A Review of Jesus : A Psychological Biography

Abstract

Capps's book uses historical, sociological, and psychological methods to probe the personal identity and self-understanding of Jesus. This reviewer suggests that historical, sociological, and psychological methods are modes of discourse that are modern forms of myth. “Myth” is understood as any narrative form that is used, and/or taken for granted, as a way of self-understanding and understanding the world. These disciplines are useful critical tools with which to explore the text and its world, but they do not guarantee knowledge about the past. As modern modes of discourse they create narratives (i.e., myths) about the past, that for us are preferred epistemological pathways. Jesus Christ is the ultimate model of the God-person relationship in the Christian west. Therefore, any serious attempt to render a realistic portrait of Jesus using contemporary modes of describing reality has the possibility of effecting a profound transformation of the images of God and Jesus. This then can transform our own relationship with God. The value of Capps's book is not in any knowledge it might give us about Jesus, but in the transformation it can effect within the reader, and the author, of central religious images. Psychoanalytic and developmental theories are limited in their explanatory effectiveness because they are materialistic and personalistic (reductive). The analytical psychology of Carl Jung and the archetypal psychology of James Hillman are proposed in order to add a transpersonal dimension to Capps's approach to the personality of Jesus.