The physician has identified the illness.
He has explained its cause.
He has prescribed a remedy.
He has demonstrated, through his own life, the kind of health toward which the patient must move.
But what happens after the physician is gone?
This question is essential to our study.
A physician may leave behind a group of people who deeply admire him. They may preserve his memory, repeat his words, and tell others about his extraordinary work. Over time, stories about him may spread. His followers may build institutions in his name. They may develop doctrines explaining who he was and why he came.
All of these things may be important.
But they do not by themselves answer the most important question:
Did the patients take the medicine?
This distinction provides an important analytical framework for the study of all great historical figures:
1. The Physician
The person who recognized the illness, diagnosed it, and proposed a remedy.
2. The Prescription
The particular path of transformation that the physician recommended.
3. The Patients
The people to whom the prescription was given.
4. The Tradition
The movement, community, institution, or religion that developed around the memory of the physician.
These four should not automatically be treated as identical.
A person may admire a physician without following his advice.
A community may preserve the physician's name while forgetting his central prescription.
An institution may become powerful while the original message of its founder becomes weak.
Indeed, one of the great paradoxes of religious history is this:
A movement can become increasingly devoted to the identity of its founder while becoming increasingly distant from the way of life the founder taught.
This question must therefore be asked of Christianity.
Not:
“Is Christianity good or bad?”
But:
To what extent has Christianity, throughout its long and diverse history, followed the diagnosis, prescription, and method that this study has identified in the teaching and life of Jesus?
7.1 Jesus and Christianity Are Not Historically Identical
The first principle of this investigation must be methodological.
Jesus and Christianity cannot simply be treated as the same historical reality.
Jesus was a first-century Jewish teacher and prophetically significant figure whose life and message gave rise to a movement. Christianity, as a worldwide religious tradition, developed over centuries.
Between Jesus and the Christianity of later history stand many processes:
- the experience and interpretation of the earliest disciples,
- the belief in Jesus' resurrection,
- missionary expansion into the Greco-Roman world,
- the development of Christological doctrines,
- the formation of the biblical canon,
- the emergence of church structures,
- theological controversies,
- councils and creeds,
- the relationship between church and empire,
- divisions between Christian communities,
- missionary movements,
- reform movements,
- and encounters with vastly different cultures and political systems.
Therefore, when evaluating Christianity, it is historically misleading to assume that every later Christian development can simply be identified with the intentions of Jesus.
A more careful approach asks two separate questions:
What did Jesus teach and practice?
and:
How did later Christians interpret, preserve, modify, embody, or sometimes contradict that teaching and practice?
The distinction does not necessarily imply hostility toward Christianity.
On the contrary, it allows Christianity to be examined honestly.
A tradition that cannot distinguish its founder from its own later history may become incapable of self-correction.
7.2 The Earliest Question: Who Was Jesus?
One of the most important developments after Jesus' death was the increasing attention given to the question:
Who was Jesus?
This was an understandable question.
His followers believed that his life, death, and continued significance demanded explanation.
Was he the Messiah?
What did his resurrection mean?
What was his relationship to God?
How should his death be understood?
What authority did he possess?
These questions eventually produced the great doctrinal developments of Christianity.
They remain central to Christian faith.
But from the perspective of the present study, another question must stand beside them:
What did Jesus ask people to do?
The first question concerns the identity of the physician.
The second concerns the medicine he prescribed.
Both may be important.
But the first can sometimes overshadow the second.
It is possible to develop an elaborate theology about the physician while paying less attention to the actual process of healing.
One can debate whether the physician was uniquely sent by God while neglecting the instructions he gave to the patients.
One can worship the physician while refusing the medicine.
This possibility is particularly relevant to Jesus because the Christian tradition came to make extraordinarily strong claims about his identity.
The stronger the attention given to the question “Who is Jesus?”, the greater the danger that the question “What did Jesus teach?” may receive insufficient attention.
This does not mean that Christian doctrine is necessarily wrong or unimportant.
It simply means that belief about Jesus and obedience to Jesus are not automatically the same thing.
7.3 When the Patient Begins to Worship the Physician
The physician metaphor can now be extended.
