INTERVIEWER
It has been said that Jesus was and is the most misused, misquoted, misunderstood man in human history. Do you agree with that statement?

ALLEN DWIGHT CALLAHAN
That Jesus' words are often misused - no one could argue against that - that Jesus' words have been appropriated, expropriated, used by so many people. Those words carry authority now. His words are now larger than life. They were profound and had an extraordinary effect upon people apparently in their own time. Now they've taken on this aura of authority. I mean after all, when you have some people saying that there was a man in first century Palestine who was actually God, that adds a lot of authority to anything he said or did. So anybody who wants to do anything wants to expropriate that authority if they can.

This is a game that everybody plays - you find an authority and then you manipulate it for your own ends. So we can expect Jesus' words to be bent and twisted and stolen and used by all kinds of people. In a way it is similar to what the Treasury Department has to deal with with counterfeiters. You've got all kinds of counterfeiters out there because the genuine article is so valuable. So you live with the counterfeits and you learn how to discern them, but nobody's talking about setting the treasury on fire. Likewise, there's something about these words that are compelling, that continue to be compelling, that they have their own authenticity, no matter who many people try to falsify them.

INTERVIEWER
What does the resurrection mean to you and how was it interpreted by the earliest followers

ALLEN DWIGHT CALLAHAN
In the resurrection of Jesus, and even in his ministry, people could see that the limitations of their existence and really of all human existence were qualified, if not nullified in what Jesus was doing, including death. And if there were any question about that, then the resurrection answers that question. Paul looks back on this tradition of Jesus' resurrection, and he refers to Jesus as the first fruits, that is he's the first wave of the harvest of a multitude of people who will enjoy victory over death. And he writes this to the Corinthians, and he says you comfort each other with these words. It doesn't mean that we're not going to face death. Paul wrote that to remind the Corinthians of that victory over death precisely because they were facing death, because some of their members had already died.

There were some people at Corinth who were thinking that because Jesus had been raised from the dead, because they had put their trust in Jesus, they wouldn't have to die. They wouldn't have to face mortality. Paul says no. He says, this gives you the strength to face mortality because you know that it's not the end. And he says this is our hope. So in that way, mortality as people really experienced it, not as some kind of grand existential angst, but as people really experienced at the gravesite when that loved one passes away, that pain has been addressed. We can't obviate it, but we can triumph over it, we can transcend it, as Jesus has done.

INTERVIEWER
Richard Rohr commented that we are human beings trying to become spiritual. And what Jesus is personifying is that we are already spiritual beings, and the problem is really how to become fully human. Can you comment on that?

HUSTON SMITH
Well, I think he's exactly right. One of the ways in which the early church fathers summed up the miracle of the incarnation was; God became man so that man might become God. Today we would not say man, we would say a human. God became human so that human can become God. And I think that does say it. However, there was an antecedent in the book of Genesis. When it comes to the creation story and it comes to the creation of the human being, the terminology is "I will create man in my own image". Now, that means, God being divine, I will create man as divine. Now, image makes a slight difference, because the finite can never become totally human. But it's like the mountain at the bottom of the lake. It is a reflection. And so the outlines are the thing.

So we're told at the very start that we are divine - not one hundred percent, but ninety nine point forty four. It's there. The divinity is within us. The problem is simply that it's become overlaid with so much crud and salvationists and guilt, fear, anger and ego, and so on, that it's like a lamp. A lamp can have a flame inside, but the lamp covering, can be overlaid with first dust and then dirt and then mud. And finally, you can get it to the point that no light is visible at all. And the people who seem to be just inherently evil, why that is not a bad analogy for what has happened. But the point is that the divinity is right here and can be accessed. And in the father's way of putting it, the impact of Jesus was to access that divinity which is already there, and to let it shine forth.

INTERVIEWER
When we look at Jesus we see a complex figure. One quality about Jesus that sometimes gets overlooked is that Jesus was among other things, clearly a radical figure. Can you tell me about what was so radical about his teachings?

HUSTON SMITH
Radical is a bad word in certain sectors. I happen to live in Berkeley and radical is a good word in Berkeley, and the best of the Jesus scholars pick up on that. There is in a world class Jewish scholar who teaches in my university, the University of California before I retired two years ago. He spent two years learning Greek in order to understand Jesus better and his book (it's one of the best written and it's by a Jew) is Jesus: a Radical Jew. And that's the whole thesis. He was a Jewish soul through, but he was a Jewish radical. And the radicalism consists precisely in not allowing social/conventional, guidelines that divided people, and the absolute nonchalance you might say, with which he just wiped those all away and came down to the real thing which is your one on one relationship to your neighbor. Do you give your neighbor the same standing in your desires, hopes, efforts, as you do your own interests? That's why it was radical.

INTERVIEWER
Have we focused on the core issues that Jesus was teaching?

