451 - The Trial of Jesus In an Age of Trials

The Trial of Jesus In an Age of Trials
By Thomas F. O'Meara

"Political trials and political prisoners accuse their society of being frozen in what is wrong. The legal system must take its course, but in and through the judicial process itself, trials raise the agonizing and ultimately insoluble conflict between man and his laws. The courtroom offers a platform for critical and prophetic views and the deeper questions of whether law and court process are identical with what is good and true. The jurisprudential and the political are not enough; the movement struggles beyond to the 'theological.' "

WE are living in an age of trials, not sensational trials of murder and adultery, but political trials. Since 1965 these AV processes, which we long identified with the retardedness of Europe, have multiplied, throwing spotlights on unsuspected facets of the United States. The real purpose of these trials is found in their dialogue, in the exchanges of rhetoric, philosophy, social protest, and religious futurism during the proceedings. Because of the abuse of language in our times (civilians are not "massacred" but "wasted"), the indicted try to lead beyond accepted propaganda to critical realism, through social stagnation to the possibility of the future.

The Chicago Eight trial gives us this exchange.

LEONARD WEINGLASS (a defense attorney): Mr. Schaller, is it an obscenity for the mayor of a major metropolitan area to

Thomas F. O'Meara, O.P., is Professor of Systematic Theology at Aquinas Institute, which is one of several institutions in the ecumenical cluster in Dubuque, Iowa. He has served as a visiting professor at Notre Dame University and Weston Theological College, Cambridge. His recent books are Holiness and Radicalism in Religious Life (1970) and Projections: Shaping an American Theology for the Future (1970).

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advise his police to shoot to kill all arsonists and shoot to maim all looters?

RICHARD SCHULTZ (a government attorney): Objection.

THE COURT: I sustain the objection.

MR. WEINGLASS: Do you consider it an obscenity for the United States Government to use napalm in the bombing of civilians in North Vietnam?

MR. SCHULTZ: Mr. Weinglass can't be serious in contending that these questions are proper on this re-cross examination.

MR. WEINGLASS: That is perhaps my most serious question in this trial." ¹

The Catonsville Nine trial illustrates how deeper issues struggle with the law for a hearing.

PHILLIP BERRIGAN: We tried to attack racism at its roots.

JUDGE: We are not trying the racial situation in the United States.

THOMAS MELVILLE: [The President of Guatemala] was very courteous but he said there was no land for these peasants. . . .

JUDGE: We are not trying the government of Guatemala, nor the Catholic Church in Guatemala.

THOMAS MELVILLE: [The President] took the land from the peasants and gave it back to the United Fruit Company. . . .They were killed or moved forcibly off the land.

JUDGE: We are not trying the United Fruit Company.

GEORGE MISCHE: If they [the bishops] were really to live in the spirit of the stable in which Christ was born, then why not get rid of the buildings, give them to the poor?

JUDGE: We are not trying the Bishops of the United States. ²

I

The Milwaukee 14 and the trial of Spock and Coffin were variants of the Catonsville Nine trial. ³ The Black Panthers are involved in

¹ J. Anthony Lukas, The Barnyard Epithet and Other Obscenities: Notes on the Chicago Conspiracy Trial (New York, 1970).
² Daniel Berrigan, The Catonsville Nine (Boston, 1970), pp. 24, 54, 55, 72, 90.
³ See Jessica Mitford, The Trial of Doctor Spock (New York, 1969).

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a plethora of trials of considerable diversity across the nation. ⁴ Stokeley Carmichael, Eldridge Cleaver, and Timothy Leary have fled trial. The indictment of the East Coast Conspiracy to Save Lives, a group composed of mainly sisters and priests, will certainly bring to a climax the deeper currents of these trials, and they are only random symbols of deeper juridical turmoil. There are tens of thousands of young American men who are or could be embroiled with the government over the draft. Fifteen per cent are refusing induction at the Oakland, California, center. There are thousands of hearings, processes, and appeals over racial justice, some of which appear in William Kunstler's paperback collection of trials in the South over civil rights. James Forman's foreword to that book begins: "Southern courts, southern judges, southern laws-the entire fabric of the southern way of life is designed to humiliate, degrade, and keep in total submission black folk who must live in a white-dominated society." ⁵

Similar processes attracting international notice and pressure have arisen in Europe, and they illustrate the international character of protest. The Basque liberation movement trial reflects newer efforts against Franco; although unpublicized, Czechoslovakia is involved in hundreds of "processes" after August, 1968. In Russia, there are the trials of Jews accused of hijacking in order to reach Israel, and other Russian trials involve artists, particularly novelists.

