Nonconformist Chronicles

Historical Jesus and Christ of Faith

Characteristic of the Enlightenment Era was the exaltation of human reason and natural explanations to the point of dismissing the miraculous or mysterious. The boundaries of truth were limited to what could be empirically known or rationally proved. "The Quest for the Historical Jesus" was undoubtedly influenced by such philosophical suppositions as scholars sought to deliniate between the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith.

Supernatural explanations for the imprint of Jesus left upon history and society were jettisoned in favor of more provable explanations. Since he could not have been a divine man who did miraculous works and was resurrected from the dead, there must be natural explanations for his ascendancy and for the lasting impact of the church.

Albert Schweitzer dated 1778 as the beginning of the "quest" with the controversial writings of Hermann Reimarus who dismissed the historicity of the resurrection accounts. Reimarus argued that Jesus died upon the cross disillusioned, having failed to usher in the kingdom of God. It was the creativity of his disciples that kept his legacy alive by reinterpreting his teachings eschatologically. The church contended that Jesus did not fail, but that he was resurrected and will return to set up his kingdom.   

Many historical Jesus scholars followed, mainly within German academia, but also among the French and British. They were mostly consistent in their assesment that the historical Jesus was a peasant from Nazareth who failed to start a revolution and was instead crucified. He allegedly expected God's intervention to save him and to establish his kingdom on earth. When this did not happen, the church picked up the ball and reworked the doctrine of Christ with myths of a divine man, a resurrection, a spiritual kingdom, and a second coming.

The goal of the "quest" was to peel away the layers of church tradition and subsequent theological developments to get at the identity of the real man, Jesus of Nazareth. To really know what Jesus said and did meant getting back to the historical Jesus. The "Christ of faith" was allegedly an invention of the church since divine beings obviously don't walk the earth and there are no virgin births or resurrections. Everything must have a natural explanation. Historical Jesus scholars view the resurrection as the disciples' coping strategy to keep faith alive in one who was too great to die.

More recently, scholars like E. P. Sanders have stated it as fact that Jesus' followers had resurrection experiences. While he stops short of saying that the resurrection is a historical fact, he does not see faith as resulting from mass hysteria or "calculated deception." While more radical scholars say mass hysteria could account for 500 people who had a "resurrection experience" simulataneously, Sanders argues that this could not account for the numerous personal testimonies in the Gospel and Acts.

While radicals point to alleged contradictions in the Gospel accounts as proof of conspiracy, others argue that such an elaborate hoax would be more uniform. Conspirators would have made an effort to tidy up their accounts.

Even scholars who don't accept everything in the Gospels as historical are hard pressed to explain away the resurrection. Some are led to conclude that something extraordinary must have happened to launch such a movement as the church and to cause believers to embrace persecution or martyrdom rather than to deny the Christ of faith.      

Recommended Sources:

Bornkamm, Gunther, Jesus of Nazareth (New York: Harper & Row, 1956, 1960).

Brown, Colin, "Historical Jesus, Quest of" In Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, edited by Joel B. Green and Scot McKnight (Downers Grove, IL.: Intervarsity Press, 1992), 326-340.

Sanders, E. P., The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Penguin Books, 1993, 1995). 

Yancey, Philip, The Jesus I Never Knew (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995). While not a Historical Jesus source per se, Yancey's book raises some good questions and gives plausible answers in regard to some of the issues relating to Jesus.   

What About the Resurrection?, Part Two

I know I promised to post the second part of my thoughts on the resurrection soon, but life and work just tend to get in the way. Sorry. I'm not altogether sure who all is reading this anyway, but since this blog is a good place to organize my thoughts and get at least a bit of feedback, I suppose I will continue. So where were we? Oh, yes. The resurrection.

Was the resurrection of Jesus a literal, historical event, or something else entirely? My previous post suggested that Matthew argued specifically for a literal, historical, and bodily resurrection of Jesus. Matthew contended that the body of Jesus had not been stolen as some had reported. So in reckoning with the empty tomb, my previousus post concluded by asking, "What happend to the body of Jesus?" 

Were the earliest Christians perpetuating a hoax when they preached the resurrection? If so, why would they have been willing to die for their belief in that event? Why would they, at risk of injury or death, continue to acknowledge Jesus as living Lord? The topic of the apostolic speeches and sermons in Acts is consistently the death and resurrection of Jesus (Acts 2:23-39; 3:13-15; 10:39-40; 13:27-31; 17:2-3; 17:31-32; 23:6; 26:22-23). The goal of Christian preaching was to impart faith in Jesus by proclaiming his resurrection from the dead. 

