Jesus Laughed

Some thoughts on the New Puritanism

I like Jonathan Pageau. We have actually been friends on Facebook since 2014, long before his Symbolic World project, and he was an early contributor to Jesus the Imagination, the literary and arts journal I founded and edit. You could say I gave him his start in the biz. (That was a joke.)

Anyway, as you may have heard, Jonathan came out with a “Jesus did not laugh” statement this week which blew up to a certain degree on Christian social media. This kind of stuff gives me a perpetual eye roll. Jonathan, in his defense, turns to “Holy Tradition,” and Clement of Alexandria in particular, as warrant for his position. Well, if you’ve spent any time reading the Fathers, you know they possess a lot of wisdom, but that they also say some really stupid things upon occasion. A good number of their stupid assertions have to do with women and marriage (I write about this at length in Sophia in Exile).

Tertullian, for example, the patristic version of a hotheaded loudmouth, harangues the fairer sex in his diatribe, De cultu feminarum (On the Adornment of Women): “Do you not know you are an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age; the guilt must of necessity live, too. You are the devil’s gateway: you are the unsealer of that forbidden tree: you are the first deserter of the divine law.”[1] He even blames women for the crucifixion of Christ. Furthermore, as Paul Evdokimov has observed, “At one time, serious theologians discussed whether or not woman had a soul,” so we should not act with any indignation at the suggestion that at least some of the Fathers lacked an appreciation for the Divine Feminine, or for anything feminine for that matter.[2] This anxiety was fortified by the anxiety about sex the Fathers inherited from Platonism and Neoplatonism—and not Judaism—and imported into monasticism. Again, from Evdokimov,

“Certain forms of asceticism that prescribe avoiding one’s mother, and even animals of the female sex, say a great deal about the loss of psychic balance. The loss explains the opinions about married love held by certain Doctors of the Church—opinions drawn, it seems, from manuals of zoology, whereby the couple is viewed from the perspective of breeding.”[3]

As Evdokimov further states, “It is with the hermits that the ‘woman question’ becomes most current, reducing it to its ‘passionate’ aspect and compromising it forever. Certain theologians deem it useless to propagate the human race; they reduce marriage to the one aim of avoiding incontinence. This is why a conjugal love that is too passionate borders on adultery.”^[4] Is it any wonder that there is confusion about sexuality—even within the precincts of marriage—in the Christian psyche?

I think this kind of psychic imbalance is also in evidence in the “Jesus never laughed” dustup. It’s a form of Puritanism: disembodied, humorless, and inhuman.

Years ago, my Byzantine Catholic pastor (a Greek convert from a long line of Orthodox priests, may his memory be eternal) told me a great story about his dissertation conference with a Cardinal professor at the Gregorian (The Mother Ship of All Catholic Universities) in Rome. I don’t recall what the dissertation subject was, but during the examination, the Cardinal asked my pastor if Jesus ever defecated. “Yes,” the young priest answered, “and that was some holy shit.” Apparently, the Cardinal lost his own shit on hearing this, scandalized that this cocky priest would assert such a thing about Our Lord and Savior. As a result, the Cardinal was relieved of his duties for teaching heresy (I imagine for teaching Docetism). I think the “Jesus didn’t laugh” controversy is more of the same.

True, there is no scriptural warrant that Jesus laughed, but neither is there scriptural warrant that he defecated. But there is scriptural warrant that he told jokes.

One instance is in Luke 10 after the disciples come back from their first mission trip and report to Jesus, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us.” Jesus responds with, “I watched Satan fall like lightning” (19), which is the joke. Essentially, Jesus is using sarcasm to deflate the pride of the disciples’ “Look what we did!” enthusiasm. He then straightens them out: “Do not rejoice in this, that the demons submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven” (20).

My next favorite joke is in Matthew 16, right after Peter identifies Jesus as ‘the Messiah, the Son of the Living God” (16). When Peter, having been named “the Rock” just moments before takes Jesus aside to admonish him about predicting the Crucifixion, Jesus lands another joke: “Get thee behind me, Satan!” (23). Using hyperbole, Jesus puts a check on Peter’s presumptuousness. That’s one of the many uses of humor.

My favorite joke scene, however, is at the Wedding at Cana. There both Jesus and his mother engage in some familial humor. When the wine runs out, Mary tells him, “They have no wine” (2:3). Note she doesn’t add anything like, “Do you think you could do something?” But Jesus can read subtext and answers, “Woman, what is that to you or me? My time has not yet come.” A modern paraphrase could render this as, “Ma, cut it out. I’m on a schedule!” She doesn’t even answer him, just turns to the servants and says, “Do whatever he tells you.” That entire scene cracks me up. (I read all of these, with inflection!, in this video.)

Even the Gnostics, not exactly known for loving the flesh, have a tradition of Jesus as a dancing God. At the Last Supper in the Acts of John, Jesus tells the disciples, “‘Before I am delivered up to them, let us sing a hymn to the Father, and go forth to what lieth before us.’ So he commanded us to make as it were a ring, holding one another’s hands, and himself standing in the middle.”[5] He then begins to sing and lead them in a dance. “Grace is dancing. I would pipe, dance all of you! Amen. I would mourn, lament all of you! Amen.”[6] Jesus reveals to them that the dance is itself the Cross, the axis of the world; and he tells them that this is a mystery. I’ll go with that.

We can assume that Jesus, being fully human, not only laughed and cried but defecated and even bruised his knees as a child and got a splinter or two in his carpenter’s shop. To think he didn’t is to really be a heretic.

Some Christians seem to want a Jesus that didn’t laugh, didn’t defecate, didn’t drink wine, and didn’t dance. But he did. The Fathers, God bless them, were too influenced by Neoplatonism, perhaps trying to gain a little cultural relevance in Late Antiquity, and injected lots of disdain for the body (and, let’s face it, being incarnated) into their theology—none of which exists in the Old Testament. I do love Plato and Neoplatonism, but let’s not make a religion of them.

Those advocating for this kind of Christianity are not new. Puritans of every denomination have been at this for over 2000 years (Iconoclast Controversy, yo!). During the 17^th century, Puritan Christians were the first to outlaw Christmas in their pursuit of a purified Christianity. They, unsurprisingly, were enormous drags at parties—which they also outlawed (Whitsun ales, for one). To be sure, they exist today in Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox iterations—they may call each other heretic, but they all follow the same religion. The winners, of course, write history (and dogmatics, apparently). I have no use for a God who can’t laugh, even less for a religion lacking joy.

I know this makes me a heretic in the eyes of some. I’m okay with that. But I also know full well that, were times, social conditions, and the balance of power in the world different, I might very well find myself standing on a pile of faggots, tied to a post, awaiting my salvation; and that many would think it justified. Thank God for secularism.

Here I stand. I can do no other.

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[1] De cultu feminarum, 1.1.

[2] Paul Evdokimov, Woman and the Salvation of the World: A Christian Anthropology on the Charisms of Women, trans. Anthony P. Gythiel (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1994), 243.

[3] Ibid., 27.

[4] Paul Evdokimov, The Sacrament of Love: The Nuptial Mystery in the Light of the Orthodox Tradition, trans. Olivier Clement (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995), 17.

[5] Bernhard Pick (trans. and ed.), The Apocryphal Acts of Paul, Peter, John, Andrew, and Thomas (Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Co., 1909), 94.

[6] 95