What unifies these political trials is that the defendants see themselves in the courtroom and in their actions as being the accusers. The accusers become the accused. Rennie Davis said of the Chicago Eight, "In choosing the eight of us, the government has lumped together all the strands of dissent in the sixties. We respond by saying the movement of the past decade is on trial here." ⁶ Political trials and political prisoners accuse their society of being frozen in what is wrong. The legal system must take its course, but in and through the judicial process itself, trials raise the agonizing and ultimately insoluble conflict between man and his laws. The courtroom offers a platform for critical and prophetic views and the deeper question of whether law and court process are identical

⁴ F. J. Epstein, "The Panthers and the Police: A Pattern of Genocide," The New Yorker, February 13, 1971.
⁵ Deep in My Heart (New York, 1970), p. xvii; A. Brumberg, In Quest of Justice: Protest and Dissent in the Soviet Union Today (New York, 1971).
⁶ Lukas, op. cit., P. 2.

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with what is good and true. The jurisprudential and the political are not enough; the movement struggles beyond to the "theological."

Even the Manson trial, the My Lai trials, and the trials for assassinations, such as those of Sirhan Sirhan and James Earl Ray, reflect this national struggle. For they are not trials of an isolated murder, but trials of our country's pulse, of our kind of society. They ask: when death-giving violence is included as an exceptional but normalized factor of a society (e.g., lynching, beating, and undeclared compulsory wars), will there not, then, be the ritual murder, the massacre, the assassination, no matter how far from the cave we think we have come?

II

Jesus of Nazareth is the central figure of a world religion which intensely venerates its central prophet. He is both believed and believed in; he is called not only savior and prophet, but lord and God.

Yet, Jesus of Nazareth, whose parents and relatives were well known, was executed for dissent. Not much more than thirty years old, he was convicted simultaneously for dissent against the established religion of Judaism, the unique revelation of God to his chosen people, and against the Roman Empire, one of the great political accomplishments of human civilization. What an accomplishment was that dissent-to be capitally executed at the same time by both temple and state!

The trial of Jesus is similar to the trials I mention. There is no normal, proven charge of criminal behavior against him, yet a call for death breeds rhetorical tension in his hearings. The uncertainty of the charges against Jesus and the complexity of his person are complicated by hearings before different people with different jurisdictions. Jesus' trial is recognized as great dramatic art whether we meet it in Bach's Passion According to John or in Jesus Christ Superstar. The following pages will show that this drama has as its theme not Jesus' disobedience of Moses and/or Caesar, but the new religio-human dignity of man preached by the Christ.

With a removal of our stereotypes of what the New Testament accounts say about Jesus' trial and with the help of the extensive exegetical and popular material on the trial, let us try to understand the theological and political implications of what Jesus says

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and does. Jesus is not so concerned with the divine of the otherworldly, but with the divine in the tremors of history. He is concerned with a view of man as changed through his summoned, new relationship to God. Finally, Jesus still directs attention to his preaching's central theme of personal value while he displays man at his weakest, i.e., man accused of a capital crime before absolute juridical power. This personal-political theme of Jesus' indictment (eminently religious but not speculatively dogmatic) may turn out to be more radical and more demanding upon us as believers than we imagine. At the same time, it will give Christians a pattern or insight for understanding dissent.

III

Since rhetoric, political philosophy, and jurisprudence are intertwined in this political trial, it is not clear by whom Jesus was tried, or for what charge ⁷ The author of The Passover Plot argues that Jesus forced the trial and the execution (drugging himself to survive the cross) so that he could attain political success. ⁸ A number of other (mainly Jewish) scholars argue that the trial before the Jewish council was either a fabrication, or an attempt by the Jewish leaders to allow Jesus to demonstrate his messiah-ship. ⁹ A recent theory is S. G. F. Brandon's: Jesus was a member or a strong marginal figure of the revolutionary group called the Zealots; he was executed for violent political activity against Rome. ¹⁰

