Living Jesus
In preparing a homily on the Letter to the Colossians, I had occasion to re-read Luke Timothy Johnson’s brief but insightful account of the letter in his The Writings of the New Testament.
In the current issue of America the always challenging Professor Johnson pens these provocative words regarding the quest for the historical Jesus:
I try to remind my audience that the entire quest for the historical Jesus is a massive deflection of Christian awareness from its proper focus: learning the living Jesus—the resurrected and exalted Lord present to believers through the power of the Holy Spirit—in the common life and common practices of the church. To concentrate on “the historical Jesus,” as though the ministry of Jesus as reconstructed by scholarship were of ultimate importance for the life of discipleship, is to forget the most important truth about Jesus—namely, that he lives now as Lord in the full presence and power of God and presses upon us at every moment not as a memory of the past but as a presence that defines our present. If Jesus is simply a dead man of the past, then knowing him through historical reconstruction is necessary and inevitable. But if he lives in the present as powerful and commanding Lord, then he must be learned through the obedience of faith.
Jesus is best learned not as a result of an individual’s scholarly quest that is published in a book, but as a continuing process of personal transformation within a community of disciples. Jesus is learned through the faithful reading of the Scriptures, true, but he is learned as well through the sacraments (above all the Eucharist), the lives of saints (dead and living) and the strangers with whom the exalted Lord especially associates himself. Next to such a difficult and complex form of learning Jesus as he truly is—the life-giving Spirit who enlivens above all the assembly called the body of Christ—the investigations of historians, even at their best, seem but a drab and impoverished distraction.
The entire article is here.
Fr. Imbelli – thanks for posting this. Full disclosure – I studied under Crossan at dePaul University; enjoy his and Borg’s collaboration and works; and enjoy the ongoing dialogues with NT Wright.
Would agree with Mr. Johnson’s points but:
- why make this into an either/or
- would suggest that it is a both/and
Why? Personally, I find the quest for the historical Jesus to have opened up multiple areas of thought, data, windows into the cultures, peoples, times that have allowed me to re-look at scripture in a new way. So, I don’t see either approach as negative for the other; rather, they enhance and support each other.
Just my opinion. BTW, you are probably familiar with the works of Mark Link SJ – I used his books as texts when teaching in high school. They are an excellent blend of the historical search and Johnson’s points.
I’m won’t go behind the paywall to read the article, but I was disappointed by a lot of Johnson’s responses in the podcast interview. It seemed to me that when asked if there was a better way to pursue the “quest,” he gave a rather convoluted answer that basically boiled down to “don’t bother,’ without simply coming out and saying as much.
Since I sometimes am not terribly impressed with what I have read by LTJ, it’s only fair I to note that I found this to be insightful, and very much needing to be said. Here’s the thing I’ve never understood: Unlike Mormons and Muslims, Christians have never believed, so far as I know, that the Word of God was written by God, literally. We believe, on faith, that’s what in the gospel, though written by man, was inspired by God. So if something was added to the gospel “later”, or may not have been the exact words of Jesus, don’t we still believe that it’s in there for a reason, i.e., a good reason?
Don’t editors and scholars generally believe that the final version, reflecting their edits, is better than the first draft they receive? So what’s the problem?
My preliminary opinion is that Luke Timothy Johnson is copping out. I have pulled The Real Jesus from my bookshelf and am either rereading it or reading it for the first time. (I don’t remember it.) If his point is that we cannot reconstruct the historical Jesus — that is, come up with a historically verifiable portrait that everyone will agree on — then I don’t know who would disagree with that. We can’t even do that with Margaret Sanger or Harry Truman or even Barack Obama.
But it seems to me that — particularly for Catholicism — it is extraordinarily important that certain events in the Gospels be historically accurate. If Jesus the “literary character” gave bread and wine to his disciples, said it was his body and blood, and said to do the same in remembrance of him, no matter how deep an insight the actions of that literary character give us into the “living Jesus,” if they are not historically accurate to a large extent, then the Eucharist is not what the Catholic Church claims it to be.
If the account of the Last Supper has as its origins a meal those in the early Church developed to celebrate the memory of Jesus, that is extraordinarily different from the early Church having a meal of remembrance because Jesus instructed the Apostles to have such a meal in his memory.
There is a funny little moment in one of Isaac Asimov’s science fiction novels that takes place so far in the future that ordinary things of Earth are no longer remembered. The Horsehead Nebula is known as the Horace Head Nebula, named after the astronomer who first discovered it — Horace Head.
Getting me to respond to one of Fr. Imbelli’s historical Jesus posts is probably easier than shooting fish in a barrel, and, needless to say, this post raises many issues for me.
I take the shorter version of Johnson to go like this: good theology cannot be derived from historical studies alone. With this, I am in complete agreement. Anyone who thinks that historical investigation into Jesus will finally determine the proper theological understanding of Jesus is confused, and has at least committed a category error, of sorts.
That said, I think Johnson completely overlooks one of principle reasons people get interested in the historical Jesus. Beyond an interest in the humanity of Jesus, which is what Johnson proposes, I think there is also a strong sense that some very traditional claims about Jesus are not credible. Consider:
1) If evolution is true, then there was no “Adam and Eve,” Jesus cannot literally be the “New Adam,” nor can he have any salvific relationship to an “original sin,” if that sin is understood as a specific act by an original person in time.
