This is the second lecture in the Lenten series: Jesus from Synagogue to Cathedral
After the New Testament
The latest writings of the New Testament may be as late as 100 C.E. (some would say even later), and the following century is not a period that is bursting with historical data. Nevertheless, there are enough writings in the period 125-250 C.E. to give us a fairly clear picture of the development of the Church in the first three or four generations of the increasing number of people (almost entirely Gentiles) who followed Jesus. The goal of this lecture is to try to understand how the picture of Jesus with which we leave the New Testament period at the end of the first century becomes the portrait we find by the end of the sixth century C.E., firmly painted by a series of doctrinal statements: an ‘official’ series of Creeds and Definitions, but also a vast body of theological, writings. By the end of the process, (though the very concept of the process ending is a matter of serious contemporary debate), these writings were divided, in general, into two categories: ‘orthodox’ (from orthos, straight and doxa, opinion) and ‘heretical’ (from hairesis - choosing [a peculiar view]).
Two Pictures
Briefly to anticipate the conclusion, the two pictures are different: some would say totally different, others somewhat different, but clearly different. The crucial question, that has been asked increasingly urgently since the start of the critical study of the early church is how far are we bound by the dogmatic definitions of the early centuries: how final and unquestionable, that is, do we consider the process, the end result of which, was the “orthodox” portrayal of Christ as the “second Person” of the Trinity, of “one substance” with the Father; as fully human and fully divine and yet a single person?
Two Natures – One Person
Just to give the ‘feel’ of what we might call the dogmatic portrait of Jesus (though, significantly “Christ” is used much more than Jesus), here is a very brief quotation from the statement that is regarded as the definitive, final position of the Catholic Church on the person of Christ, the Definition of Chalcedon of 451 C.E.:
We all unanimously teach (here the Bishops insert virtually the first part of the Nicene Creed, and then go on, He is the)…one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only-begotten, made known in two nature without confusion, without change, without division, without separation, the difference of the natures being by no means removed because of the union, but the property of each nature being preserved and coalescing in one person (prosopon) and one individual being (hypostasis)*1 – not parted or divided into two prosopa, but one and the same son, only-begotten, divine Word, the Lord Jesus Christ.
One might contrast this with the scene in Mk. 2.23ff where we see a Rabbi going for a walk with a few of his disciples, or even with Lk. 24.13ff, where a few days after the crucifixion, two disciples are again walking in the country. Jesus, as a stranger, walks with them and appears again in a rabbinic role, “[B]eginning with Moses…he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.” Moreover, Luke implies that it was in the common meals they held that they became aware of the presence of Jesus, not as dead, but as risen.
More than a Prophet
By the end of the N.T. period, as I noted last time, Jesus was remembered as a, friend, a Rabbi and wise man whose teachings presented new possibilities of the human relationship with God. Above all, he was seen as God’s chosen agent in the battle with the evil powers, as a defender of the poor and marginalized, and as one who had the charisma to implant in people, the assurance of God’s healing and forgiveness. But we also saw that by the 80s of the first century, Christians were accepting Jesus as more than a Prophet and Rabbi: they sensed that he was adopted by, or exhibited, or shared in the Divine; (all these positions were held and debated in the early centuries). As early as 52 or 53 C.E. Paul could end a letter to his converts in Corinth with the Aramaic words, written in Greek characters for the sake of his readers: Μαρανα θα, Marana Tha, Come Lord, a prayer for the speedy return of Jesus, already addressed as “Lord” (Kurios).
Regula Fidei
This is still worlds apart from the language of the Chalcedonian Definition, and it seems to have been the kind of non-dogmatic view of Jesus that prevailed well into the third century. It is certain that a body of oral tradition existed before any of the NT was written and it is clear, from the references we have in the years 100-250 that this same body of tradition continued alongside the written scriptures for some while. In writing about tradition, Richard Hanson notes that several of the early Church Fathers, particularly Irenaeus and Tertullian in the west and Origen in the east speak of what they call the rule of faith (regula fidei) as clearly distinct from the written records. Elsewhere, he writes, “During” [the years 150 to around 285], “it was the ‘rule of faith that expressed orthodox belief in a fluid and undogmatic way”.*2
This approach was probably important for the emergence of a structured Ministry of Bishops, Priests and Deacons, that we find in place by the beginning of the 4th century, because a custodian of the tradition was needed, and the local Bishop became the one who was entrusted to receive the tradition and to pass it on, untouched, so to speak, to the next generation of the faithful.
