Book review: The Christ is Not a Person

by J. C. Tefft

★★★★★

As a colleague often proclaims, "Christianity is the belief that history is heading somewhere." Tefft would agree. It's heading toward an eternal consciousness. Tefft embraces the wonder of evolution instead of grudgingly accepting its possibility and then dismissing it into a corner. But more than mere biological evolution, Tefft sees the development of life as a gradual transition into conscious awareness. We see this on a macro scale, as we compare minerals to plants to animals to man to God. 

Here, "God" is the all-pervading Intelligence or Spirit that motivates Creation, guiding us slowly toward ultimate Consciousness. You'll want to read this definition twice: "What is called the Christ in New Testament Biblical lore is not a person born two thousand years ago, but can be likened to a new unseen faculty or capability that exists within the field of omnipresent Energy at the 'entrance' to the Kingdom of Heaven."

So Tefft is clearly not a Christian in the conservative or exclusive sense of the word. He notes that Pure Consciousness came to light hundreds of years before Jesus, through at least two people that we know of--the Buddha and Lao Tse--though there were probably others. This acceptance of other traditions is important; religious authorities have tended to dwell on the differences that separate their way of thinking from others, rather than the similarities, and this closed-minded approach will never fully approach truth. However, the focus of Tefft's book is on the Bible.

Tefft reads the Bible with both scholarly and spiritual insight. He leans toward to a non-conservative dating of the Bible's books. For example, the Gospels were written between the years of 64CE and 100CE by authors who had never known Jesus personally; the books of Moses are compilations of multiple authors with multiple agendas; and so on. We cannot, therefore, expect perfection among these writings, as if the Bible can in its entirety be read in a spiritual manner. There is much in the Bible that belongs to antiquity, and while such material may be of historical interest to some (read: Lee Harmon), it is of little value in the realization of enlightenment (read: J.C. Tefft). Sigh. Now I have to read all the Bible.

And in this book, I nearly did read all of the Bible, or at least it feels like it. This is no beach read. Tefft has amassed and explained a huge number of scriptural passages, such that his book becomes almost a Bible in itself. You'll relearn the story of creation, the flood, Jacob's ladder, the ten commandments, and more, arriving at Jesus in the second half of the book. Tackle this one if you're really ready for a spiritual transformation, not merely looking for some surface-skimming entertainment. I struggled a little; I think I would have preferred for Tefft to give me Jesus first, or least his coverage of the Lord's Prayer, so I can see where we're heading. Then I could more easily appreciate the Old Testament stories. 

Tefft's interpretation appeals to me as another window to truth, recognizing that religious truth is many-faceted. I think his view is mystical, meaningful, uplifting, and that it promotes human kindness. In other words, all the things that make for a good religion or humanitarian philosophy. Highly recommended. And yet ... for myself, I find that I'm too mired in the historical-critical method of reading scripture to be able to seriously approach the Bible in this fashion. Jesus, yes; the rest of the Bible; no. Tefft's method of reading the Bible is fascinating and spiritually uplifting, but I can't imagine that this is the way the writers of the Bible intended their words to be read.

The fact is, I had the book pegged for a 4-star review all the way until the last fifteen pages, when Tefft came through with an epilogue summary that was concise and uplifting. Of the events leading up to Jesus, Tefft writes,

"After Moses, enlightened souls the likes of Saul, David, Isaiah, and Jeremiah arose over the years within Israelite society--the later ones proclaiming a new Kingdom yet to come, and Kingdom unlike any they had known before ... It turned out to be a Kingdom that is within Man ... as one awakens to the living Christ within, one is shown how to approach Life with Love in one's heart." 

Amen.