2) The various fulfillment texts in the NT are almost certainly a literary device used by the gospel writers to promote their gospel narrative, and not actual historical occurrences verifying the authenticity of Jesus’s messianic status. Beyond the fulfillment texts themselves is the question of the widely held belief that the gospels are themselves historically true, a belief that is impossible to hold after careful reading of the texts. Johnson himself refers to the literary character of the gospels and to the diverse understandings of Jesus present in them, but then seems entirely unwilling to wonder if many Christians would find such claims unnerving.
3) As Joseph Fitzmeyer recently demonstrated (The One Who Is To Come), the Christian use of the term messiah as applied to Jesus bears no theological resemblance to the Jewish uses of the term. If Jesus was a Jew, and if his earliest followers were Jews, it does not indicate a simplistic reliance on history to wonder if there has not been some very important theological innovation in the Christian appeal to the messianic status of Jesus. Such theological innovation might also be suspected in uses of the phrase “Son of God,” but, here again, the point is not to use history to prove something right or wrong, but rather to begin to wonder how firm the authoritative foundation has been for making such claims.
4) Biblical studies show that it is almost certain that the earliest followers of Jesus expected an imminent Second Coming. It does not indicate a simplistic reliance on history to wonder where they got this idea from, and what it might mean that they got it so wrong, and that now 2,000 years have passed without the Second Coming.
5) Biblical and historical studies strongly suggest a much, much more Jewish Jesus that than traditional Christian thought has admitted, and so various anti-Jewish theologies that have come hand in glove with various theological claims about Jesus are seen to be unpersuasive.
Many more examples could be raised, all of which make the same point: there are well informed reasons to wonder about the credibility of many traditional theological claims about Jesus.
Of course, what a living church must do with such problems is proclaim a credible gospel and attending to the best of historical studies. Consider what Johnson does in the America article. The core gospel affirmation is this:
If this is the theological core that Johnson wishes to run with, more power to him. I think there are a lot of Christians who could affirm this Jesus (and Jews and Muslims for that matter!) without worrying about other theological claims regarding Jesus that are less credible.
Finally, what about faith? Johnson seems to suggest that anything but a robust faith in the creedal Jesus indicates something of a lack of trying on one’s part, and I find this very troubling. Even he looks for theological language that circumvents the creeds. For example,
Even Johnson’s Jesus lives now “in” the full presence and power of God, and not “as” the full presence and power of God. Heck, even I could affirm that. In this sense, Jesus is an icon of God. But to suggest that the Jesus in whom Christians should place their faith is a theologically obvious Jesus, rather than one that must be searched for again and again, is simply to suggest that nothing at all has happened sense humans first encountered the man from Nazareth.
I found myself agreeing with what LTJ says in the excerpt above, but thinking that he’d gone too far. If Jesus’ teaching in the Gospels is important an important part of our relationship to the living Jesus, then surely anything which allows us better to understand what he meant in the context of his culture must also matter. Doesn’t “faithful reading” of the Scriptures include trying to understand what people meant at the time?
He says, “Jesus is learned through the faithful reading of the Scriptures, true, but he is learned as well through the sacraments (above all the Eucharist), the lives of saints (dead and living) and the strangers with whom the exalted Lord especially associates himself.” I was surprised to see no teaching role for the Magisterium!
Ooops. Upon rereading, lots of typos. My apologies. This is what I get for writing after heavy yard work in full mid-day sun!
As Joseph Fitzmeyer recently demonstrated (The One Who Is To Come), the Christian use of the term messiah as applied to Jesus bears no theological resemblance to the Jewish uses of the term.
Joe,
Another very recent book (which I haven’t yet read) that strikes me as potentially unsettling is James D. G. Dunn’s Did the First Christians Worship Jesus?. His answer, apparently, is no, raising the question of whether current Christians ought to worship Jesus either.
David,
I have added it to my wishlist (that’s how I keep track of books to read). Thanks for the reference.
Another book on the topic is Larry Hurtado’s, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity.
Some years ago, when Roger Haight devoted the CTSA convention to “Jesus as the Foundation of Christianity” (and in his view this meant the so-called “Jesus of history”), there was a concluding discussion on the topic, with some of us disagreeing with that idea and others agreeing with it. A priest with a certain impatience, it seemed, suggested that we follow him to the South Bronx and he would show us the real Jesus.
I don’t think I entirely agree with Johnson. If I recall correctly, N.T. Wright quoted a theologianas saying that he would think that interest in the historical Jesus would be an implication of the doctrine of the Incarnation. The difficulty, I think, is when people want to make the Jesus of historians’ (plural] reconstructions [plural] substitute for the portraits [plural] of the Gospels [plural]. If this is what Johnson is really aiming at, then I agree with him, but as was said above, do we have to have an either-or on the question?
I regret that the access to the Johnson article is restricted. And I presume the editors of “America” won’t mind if I transcribe another paragraph from it, since it may clarify further Johnson’s view:
“There is absolutely nothing wrong with studying Jesus as a historical figure, and if we so study him, it is correct to bracket the premises of faith. The sort of project undertaken by Msgr. J. P. Meier in A Marginal Jew, which tests what elements in the Gospel accounts can be historically verified, is perfectly legitimate and yields genuine results. But as Monsignor Meier himself recognizes, the empirically verifiable Jesus is by no means the “real” Jesus. It is more than legitimate, moreover, to learn as much history as possible about the first-century world of Jesus. The point of this knowledge, however, is to become better and more responsible readers of the Gospels themselves. It is not to deconstruct the Gospel narratives in order to reconstruct a “historical Jesus” and claim thereby to have discovered who Jesus really was. Still less is it to propose such a reconstruction as normative for Christians today.”