Was Jesus a revolutionary? a Zealot? The name "Zealots" means the zealous ones, the determined ones, the involved ones. There is a nuance of fanaticism. The Zealots at the time of Jesus were zealous for the Jewish law and cherished an expectation of the imminent dawning of a real kingdom of God, brought about, if necessary, by

⁷ The literature on the trial of Jesus over the past century is extensive; bibliographical help can be had from B. Metzger, Index to Periodical Literature on Christ and the Gospels (Grand Rapids, 1963), pp. 32ff.; New Testament Abstracts (1955-1971); J. Blinzler, The Trial of Jesus (Westminster, 1959), pp. 297-304; P. Winter, On the Trial of Jesus (Berlin, 1968); S. G. F. Brandon, The Trial of Jesus of Nazareth (New York, 1968); Jesus and the Zealots (Manchester, 1967); K. Koch, ed., Zum Prozess Jesu (Weiden, 1967); A. N. SherwinWhite, Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament (Oxford, 1963); H. Lietzmann, Der Prozess Jesu (Berlin, 1958); H. van den Kwaak, Het Proces van Jezus (Asten, 1969); E. Bammel, ed., The Trial of Jesus (Naperville, 1970); D. Catchpole, The Trial of Jesus (Leiden, 1971).
⁸ Hugh Schonfeld, The Passover Plot (New York, 1967).
⁹ H. H. Cohn, "Reflections on the Trial and Death of Jesus," Israel Law Review, 2 (1967), 332-79; T. Horvath, "Why Was Jesus Brought to Pilate," Novi Testamenti, 11 (1969), 174 ff.
¹⁰ Brandon, op. cit.; see Jesus and the Zealots (Manchester, 1967); Winter, op. cit., p. 50.

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bloodshed. As with the SDS, there were various branches. Oscar Cullmann writes:

"It is necessary to distinguish among the various groups of resistance fighters: on the one hand, the actual Zealots whose chief demand was a radical reform of the existing temple worship and of the ruling priesthood, and on the other hand, the 'Sicarii' (a Latin designation literally translated cutthroats, bandits, or assassins) who rather advocated a political program with the goal of driving away the Romans and establishing a powerful kingdom of Israel. Faith and politics were, however, in both groups extremely closely interwoven, for both groups strived for the overthrow of the existing order and therefore had to fight against the ruling power in Palestine." ¹¹

Jesus, as well as the Zealots, proclaimed that the kingdom of God is at hand, and he was conscious of fulfilling a decisive, divine mission in the establishment of this kingdom. Jesus was critical of Herod, a "fox" (Luke 13: 22), and of kings who rule over the people and oppress them by the use of force while adorning themselves with the title of "benefactors" (Luke 22: 25). At times the crowd wanted to make him king (John 6: 15). More important, biblical studies indicate Jesus drew Zealots to his cause. Among the twelve there was at least one, Simon the Zealot (Luke 6: 15), who was a member before he became one of Jesus' disciples. Cullmann says this was possibly true of Peter "Barjona," and of Judas Iscariot (the surname "Iscariot" could very well contain the designation "Sicarius"). "Furthermore," says Cullmann, "the cleansing of the temple, the entrance into Jerusalem according to the circumstances reported by the Gospels, and the carrying of weapons by one or several disciples in Gethsemane were able to be interpreted, although unjustifiably, already in the time of Jesus as Zealotist acts." ¹²

On the other hand, Jesus presented himself clearly and precisely as an opponent of every act of violence. This is reflected in his many sayings advocating non-violence, the exhortations to love our enemies, the beatitude concerning the peacemakers, the command not to draw the sword. Beyond the numerous non-violent texts is the underlying political theology of Jesus. This is the advent of the kingdom-eschaton which is the atmosphere for man's maturity

¹¹ Oscar Cullmann, Jesus and the Revolutionaries (New York, 1970), pp. 3 f.
¹² Ibid., See M. Hengel, Die Zeloten (Leiden, 1961); Was Jesus a Revolutionist? (P pp. 8, 9. Philadelphia, 1971).

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through grace. Violence would have locked him in a combat with the establishments he intended to transcend, as his trials show. ¹³

Was Jesus tried as a revolutionary? The unusual theory may still produce a bestseller, but the explanation of the trial of Jesus (and of its various interpretations) is precisely its complexity. The trial is complex, unfolding through a spectrum of motives and issues. There is no one explanation, for on trial with Jesus are political, human, and religious dimensions. What are these currents which cause this complexity?

