Three Perspectives on the Records
Contributions by Richard Naegle, Norman McMullen, and Helen Saul:
Richard Naegle:
For many of us who have been long associated with the Guild, the core seminar and experience has been The Records of the Life and Teachings of Jesus. In many ways, the Records Study, as amplified by Jungian insights, has provided the philosophical, religious, and psychological underpinnings for most Guild seminars. Yet this central seminar seems to be drawing fewer and fewer new people. Why?
Here are some of my musings: For centuries the gospels and the Christ they describe have been claimed as a source of authority for the Christian Church and used as a lens for theistic inquiry (i.e. into the nature of God). Sharman was interested in the historical Jesus as different from the Christ of faith. His approach moved authority from the Church to the figure of Jesus; it also shifted the ability to interpret Jesus’ life and teachings to the individual.
Differently, Jung was not interested in the historical figure of Jesus; rather he focused on the Christ as an archetypal/mythological reality within the human psyche. Howes, however, combined Sharman and Jung’s approaches. She helped deepen the psychological understanding of the material (including the savior archetype), leaving final interpretation to the individual, but also leaving ultimate authority to “the Jesus of the Records.” All three—Sharman, Jung, and Howes, continued to use the material for theistic inquiry.
It seems to me that today two fundamental assumptions are being challenged:
1) For many Jesus is no longer seen as the authority, as the arbiter of valid spiritual experience. The historicity of the figure itself is widely questioned. And many younger people are not gripped by Jesus since they did not grow up in the Christian “myth” (in which most of us in an older generation did). It is not an important living myth for them, and hence there is little desire to explore it—especially in an expensive 17 day seminar. (While the savior archetype is still very much alive today, it is not epitomized by Jesus Christ for them.)
2) Many people no longer embrace the idea of theism (i.e. “belief in a god or gods…especially as creator and ruler of the world”), particularly as it is taught in institutional religions. While they have spiritual experiences and a sense of profound universal meaning, they are uncomfortable with the word “god” (i.e. a being outside of time and space who is the perfect, omnipotent and omniscient originator and ruler of the universe). The language and thrust of the life of Jesus therefore may seem foreign or irrelevant for them.
Yet, as we intimately know, the Records Study still holds profound riches. Do we give up on the seminar? Or how do we make it more relevant? I welcome your reflections and ideas in a continuing exchange.
In addition, the past, present, and future of the Records is the topic for the Study Center’s panel Is There Still Life in Those Old Bones, and Should We Care? A discussion on the study of the historical Jesus—to be held Saturday, August 28, 1-5:30 at the home of Jean Gansa.(Click the preceding link for more information)
Eleanor Norris will give us an overview of the historical development of the study of the historical Jesus, via Sharman, Jung, and Howes, which has been the focus of her PhD dissertation at the Pacifica Graduate Institute. Hal Childs and Patricia Calcagno Stenger, recent leaders of Basic Records, as well as other leaders, will then discuss new ways in which the study might develop. For more information and to register, please go to the Guild’s website, guildsf.org, or see the new printed brochure.
And, as a follow-up. there will be a discussion, A Sacred Conversation—Beyond Theism, hosted by Clare Morris and myself at the Friends House, Santa Rosa, on Sunday, October 18, 2-5pm. (Click the Preceding Link for More Information)
Richard Naegle
Norman McMullen:
The Records Study – Past, Present, Future
Richard, I found your musings in the August TF about why fewer people are coming to Records clear and helpful. Thank you.
I agree with the two reasons you give for this fall off, but would add a third and to my mind a very important one. It is that modern Biblical scholarship has quite successfully permeated today’s media and hence the ‘novelty’ of the critical method used in Records is no longer novel. Most of the questions about Jesus being human or divine have been (or are being) worked through in TV, films, books or newspaper articles, especially in the last 15 or so years.
Another dimension to this third point is that this current biblical scholarship is also growing into the awareness of some liberal churches and hence, I suspect, traditional church people who are finding Christianity ‘is failing them’, no longer find the Guild the only raft in their sea of doubt and questioning. There are fringe churches there for them.
Both these movements could be contributing to the fall off from Records as many, not all, Records attendees were from the Christian stable.
Norman McMullen
Helen Saul:
The Records Study--Past, Present, and Future
Richard - Just read your article on the future of the Records study. Very thoughtful. I, too, have been thinking about the issue.
I regularly attend an AA meeting which is made up of very highly educated thoughtful people. As the basis of AA is a reliance on a "higher power", or God by any name one feels comfortable using, the issue of theism arises at almost every meeting.