LTJ is big on not reducing Jesus to the historical Jesus whereby we lose the importance of Jesus as the face of God. Sadly too many in the Jesus movement let the science obscure or destroy the faith. While historical studies do give much insight, we have to preserve the crucified and resurrected Jesus who has called us ‘friends’ and showed the loving way to God.
Fr. Imbelli,
Yes. Johnson has some room for the historical study of Jesus. But then when he gets to the life of faith and to an affirmation of the living Jesus, he does nothing to dispel the conclusion that all is well, theologically speaking. However, for any who find that all is not well, an appeal to “the obedience of faith” can seem rather to be missing the point.
I, for one, would enjoy more robust theological challenges to creedal Christianity; that is, I would like more contemporary theologians to be more honest about what they are doing. I think many contemporary theologians try to rebuild the house of Christianity without mentioning that they have moved the door, etc. Such challenges would certainly not be convincing to all, but they would serve to put creedal Christianity more on its theological toes. Right now, everyone nods in the direction of creedal Christianity, perhaps hoping that many will not notice that important theological changes have been proposed. This kind of tangential engagement allows advocates of creedal Christianity to simply reaffirm, rather than re-defend, their theological commitments.
“Another book on the topic is Larry Hurtado’s, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity.”
And here, to close this circle, is Hurtado’s review of the new Dunn book:
http://larryhurtado.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/dunn-was-jesus-worshipped-review.pdf
on his most excellent web site:
http://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/
Joe P,
There is a problem with creedal Christianity and LTJ does not disavow that. He is showing how we should not get bogged down on that. Dialogue should go on, as you say. Certainly there are too many theologians who blind themselves to it. Nonetheless, we cannot let the issue bog us down into a loss of faith as apparently happened to Crossan, Erhrman and others. So when LTJ writes: ” To concentrate on “the historical Jesus,” as though the ministry of Jesus as reconstructed by scholarship were of ultimate importance for the life of discipleship, is to forget the most important truth about Jesus—namely, that he lives now as Lord in the full presence and power of God and presses upon us at every moment not as a memory of the past but as a presence that defines our present”, he makes a most necessary point.
Mark,
Many thanks for bringing to our attention both Hurtado’s review of Dunn, and Hurtado’s website. A very valuable link.
I agree with LTJ’s basic point that it is a mistake for Christians (who, after all, believe Jesus is alive) to seek knowledge of Jesus purely through historical study (as if he were dead). I found his book “Living Jesus” very helpful in making this point and exploring how an integrated life of faith helps us to know Jesus.
But I also agree with those who think Johnson is taking his critique too far. There is definitely room for a both/and approach here. Johnson pays lip service to this idea, but I have never seen him do anything but attack anyone other than himself who uses history to clarify the meaning of the texts of the gospels.
I also think he is unfairly lumping together scholars who use very different methodologies. To treat the critical realist approach of someone like N.T. Wright as the same sort of enterprise as the more standard historical-critical approaches used by Crossan and Ehrman is failing to appreciate the very different epistemologies that underlie these approaches. (On a similar note, see the following link for a comparative analysis of Meier’s Crossan’s and Wright’s understandings of “history”: http://www.blakleycreative.com/jtb/CV/TheCrisisOfDiversity_JTedBlakley_2c.pdf)
Johnson and Wright have actually had an interesting exchange on their differences in “Jesus & the Restoration of Israel: A Critical Assessment of N.T. Wright’s Jesus & the Victory of God”,
edited by Carey Newman.
For a critique of Wright’s approach that echoes some of Johnson’s concerns but is less broadbrush, see Richard B. Hay’s insightful talk here: http://www.wheaton.edu/wetn/lectures-theology10.htm (Actually, this whole conference is fascinating if you are a follower of the debates about the historical Jesus and the new perspective on Paul.)
I think the most sophisticated studies of the methodological issues, including the relation between faith and reason, are those of N.T. Wright in Jesus and the Victory of God, J.D.G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered (a wonderful book), and B. Meyer, Crticial Realism and the New Testament and Reality and Illusion in New Testament Scholarship. A graduate of CUA, Christopher McMahon, did his dissertation on the methodologies of Wright and John Meier.
David Tenney,
wow! what a splendid presentation by Richard Hays: respectful, critical, deeply insightful. I would urge any interested in the issue (I think that means all of us on this thread) to spend the hour it takes to listen to the talk.
To your knowledge is it available in print form?
R.I.
“… the entire quest for the historical Jesus is a massive deflection of Christian awareness from its proper focus, learning the living Jesus … in the common life and common practices of the Church.”
I agree with the word, “massive”. Young college students enjoy hearing about the historical Jesus ( a “marginal Jew”) because it makes Him more human and they are thrilled to know the Gospels are faith portraits of each writer(s). The practical application then is to take that interest and introduce them to the living Jesus. Giving them a service project does not complete that task. The introduction to the great spiritual writers does.