1) The political and the religious mix here at the deepest level. In the New Testament, Jesus' teaching about man and his new relationship to God and neighbor remove duties to state from their primary level.

2) The Jewish nation Which was a theological and a political entity is occupied, an administrative section of the Roman empire. Rome too is a political, and after Augustus, increasingly a theological entity. Rome is deified; Caesar becomes a god.

3) The Law of Pentateuch is fulfilled by a New Law. Love is not merely an interior attitude or a good-neighborliness. Organizations "of the kingdom" are to live now not by forced control but as service. Could man be superior to the laws of his religion? How is man autonomous in his own sphere to rules of religious purification and public taxation?

¹³ "We are now acquainted, therefore, with the special nature of Jesus' Messiahism. His expectation of the kingdom of God had to lead him to a critical attitude toward the Roman empire. Jesus could have viewed the occupation of Palestine by the Romans only as a usurpation by violent men, for their totalitarian claim, according to which Caesar demanded what belongs to God, must have been known to him. He concedes no more divine right to the emperor than to Herod, the 'fox' who wanted to kill him.
"All this must have made Jesus likable to the Zealots and explains why Zealots felt attracted to him and even became his disciples. And yet he did not join them, for their goal and their methods were not his. Jesus preached insurrection neither against Herod, who persecuted him, nor against the emperor. He was as far removed from a revolt against the state as from an unconditional inner acceptance of it. Both of these positions would have been incompatible with his message of the good news of the kingdom of God. Among the Twelve was one or more former Zealots. No false conclusion, however, as is often the case, should be drawn from this. For what is especially worthy of attention, as has been noted, is that he accepted into the Twelve also a (indeed former) tax collector, i.e., a representative of those who collaborated with the occupation force and therefore were deeply hated by the Jews and especially by the Zealots. Jesus sought even the company of these representatives of the existing political order." Cullmann, op. cit., pp. 43 ff. A case can be made out for the Zealots as the violent and extremist wing of the Pharisees, a group with which Jesus had little in common because their view was so narrowly institutional. Cullmann, op. cit., pp. I ff.; G. Baurnbach, "Zeloten und Sikarier," Theologische Literaturzeitung, 90 (1965), 727 ff.

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4) Jesus could not and would not avoid the popular movements against the two establishments which had sold out to each other. Soldiers and tax-gatherers should not exploit; Zacchaeus with his conversion returns his earnings through oppression. The kingdom of God was preached as both absent and present, coming and now here. Would the messianic kingdom triumph over the empire of Rome? Should it triumph over the temple, too?

IV

Jesus' trial is twofold. At its first part before the Sanhedrin, we have a Judicatory body which is convinced a priori that Jesus is religiously and politically dangerous, upsetting the status quo in both spheres. It clumsily seeks for the right charges. These charges must be not only theological-for to claim to be the Messiah is not a civil crime-but also political-in order to involve Pilate who is present in Jerusalem for the Passover.

The initial attempt at a charge is Jesus' attack on the temple. This charge is weak, although to prophesy the destruction of the temple had been a serious crime at the time of Jeremiah. The witnesses do not agree on what Jesus said; political trials are always constructed around an inner truth, au fond dangerous but twisted into a shocking threat. The gospels record that Jesus verbally "attacked" the temple metaphorically (referring to the temple of his body which would be destroyed) or prophetically. The accused is next asked if he is the promised, central figure of the Jewish religion -the Messiah, but he is also questioned through a theological term which is simultaneously political: the king of the Jews (perhaps the actual words were "king of Israel"). One gospel records:

"The chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were looking for evidence against Jesus on which they might pass the death-sentence. But they could not find any. Several, indeed, brought false evidence against him, but their evidence was conflicting. Some stood up and submitted this false evidence against him,' We heard him say, "I am going to destroy this Temple made by human hands, and in three days build another, net made by human hands."' But even on this point their evidence was conflicting. The high priest then stood up before the whole assembly and put this question to Jesus, 'Have you no answer to that? What is this evidence these men are bringing against you?' But he was silent and made no answer at all. The high priest put a second question to him, 'Are you the Christ,'

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he said, 'the Son of the Blessed One?' 'I am,' said Jesus, 'and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power and coming with the clouds of heaven"' (Mark 14: 55-62).