Emergence of Hierarchy
The changing view of ministry in the Church is another aspect of the critical study I have referred to several times. The ‘orthodox’ view had been that the orders of ministry (Bishops, Priests & Deacons) were put in place by Jesus.
The Prayer Book of the Episcopal Church has a “Preface to the Ordination Rites” that reflects the scholarship of the last two centuries, but leaves wiggle room when it says: “[S]ince the time of the New Testament, three distinct orders … have been characteristic of Christ’s holy catholic Church.” (p. 510). “Since” is probably purposely ambiguous: it more naturally means after, which would be the consensus of most non-R.C. Church Historians; but it leaves room for conservatives from Catholic to Charismatic, who insist on the pre-critical view.
Contemporary Emphasis on Christ of Faith
It is interesting that this is not Jesus’ church, but Christ’s holy Catholic Church. This seems to be just one very small example of the way the Jesus of history has often been swallowed up by the Christ of faith, a process that began in the 5th century and continues today (though often hidden – I call it “crypto-monophysitism”!) For example, almost any newspaper report of an amazing escape, a totally unexpected recovery from sickness, or even a face appearing in your pancake can be reported as divine interventions or manifestations, attributed to Christ.
Move to Definition
In a way, the emergence of a systemized ministry can be seen as the early signs of what was to follow, when it was felt necessary by philosophically minded theologians to provide a kind of blueprint of the ‘inner’ workings of God (in the Nicene creed), and to explain the mechanics of Jesus’ two natures (defined at Chalcedon). The ministry of the Church moved from the picture we get in the NT to greater definition, by the end of the process consisting of seven orders: Door keeper, Lector, Exorcist & Subdeacon leading to the three major orders. (The list of the "minor orders" varies from time to time and place to place).
In the New Testament, we hear of Apostles, Prophets, Exorcists, Elders (the Greek word is πρεσβυτερος – Presbyter) Deacons, and, in the very latest strands of the NT, coming from around 95 C.E we have about five references to episcopoi – literally ‘overseers’ - bishop, a word that comes into the language from the Greek via late Latin, (e)biscopus. Of much more importance than is often allowed was the order of Prophets, and, indeed, some Prophetesses. A mid-second century book called The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, (known as The Didache), contains some detailed rules for welcoming a Prophet to the local community, warning that a stay of over three to four days may indicate a charlatan.
Montanism
Perhaps the earliest move to tighten up on belief came when the Prophet Montanus (c.156) led a charismatic, apocalyptic movement which the authorities considered dangerous since its Prophets and Prophetesses uttered “words of Jesus” which were taken as authoritative additions to the Gospels. Another straw in the wind was that the movement received condemnation by Zephyrinus, the Bishop of Rome (198-120), in the early 3rd century, a foreshadowing of the growth of papal power. The pattern was set that the preaching or writing of speculative thinkers often triggered tighter definition of the rather loose “rule of faith”. Another, less pleasant practice also emerged. It is one with which we, having endured an interminable Presidential campaign, are all too unhappily familiar with, consisting of innuendoes, exaggerations and downright lies. It was not difficult to find mud to sling at Montanus and his followers. The genders mixed freely in ecstatic outdoor meetings - (Hellenistic society was remarkably puritanical about such public meetings) - and it was easy to suggest that spiritual ecstasy soon led to physical heights of sexual passion.
Fathers & Heretics
Among the main figures who raised questions in the fourth and fifth centuries were Arius, a Presbyter in Alexandria and Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople in the 430s, This is to mention but two from a cast of many dozens. Required reading in Seminary for this period of Church History was Dr. Prestige’s Fathers and Heretics; colloquially known as, “Dads & Cads”. It takes three hundred pages to get through the ranks the of the boat-rocking heretics and the defending ranks of the-truth-is-absolute-and-we-have-it orthodox. Still, these two heresiarchs stand as the immediate (but by no means only) cause of two violent controversies. Among the notable defenders of orthodoxy, by far the most effective, and since he led the winning side, also the best known was Athanasius; born at the very end of the third century, he became Bishop and Patriarch of Alexandria in 328.
The majority of biographies of Athanasius see him as the one who saved Christianity, and it is certainly true that his role in the Council of Nicaea was pivotal. There has been, however, a growing appreciation of just how big a role power politics played in the development of the central dogmatic statements of the time, and Athanasius was certainly a major player in the game.