Here’s the rub for me! Four years of seminary courses deal “massively” more with historicity and teachings than SPIRITUALITY. It is spirituality within the Church from Jesus through Paul to the Fathers, etc. that has a real history we can follow. It is in the seminary formation that the “massive” deflection from the living Jesus takes place (seems absurd to state). It is expected that seminarians arrive “converted”. As Michael Casey reveals: conversion is only the beginning of the “new life”. How much more seminarians need just to get them started. Homilies can be interesting and enjoyable, but they need to ignite the minds and hearts of the Church to encounter the living Jesus through a spiritual life. If not, the homilies are not living and effective. Focusing on seminary formation and a movement of the dial in seminary formation toward personal and collective spirituality can restore a richness to the Church.
Here is an honest question: How does one read “great spiritual writers” when one is very aware that their approach to scripture and history is not likely to be similar to one’s own? How does one read texts of great spiritual confidence when this confidence seems to be based on conclusions and assumptions that cannot be shared?
We should be honest in admitting that writers with both approaches have had their difficulties. So, Joe P, I think you may be getting trapped into what I call the “reverse dogmatic” approach whereby one can reject a conclusion because it is based on a different christological approach. To me that is the great shortcoming of Nicea to all the other christological councils. They concentrated on dogma while the faith was falling apart, particularly in the leadership. So writers have to be evaluated according to their relevance to the imitation of the crucified and resurrected Christ rather than procession of the Trinity. Rather than get into things about persons and nature which truly are beyond us we should formulate a principle that anyone who denys that Jesus is from God and the jproclamation of God is off center and betrays the faith and practice.
Jim S,
What you say about undergrads meshes with my experience. There are a few groups at B.C. which provide community support and nourish their members on both the devotional and the intellectual dimensions of Catholicism. And this enhances rather than derogates from their service involvement.
I’ll add my two cents:
Johnson’s point is vital for believers and overemphasis on the historical Jesus deflects where the believer should be going.
I think that underscores, however, the issue of risk in (salvific) faith and its interelating with the credibility of proclamaion by the living community, warts and al – which affects many of the things we’v etalked about elsewhere.
Beyond methodology, there is also how historically we’ve come to look at the scriptures and how the link of historical Jesus and Christ of faith have been meshed.
I think Fr. Meier’s work on Jesus’s jewishness is outstanding (I wonder if the podcast of his notre dame lecture summarizing hiw work is still available at America in their podcast archives, earluy June, I think), and I’d suggestr we still have more to learn.
For me, historical modesty is at the heart of faith, even if an overemphasis on the historical Jesus creates problems for some (many?)
Fr. Imbelli,
I too was struck by Hays’ presentation (and I’m excited to finally have some people to share it with who would appreciate it). He’s a first rate scholar. I’m a big Wright fan, but I thought this was one of the most intelligent critiques of Wright that I’ve heard. I’m not aware of it being available in print, but I haven’t spent much time looking.
If you are interested, Wright actually does briefly respond to Hays at the end of Marianne Meye Thompson’s talk when there were a few extra minutes in the program. I haven’t had a chance to listen to the panel discussion yet, but he may also say some more there.
From Luke Timothy Johnson’s article:
“Jesus is best learned not as a result of an individual’s scholarly quest that is published in a book, but as a continuing process of personal transformation within a community of disciples. Jesus is learned through the faithful reading of the Scriptures, true, but he is learned as well through the sacraments (above all the Eucharist), the lives of saints (dead and living) and the strangers with whom the exalted Lord especially associates himself.”
I have to say, I strongly agree with this. At the same time, I find coursework, books, Commonweal etc. to be invaluable in helping to unpack the meaning of revelation. My preaching would be much more impoverished without the (inadequate) intellectual foundation I’ve received thus far.
I wonder what folks think about this: it seems that there can be a spiritual peril in study. i’d think most/all of us can think of examples of students or scholars whose faith was weakened or even lost entirely in the course of their studies. That is not a reason to discourage those pursuits, of course, but I do wonder if students should be warned, and/or fortified, against the spiritual dangers that lurk on the scholarly road.
Joe Petit – I appreciate your observation regarding the reconciliation of one’s spiritual perspective with that of great spiritual writers.
As a coincidental nexus, in Hays’ presentation in which he expected agreement from his very good friend, Tom Wright, to his point of view in his book, the surprising challenge to his view by Wright stirs him to re-examine and re-search. He became so familiar with his friend and their intellectual yet jovial conversations, he was jolted.
I believe that is what spiritual writers do no matter their perspective – opens our minds to a re-examination and a re-search. For example, the wonderful blog on the Ascension by Father Imbelli months ago (our necessity to willfully DESIRE to ascend which is achieved through a life of LOVE) still reverberates with me each time I remember the Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary. I even think of it during the Luminous mystery, the Wedding Feast of Cana, in which we recognize that the risen and ascended Jesus is the choice wine saved for the end time and served to us (in the Eucharist) as we approach the kingdom of God.
There is another conversation between Wright and his critics, including L.T. Johnson and R.B. Hays, in Jesus and the Restoration of Israel: A Critical Assessment of N.T. Wright’s Jesua and the Victory of God.
