That's why they pay him the big bucks.
Here in The New York Times, where for him it sort of comes down to the idea that Jesus is Everyman:
Part of the lure of the New Testament is the complexity of its central character — the mix of gentleness and zeal, strident moralism and extraordinary compassion, the down-to-earth and the supernatural.
Most “real Jesus” efforts, though, assume that these complexities are accretions, to be whittled away to reach the historical core. Thus instead of a Jesus who contains multitudes, we get Jesus the nationalist or Jesus the apocalyptic prophet or Jesus the sage or Jesus the philosopher and so on down the list. ...
The mystical Jesus is for readers who wish we had the parables without the creeds, the philosophical Jesus for readers who wish Christianity had developed like the Ethical Culture movement. And a political Jesus like Aslan’s is for readers who feel, as one of his reviewers put it, that “Jesus’ usefulness as a challenge to power was lost the moment Christians first believed he rose from the dead.”
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Well, "Legion" contained multitudes, too, didn't he? What if Jesus' family really was right, that he was "a little off"? If you've ever encountered a religious fanatic in your own family, you know what I'm talking about.
"John thinks God cured his eyesight so he's not wearing his glasses, and oh, by the way, he says the world is coming to an end next May on Israel's birthday. Something about the significance of 66. He stayed up all night reading the Bible and came down to breakfast this morning all bleary eyed muttering how God had revealed it to him. He's not sure if he was awake or not when it happened. Anyway, he's quitting his job and plans to share this message with anyone who will listen from now until then, hoping they'll repent and be saved from what's coming when it happens."
Nowadays it's common to describe people who are a complex mixture of extremes as suffering from bipolar disorder, but it's still too hard for most people to entertain the idea that the history of their entire civilization might just quite possibly be the Nachleben of a madman.