G.D. Kilpatrick sums up the process in this way:

"The proceedings had to serve two purposes. First they had to provide an established charge which would unite all important parties in the Sanhedrin in the conviction that according to Jewish law the prisoner was guilty and liable to the death penalty. Secondly, a charge had to be found which would carry conviction with Pilate. . . . The evidence about the saying on destroying the Temple was to serve the first purpose. It is noticeable that at this point in the trial witnesses were summoned. If we have correctly interpreted the High Priest's examination, the messianic interrogation served the second purpose. This part of the proceedings does not rely on witnesses but on examination of the prisoner. In the earlier verses where witnesses are employed, we have the appearance of a trial. In the later part, we have something more like the preliminary examination of a prisoner before trial. The prisoner is questioned directly and no witnesses are called." ¹⁴

Jesus admits that he is this religious figure, but as if to shy away from its political dimension, he colors it with a strongly transcendent and eschatological Old Testament passage-the Son of Man at the right hand of Power coming on clouds. The priests' push into the political is not completely denied, but their dangerous extreme is counterbalanced, moving the messiah-ship away from the secular to the divine. In the Jewish conception of the messianic king, faith and politics are connected. Therein lies the temptation. Jesus observes the greatest restraint toward the title of Messiah when it is conferred on him. He knows that this title gives rise to misunderstandings, and subsequent events have confirmed this. Without totally refusing the title, and without emptying his true messiah-ship of all political connotations, he prefers to keep away from it.

At any rate, motivated by Jesus' attacks on temple and priesthood as absolutes, but the tumult of Palm Sunday and Jesus' demand that religious leaders be subject to the deepest imperatives of a truly human ethic, the Sanhedrin escorts him to Pilate, who, apart from exceptional times, alone has the right of execution.

¹⁴ G. D. Kilpatrick, The Trial of Jesus (Oxford, 1953), pp. 15, 16; see Blinzler, op. cit., pp. 85f.; P. Richardson in Bammel, op. cit., p. 7.

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V

We are looking at trials inasmuch as their historical and social dynamics disclose the religious-the trial as incarnation. Before proceeding to the trial before Pilate, we might relate the Procurator's supposed presence in 1970 at the trial of the Chicago Eight. It is recorded by J. Anthony Lukas of The New York Times.

"On February 9, members of the Radical Jewish Union attempted to exorcise the 'dybbuk,' which they claimed had possessed judge Hoffman. The Union said the dybbuk-a wandering demonic spirit -was that of Pontius Pilate who had possessed many souls over the past two thousand years, the last being Jeffreys of Wem, a chief justice under James II of England, who condemned more than three hundred persons to death.

"In the shadow of the federal courthouse in New York's Foley Square, as several hundred lawyers, stenographers, and passers-by looked on, eighteen of the Union's members, wearing white shrouds and prayer shawls, formed a circle to the blast of the ram's horn. They chanted a forty-minute liturgy, beginning:

Wherefore, wherefore
Did the soul from its
exalted height
Fall into its abysmal
depth and
Invade the body of this
wretched man
To pervert justice and negate life?

"The Union said that while the dybbuk was being expelled, the judge might show pallor, irritability, and spastic motion. During the time the ceremony was scheduled I watched the judge closely. He never looked better." ¹⁵

As the Jewish leaders move Jesus to the "real" trial, the religious must become the political. Nor is this difficult, for Jesus' silence assists judgment. Whereas the precise charges, "perverting the nation," "destroying the temple," "refusing tribute to Caesar," " making himself a King," (Luke 23: 2 ff.) are immature and inaccurate, they contain the truth that Jesus' teaching did endanger the Jewish religion and the Roman political body as absolutes.

In the Synoptics Jesus says little. To Pilate's question, "Are you the king of the Jews?" he answers in his famous phrase: su legeis.

¹⁵ Lukas, op. cit., p. 51.

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Clearly ambiguous, this is part of the "shift" on Jesus' part to exclude neither the religious-transcendent (to God) nor the humano-political from the new way and era he preaches for man. Translations vary from: "Thou has said it," to "The phrase is yours." In the Synoptics, Jesus is sent to Herod and Barabbas is traded, and we hear no more of the trial except that circumstances allowed Jesus to be condemned. In John, the trial is further developed." ¹⁶ Pilate speaks as an agnostic and acts like a politician.

