Sydney, Wednesday 17 April 2024: Why was Jesus, who said “I judge no one” judged and put to death for a political crime? To what extent can we characterise Jesus as a politician or a philosopher or is he “unassimilable” in the history of politics, philosophy and even religion?
The Centre was proud to co-host rising young philosopher Dr David Lloyd Dusenbury at the Australian Catholic University (ACU) last week as part of ACU’s Western Civilisation Program’s Aletheia Speaker Series.
Dr Dusenbury spoke on the subject of his latest book, “I Judge No One”: A Political Life of Jesus.
Dr Dusenbury took the audience on a tour of the Gospels and ancient pagan references to the man who died on the cross, showing that the Jesus figure is defined by a combination of strangeness and familiarity that would have been both evident and shocking to contemporaries, but which now requires a knowledge of the ancient Mediterranean world to reconstruct.
A rabbi or teacher who taught “new mysteries” in a new way; a ruler whose kingdom was not of this world; a man who was executed, but for no ordinary crime—Jesus has something in common with many other figures with whom contemporaries were familiar, including philosophers, emperors, prophets and zealots, but is not exactly like any of them.
In setting out Jesus’ remarkableness, Dr Dusenbury also refuted a recurrent theory that Jesus was put to death because he was a violent criminal, arguing it was his non-violence that again differentiated him.
“He is thought worthy precisely because he was not a violent figure,” Dr Dusenbury said.
“World history is shaped by very violent figures and one of the most extraordinary things about the political life of Jesus is the fact that he shapes global history to this day without resorting to the sort of typical mechanics of political influence which are not infrequently sadly quite violent.”
David Lloyd Dusenbury is a philosopher and historian of ideas, currently senior fellow at the Danube Institute and visiting professor at Eötvös Loránd University, in Budapest. He obtained his doctorate from the University of Leuven. Last year, he held a joint chair at the Institute of Jewish Studies and the University Centre Saint-Ignatius at the University of Antwerp, in Belgium.
His most recent book, I Judge No One: A Political Life of Jesus, is out now with Hurst Publishers in London, and Oxford University Press in New York. His other books include The Innocence of Pontius Pilate: How the Roman Trial of Jesus Shaped History, and Platonic Legislations: An Essay on Legal Critique in Ancient Greece.
Professor Dusenbury has held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Leuven and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and visiting professorships at Loyola University Maryland and Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele. He has lectured widely in Europe and the United States on topics in philosophy, religion, law, and the history of ideas. His essays and criticism have appeared in The Times Literary Supplement, The Spectator, Corriere della Sera, and other cultural and political reviews.
Media contact: Sarah Switzer 0407 816 098 / sarah.switzer@ramsaycentre.org