Some Background
The third century was not a bumper time for the empire. Peter Brown writes:
“After AD 238, all classes in the Roman world had to face up…to the unpleasant realities of empire. Between 238 and 270, bankruptcy, political fragmentation and recurrent defeats of large Roman armies laid bare the superb nonchalance on which the old system of government had been based”.*3
He goes on to point out that a few strong Generals restored the empire over which Diocletian reigned from 285 to 305: much tighter, centralized control of the Provinces and an enlarged bureaucracy led a badly shaken society back to order. It is, perhaps, noteworthy that the rescue from a failed state is not infrequently the result of a military dictatorship: one thinks of the Weimar Republic and several more recent S. American countries.
Persecution of Diocletian
Before the rise of Diocletian, the Church had been growing quietly: “The Christian church enjoyed complete tolerance between 260 and 302”.*4
Though Christians were still a small minority, people were aware of the growing power of Bishops and their congregations, and many in the empire blamed the terrible crisis that had overtaken them on the increasing failure of civic duties, the failure to offer the ancient and proper devotion to the immemorial gods.
So it was not surprising that Diocletian unleashed a bitter persecution, perhaps, the first such total effort. The persecution failed, though while it lasted a large number of biblical manuscripts were confiscated and destroyed. In 312 the Emperor Constantine was converted to the new religion, convinced that the Chi/Rho sign he had seen in the sky was Christ’s signal to him of victory in return for conversion. This event was, perhaps, the most momentous (some would say “disastrous”) turn of events in the whole history of the Christian church. The scattered autonomous communities, each led by their chief Pastor, the local Bishop, had, in effect become a State Church.
Nicaea and Chalcedon
I need to turn now to the two main controversies that raged in the church in the 4th and 5th centuries. What mattered to most Christians was the closeness of the community, the bonding of brothers and sisters, and, above all, the bonding of the community as a whole with Jesus. The weekly Eucharist reaffirmed the presence of the risen Lord and gave assurance of coming close to God. It was also the time when offerings were made for the poor and sick of the Christian community; this was seen as one of the striking characteristics of the new communities in a society where such concern, in spite of Societies and Guilds for specific groups, was largely absent. Such involvement was much more personal and intense than anything converts had experienced in the rites of the old religion dedicated to the gods of the city or a particular locality, but the finer points of theology were in the hands of the theologians, and before Nicaea, the fluidity I noted at the beginning remained the norm for the laity and many clergy. Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea (263-340), for example, held views very like those we noted at the end of the NT period. Peter Brown writes, “[The One] High God…had reached down to earth, to make his commands plain through a series of privileged representatives of His will, of which Christ had been the greatest.”*5 Still, it was normal to pray to Jesus and it was felt that he was more than a mere ‘representative’.
Demand for Clarity
These positions, however, were being questioned: briefly the issue was that philosophically minded theologians began to ask, “What precisely is the relationship between the Lord Jesus and the One God? If he is divine, how do we escape the charge of polytheism? But if he is merely a Prophet, does not that leave the One High God distant and not part of human vicissitudes?” It was an Alexandrian Presbyter, Arius, who brought things to a head by teaching something very like the views of Eusebius. At this point the great Athanasius entered the fray and he was to hold center stage in the controversy for over thirty years. Constantine was not a little irritated to find that his new “spiritual” arm of the state, so to speak, was rent by conflict. This is not what he expected, and he summoned the Bishops to meet in the city of Nicaea, and thus what is known as the First Ecumenical Council came into being. After weeks of wrangling and acrimony, the Bishops produced a document that they said laid out the faith always held, and, for the future, was always to be held by the Church.
Like God - The iota that split an Empire
Not all signed it, and those who refused were made aware of the Emperor’s displeasure, often by banishment. The minutes of that Bishops' meeting in 325, after several more decades of dissension, discussion and change, became the Creed of Constantinople, published in 381: this is what is generally called the Nicene Creed today. Gone was the old fluidity. God was defined in philosophical terms by the use of the Greek word homoousios - same substance (in the Latin una substantia, one substance); it was, indeed, the use of this unscriptural term that caused so much dissension, but it was felt to be the only way to exclude Arius’ teaching that Jesus was only a high-powered messenger/prophet.
A substantial body of Christians was excluded by this new standard. They wanted to say that Jesus was like God (not homoousios, but homoiousios, a minute difference that led to the remark that this was ‘an iota that split an Empire'). Semi-Arianism, as it was called, became almost the dominant form of Christianity in northern Europe as the Visigoths were converted.