"Pilate entered the praetorium again and called Jesus, and said to him, 'Are you the King of the Jews?' Jesus answered, 'Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?' Pilate answered, 'Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me; what have you done?' Jesus answered, 'My kingship is not of this world; if my kingship were of this world, my servants would fight, that I might not be handed over (to the Jews); but my kingship is not from the world.' Pilate said to him, 'So you are a king?' Jesus answered, 'You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Every one who is of the truth hears my voice.' Pilate said to him, 'What is truth?' After he had said this, he went out to the Jews again, and told them, 'I find no crime in him.'

"So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, 'Here is the man!' When the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out, 'Crucify him, crucify him!' Pilate said to them, 'Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no crime in him'" (John 18: 33-38; 19: 5-6).

Pilate is not interested in pursuing the non-political dimension into what this kingdom might be, a kingdom of truth. What is Jesus' truth? For this he has come and for this he is willing to be found guilty. "Kingdom" and "truth" mean much more for Jesus than abstractions. They are symbols for a new way of living in the pulse of history, within life and beyond physical death. They eschew duality, interiorization, and hypocrisy. Pressed, Jesus says the power over him from above shows that Pilate's power is not absolute. Is this because Pilate is before the Son of God, or because from now on man can be seen for what he truly is? Jesus Christ never flees his life by using his unique relation to God as an escape route. His trial is the trial of a man in and for the new era, not the trial of a

¹⁶ John has already developed a theology of the trial, utilizing concepts such as "truth" and "above."

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God. His crime is the crime of the definitive prophet who sees the new. His transcendence begins with this newness of human life. The forum of politics connives with the forum of religion. Pilate is wary of breaking his Roman justitia; the Sanhedrin is determined to get rid of a dangerous prophet.

Jesus loses. He will not sacrifice the creative ambiguity of his message either by escaping religion by fleeing to the political, or to a super worldly and harmless religion.

"The trial is finished, the judge's gavel had pounded us into true shape, and the thing was done, lost, given over, run like veins aground, in the shape of the body, in the shape of man." ¹⁷

Jesus is crucified between two men; he is traded for one. We are used to hearing these three described in English with the quiet word "robbers." Yet, the Greek word (lestai) could be translated by the word "revolutionaries." Barabbas according to Mark 15: 7 was seized with rioters, revolutionaries, and uprisers (stasiastoi). ¹⁸

VI

Since the centuries of the Romantic and the Baroque, piety has not seen the trial of Jesus well. It took for granted that it was the outrageous subjection of the God-man to a human trial concluding with the non-acceptance of his revelation about his supernatural person and message.

The political and religious converge in Jesus' anthropology as well as his theology. Jesus' preaching is a puncturing of the status quo. He reintroduces the dynamic forward movement of history in which something within and above man is breaking in. He called it the kingdom; he turned the eyes of people towards a better present and future. The Fatherhood of the omnipotent God corresponded not to childish religion but to mature faith realized in active hope and love. Human dignity and participation in the kingdom rested upon the deepest human responses and benedictions of a person, not upon

¹⁷ Berrigan, op. cit., p. vii.
¹⁸ Cullmann, op. cit., p. 67. J. Haley in his interesting monograph The Power Tactics of Jesus (New York, 1969), calls attention to Jesus' use of silence as necessary for his confrontation supported by the theretofore powerless masses with the establishment. The underlying question in a critique of Haley is whether Jesus' life and the kingdom are only liberating subjective attitudes or the witness and incarnation of new power in religious and political history. In short, Haley reflects the demythogizing of Strauss-to-Ebeling, rather than the exigencies of America today for a social Christology based on grace as more than human charisma, power, and hope.

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class, wealth, or ecclesiastical position. Above all, Jesus preached that there were only two absolutes, and they were neither church (temple) nor state. The two absolutes were God and man's new relationship-as son and adult-to God as loving Father and co-working Spirit. It was a way to see, to perceive the personally real, the pragmatic truth. Although it claimed to be a vision of the newness of how things are, its danger lay in its claim to sovereignty and objective power. It is a way to see. Daniel Berrigan asks:

"Indeed it cannot be thought that men and women like ourselves will continue, as though we were automated heroes, to rush for redress from the King of the Blind. The King will have to listen to other voices, over which neither he nor we will indefinitely have control: voices of public violence and chaos. For you cannot set up a court in the Kingdom of the Blind, to condemn those who see; a court presided over by those who would pluck out the eyes of men and call it rehabilitation." ¹⁹

Jesus' kingdom is the Kingdom of the Seeing.

