In our symposium yesterday, I (acting as Sartre) declared that Jesus was acting in bad faith when he allowed himself to be crucified. By this I meant that by submitting himself for crucifixion, Jesus - as a human extension of God - was acting in a way contrary to his true identity. God, by definition of being the mightiest figure in the universe, is powerful enough to resist and overrule those who rank below himself -- AKA everyone else in the universe. To allow himself to be treated as a slave by persons lower ranked than himself in the grand scheme of things, is to act contrary to his potential for exerting supremacy. For this reason, I believe that Sartre would identify Jesus as having acted in bad faith. He was "playing at" being a slave, while in actuality he was the farthest thing from that social station. He had every potential to transcend the situation of his crucifixion, and he chose not to. I understand the religious reasons for his decision to submit, but I do not believe that Sartre would be so generous.
In fact, I believe that Sartre would say that Jesus was acting in bad faith also because he knew his purpose and ultimate project - to be the savior of the world, to tangibly represent God to people, and to educate people about the expectations that God has for his created beings. A crucified God subject, as Nietzsche has argued, is fundamentally out of order with the identity of who God is understood to be. The Christian Bible recounts Jesus as having endured much suffering and many mixed feelings about being crucified. Yet he had the free will to take his own "cup" from himself, and and did not.
With the ideas of Sartre and Nietzsche in mind, what do you think? Was Jesus acting in bad faith after all? Are we misunderstanding the character of God? Or, was Jesus not a satisfactory enough representation of God, or even God at all, according to the "gospels" of Sartre and Nietzsche?
- Isabelle
This is a very interesting post, but I don't know if I would agree that Jesus acted in bad faith. I will go ahead and say that I am not the first person one should go to if they seek information about Jesus, but I have always been under the impression that Jesus chose freely to be a slave and be sacrificed. If Jesus went about saying he had to be sacrificed and could do no other activity but be a sacrifice (which he may have, I don't know for certain) then I would agree that Sartre would say that Jesus acted in bad faith. I believe, however, that Jesus knew what he was, and what he was capable of. If this is true then I would say that his decision to be a slave and be sacrificed is the opposite of acting in bad faith because, as you mention earlier, "God, by definition of being the mightiest figure in the universe, is powerful enough to resist and overrule those who rank below himself". In fact if Jesus acted as a God merely because he is/was one then I would argue that this would be acting in bad faith. Of course if one thinks Jesus is/was a God, then the question to ask would be are gods, like humans, both a facticity and a transcendence? It might be the case that gods are indeed pure transcendence, and so it might also be the case that Jesus/God acted in bad faith by subjecting himself/Jesus to being a human to begin with.
ReplyDeleteWell, if Jesus and God even existed in Sartre's world, then they would be schizophrenics with no contact with reality. Existentialism half rests on the proclamation that there is no divine being. Otherwise, humans would have the ability to think of their actions or their circumstances in a factitious sense... "God made it this way... I have no power over the way things are because God made them so..." In this sense, of course Jesus was acting in bad faith because he felt he could be nobody other than the person who was going to save humans from their sins. That, and he thought he was the son of God... Which must be a self-deception because in Sartre's world there is no God. Jesus was in bad faith for believe he was a pure facticity as both a savior and as a son of God.
ReplyDeletei think the idea of jesus as acting in bad faith is an interesting one. However for me, Jesus was not actingin in bad faith because he was aware of who he was and what that meant for everyone else. He was a role model and had a responsibility to lead the people. I think we can all agree that, for many, Jesus is a role model. However, to use Jesus as a role model is an attempt by Jesus to play a role, similar to the waiter in the cafe who attempts to play the role of a waiter than than himself. Just as the waiter will never be a waiter in the same way in which a book is a book, one who attempts to look at Jesus as a role model and copy him will never fully be Jesus.
ReplyDeleteAssuming Jesus had godly power and was truly able to overcome others with that power, then Jesus would have had to believe that he was unable to do anything about being crucified in order for it to be deemed as bad faith. Whether or not Jesus was crucified was a choice he made as part of his transcendence. If Jesus had believed that there was nothing he could do about his situation and play the role of a slave as an inkwell is an inkwell, when he truly had the power to transcend his situation, then that is bad faith. If he merely chose to be crucified and not exert his power, but was aware of his capabilities, then that is not acting in bad faith.
ReplyDeleteWell, first off, I think that discussing a godlike figure under and existentialist framework is difficult, since existentialism assumes no god. That said, if Sartre looked at the actions of Jesus, he would find Jesus in bad faith by not accepting his lack of godliness. Essentially, he is refusing to accept an untranscendable fact: that he is a human.
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