A few decades ago, Ernst Käsemann wrote an essay entitled “Blind Alleys in the ‘Jesus of History’ Controversy.” The first of these dead-ends he illustrated from the project of Joachim Jeremias, author of important books on the parables, on the eucharistic words of Jesus, on the Lord’s prayer, as well as a theology of the NT. Jeremias, according to K., was of the view that historical critical inquiry into the historical Jesus was necessary because the resultant knowledge was “knowledge of the object of faith. Thus he does not shrink from really allowing faith to be dependent on insight mediated by scholarship. I cannot recall that the logic of this position has ever been pursued so radically by any other colleague of mine in this field…. It is certainly not his intention to embark on a particularly hazardous enterprise. We are, he says, better equipped today than previous generations were. Literary criticism of sources and of traditions, form-criticism, the history of the age and its environment, new knowledge about Jesus’ native tongue and, above all, about his eschatology have refined our methods and kept us from making mistakes which were once unavoidable. We can no longer modernize Jesus and create him in our own image as easily as our fathers did.’
Käsemann replies: “Is Jeremias not aware of the dilemma which threatens him? On the one hand we say: ‘We must follow along the way of the historical Jesus and his message, exactly where it leads us.’ This is to give sanction in principle to the whole history of error and confusion over the last two hundred and fifty years with all its catastrophes, although Jeremias expressly dissociates himself rom this period. The logic of this, in turn, is that in each individual phase faith was dependent on the state of historical knowledge. But in actual fact such has only too often been the path to superstition. In view of this, are we justified in saying that the general direction was right and only its means and objectives were inadequate. Or–the other horn of the dlilemma–is the postulate in question itself false? ‘Regardless of where it may lead us.’ Is it not a counsel of desperation to talk like this after the tragic history of the ‘quest of the historical Jesus,’ as A. Schweitzer has portrayed it? Which generation in it did not boast of its refined methods and its spiritual achievements?”
After quoting another sentence of Jeremias–”We can venture [on this road] with confidence, nor need we fear that we are embarking on a perilous, fruitless adventure”–Käsemann comments: “Can we for a single moment forget that we are dealing every day with a flood of dubious and even abstruse attacks on the exegetical, historical and theological fields and that our study is gradually degenerating into world-wide guerilla-warfare? (That is, if the past does not scare us enough by itself!) Can we, of our own power and without getting involved at all, disengage ourselves from this massa perfiditionis [condemned mass]? Can we ply our trade otherwise than in the knowledge that the feet of those who will carry us out have already long been at the door and indeed are there all the time?” [The last sentence alludes to the scene in which Peter strikes Ananias and Sapphira dead for their deceit: His words to Saphhira are: "Behold the feet of them who have buried thy husband are at the door, and they shall carry thee out" (Acts 5:1-10).]
Käsemann was one of the figures who in the 1950′s inaugurated “the new quest of the historical Jesus” (now known as the “second quest,” with the flurry of work in the last two decades or so being “the third quest”). In this he was famously departing from his mentor Rudolf Bultmann who said it was of no interest to him what went on in the mind and heart of Jesus of Nazareth. In criticizing Jeremias so severely, Käsemann was certainly not giving up on the project of trying to understand the “Jesus of history,” but he was reminding those who want to rest their faith on what crticial historical inquiry can verify about Jesus that this would be to lean against a very fragile reed indeed. The same might be said, I think, of those who tday believe that critical history today has verified that Jesus was not what later faith in him would declare about him. The Jesus of history is the Jesus of historians, and there have been many of the latter over the last 300 years, there are many of them today, and there are no doubt goivng to be many in the future.
Ben F. Meyer, whose work on NT hermeneutics and history have greatly impressed N.T. Wright and J.D.G. Dunn, has some useful remarks at the beginning of his chapter “Faith and History” in The Aims of Jesus. He observes that the stakes in the debate about Jesus are so high because of “the conviction of inalienable ties between Christian faith and the Jesus of ancient Palestine…. From the beginning Christian faith has been a confession of events in human history. The events were more than a point of departure. Faith was not only grounded in them, it included them in interpretative affirmations. So history with its claims on the man of faith has become the arena where his faith is affirmed, attacked, defended, reappropriated, redefined.
“What importance do these debates have for faith? Considerable importance, for they determine the relative compatibility of faith and integrity. In the long course of these debates from the Enlightenment to the present some (e.g. early German pietists) have decided that faith required the renunciation of intelligence (sacrificium intellectus); others, far more numerous, that intelligence–better intellectual integrity–required the renunciation of faith; others, that malgré tout and by the skin of one’s teeth one could keep hold of both faith and integrity; and, finally, still others, that, when all was said and done, intellectual integrity positively called for entry into the life of faith or perseverance in it.
“These are not only diverse judgments but diverse states of heart and mind.”
I very much like his restatement of the issue as a matter of intellectual integrity rather than posing it in terms of those abstractions, “faith and reason.”
Fr. Komonchak, thank you for those excerpts.
David Tenney,
You have introduced us to a feast. Luckily I’m in-between some commitments and have had the luxury of being able to spend time listening to the Wheaton Conference.
I’m half-way through Wright’s Friday evening lecture and recommend it for its insight into his project and for the sheer eloquence and pastoral passion of the man. He pays special tribute to Ben Meyer’s book, “The Aims of Jesus,” as being seminal for him.
Wright affirms Chalcedon, but cautions against the Tradition’s too abstract reading of “divinity” and “humanity.” It is Jesus’ Jewish humanity that is the embodiment of Israel’s God coming to save his people and the world.