Christological Question
Having, established the full divinity of Jesus, it was inevitable that questions would arise about how he could be fully human and divine at the same time, and conflicting views led to the Council of Chalcedon, which insisted that it was necessary to believe that Jesus was fully human, fully divine, but one 'person': in the end, however the Council did not (could not?) explain how this could be.*6 The view that his “central person”, so to speak, was divine and that his earthly body was temporary, or a mere shell for the time of his ministry, was roundly condemned, but that has not, unhappily, prevented it from forming a very powerful undertow to Christian thinking and practice ever since. (see above on “crypto-monophysitism”). The Council also aimed to exclude once and for all the teaching of Nestorius who was thought to consider Jesus as no more than a super prophet.
Conclusion
Perhaps one of the most unfortunate results of these controversies was the suppressing of alternative ideas, and giving to human formulations the status of unalterable, divinely approved blueprints of the inner workings of the Godhead: moreover, they are formulations tied to classical philosophical views, and are strongly culturally conditioned.
My experience has been that the vast majority of believers still function more as was the norm in the 2nd to 4th centuries, where Jesus is experienced as the One who walks with us, brings us close to God and understands “the changes and chances of this mortal life”: One who was adopted by, or exhibited, or shares in the Divine. All these positions are more or less heretical, though it is comforting to note that St. Luke seems to espouse the notion that Jesus was an “adopted Son”.
I always used to warn my Seminary students never to put more than five words together on the subject of the doctrine of the Trinity since if they said more, they would surely fall into heresy, and we know that there are heresy hunters everywhere.
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1. In the period that the Creeds were emerging, endless confusion was caused by a group of Greek words taken from philosophical writings: substance – ousia; an individual thing/person – hypostasis; person – persona Lat; prosopon Grk, and others like ‘nature’ and ‘form’.
The confusion was confounded because of growing separation of E. and W. resulting in a smaller number of bilingual theologians: St. Augustine, born in mid 4th century, for example, could not read Greek. The situation was not helped by the fact that the history and etymology of each word shows variations of use by different classical authors.
A further cause of misunderstanding and conflict between the theologians of the East and those in the West was the use of the two words substantia & hypostasis which are etymologically equivalent: ≈ standing beneath, i.e. the essence of a thing, person. In Greek, however, hypostasis was regularly used to mean an individual thing, person.
Before Nicaea, the West had settled on the formula, una substantia, tres personae; so, when a Greek spoke of three hypostases, to Latin ears this sounded like saying there are three Gods (tres substantiae).
See The Oecumenical Documents of the Faith, pp. 20ff. ed. T.H. Bindley, London. 4th Edition, 1950
2. Dict. of Christian Theol. pp. 341b & 246a. Tertullian (c.160-220); Irenaeus c.130-200); Origen (186-255)
3. The Rise of Western Christendom. Oxford 1996 p.19
4. Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity London 1971 p.68
5. Rise of W. Christendom p.71
6. The use of the word 'person' (persona, prosopon) is a further considerable complication in any contemporary efforts to make sense of Chalcedon. The modern sense of 'personality' is quite absent in the classical use; indeed, the Latin per-sona has its origin in the mask of the dramatic actor - 'sounding through'.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Jesus in the New Testament
As Lent approached, I was asked by the Rector of All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Rehoboth, Delaware, to suggest a theme for the five Lent Luncheon Lectures offered every year. I first considered taking the Apostles’ Creed as a basis, (though who could compete with Karl Barth?), or, perhaps, the vexed issue of the Church and State, and then I contemplated several other possibilities, but none of them sparked a great deal of enthusiasm. Then, in a space of a few days of fairly desultory TV watching, the contemporary use and frequent misuse of the name ‘Jesus’ stuck me, and I came up with:
Jesus: From Synagogue to Cathedral
The Central Question
The basic question is: How did we get from an unconventional Rabbi, born a Palestinian Jew around 4 B.C.E, whose education was almost certainly minimal, and who joined the other village lads from time to time in the Synagogue to learn some foundational passages from the Torah and Prophets: how did we get from there to the massive basilica built by the emperor Constantius II, Constantine’s son, where the great dome, with a vast mosaic of Jesus the Christos, reigning in glory dominated the building? Many such churches followed and the reigning Christ oversaw the rich pageantry of solemn Liturgies.
Norman Perrin writing about the figure of Jesus in the N.T., says, “In part, he was the Jesus who had lived and proclaimed his message in Galilee and Judea…But in still larger part he was the risen Lord present in the Christian communities; still conducting his ministry to them and through them”. (The New Testament – An Introduction 277). And it is because of the “larger part” of the N.T. records that we are meeting today, for we do not meet as an antiquarian society, but as a believing community, part of a vast throng of believers down the ages.
Why Were Two Pictures not Seen?
