The Point of Jesus From a Philosophical Perspective

I don't write a lot about Jesus. He has never really fascinated me as a philosopher or as a person. But his death--and Socrates' death--says volumes not necessarily about him, but our collective reaction to him.

The deaths of Socrates and Jesus are tragic in such a profound way that few would ever dare consider, because the manner in which they were killed speaks to the very worst in all of us.

I don't consider Jesus to be even a very important philosopher on paper (fitting, because he didn't write anything down; for that matter, neither did Socrates), but I still consider him a nice guy who really should not have been murdered. The reason I don't view Jesus as incredibly important philosophically is because he offered a utopian system of ethics that is truly impossible, and banked everything on divine judgment, despite the fact that there are very good immediate "worldly" reasons to be a good person. Many of these were laid out in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. I don't think waiting a lifetime for the consequences of your actions is an effective motivation for doing anything. People are generally bad at considering anything more than the immediate consequences of any decision, and in my view, therefore, need very good "worldly" justifications for being good, such as having people like you and listening to what you have to say; having true friends as opposed as those you need to pay in order to keep their company, or the fact that helping others triggers a positive emotional response in all parties. Doing good feels good. This says nothing more or less about the integrity of their character than trying to score Brownie Points with God.

But all of this is really beside the point. Remember who Jesus was interacting with, because this will be extremely important later: Jesus was helping the disenfranchised, and eviscerating the wealthy, probably because he saw that the existing system as oppressive. Do not forget that a recurring theme in the Old Testament was also the care for the poor and disenfranchised, and in this way Jesus is still not a complete reversal.

And then there was the Pharisees, who were principally the ones who whipped up the crowd to call for his death because he had gained the support of the lower classes and were thus a danger to their power. Pontius Pilate didn't really want to kill him, but the people, who were manipulated against Jesus by the Pharisees, demanded he be crucified. And so he was.

Socrates was forced to drink Hemlock because of trumped up charges resulting from his cross-examinations of government leaders, often resulting in the exposure of their ignorance. He, too, was a threat to the powers that be.

Jesus was killed because he was a threat to the ruling class; his system of ethics and lifestyle resembled what we would think of as a commune. The problem with Jesus' death, ultimately, is that it was supported by the very people who stood to benefit from and originally supported what he had to say. The ultimate tragedy is that the people themselves wanted him to die.

Let us imagine that Jesus did come back. To be kind, let us even give him the scars he presented to his followers that, according to the story, proved that he was who he said he was when he returned. Let us also allow that he said pretty much the exact same things he said when he was originally alive.

How would people react to him? The reality of this question in its possibility--not of Jesus' factual return, but the reaction he would receive from his audience--should frighten you. In other words, if Jesus ever returned, we as a society would kill him again. It is Dostoevsky's "The Grand Inquisitor"; the irony is that Jesus would probably be murdered for his own sake--in the name of the very institutions that are supposedly attached to his legacy. One could very well argue that these institutions are not really doing what Jesus intended--which would be a fair point--but this line of reasoning would eventually call into question the very nature and authenticity of Christianity itself when matched against the figure it revolves around.

The crux of Christianity, of what follows from the tragedy of his death, the possibility of resurrection and further prophecy, stems from the profound guilt at having killed him. The people who originally believed in him probably saw the profound, cosmic injustice of his death, and devised a story with a "happy ending," in which his spirit endures and his martyrdom guarantees salvation for them. This guilt is further assuaged by a kind of determinism of the whole thing: "It was supposed to happen." But did Jesus himself see it that way? Did he want to become a martyr? Did he think he was intended to construct Heaven and Hell, or participate in a cosmic chess game against Satan? When Jesus says that he was betrayed at the Last Supper, it might not have been any kind of divine knowledge; he might have had someone tell him about the plot to have him arrested. Also, much like Socrates in "The Crito," he might have simply accepted his fate, and dined knowing that he was going to be captured, much like Socrates telling Crito that while the punishment is unjust, because I live here, I must obey them (and form the basis of Social Contract Theory). To shed light on this problem, Jesus remarked, "Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they are doing" [Luke 23:34 NSRV]. This single quote clarifies for us that Jesus did not see himself as a martyr, or, even if he did, he did not want to be one. He did not say, "Hey guys, I'll be right back. Everything will be fine." The supernatural elements surrounding his death were artificially imposed precisely because the people who loved him needed something more to hold on to; they could not live with an injustice as the end result. Even in the failure of the Garden of Eden, God did not abandon his creations, and here, too, the people who believed in Jesus would not allow their relationship with God to end in such tragedy.

But I don't see it that way. I don't think that Jesus' death could ever be whitewashed or compensated for. I may be deemed a pessimist, but I cannot deal with the fact that were we to have another chance--or even multiple chances--we would blow it. But the primary reason why I am so upset is that the people who would kill Jesus are the very same people who say they love him. I also don't condone murdering philosophers, but that's a given.