Wright also insists on both a theology of the Kingdom and a theology of the Cross. What sort of Kingdom is it, he asks, that is accomplished by the crucifixion of him who brings the Kingdom? Much to ponder. I’ll leave watching the second half for tomorrow.
JAK –
I”m having trouble seeing just what the problem is. The content of faith seems to include/be dependent on historical evidence from both the scholarly evidence of the historical Jesus plus tradition. But the content of tradition is also dependent on scholarly evidence of what happened after the early days. Or does tradition have some sort of added cetification that is not a matter of historical evidence. In other words it all seems to be history all the way down.
Or have I misunderstood your meaning of “faith”?
What would you all recommend as a book to someone who is interested in the historical Jesus studies, but doesn’t know where to begin? I’m actually more interested in a book that considers them from a perspective of faith, although it might be good to read one that brackets faith too.
Some years ago I read a short book by Crossan. I have to say it definitely put a strain on my faith for some time. Seems that the only historical thing that he found was Jesus saying, Render unto Caesar… Of course, I’ve come to realize that that is Crossan’s mission and purpose. He wants people to give up their faith in Jesus.
JC,
The book edited by Beverly Gaventa and Richard Hays, “Seeking the Identity of Jesus” is, I think, excellent.
It is the result of a collaborative project, by first rate scholars, who also have a deep faith commitment. Because there are individual essays, it is also more manageable than a more hefty tome. It not only treats the biblical material, but also goes on to dimensions of the church’s tradition.
Thanks, Fr. Imbelli.
Render unto Caesar… Of course, I’ve come to realize that that is Crossan’s mission and purpose. He wants people to give up their faith in Jesus.
JC,
This strikes me as unfair.
Hi David Nickol,
In the book I read, Crossan begins each chapter with quotes from letters he received from readers, at least a couple of whom were catholic nuns, describing how reading some other book of brought on a crisis of faith.
Crossan does not believe in the divinity of Christ, and he writes books arguing such. I don’t think it is unfair to say that he wants to convince others that Jesus was not God’s son.
Maybe you know more about his goals?
Joe
Just want to say, If christ is not risen, then our faith is in vain.
How much certitude history gives us about the Saviour lessens the faith effort.
Thanks, Fr. Imbelli, for the pointer to the Gaventa and Hays book. While I was investigating my own level of interest in reading it, Google popped up with a review by Ben Witherington which contained this paragraph:
“We live in a Jesus haunted culture that is Biblically illiterate, and so unfortunately at this point in time, almost anything can pass for knowledge of the historical Jesus from notions that he was a a Cynic sage to ideas that he was a Gnostic guru to fantasies that he didn’t exist, to Dan Browne’s Jesus of hysterical (rather than historical) fiction. The real value of actual historical research about Jesus is that it provides a hedge against the inflation and infatuation of giving free reign to one’s imagination when it comes to the identity of Jesus.”
This speaks to my original reaction to the LTJ excerpt above. Preachers speak for Jesus, Dan Brown speaks for Jesus, parents speak for Jesus, individual NT scholars speak for Jesus; really engaging with the breadth of NT scholarship can help inoculate people against too quickly buying the next exciting new portrait of Jesus somebody’s trying to sell, however compelling it may be.
I was rushing to make an appointment when I recommended the Gaventa and Hays edited book. But I did want to mention that there are some essays that I found striking in their perceptiveness. Dale Allison on “The Embodiment of God’s Will: Jesus in Matthew” provided insights that I had not seen set out before: for example, “the coincidence of opposites” in Matthew’s presentation of the Transfiguration and the Crucifixion scenes.
Brian Daley’s essay, “The Word and his Flesh: Human Weakness and the Identity of Jesus in Patristic Christology” is masterful. And Sarah Coakley’s “The Identity of the Risen Jesus: Finding Jesus Christ in the Poor” is splendid.
As is clear from the above titles, the book does not restrict itself to the issue of the “historical Jesus” in the narrow sense; but it incorporates the quest into the wider and richer context of the witness of the New Testament and Tradition.
Ann: The problem consists in there being, potentially, two different mediations of the past that Christian believers believe is constitutive of the faith: (1) the existential communal history that we find in the Creed, in biblical accounts such as St. Paul’s evocation of the last supper and of the death and resurrection of Christ, not to mention the four canonical Gospels, and through the living tradition of the Church; and (2) the account of the same purported events that historians using modern critical methods construct. Since these methods developed in the 19th century, many practitioners have called into question the historical claims made in the Scriptures and the tradition, and so the issue arose, as the latest skirmish between faith and reason, as to which mediation of the past was to be accepted. The answers to the dilemma have varied, as indicated in my quote from Ben F. Meyer in my last post above. If you want to see the issues posed more personally, you could refer to Joe Pettit’s post above, on August 1st, at 1:06 PM.
“This speaks to my original reaction to the LTJ excerpt above. Preachers speak for Jesus, Dan Brown speaks for Jesus, parents speak for Jesus, individual NT scholars speak for Jesus; really engaging with the breadth of NT scholarship can help inoculate people against too quickly buying the next exciting new portrait of Jesus somebody’s trying to sell, however compelling it may be.”