Before we can even begin to deal with this lecture’s subject, we have to take seriously what Perrin says and consider its implications. For over 1500 years the fact that there are two portraits of Jesus in the N.T. was not a problem. There are, indeed, more than two, but the central issue is the two that Perrin identifies, which are frequently differentiated as the Jesus of history, going round Galilee teaching and exorcising, and the (Jesus) Christ of faith, the center of the community’s devotion, giving them access to God. We need to ask why it was the ancients were able to see one clear portrait of Jesus and we are faced with multiple, overlapping pictures?
The simple answer, that infuriates traditionalist conservatives, is that we know a great deal more about how the NT writings came into being than was known in the late second century C.E. This answer produces responses like “sheer hubris”, but a moment’s thought will show that we accept this in every other area of human thought and practice. Jesus and his contemporaries firmly believed that infectious diseases were caused by evil spirits that got into you: it is not hubris for us to say they were wrong and that cholera, for example, is caused by the ingesting and spreading of a bacterium, vibrio cholerae; nor is it human pride when we say that we know that things burn because of a reaction between oxygen and carbon, and definitively not because they contain a mythical substance called Phlogiston, which early research was forced to conclude must have negative weight.
The Harmonized Picture
Along with all other areas of human thought, the understanding of history underwent a startling change from the 18th century on. No longer was it assumed that a report was more accurate because it was repeated endlessly: documents Number Two through Twenty might all be quoting number One or each other, for example. The distinction that Perrin draws also gradually became clear. Odd as it may seem, the early theologians, while noticing that the four gospels exhibited different characteristics, nevertheless, did not feel that the differences were all that important. Consciously or unconsciously the approach to the gospels was to harmonize them, to assume, for example that when Mark and Matthew tell the same story, but with significantly different details, what we have is accounts of two happenings. This approach is epitomized by a mid-second century work called the Diatessaron (= one from four). To quote Elliott and Moir, “He [Tatian] produced a ‘scissors and paste’ life of Christ from the four Gospels”*1 . The work was widely used and was the forerunner of many more in the third to tenth centuries, indicting very clearly why it was thought that a single, focused picture of Jesus could be presented.
Emergence of Critical History: A New Picture
Modern critical study suggests a different picture. Not only do the four gospels exhibit distinctly the interests of each author, it is also clear that they were written at different times and with different audiences in mind: Matthew clearly writes for and to that group of Christians that retained a strong element of Judaism in its belief and practice, whereas Luke writes for communities in the Hellenistic world who had little or no background in the Hebrew scriptures. One of the most striking developments was the separating of John’s gospel from the other three. It became very clear that the first three have some complex textual inter-relationships. That is to say they either used each other or some original document that did not survive. In the early days of critical study, this second alternative was much favored, but as study progressed it became much more likely that the first three gospels used one another in some sequence or other. For this reason, they became known as the Synoptic Gospels, (from the Greek συν οπσις - syn-opsis) because they could be looked at together in parallel columns high-lighting common passages. In critical history writing of any kind, unanimity is hardly to be expected, but the end result of intense literary analysis of the Synoptic gospels is that a large majority of scholars hold that Mark is our first gospel, written around 68 C.E., followed by Matthew and then Luke in the next decade.
The Fourth Gospel
It had been recognized in antiquity that John’s book was different from the others, and even a few voices were raised questioning its authority. The majority view however, expressed by Clement of Alexandria, was that this was “a spiritual gospel”, suggesting that it looked for the divine reality behind the ministry of Jesus. So in spite of the differences between this and the first three gospels, it was assumed to give us more historical information about Jesus.
In fact, the picture of Jesus we get from John is much more firmly in the second area that Perrin identifies. He is still the historical Jesus, but he has acquired traits of the glorified Savior and Lord. Jesus is clearly a human being, he weeps and is angry, but he is on the way to being more; he is according to John a bodily manifestation of God; at the very beginning of the book, John strikes a note very different from anything we find in the Synoptic Gospels, using a term from Greek Philosophy when he writes: “the Word (Logos) was made flesh and dwelt among us”. John assumes that Jesus knows what someone is thinking, and astonishes Nathanael*2 when in answer to the question “when did you get to know me?” Jesus replies, “‘I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you’”. (1.48).
St. John’s gospel was not the last to be written, but it is the last of the four that the church ultimately designated as “official”, known as the canonical gospels; it is also the one that exhibits most clearly the move from the Jesus of history to the Jesus Christ of faith. People often do not know that beside these official four there is at least a dozen or so more so-called ‘non-canonical’ gospels, the best known of which is The Gospel of Thomas.