I've granted that the Scriptures were written to pre-modern audiences and at times communicated theological truth without overturning some pre-modern assumptions that can no longer be taken literally. But in the case of Matthew's resurrection narrative and the speeches in Acts, the very point of these texts is the assertion that the resurrection happened and that this makes all the difference. 

The question "What does this mean?" does not always render the question "Did this really happen?" superfluous. In the case of the above texts the very meaning depends upon whether the resurrection really happened. 

Since I've been looking at Spong's work, what does he say about the resurrection? He does not believe that it was a literal historical event. He follows Crossan who speculates that the church created comforting legends regarding the decent burial of Jesus, whose body likely (according to these authors) met the fate of most crucified men, thrown into a shallow grave and devoured by wild dogs. 

So while neither the burial nor the resurrection was literal (according to these authors) some kind of turning point experience occurred which emboldened the followers of Jesus to go out and boldly proclaim him to the world. Spong identifies this experience as "Easter" but admits ignorance in identifying the particulars of this event. He does contend that it was not a bodily resurrection, but perhaps some kind of heavenly vision.

Whatever Easter was, it was a major turning point at which the earliest disciples were "able to stare into the reality of God" which now included Jesus as a part of that reality (Spong, 302). The resurrection narratives were simply the only way that the early church could narrate the God-presence that they continued to experience in Jesus and their conviction that death could not contain him.   

Crossan suggests that the disciples might have seen an apparition of some sort. So what does this mean? Were the disciples hallucinating? Were the apparitions the wishful thinking of their wild imaginations?

For authors like Spong and Crossan, the resurrection might have been taken literally by pre-moderns, but honest thinkers living on this side of modernity simply cannot bring themselves to embrace with their hearts what their minds will inevitably reject. So it's argued that in this scientific age, the literalness of the resurrection must be jettisoned in order to make room for the rational thinkers who cannot force themselves to believe it. Spong argues that unless we can save the gospel from literal distortions that it will surely die.    

The fallacy of this conclusion is that the real divide is not between pre-modern and post-modern. Even many pre-moderns to whom the apostles preached had difficulty believing the resurrection. But we never find the apostles making the gospel more palatable for unbelievers. They never changed their preaching to accommodate those who had trouble with it. The account of a man rising from the dead has never been met with total acceptance by any generation. But whether we believe it remains the dividing line between faith and unbelief.  

What About the Resurrection?, Part One

I have recently posed the question, Can We Take the Bible Literally? There are undoubtedly many texts that aren't meant to be taken literally. The Scriptures, at times, employ poetic license, allegory, apocalyptic, parable, and other non-literal forms and genres. So I don't believe every text is to be taken literally.  

Nor do I think it's always necessary to force the pre-modern biblical texts into a scientific mold as if they were written to either demonize or to be harmonized with modern theories or discoveries. Modern science wasn't even on the biblical authors' radar screens. 

While God knows all the secrets of the universe, I doubt that he revealed them to these authors who originally addressed pre-moderns. The biblical authors wrote within the framework of pre-scientific understandings, sometimes reflected in the Scriptures themselves, which does not make the biblical theology any less true.

I believe that God took the biblical authors where they were, not revealing everything to them, but just what was pertinent to human redemption. If it were proved to me beyond the shadow of a doubt (which it has not been) that creation did not take place in six literal days, or that the Book of Jonah is a parable, or that the "demons" Jesus cast out were actually diseases, this would not shake my faith in the least. But are some texts intended to be taken literally as objectively and historically true? Does the theological truth of some texts depend upon the literalness of historical events described therein?

I think a case in point would be the resurrection narratives in Matthew's Gospel. Matthew clearly argues for a historical, literal, and bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Matthew dispels the rumor that disciples stole the body of Jesus. The tomb was well-guarded and well-secured (Matthew 27:62-66).

The rumor of the stolen body began with guards who claimed to have been asleep at the time of the alleged grave robbery (Matthew 28:11-15). As Rubel Shelly asked in his book, Prepare to Answer: A Defense of the Christian Faith, what court would accept the testimony of those who claim to have been asleep during the incident in question? Moreover, Shelly contends that had the disciples stolen the body, both religious and Roman officials had both the means and the motive to produce the body. They could "examine every piece of evidence" and "interrogate every witness" (p. 205). 

We must reckon with the empty tomb when pondering the claims of the Christian faith. What did happen to the body of Jesus?  

More later---soon---I promise.