Greg Sheridan makes the urgent case for Jesus
For an intellectual of such range, so engaged with the current world, religion somehow brings out a homespun streak in Greg Sheridan.
Greg Sheridan is a senior journalist for this newspaper, and he has a wide-ranging brief. He can write convincing on a range of topics, from Gough Whitlam’s disastrous foreign policy or the futility of Australian Defence investing in tanks. Furthermore he’s a virtuoso public performer – articulate, good-humoured, witty – which the ABC to its credit has realised, regularly inviting him on The Drum. He is also that very rare thing in public life: a committed Christian, an enthusiastic apologist for his creed. The title of his first religious book worked on the castor oil principle, Why God is Good for You. His new book’s subtitle, The Urgent Case for Jesus in Our World is gentler but the emergency treatment still operates. The Case is provocative, and requires a massive study first of “Our World” and presumably its ills, followed by a ditto study of Jesus, then the application of one to the other.
Sheridan squibs that herculean task. Understandably.
His first half instead is a very empathetic reading of three major figures of foundation Christianity, Jesus, his mother Mary and St Paul.
Distractingly, this section is sprinkled with aspersions on biblical scholars. Sheridan is reliant on them, but as a breed they are not to his liking. ‘You must logically conclude that most such (biblical) scholarship is ultimately mistaken in its conclusions’. In spite of his protests there is a hovering ghost of anti-intellectualism here. Instead Sheridan is an enthusiast for the “plain” or “natural” meaning. Unfortunately even “plain” meanings have to be deciphered (by learning to read, for a start) just as much as more recondite ones. And scholars, as in all textual analysis, can be a great help in uncovering more than “plain” meanings.
To take an example. Of the moment when Jesus on the cross consigns his mother to John, Sheridan comments “And from that day, so the Gospels tell us, Mary lived in John’s home as a member of his household”. Yes, a plain meaning is that Jesus, solicitous for his mother, asks John to care for her. But there’s much more to it. For a start the words are “from that hour”, not “day”. Elsewhere Jesus makes much of his hour - “my hour is not yet come” etc. But now his hour has come. The Greek preposition “from” is not just a temporal marker; it’s “because of that hour”, the hour of his redeeming death, that Mary’s reception by John happens.
The literal phrase for John’s response is that “he took Mary to his own”. The Greek phrase echoes the one used at the beginning of John’s Gospel where “the Word came unto his own and his own took him not”. At the cross, however, John, the male representative of Jesus’ “own”, is taking/accepting Christ in the person of his flesh and blood, his mother, Mary. A far richer reading than just the plain one. And we owe it to biblical scholars.
For an intellectual of such range, so engaged with the current world, religion somehow brings out a homespun and nostalgic streak in Sheridan.
His ideal Christian world is in the past, particularly in a deservedly golden age of English lay writing - Chesterton, Christopher Dawson, Graham Greene, C.S. Lewis, Evelyn Waugh, the Australian Frank Sheed (a fine theologian and entrepreneurial publisher). Sheridan’s comfort era is underlined by various of his judgments - J.R.R. Tolkien was “the greatest creative mind of the twentieth century”, and of Willa Cather’s 1927 novel Death Comes for the Archbishop “I have never encountered a more flawless work of art”.
In the second half of the book Sheridan returns to more familiar journalist territory - interviews with authorities. In this case it’s living Christians, human beings to admire, and even reverence. His interview with the believer, Scott Morrison, is a scoop - although I still don’t know what the religious centre of a Pentecostalist’s life is. There’s a prayer life, not least the emotional high of public prayer, but what else? Whereas Peter Cosgrove’s code comprises simply, but comprehensively, “sin, the life hereafter, redemption, love, mercy and compassion”.
And, mentioning in passing that Penny Wong is a committed Christian, how did this seasoned journalist fail to get a manifesto from a saint of the left?
Amongst Sheridan’s other witnesses John Anderson is the most moving, and George Yeo, “the smartest man I have ever met in Southeast Asia”, a former Singapore foreign minister, makes easily the most exciting religious claim in the book. Just part of it reads, “When we are bound together in love, there is potentially nothing in the universe that our collective brain cannot one day understand. It is in love for one another that our divine nature becomes fully manifest. I see spirituality encoded in our genes. It’s a necessary accompaniment to intelligence.” Greg Sheridan must be thanked for eliciting that soaring hope.
Gerard Windsor’s books include The Tempest-Tossed Church - Being a Catholic Today
Christians: The Urgent Case for Jesus in Our World
Allen & Unwin
374pp, $26.25
Which empire introduced coffee to Europe?
What fish is used in Worcestershire sauce? Which two film sequels have starred Robert Carlyle? Test yourself.
Can the non-verbal be telepathic? This podcast says yes
Hugely popular The Telepathy Tapes explores the alleged telepathic abilities of some spellers in the autism community but lacks balance in the telling.