What has come to me out of these years of hearing many different experiences of persons who, in fact, DO rely on a higher power is that Buddhism seems very helpful in peoples lives, and also helpful seems to be a sort of cosmology I can only best describe as Taoism, or a faith in a universe which has a meaningful pattern and a Way to live harmoniously with that pattern.
It has, of course, been suggested that Jesus may have been influenced by the religion of India in his day, of which I know very little. But he certainly believed in a Way that was very connected to a non-ego centered life. Some thinkers have tried to favorably compare Jesus' teachings with those of the Buddha. I think that is fair.
Where this is all leading I am not certain, but your point that many today did not grow up in the mythic tradition of Christianity is definitely the clue to the direction that should be taken in future Guild offerings of seminars in the teachings of Jesus.
I, of course, have found that the work of the 12 Steps of AA is a profound religious/psychological journey. There is a fine book, loaned to me by a friend, on Buddhism and the 12 Steps. So, of course, I strongly believe that Jesus and Buddha are totally relevant to the life crises of the modern world, both individually and collectively. And my own study of Taoism continues to be fundamental to my life.
Somewhere in all of this we are both pointing to where the future lies. I am glad to see that there will be thoughtful discussion of all of this.
Maybe this will add to your thinking. Thanks for the article.
> Warmly,
Helen Saul
> "You never really understand something unless you can explain it to
> your grandmother." - Albert Einstein
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Where has "The Records" Gone?
The Records of the Life of Jesus study represents a heroically _modern_ project. First, around the beginning of the 20th century, the application of critical (scientific) principles to determine the most authentic text, to which Sharman added the remarkably effective Socratic dialog method. Around the middle of the last century came a vital extension--thanks to Elizabeth Howes, and the work of many other Guild leaders--the engagement of depth psychology and the individuation process. This was a Copernican step in the perspective of the ego in relation to the source of existence.
In essence the archetype of Christ (identified as Jesus) was replaced by Jesus as the model of the creative ego. This still required, however, the assumption that there is such a thing as the "historical Jesus" and specific text that can at least to a high degree of probability be regarded as the words of Jesus. In other words, an assumption that a "core" of psychologically and spiritually authentic teachings can be retrieved and engaged to create in the Records participant a process analogous to what Jesus himself experienced.
By the last third of the past century, however, the most academically respected New Testament scholarship (e.g. the Jesus Seminar) had largely eroded the "core," reducing it to a small number of high probability sayings. Meanwhile, the cultural developments we call "postmodernism" provide an even more significant and radical challenge to the assumptions underlying "traditional" Records study.
It is characteristic of the postmodern world that the whole _idea_ of authority or even "authorship" is deconstructed. There are no fixed texts that stand complete within themselves. Every text is part of a web of reflection and self-reflection (perhaps a bit like a piece of a hologram). In this view it becomes futile to attempt to isolate an "authentic" or "historical" Jesus from the web of two millennia of reflection.
Now consider the young person who might encounter an invitation to a Records seminar. She or he is someone likely to be intimately involved in a culture of "mashups" (new works created by dynamically combining aspects of existing ones), "sampling," (think hip-hop), YouTube, cooperative "authorship" (Wikipedia), and the breakdown of the distinction between genres, forms, and indeed even between "art" and the objects of everyday life.
Thus in the 21st century "Text" is no longer potentially "definitive" but has become more like streams that weave in and out of one another, creating new narratives that often consciously reflect on themselves. What does this mean not only for the Records but for the use of texts in general in Guild seminars?
I am looking forward to seeing how people who are more steeped in the Records than myself will address the impact of postmodern culture on this century-old project. But I see considerable promise in one approach, which John Petroni and Hal Childs have introduced to many of us. It involves moving beyond dialog with "the text" to a kind of direct, dialectical psychological encounter with emotion and image, reflected upon itself and transformed into "thought." It is the alchemy in which "text" is negated and its core or essence dissolved, only to be reborn as a mode of being.
The sayings attributed to Jesus still contain powerful images and can stir powerful emotions. But it is not clear to me whether they should remain privileged in such a way that a special seminar should be built mainly around them--a seminar with an implicit narrative and the assumption of a historical figure.
Perhaps the "Records" has already dissolved and is beginning to reappear not as the object of a seminar, but in the way we approach all images and emotions.
To borrow another term now used, I would suggest that Records has already been "sublated" (both negated and preserved) in our (post)modern consciousness. Perhaps our task now is to articulate and catch up with what it has already become.