Synoptic Gospels Not Neutral
It would be a big mistake, however, to assume that the Fourth gospel was the one that was all theology and that the Synoptic gospels are all “simple facts”. “That’s the truth pure and simple” is often used in rhetorical polemic, and, as has been frequently pointed out, the truth is rarely pure and never simple. The same can be said about ‘simple historical facts’; for instance, recording ‘A’ rather than ‘B’ is in itself the first step to interpreting.
To return to Norman Perrin’s distinction with which we began, it is clear that it is not only the Fourth Gospel that gives us a strongly interpreted picture of Jesus: the process was well under way in the earlier Synoptic Gospels.
One of the striking elements of interpretation was the effort, begun by Mark, to make sense of the death of Jesus, who, by the time Mark wrote, was accepted as God’s anointed one, the Messiach, the Christos. For the earliest believers this would be quite a stumbling block since in all the messianic expectations of the OT there is no evidence of a belief in a Martyr Messiah. Mark used, possibly following the teaching of Jesus himself, texts from Isaiah which speak of God’s Servant taking the message to the Gentiles, suffering and being rejected. In their original context these sayings*3 had no reference to a Messiah, indeed, it seems that it was the “holy remnant” of Israel who suffered for the nation as a whole. Another very important interpretative element in Mark (which is taken over particularly by Luke) is to see Jesus in his ministry fighting with the powers of darkness who appear again and again in the form of demons causing sickness, paralysis and blindness. Mark suggests that the earthly rulers of Rome and Jerusalem joined forces to destroy Jesus: thus Mark notes that as Jesus died a great “darkness came over the whole land”. *4
Can We See an ‘Historical’ Jesus?
Can we get behind this interpretive element to meet Jesus the Rabbi as he went to the Synagogue? This question has been at the center of much scholarship for over a hundred years: it has been named ‘the Quest of the Historical Jesus’. Some have felt that we can get behind the interpretive screen, so to speak and others that it is a hopeless quest. Perhaps a very tentative consensus has settled on a middle position. Careful and intensive work suggest that it is possible to identify the very earliest traditions about Jesus and the reporting of his message.
The Parables
The primary source is the parables. Linguistic analysis strongly suggests an Aramaic undertone, and though Jesus might have known a little Greek (the land, after all, was occupied by Greek speakers) he almost certainly spoke Aramaic. The parables strongly suggest that the fulcrum of Jesus’ message was the coming of the Kingdom (more properly, “the Rule”) of God, which, you may recall, is the very first thing that Mark records Jesus proclaiming after his baptism. Many of the parables begin with “The Kingdom of God is like … a father who had two sons…a merchant in the market for pearls … a shepherd seeking a lost sheep". The parables often imply a reversal of human standards and expectations, suggesting a view of God far from a narrow, exclusive legalism. *5 The strange parable of the farmer who paid all the day workers the same irregardless of how long they had worked, sets out the “amazing grace” of God, one of the central themes of at least two of Paul’s letters.
God's Grace & Jesus' Openness
This view of God as, one might say, ‘profligate’ was (and, one might say, still is) infuriating to legalist authorities, and Jesus put it into practice in his open table fellowship, which, the gospel writers note, caused grumbling and then, enmity. This openness, his willingness to put love of people before the strict letter of the law and the politics of the Jewish rulers dependent on Rome seem enough to account for Jesus’ arrest and execution. This approach seems to give us the outlines of a picture of the historical Jesus. What follows on the execution, however, is beyond history. It is based on the faith of that small band of disciples who understood that the powers of darkness had not defeated God, but believed that the power of love had overcome hate, and that life was stronger than death.
A Picture and a Portrait
This presents us with two pictures of Jesus, rather like two photos printed one over the other and we cannot have one without the other. If we are looking for something like a modern biography, the NT will disappoint us: we do not know, for instance the color of Jesus’ hair or eyes; we do not know if he was tall or short; we do not know if certain food gave him indigestion. Those earliest followers in the Way had known Jesus as a man and friend, set at a certain point in the flux of history; he was in no way a mythical divine hero to them like the gods of the Hellenistic world, but from the beginning they sensed that he was adopted by or exhibited or shared in the Divine; (all these positions were held and debated in the early centuries), and that, of course, definitively colors the portrait that became the norm, what later was to be called the “orthodox” view.
The Other Writings of the N.T.
