The Existential Jesus by John Carroll (Scribe Publications, Melbourne 2007).

This year I attended the Australian cathedral deans’ conference in Newcastle, where the key speaker was John Carroll, Professor of Sociology at La Trobe University in Melbourne. The title for his presentations was ‘The Existential Jesus’.

I went to hear him with low expectations but came away impressed by his wisdom and challenged about my own understanding of the gospels. I quickly ordered Carroll’s book for myself and was not disappointed.

Carroll does not confess to be a Christian or a worshipper but his examination of the gospels of Mark and John is sensitive, respectful, and even reverential. His inspiration came from leading a reading group at La Trobe University. As he freely admits, “I [have] convened the group out of an interest in the foundational religious texts of our culture; also, as someone with a deep intuition of a sacred order governing the human condition; and as someone for whom Jesus is a central but obscure presence.” (p5)

The book is divided into two main parts. The first examines the story of Jesus, and the second looks at ‘they who follow,’ meaning Peter, Magdalene, Judas and Pilate. By extension, I found myself included in that second category, examining my own relationship to Jesus. If only the plethora of Christian books achieved this goal, how much better would we be served! Maybe it takes someone outside the church to challenge us in the same way that Carroll oozes respect for the existential Jesus, stripped of two millennia of churchiness and sometimes bigotry!

The first part of the book grapples with the person of Jesus as expressed by Mark, the first gospel to be written. Carroll’s work is a contemporary contribution to the search for the historical Jesus. As such, he presents a Jesus who is real, challenging and in many ways, attractive. And yet, Carroll is not afraid to reveal the Jesus who is also troubled, realistic and enigmatic.

For example, one person Carroll writes much about is Legion, the madman found by Jesus at Gadara on the sea of Galilee. In the past, I have read the story, noted it and moved on. But Carroll sees a far deeper significance in this man whom he believes crops up several times in the text after being healed by Jesus.

Ultimately, Carroll even equates Legion with the angel at the tomb after Jesus’s resurrection. Just consider this short extract, for example.

“Legion feels at home among the tombs. He belongs among the dead. Other humans are desperate to chain and shackle him. Their response to rampaging pneuma [Carroll’s persistent description of spirit, ‘... the charged wind, the cosmic breath, the driving spectral force’], is to tie it down; lock it up.” (p47)

Combining the attributes of Legion and the angel, Carroll sees the link as the narrator of Mark’s gospel himself. Without giving away too much of the plot, here are some of Carroll’s words as he compares the styles of the writers of the Markan and Johannine gospels:

“Just as Mark’s Jesus is unsure of his way and emotionally volatile, his narrator incorporates within himself the wildness of Legion, the panicky flight of the naked young man, and the achieved calm inside the tomb. In contrast, John’s Jesus is composed and magisterial, and his narrator is steady and resolute.” (p230)

I thoroughly appreciated The Existential Jesus, and finished the book feeling closer to the Lord I serve than when I began it. It’s a challenging read, but it is a release from bias and the blinkered effect of 2000 years of church history.

Archbishop Peter Jensen, writing in The Monthly, had to admit The Existential Jesus testifies to the need for our culture to grapple again with the Jesus of the New Testament. John Carroll is right. This task is inescapable if we wish to understand our history and the significance of our civilisation.

Charles Tyrell is Dean of Christ Church Cathedral, Nelson.