When Jesus Came to Harvard by Harvey Cox

First published: New York: Mariner Books, 2006

Genre(s): Nonfiction

Subgenre(s): Biblical studies; critical analysis; handbook for living

Core issue(s): Daily living; ethics; guidance; Judaism; morality

Overview

In the 1980’s, the Harvard College faculty introduced a moral reasoning curriculum into its undergraduate program in response to a perceived increase in professional corruption and unethical behavior (even among Harvard graduates) and a belief that a focus on facts in education had diminished the importance of values and morality. Harvey Cox, a professor at the Harvard Divinity School and the author of The Secular City: Secularization and Urbanization in Theological Perspective (1965), was asked to teach a course on Jesus in the new curriculum. He reluctantly agreed, despite wondering whether morality was something that could be taught in an academic environment and believing that moral reasoning did not necessarily lead to moral actions. In addition, any college class would include more than just believing Christians. How would they respond to Jesus as a moral exemplar? However, Cox accepted the challenge, teaching the course for two decades, with considerable personal fulfillment. When Jesus Came to Harvard is his account of that experience.

One of the challenges Cox faced with his varied Harvard students was making Jesus, who lived two millennia ago in a preindustrial rural environment, relevant to the moral quandaries of the late twentieth century, a much different world. Also, what could a morality linked to Christian theology offer to Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, agnostics, or atheists? Cox, from a Baptist background, did not interpret the Bible as always being literally true.

Cox did not believe that the quest for the historical Jesus was ultimately satisfactory as it left Jesus only as a product of the early Roman Empire in the province of Judea, a Palestinian Jew and a rabbi who preached about the imminent coming of God, attracted a following among the underclass in Galilee, inflamed the religious and political authorities, and was arrested and subsequently crucified, the usual Roman method of executing troublemakers. His followers, believing he rose from the dead, became the earliest Christians, initially forming a sect within Judaism. Jesus’ life as re-created by historians did not answer the question of what Jesus would do in any given circumstance in the modern world. Cox’s response to determining what Jesus would do was to begin with the fact that Jesus was a rabbi steeped in Judaic theology and tradition and that he relied on narrative stories rather than abstract principles and precepts to convey morality. Cox notes that history and myth often intertwine, ritual can be more revealing and truthful than chronicle, and ritualized stories enrich historical fact.

Throughout When Jesus Came to Harvard, Cox emphasizes that Jesus was a rabbi and his knowledge of Jewish doctrines and law was extensive. Also, as a rabbi, Jesus’ ministry reflected the rabbinic tradition of using narrative storytelling to convey moral and ethical issues. Cox argues that awareness of a moral issue is in itself insufficient: One must decide what moral response to make to the situation, and one has to have the courage to actually implement a response. The process, the author claims, is less a matter of abstract principles or general moral theories and more a consequence of imagination sparked by stories, or case studies, in which often Jesus himself was the central figure. As Cox notes, these stories, those that Jesus told and those that were told about him in the Scriptures, did not have to be factual in a scientific historical sense, but they had to be “true.” What was of great significance with Jesus was that morality was universal, therefore his stories frequently focused on people outside mainstream Jewish society.

Although Cox’s Harvard class centered on the applicability of the moral examples exemplified by Jesus, other aspects of the Jesus narrative frequently entered the discussion, such as whether the stories of the virgin birth or the Garden of Eden were historically “true.” Cox does not express a literal belief in these stories but instead responds to such questions about biblical “miracles” by noting that Jesus himself was born, lived, and died, and that God encompasses every aspect of human experience, including joy, pain, and morality. Regarding the story of the Garden of Eden, Cox interprets it as Adam and Eve refusing to accept their human condition, wanting even more, similar to the conflict between the aspirations and limitations of many people in today’s world. Cox points to the tradition of the midrash in the stories told by Jewish rabbis, likening them to the riffing of jazz musicians when they perform variations on the main theme, and claims that there is no single meaning or interpretation to the biblical stories. The author argues that moral reasoning in the abstract, in the absence of imagination and stories, limits or reduces morality’s significance and impact.

In the chapter “A World Without God?” Cox explores the meanings of Jesus’ imploring cry from the cross, “My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?” Jesus’ words invariably puzzled many students, who saw Jesus as a moral man abandoned by God. Why did God desert Jesus and why did Jesus feel deserted? Cox’s answer is that God refuses to compromise human freedom by becoming merely the deus ex machina who rescues humanity at times of crisis. To be fully human, as Jesus was on the cross, is to face life’s crises, including responding to the moral issues life presents.

Christian Themes

The author claims that the theme in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount as recorded in the book of Matthew is the major underlying message of the entire Bible, the culmination of many earlier versions of that text. However, its application in today’s world, when supplemented with the account of the sermon as given in Luke, where Jesus seemed to condemn the rich and successful, was challenging to many of Cox’s students, committed as they were to achieving professional success in a material world. Through discussion, however, Cox was able to give the Beatitudes modern relevance. The meek are not passive and weak but faithful and patient, and peace is not necessarily the world of a Pax Romana or a Pax Americana but rather the inner peace of shalom. Therefore the story of Jesus and his stories with their moral center can and have appealed not only to committed Christians but also to many non-Christians such as India’s Mahatma Gandhi.

When Jesus Came to Harvard is a book about morality rather than theology. In it, Cox, a believing Christian, stresses Jesus as an observing Jew, a rabbi who taught the Torah, noting that even the Lord’s Prayer is more traditionally Jewish than uniquely Christian. The stories that Jesus told, the sixty-odd parables, which make up about one-third of the first three Gospels, are not overtly about God but about wedding feasts (guests invited in from the highways), muggings (the Good Samaritan), and the activities of farmers and fishermen. However, the stories, like Zen koans, are not always easy to interpret, such as the story of the condemnation of the late-invited guest who was not properly dressed for the wedding banquet and who was thrown “into the dark, a place of wailing and grinding of teeth.” Be prepared, be properly dressed, for the imminent coming of God, or be always aware of the many moral choices that life presents.

Throughout the history of Christianity, believers have looked forward to the Second Coming of Jesus and the end-times, as evidenced in the popularity of the Left Behind series (1995-2007), but Cox ignores those eschatological issues, referring to a Hasidic rabbi, who when asked what he would do if he knew that the Messiah was coming today, responded that he would simply continue to water his garden. When discussing Christ’s Resurrection, Cox admits that he does not know what it means or what he believes about it. In fact, he doubts that “believe” is the correct word. “Confidence,” “hope,” and “trust” more accurately reflect his own feelings. Cox describes Jesus as an elusive “friend,” today still talking and eating with humanity irrespective of rank or status. As the story of the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt has had an inspiring impact on non-Jews, so Jesus can have a moral if not a theological meaning for non-Christians.

Sources for Further Study

Campbell, Colleen Carroll. “Jesus Christ Superfluous.” Review of When Jesus Came to Harvard. First Things 152 (April, 2005). Campbell criticizes Cox for stressing the importance of Jesus as a moral teacher over Jesus’ divinity as the Son of God.

Gula, Richard M. “Rabbinical Thinking.” America 192 (January 2, 2005): 24. Gula argues that Cox succeeds better at introducing Jesus through the biblical stories than connecting Jesus to present-day moral choices.

Heinegg, Peter. Cross Currents 55 (Spring, 2005): 138. Finds Cox’s work as thoughtful and relaxed rather than being rigorously analytical.

Lawton, Kim. “Interview with Harvey Cox.” Religion and Ethics. Episode 935, April 28, 2006. In this Public Broadcasting System program, the author and Cox discuss the Pentecostals and other similar movements.