JC – here is where I think Luke Timothy Johnson’s insight is so wise: it speaks to how we *encounter* Jesus. Our foundational encounters need to be – must be – a *personal* encounter, through word, sacrament, and our faith community made up of living saints.
Ann Olivier wittily remarked above, “it all seems to be history all the way down”. I’d reply: yes, Jesus the man was a figure of history, but the essence of our encounter with Jesus isn’t historical, because Jesus isn’t only a figure of the past whose life ceased 2,000 years ago and whom we can only know through history’s annals. He’s the *living* God, and we best get to know him as we get to know our brothers, sisters, dear friends and spouses: through live, personal encounters. Our witness to others about Jesus isn’t the regurgitation of what we read in a biography; it’s the excited testimony about the living person who is changing our lives.
The historical scholarship, like scholarship springing from other disciplines, can be good and helpful. But they can’t, musn’t, substitute for that living encounter.
That’s my view.
J.C.: I would strongly recommend Ben F. Meyer’s book The Aims of Jesus which is also warmly recommended by N.T. Wright and J.D.G. Dunn. It includes a very serious discussion of the questions of method that are raised by the question of the “Jesus of history” but which, surprisingly (or maybe not), are seldom seriously addressed. Dunn says he recommends to students looking for an introduction to the debates: G. Theiseen and A. Merz, The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide.
Maybe you know more about his goals?
JC,
I think Crossan’s goals are pretty much the same as any other Biblical scholar’s goals — to research topics deeply, to present one’s findings, to engage in dialogue with other scholars (defending one’s own views when they are criticized), and to let the public of nonspecialist know something about one’s views when there is a clear interest. Maybe I was misreading you, but it sounds like you think of Crossan as kind of an anti-Billy Graham — someone who is on a crusade to get as many people as possible to lose their faith and reject Jesus.
If you watched the very interesting video that David Tenney brought to our attention, you saw Richard B. Hays respectfully but bluntly criticizing aspects of N. T. Wright’s work (with Wright in the audience). Hays was by no means shy about asserting his own point of view, but I don’t think anyone would say it is Hays’s “mission and purpose” to demonstrate that he is right and N. T. Wright (and everybody else) is wrong. Scholars publish their works and defend their points of view. That is what scholarship is all about.
Christians (and Muslims, and others) have to get over the idea that people who do not share their beliefs are evil. If Crossan (or Géza Vermes or Bart Ehrman) does not believe in the divinity of Christ, he is not under any obligation to keep quiet about it lest he lead believing Christians “astray.”
This may be grossly oversimplified, but it seems to me that if one takes Luke Timothy Johnson’s approach, it is necessary to dismiss or explain away anything unsettling that one arrives at through the historical-critical approach. If, for example, if looks very much like Jesus expected the Second Coming to be within the lifetimes of some of the people to whom he preached, you have to find another interpretation of what he says about the end times to keep from concluding he was in error.
John P. Meier and Raymond E. Brown both (if I am not mistaken) say the weight to evidence in the New Testament is that the brothers and sisters of Jesus were his siblings, not his cousins. Yet as Catholics they do not present it as their conclusion that Jesus did indeed have brothers and sisters (and that the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary is incorrect).
Now, if you are an “orthodox” Catholic, your intellectual framework provides justifications for accepting Church doctrine regarding the lives of Jesus and the others in the Gospels when it is not in harmony with the New Testament. But if you are not a Catholic the viewpoint Johnson offers makes less sense. And if you are not a Christian, it makes no sense at all.
One further thought. It seems to me that taking Johnson’s position, one has to accept that a non-Christian historian can have nothing significant to say about Jesus.
Here is a recording of a debate between John Dominic Crossan and N. T. Wright on the Resurrection.
I found the link on a site for downloading mp3′s, and the site assumes mp3′s are all songs, so it has this automatically generated text regarding Wright and Crossan:
I wonder what the Wright/Crossan ringtone is like. Maybe one voice says, “Your phone is ringing,” and another voice says, “No, it’s not.”
JC,
I would recommend N. T. Wright’s “The Challenge of Jesus”. It presents in shorter form many of the conclusions he reached in his larger works. It is also aimed much more at the Church than at the academy and is written from a perspective of faith. There are also a number of very accessible articles and talks at http://www.ntwrightpage.com/
Thanks, Fr. K and Mr. Tenney. You all will keep me busy.
David NIckol, I think you are right. I’m treating Crossan different from what I would expect from another scholar. One reason is probably because he is a former priest. Nevertheless, your ideal sketch of what it means to be an academic is tempered by my experience of being a grad student right now! Academics have motivations other than or along with the search for truth.
The fact that Christ Has Revealed Himself to His Church through the Trinitarian relationship of Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture, and The Teaching of the Magisterium is a Dogma of The Catholic Church. That being said, in order to understand the Historic Truth regarding Jesus, one must begin at The Beginning, for “In The Beginning Was The Word, and The Word Was With God, and The Word Was God.” From The Beginning, we were called to a communion of Love. It is through Christ that we can know the Essence of Love for it is through His life, His Passion and His Death on The Cross that we can know The Fullness of God’s Glory, desiring Salvation for His Beloved.
“He Is Risen.”
For the sake of clarity or succinctness, we might remind ourselves of Origen’s complaint as he pursued intellectual theological meanderings. He said theologians pursue lofty meanings while all the people care about is “Christi Crucified.” The people are in great company since that stance was insisted upon by Paul.