Suppose a remarkable physician enters a sick society.
He understands an illness that others cannot see.
He heals some people.
His treatment produces extraordinary results.
People become convinced that he has been sent by God.
They begin telling others about him.
Soon, the physician becomes the centre of attention.
His portrait is displayed everywhere.
People sing songs about him.
They study his ancestry.
They debate his nature.
They argue about exactly how divine he was.
They establish organizations in his name.
Eventually, millions of people identify themselves as followers of the physician.
Yet one question remains:
Are they taking the medicine?
This question is not intended as an argument against honouring the physician.
Nor is it an argument against theological reflection.
It is a warning against substitution.
The patient may substitute belief in the physician for participation in the healing process.
He may believe:
“Because I admire the physician, I must be healthy.”
But admiration is not health.
He may say:
“I know everything about the physician.”
But knowledge about the physician is not necessarily transformation.
He may belong to the physician's institution.
But membership is not necessarily healing.
This distinction may help us understand one of the persistent tensions in Christian history.
Christianity has often placed great emphasis upon correct belief.
Jesus, however, repeatedly directed attention toward the condition of human life and relationships.
The present study does not argue that belief is unimportant.
Rather, it asks whether belief becomes complete only when it produces the transformation toward which Jesus pointed.
7.4 The Religion Jesus Criticized Can Reappear in His Own Name
This is perhaps the most uncomfortable question.
Jesus strongly criticized forms of religion in which external religious identity became disconnected from inner transformation.
He challenged religious hypocrisy.
He questioned the tendency to judge others while ignoring one's own failures.
He challenged those who believed that religious status automatically made them righteous.
He repeatedly brought attention back to the fruits produced in human life.
This raises a disturbing possibility.
Can the very kind of religious illness that Jesus criticized reappear within a religion established in his name?
A person may say:
“I belong to the correct religion.”
Yet remain unchanged.
He may believe that his religious identity guarantees his acceptance before God.
He may condemn outsiders.
He may carefully preserve religious rituals while neglecting mercy.
He may claim to defend God while humiliating another human being.
He may worship Jesus while ignoring Jesus' teaching about enemies.
In such a case, Christianity has not necessarily failed because Jesus' prescription was ineffective.
The patient may simply have refused to take the medicine.
Or, more subtly, the medicine may have been gradually replaced with something else.
7.5 From Persecuted Movement to Powerful Institution
One of the most significant transformations in Christian history occurred when Christianity moved from being a frequently marginalized and, at times, persecuted movement within the Roman Empire to becoming closely associated with imperial power.
This development created new possibilities.
Christian institutions could protect communities.
They could organize charity.
They could establish centres of learning.
They could influence laws.
They could care for the poor and sick.
But political power also introduced a serious danger.
A movement centred upon a teacher who, according to the interpretation developed in this study, rejected coercive power as the means of establishing God's reign now had access to coercive power.
The question became:
What happens when the followers of a non-dominating teacher become politically dominant?
History gives no simple answer.
Christian political power has sometimes been used to protect the vulnerable and promote reforms.
It has also sometimes been used to suppress dissent, persecute religious minorities, and impose religious conformity.
This is why the distinction between historical success and faithfulness to the original prescription is essential.
A religion may become enormously successful in numbers, wealth, and political influence.
Yet success does not automatically demonstrate that it is reproducing the method of its founder.
7.6 The Problem of Coercion
Our previous section proposed that one of the distinctive features of Jesus' method was his refusal to make coercion the primary instrument of spiritual and moral transformation.
The question must therefore be asked:
Did Christianity consistently preserve this method?
The historical answer must be:
No. Not consistently.
At different periods, Christian rulers and institutions used political and legal power to punish religious dissent.
Christian communities fought one another.
Religious minorities were persecuted.
Wars were sometimes given religious justification.
The Crusades remain one of the most obvious examples of violence conducted under explicitly Christian symbols and language.
The Inquisition represents another historical context in which religious authority became connected with systems of investigation, judgment, and punishment.
These events cannot simply be dismissed as irrelevant because “true Christians would never do such things.”