I am aware that time is almost out, and I have not even looked at the rest of the N.T. That may seem strange particularly because the earliest of Paul’s letters were written something like 10-15 years before Mark wrote the first gospel. On the other hand, the Letters, by and large, take for granted the traditions that were encapsulated by the Evangelists, and, as a result, we find few references to events in the life of Jesus. The exception to this is the way the letters, particularly Paul’s, concentrate on the death and resurrection of Jesus, suggesting various metaphors as ways to explain how God rescues fallen humanity through the death and resurrection of Jesus. *6 Perhaps the most succinct summary of this in the whole N.T. corpus is in Paul’s Second Letter to Corinth: “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation”. *7 Paul is also considerably exercised by the fact that God’s chosen people, Israel, seemed to be rejecting the Messiah, and he employs all his Rabbinic skills in an attempt to show that the Scriptures can be read to show that Jesus is the next stage of salvation, beyond the preparation provided by the Torah.
The Proclamation
We cannot end without noting the Acts of the Apostles; in the first ten or so chapters, Luke gives us a glimpse of the beginnings of the Church, or perhaps one should say ‘churches’, as new tiny communities sprang up outside Palestine. Most interesting is the series of speeches Luke reports. There is a common pattern, that looks, incidentally, very like the framework of Mark’s Gospel:
The work of Jesus is to rescue humanity from its self-made chaos, a chaos exemplified by the evil powers that cause madness, and all kinds of human sickness.
The healing stories, indicate that the power of God is working through Jesus;
His activities, in welcoming those regarded by the Law as unclean, bring him into conflict with the authorities, who in alliance with the demonic forces, conspire to destroy him.
The apparent victory of these powers as Jesus dies on the cross, is reversed by the mighty action of God who declares the ultimate victory of good over evil, love over hate in the Resurrection of Jesus.
I end with another quotation (edited) from Norman Perrin, which points us on to the theme of next week’s lecture: *8
"[Jesus] who proclaimed the Kingdom of God began himself to be proclaimed as (a) the one about to return on the clouds of heaven. {Apocalyptic Christianity} (b) as the one who “died for our sins and was raised for our justification”: {Paul} (c) as “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”. {Johannine literature}. *9
1 Manuscripts & the Text of the New Testament. Edinburgh 1995 p 77
2 This is one among hundreds of occasions when John gives information not found in the Synoptic Gospels.
3 Found in Deutero Isaiah. Chs. 40-52
4 Mk. 15.33 There is also more than a hint that the powers of darkness and chaos, overcome by Yahweh in the command 'let there be light', here seem to have returned in victory.
5 St. Paul grasps this central point in I Cor. 1.25 – “Gods’ foolishness is wiser than human wisdom”. Who but a fool would send off a feckless 18 year old with half his equity?
6 One should also note Paul’s account of the Last Supper, the earliest we have, and several references the actual words of Jesus.
7 II Cor. 5.18f
8 Jesus in Dogma – The Age of Controversy
9 Op.cit. 302
Jesus: From Synagogue to Cathedral
The Central Question
The basic question is: How did we get from an unconventional Rabbi, born a Palestinian Jew around 4 B.C.E, whose education was almost certainly minimal, and who joined the other village lads from time to time in the Synagogue to learn some foundational passages from the Torah and Prophets: how did we get from there to the massive basilica built by the emperor Constantius II, Constantine’s son, where the great dome, with a vast mosaic of Jesus the Christos, reigning in glory dominated the building? Many such churches followed and the reigning Christ oversaw the rich pageantry of solemn Liturgies.
Norman Perrin writing about the figure of Jesus in the N.T., says, “In part, he was the Jesus who had lived and proclaimed his message in Galilee and Judea…But in still larger part he was the risen Lord present in the Christian communities; still conducting his ministry to them and through them”. (The New Testament – An Introduction 277). And it is because of the “larger part” of the N.T. records that we are meeting today, for we do not meet as an antiquarian society, but as a believing community, part of a vast throng of believers down the ages.
Why Were Two Pictures not Seen?
Before we can even begin to deal with this lecture’s subject, we have to take seriously what Perrin says and consider its implications. For over 1500 years the fact that there are two portraits of Jesus in the N.T. was not a problem. There are, indeed, more than two, but the central issue is the two that Perrin identifies, which are frequently differentiated as the Jesus of history, going round Galilee teaching and exorcising, and the (Jesus) Christ of faith, the center of the community’s devotion, giving them access to God. We need to ask why it was the ancients were able to see one clear portrait of Jesus and we are faced with multiple, overlapping pictures?
