November 2, 2011
A Serious Way of Wondering: The Ethics of Jesus Imagined
by Reynolds Price
Friday, January 27, 2012 | 4:00 p.m. | LIVE in the Rare Book Room, Perkins Library and live streaming
Presented by Melissa Malouf, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of the Practice of English, Melissa Malouf earned her Ph.D. in English and American Literature from the University of California at Irvine. She is the director of the Office of Undergraduate Scholars & Fellows, Duke’s umbrella organization for our premier merit scholarship programs. In 1997 she was selected by Duke students as winner of the Distinguished Undergraduate Alumni Teaching Award. Professor Malouf has been a Breadloaf Fellow, a Pushcart Prize winner, and is the author of a collection of short stories (NoGuarantees), a novel (It Had to Be You), three one-act plays, two opera libretti, and numerous book reviews. She has been the director of the Arts in Contemporary Society FOCUS program since 1998.
Why I chose this book
I am not in any sense a scholar of religion. And I can't claim, either, to share Reynold's acute sense of the presence of "the Risen Lord." But I am fascinated by the story-telling that takes place in this book--the "imagined narratives," as Reynolds calls them, that call upon both what he knows (Reynolds is a scholar of religion) and what he wants to know, what his study of the Gospels doesn't reveal. Over the years, Reynolds and I had conversations that covered just about everything--he was as attuned to and delighted by all things low-brow as he was about all things "high." And he knew that I was doing some serious wondering in my mid-forties when I entered the Catholic Church. I continue to wonder--and Reynolds's imagined narratives in this book are, dare I say, a god-send.
Discussion Points
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Reynolds writes that "Jesus was not a Christian." What do we glean from this book is the difference between Jesus and Christ?
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In the same vein, Reynolds points out that Jesus did not intend to establish a Christian Church. What are the implications of such a view for social and foreign policy in the name of Christian values?
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The "ethical Jesus": for Reynolds, the essence of Jesus' ethics is "love thy neighbor." How do his "imagined narratives" speak to this love?
- Reynolds' "imagined narratives" are not about the Christ of Christianity but about a Jesus who has been among us since the Resurrection--"among us"?