They were carried out by people and institutions that identified themselves as Christian.
Therefore, they belong to Christian history and must be acknowledged honestly.
But another conclusion does not automatically follow.
It would be historically simplistic to argue:
“Christians committed violence; therefore Jesus taught violence.”
The distinction between founder and followers must again be maintained.
The proper question is:
How did later Christians justify actions that appear to conflict with significant elements of Jesus' teaching and example?
Answering that question requires historical investigation.
Some appealed to the responsibility of rulers.
Some drew upon Old Testament models of religious reform.
Some believed that suppressing heresy protected eternal salvation.
Some interpreted violence as necessary for preserving social and religious order.
Whatever the explanations, however, the tension remains.
If the physician prescribed healing through transformation, persuasion, service, and love, then the use of coercion in the physician's name requires critical examination.
7.7 Did Christianity Also Preserve the Medicine?
An honest evaluation must not focus only on failure.
The history of Christianity also contains countless examples of people and movements that attempted to embody the path of Jesus.
Christians have cared for the sick.
They have established hospitals.
They have fed the poor.
They have worked among the abandoned.
They have opposed slavery.
They have challenged injustice.
They have risked their lives for strangers.
They have forgiven persecutors.
They have chosen service over personal advantage.
They have worked for reconciliation in situations of deep conflict.
Some of the most powerful movements for peace and social reform have drawn direct inspiration from Jesus' teaching.
These examples are also part of Christian history.
Therefore, Christianity cannot be described simply as either faithful or unfaithful.
It contains an ongoing struggle between two possibilities.
The first possibility:
Christianity remembers the physician's prescription.
It asks:
- How can we love more fully?
- How can we serve?
- How can we forgive?
- How can we include those whom society excludes?
- How can we break cycles of hatred?
- How can we take responsibility for our own illness rather than blaming others?
The second possibility:
Christianity forgets the prescription and becomes another form of the illness.
It asks:
- How can we gain power?
- How can we defeat our opponents?
- How can we prove that we alone are right?
- How can we make others conform?
- How can we protect our group from outsiders?
- How can we preserve our privileges?
Both tendencies can be found in Christian history.
The struggle is therefore not simply between Christianity and the world.
It can take place within Christianity itself.
7.8 The Difference Between Believing and Being Transformed
This leads to an important distinction.
A person can believe that Jesus is:
- the Messiah,
- the Son of God,
- the Saviour,
- uniquely sent by God,
and still remain dominated by hatred, greed, pride, or the desire to control others.
Conversely, a person may not fully understand every theological doctrine about Jesus but may nevertheless take seriously the transformation toward which his teaching points.
This raises a difficult but important question:
What does it mean to follow Jesus?
Is following primarily a matter of believing correct propositions about him?
Or is it also—and perhaps inseparably—a matter of entering the way of life he taught?
The present study does not attempt to resolve the theological debates surrounding faith, grace, works, and salvation.
Its more limited historical and ethical question is this:
If Jesus was understood as a physician of a sick society, should the effectiveness of his followers not be examined partly by asking whether the sickness he diagnosed became less powerful in their own lives?
If the patient continues to hate, perhaps the medicine has not yet been fully taken.
If he continues to dominate, perhaps the healing remains incomplete.
If he continues to divide humanity into groups that deserve love and groups that deserve hatred, perhaps the illness survives.
This is not a judgment that only outsiders may make.
It is a question Christianity can ask of itself.
Indeed, a tradition faithful to self-examination should continually ask it.
7.9 Christianity as a Continuing Experiment in Healing
Perhaps Christianity can best be understood, for the purpose of this study, not as a finished example of Jesus' success or failure, but as a continuing historical experiment.
For two thousand years, millions of people have attempted, in different ways, to understand and follow Jesus.
The results have been mixed.
There have been extraordinary examples of love.
There have also been terrible examples of cruelty.
There have been communities of service.
There have also been institutions of domination.
There have been people who died rather than kill.
There have also been people who killed in the name of Christ.
There have been movements of reconciliation.
There have also been bitter divisions between Christians themselves.