VII

What conclusions can we draw? Should we in the middle of this year of the great malaise even dare to draw conclusions? I would develop them upon the factual religious reflection on the trial of Jesus, and not apply them to some immediate sit-in or short-term movement of dissent. This theological-political view of the trial of Christ might become a lasting dynamic by which we evaluate in the United States law and order, crime and punishment.

(1) Religion as renewed by Jesus is no longer a matter of only interior attitudes or heavenly merits, nor of external observances. This attitude made him dangerous to establishments. The religious and the political-social converge in the mature religion. The inward attitude and the outward manifestation are one; faith and action are inseparable. The believer wants to pass, not by-pass, the immediate future with its potential and its darkness, for the Kingdom has come.

(2) Jesus' preaching allows for only two absolutes, but these two are always absolute: God and man. All organizations and establishments exist to minister to man's growth toward what is truly human.

¹⁹ Berrigan, op. cit., p. xi.

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Like the temple and the Roman judicial system, the church and the American judicial system do not have absolute domination over a human person. They exist to minister to his growth. Today we act as though once a person is condemned for a serious crime, or any crime, he ceases to be a person. In fact, for any crime, in public opinion, he ceases to be a person. Once he is arrested, he is often already judged and morally imprisoned. The gospel trial reminds us that a man-suspected, indicted, even condemned-is not totally defined or absorbed in that process. Jesus rejected being summed up by the words placed above the cross. He remains a, person, with claims on others and on the future, as he reminds his accusers more than once. A Christian cannot participate in the general social condemnation of all who run afoul of the law.

(3) The Christian gospel places law and order on a secondary level. It sees law and order neither as a necessary evil nor as the embodiment of an enlightened if not sacred state. Law and order exist to minister to a higher growth which they can neither absolutely accomplish nor criticize. They are subject to higher criticism: to change, to examination of their relationship to this growth, to humanization, to sacrifice, to life, to reverence for life and the future. Thomas Aquinas, writing in the hierarchical religio-political world of thirteenth century Paris, could write: "An unjust law is no law, or better, a perversion of law." ²⁰ Therefore, dissent against what are inhuman, unjust, essentially death-dealing laws is not just a marginal possibility for the Christian, but a direct responsibility based upon his belief in the possibility of the better future and in the advent now of the Kingdom of God.

(4) In the light of our paradigm-the trial of Jesus in a year of trials of dissent-we should begin to mobilize our attitudes and co-workers to assist in a radical reform of the judicial and penal systems. In terms of trials, we must rid ourselves of the attitude that the indicted or condemned are necessarily guilty. In trials of legitimate dissent, the court is immature and secondary and cannot recognize what is best for society in the long run. We must not let political trials become criminal trials or allow the raison d'étre of a political trial-public proclamation of dissent-to be snuffed out by exaggerated criminal changes.

²⁰ Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I-II, q. 92, 2-7; a. 96, 5.

465 - The Trial of Jesus In an Age of Trials

The condemned and imprisoned remain holy persons with an important and positive destiny. We should become disgusted with the enormous and widespread abuses in the penal system where men and women are quickly extracted from our midst, disappear, and then live a life where they cannot grow, but can only become greater devotees of the inhuman. Even worse, they are deprived of the most basic aspects of personal respect. A thousand times a day the official penal system of America accomplishes this, as its own chief executives later report.

These reflections on the trial of Jesus, while fashioned as a paradigm of contemporary behavior based upon political theology, do not find their justification as a set of random meditations for radicals. Accurate biblical and historical reflections lead us towards these conclusions about the real motifs surrounding Jesus' arrest, trial, and execution, and his role therein. This role was the logical conclusion to the gospel-about-man which he preached. If these reflections only give the impression that they uncritically support whatever is theologically and/or politically radical, they have failed. For Jesus' incarnation and message are more demanding and more hopeful than the immediate past's verbal agendas for politics and theology have proved to be. Jesus' dawning kingdom is a realm of seeing what can be done through what is already at work.

²¹ However, drawing on the legal theory current at the time and within the American Revolution, William Kunstler makes a case for the jury being able to decide the guilt of an individual in terms which transcend the single issue of the transgression of a public law.