As the thread winds down, I’d like to recommend an article from the book edited by Hays, “Seeking the Identity of Jesus,” that I found particularly lucid regarding the issue of historical Jesus research and the canonical gospels. It is entitled “Veritas Christi: How to Get from the Jesus of History to the Christ of Faith without Losing One’s Way.” It is both lucid and elegantly written.
He says in one place: “It is a merit of historical Jesus research that it makes it difficult to be a docetist.” But he also says: “Historical research may illuminate a range of significant issues, but it will not tell us whether Jesus’ person and mission are truly from God, definitively embodying the divine saving action on the world’s behalf … the Christian community has its own compelling reasons to resist and reject any limiting of Jesus’ reality to what is historically verifiable.”
I take it that the “unpapal conclave” of Meier, Johnson, and Ratzinger would agree on both points!
P.S. the article in question is written by Francis Watson, chair of biblical studies at Durham University.
JC – here is where I think Luke Timothy Johnson’s insight is so wise: it speaks to how we *encounter* Jesus. Our foundational encounters need to be – must be – a *personal* encounter, through word, sacrament, and our faith community made up of living saints.”
Jim P. –
For a change I basically agree with all you say :-) Without some sort of experience confirming Revelation I doubt that many people would continue in any Church except for social reasons which are not inherently religious.. That’s why I think it is so important that the churches (not just the RCC) promote personal prayer and understanding of the nature of grace. These bring real and surer answers, thought sometimes the answers to some prayers are “no” :-).
“Ann: The problem consists in there being, potentially, two different mediations of the past that Christian believers believe is constitutive of the faith: (1) the existential communal history that we find in the Creed,/ . . ”
JAK -
Thanks for the explanation, but I fear I don’t know enough theology to get it all. Must do some more reading. As usual, my problems are with hermeneutics, theological epistemology, philosophy of history and such like.
I know there probably aren’t many people reading this thread anymore, but I wanted to mention an article that suggests just the kind of insight that makes NT criticism useful in my own devotional life:
http://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2010/08/03/the-narrative-shape-of-mark/
It’s about why Mark might have “omitted” so much material that the other Gospel authors prominently included. Here’s a quotation where Larry Hurtado quotes a study by Philip Davis:
“Davis’ intriguing observation (so far as I know, he was the first to make it) was that what may look like Markan “omissions” actually are deliberate, and for the author’s purpose of making the Jesus-story a blueprint for the intended Christian readers. Here’s a key quote:
‘Indeed, it is striking that many of the most notable Markan ‘omissions’ involve matters which are not susceptible of imitation, including the virginal conception and the pre-eschatological resurrection. Mark’s whole story of Jesus can be read as a blueprint for the Christian life: It begins with baptism, proceeds with the vigorous pursuit of ministry in the face of temptation and opposition, and culminates in suffering and death oriented towards an as-yet unseen vindication.’”
This will certainly be a part of my prayer life the next time I’m preaching through the first Gospel!
With regard to “omissions” by Mark or any of the Evangelists, could the other three not say of their work something similar to what the author of the Fourth Gospel frankly admits of his: “Jesus performed many other signs as well in the presence of his disciples–signs not written in this book. But these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, so that, through this faith, you may have life in his name” (Jn 20:30-31).
All history selects, that is, chooses and omits, in order to tell a story. Only an utter positivist could deny the role of choice in the research and in the writing of history. Vatican II’s description of the process that led to the written Gospel acknowledges this: “After the ascension of the Lord, the apostles handed on to their hearers what He had said and done. This they did with that clearer understanding which they enjoyed after they had been instructed by the glorious events of Christ and been taught by the light of the Spirit of truth. The sacred authors wrote the four Gospels, selecting some things out of the many that had been handed on by word of mouth or in writing, synthesizing some of them or explaining them by reference to the situation of their churches, while preserving always their character as proclamation, but always in such a way that they communicated the honest truth about Jesus” (DV 19).
Mark,
clearly there are still some checking in on the thread. Thanks for the reference to Davis via Hurtado.
I would add to Joseph K’s quote the concluding verse of John 21: “There are also many other things that Jesus did, but if these were to be described individually, I do not think the whole world would contain the books that would be written.”
The privileged books, the canonical Gospels (and the preaching based on them), are meant to lead us towards a living encounter with him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Yes, thanks. I just thought it was interesting to consider that Mark’s editorial decision to, say, omit the resurrection was part of a consistent strategy to only narrate events disciples experience in their lives. So, no rising after death for now (though the transfiguration is narrated there, maybe to speak to the resurrection events we do experience now). It will be interesting to read through the Gospel wondering if this holds water.
Thinking about the editorial process doesn’t happen only as part of historical criticism, of course, but it happens there in a particularly “no holds barred” way.
Mark,
In the book edited by Gaventa and Hays (honestly, I receive no remuneration for the plugs), Joel Marcus has a fascinating piece on the Gospel of Mark. I think his conclusion is extreme, but there are many fine points along the way.
Here is one: “the beginning of the good news is over on Easter morning, but the good news of Jesus christ continues through the church that carries on his work through the Spirit he imparts … not only the good news about Jesus, but the good news which Jesus proclaims: the Gospel is a message addressed to the Marcan community by the risen Lord, speaking through the Evangelist.”