This mixed history should make both defenders and critics cautious.
The defenders cannot honestly claim that everything Christianity has done represents Jesus.
The critics cannot honestly ignore the enormous number of people who have drawn from Jesus' teaching a powerful motivation for compassion, service, and peace.
The appropriate conclusion is more demanding:
The history of Christianity itself must be examined as part of the history of a patient attempting to understand and apply the physician's prescription.
Sometimes the medicine was taken.
Sometimes it was forgotten.
Sometimes it was modified.
Sometimes it was replaced.
Sometimes the patient returned to the physician's original words and rediscovered the prescription.
The process continues.
7.10 A Question for Every Christian
The physician metaphor now becomes personal.
It is easy to examine Christianity as a historical institution.
It is more difficult to examine oneself.
A Christian may ask:
Do I merely believe in Jesus, or am I allowing his teaching to transform me?
Do I love only those who belong to my group?
Can I forgive?
Do I treat the weak with dignity?
Do I seek power over others?
Do I judge others more severely than myself?
Do I believe that belonging to the correct religious community makes me automatically healthy?
Have I become more compassionate?
Have I become less hateful?
Have I become freer from fear?
Have I learned to take responsibility for my own contribution to the world's suffering?
These questions may be more difficult than doctrinal questions because they cannot be answered merely by reciting a creed.
They require the patient to look honestly at himself.
The purpose of a physician is not ultimately to win an argument about medicine.
It is to heal.
Similarly, if the central purpose of Jesus' message was human transformation, the final test cannot simply be:
“What do you say about Jesus?”
It must also include:
“What has happened to you because of Jesus?”
7.11 The Larger Methodological Principle
The framework developed here can now be extended beyond Christianity.
Whenever we study a great religious founder, philosopher, reformer, or political leader, we should distinguish between:
| Level | Question |
|---|---|
| The Society | What illness or crisis existed? |
| The Physician/Figure | What did the person identify as the problem? |
| The Diagnosis | What did the person believe caused the illness? |
| The Prescription | What remedy was proposed? |
| The Method | How was the remedy to be implemented? |
| The Followers | How did later followers interpret the teaching? |
| The Tradition | What institutions and doctrines developed? |
| The Outcome | Did the tradition remain faithful to the original prescription? |
This method protects us from two opposite errors.
The first is blind devotion:
“Everything done by followers must represent the founder.”
The second is blind condemnation:
“Everything done by followers proves that the founder taught it.”
Neither conclusion follows automatically.
A serious historical study must investigate the relationship.
This framework will become especially important when the same method is later applied to other historical figures, including Muhammad.
The purpose will not be to begin with the assumption that one figure was good and another was bad.
Instead, we will ask the same questions of each:
What was the sickness of the society?
How did the physician diagnose it?
What remedy did he prescribe?
How did he attempt to administer that remedy?
What happened when followers transformed the physician's teaching into a lasting religious tradition?
Only after each figure has been studied as fully and fairly as possible should comparison be attempted.
7.12 Conclusion: The Medicine Is Still Before the Patient
Jesus lived approximately two thousand years ago.
The religion formed around his name became one of the largest religious traditions in human history.
His name is known across the world.
His words have been translated into thousands of languages.
Churches have been built in his honour.
Theological systems have been developed to explain his identity.
Yet the central question of this study remains open:
Has humanity taken the medicine?
The answer cannot be given once and for all.
Every generation must answer it again.
Every church must answer it.
Every Christian must answer it.
A person may inherit Christianity without inheriting the transformation Jesus called for.
He may receive the name without receiving the medicine.
But the prescription remains.
Love your neighbour.
Forgive.
Serve.
Care for the weak.
Do not be governed by greed.
Do not build your identity upon superiority.
Do not allow hatred to reproduce itself through you.
Return to God.
Allow your life to be transformed.
The patient society still needs healing.
Perhaps this is why the study of Jesus remains relevant after two thousand years.
The question is not merely:
Who was Jesus?
Nor is it merely:
What religion emerged in his name?
The deeper question is:
Did he correctly identify an illness that still exists—and, if so, have we yet learned how to take the medicine?
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