RICHARD ROHR
We've largely projected onto Jesus what we want him to say, whatever we think he must have really said. But you go to the Four Gospels and you can see that he didn't talk about most of the things Christianity is preoccupied with today. In fact you could make this statement even stronger; the things we are preoccupied with, he never talked about and the things he did talk about like non violence and simplicity of lifestyle, have been consistently ignored by most of the mainline churches. So he's really a fabrication of what we needed to have an appropriate god figure to be.

INTERVIEWER
What have we focused on and why have we ignored his clear and powerful message?

RICHARD ROHR
I think it's crucial to understand that Jesus is not primarily, and this is going to shock some people, he's not primarily talking about a system of requirements, a behavioral set of patterns that will make god like you. It's not a religion of requirements it's a religion of relationship - relationship is everything, right relationship. It's how to be present, how to be vulnerable, how to let other people change you, it's all about relationships, but I think because the school of relationships is a much more demanding school (you have to grow up you have to change, you have to forgive you have to let go, I have to let you be right once in a while). That is too hard, so we made it into a pseudo hard thing called requirements, and usually every denomination chooses what they're going be upset about; drinking or smoking or dancing - none of which Jesus talked about or sexual sins which Jesus hardly ever talked about.

The issues of Jesus are violence and greed - clearly, violence and greed which anthropologists say undoubtedly are the two things that will destroy the world. It's self evident once you hear that and if anyone's a great spiritual teacher they're going to have very clear taboos against violence and against greed. You read the Sermon on the Mount and it's entirely about living a simple life in this world and a non violent life in this world. But we simply weren't ready for it. I'm told that the very word non violence did not even exist in the major languages of the west until the 1960's - the very word because it wasn't in our concept - we were not ready to believe such impossible an teaching.

INTERVIEWER
You often write and speak of the significance of Jesus referring to himself as son of man. Could you elaborate on that again.

FATHER RICHARD ROHR
The most common word that Jesus uses to describe himself is the term usually translated by Christians with capital letters SON OF MAN. We now know that it didn't have to be capitalized and it most certainly wasn't originally. Very likely he was calling himself, every man - the human being - the son of humanity. He was talking as the quintessential human being - he refers to himself in the Four Gospels by this term seventy-nine times. No other term even comes close to that. He doesn't go around calling himself god but we quickly pedestalized him - putting him up as a god figure - and lost what was the primary lure or attraction which was that he was the quintessential human being. So I think every time you hear that term son of man, if you could hear him almost describing himself as a normal human being - as a full human being - this is what it means to be a full human being, I think the passage that he speaks will take on a whole new meaning to you.

INTERVIEWER
Is the real Jesus someone we would naturally have chosen as a god figure?

FATHER RICHARD ROHR
Jesus is not a natural god figure. If you were going to create a religion, you would not have thought of a naked bleeding loser, outside the city, rejected by establishment of church and state, high priest and emperor both declare he's the problem, he's got to go, he's no good. And we come along and we declare this loser the lord of history which turned history around forever. Now I don't believe ever more than ten percent of Christians got the point, in any denomination, but they're always were a few, who once you get Jesus, once you get the spirit of Jesus, once he's transformed you, you almost automatically have this empathy for the wounded one, and you have this natural mistrust of arrogance and dominative power.

If power could have been that wrong once that creates inside of us a healthy mistrust for power and a healthy empathy for the little guy, that the little guy, the excluded one the victim, the outcast, might just be the messiah, might just be the one with the answer. And this is one of Jesus most common one liners; "The last will be first and the first will be last". He's always saying be prepared to be surprised about who's really right. Now that, that keeps us all off center and humble which is what healthy religion is supposed to be. You are never sure that you're right or on top and in fact the final freedom is when you don't even need to be anymore - you don't need to be right, you don't need to make sure you're saved, all you want to do is be in love and be in right relationship. And being in right relationship is much more demanding than being right. I've said to many crowds over the years that you'd think Jesus said this is my commandment "thou shall be right". He never said that. He said "this is my commandment; love one another". That takes a lot of letting go, a lot of forgiveness, a lot of vulnerability. Most of us just haven't been ready for that much letting go, that much vulnerability. I think that's the spirit of Jesus.

INTERVIEWER
In the past two decades there's been a real renaissance in scholarship study on the historical Jesus and it appears we have uncovered a much more complex and radical figure. What kinds of things have we learned and do you believe there is still more that is as yet hidden?

FATHER RICHARD ROHR
It is. It is very exciting what we're learning about Jesus. We used to think when I was in the seminar that all you had to do is learn Greek and Hebrew and then you'd understand. This kept us preoccupied with the text and finding out pure text or a better translation of that word. And that was a good beginning for critical scripture studies. Then we moved into a whole period of suspicion and doubt. Well that didn't really happen. That didn't really happen. That didn't really happen. We basically had lost, in the West, the ability to understand sacred text. And the sacred text are of a completely different genre. They didn't happen but they're always true. That's what sacred myth means. It's profoundly true and your job is to hear that truth.