The simple answer, that infuriates traditionalist conservatives, is that we know a great deal more about how the NT writings came into being than was known in the late second century C.E. This answer produces responses like “sheer hubris”, but a moment’s thought will show that we accept this in every other area of human thought and practice. Jesus and his contemporaries firmly believed that infectious diseases were caused by evil spirits that got into you: it is not hubris for us to say they were wrong and that cholera, for example, is caused by the ingesting and spreading of a bacterium, vibrio cholerae; nor is it human pride when we say that we know that things burn because of a reaction between oxygen and carbon, and definitively not because they contain a mythical substance called Phlogiston, which early research was forced to conclude must have negative weight.
The Harmonized Picture
Along with all other areas of human thought, the understanding of history underwent a startling change from the 18th century on. No longer was it assumed that a report was more accurate because it was repeated endlessly: documents Number Two through Twenty might all be quoting number One or each other, for example. The distinction that Perrin draws also gradually became clear. Odd as it may seem, the early theologians, while noticing that the four gospels exhibited different characteristics, nevertheless, did not feel that the differences were all that important. Consciously or unconsciously the approach to the gospels was to harmonize them, to assume, for example that when Mark and Matthew tell the same story, but with significantly different details, what we have is accounts of two happenings. This approach is epitomized by a mid-second century work called the Diatessaron (= one from four). To quote Elliott and Moir, “He [Tatian] produced a ‘scissors and paste’ life of Christ from the four Gospels”*1 . The work was widely used and was the forerunner of many more in the third to tenth centuries, indicting very clearly why it was thought that a single, focused picture of Jesus could be presented.
Emergence of Critical History: A New Picture
Modern critical study suggests a different picture. Not only do the four gospels exhibit distinctly the interests of each author, it is also clear that they were written at different times and with different audiences in mind: Matthew clearly writes for and to that group of Christians that retained a strong element of Judaism in its belief and practice, whereas Luke writes for communities in the Hellenistic world who had little or no background in the Hebrew scriptures. One of the most striking developments was the separating of John’s gospel from the other three. It became very clear that the first three have some complex textual inter-relationships. That is to say they either used each other or some original document that did not survive. In the early days of critical study, this second alternative was much favored, but as study progressed it became much more likely that the first three gospels used one another in some sequence or other. For this reason, they became known as the Synoptic Gospels, (from the Greek συν οπσις - syn-opsis) because they could be looked at together in parallel columns high-lighting common passages. In critical history writing of any kind, unanimity is hardly to be expected, but the end result of intense literary analysis of the Synoptic gospels is that a large majority of scholars hold that Mark is our first gospel, written around 68 C.E., followed by Matthew and then Luke in the next decade.
The Fourth Gospel
It had been recognized in antiquity that John’s book was different from the others, and even a few voices were raised questioning its authority. The majority view however, expressed by Clement of Alexandria, was that this was “a spiritual gospel”, suggesting that it looked for the divine reality behind the ministry of Jesus. So in spite of the differences between this and the first three gospels, it was assumed to give us more historical information about Jesus.
In fact, the picture of Jesus we get from John is much more firmly in the second area that Perrin identifies. He is still the historical Jesus, but he has acquired traits of the glorified Savior and Lord. Jesus is clearly a human being, he weeps and is angry, but he is on the way to being more; he is according to John a bodily manifestation of God; at the very beginning of the book, John strikes a note very different from anything we find in the Synoptic Gospels, using a term from Greek Philosophy when he writes: “the Word (Logos) was made flesh and dwelt among us”. John assumes that Jesus knows what someone is thinking, and astonishes Nathanael*2 when in answer to the question “when did you get to know me?” Jesus replies, “‘I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you’”. (1.48).
St. John’s gospel was not the last to be written, but it is the last of the four that the church ultimately designated as “official”, known as the canonical gospels; it is also the one that exhibits most clearly the move from the Jesus of history to the Jesus Christ of faith. People often do not know that beside these official four there is at least a dozen or so more so-called ‘non-canonical’ gospels, the best known of which is The Gospel of Thomas.
Synoptic Gospels Not Neutral
It would be a big mistake, however, to assume that the Fourth gospel was the one that was all theology and that the Synoptic gospels are all “simple facts”. “That’s the truth pure and simple” is often used in rhetorical polemic, and, as has been frequently pointed out, the truth is rarely pure and never simple. The same can be said about ‘simple historical facts’; for instance, recording ‘A’ rather than ‘B’ is in itself the first step to interpreting.
To return to Norman Perrin’s distinction with which we began, it is clear that it is not only the Fourth Gospel that gives us a strongly interpreted picture of Jesus: the process was well under way in the earlier Synoptic Gospels.
One of the striking elements of interpretation was the effort, begun by Mark, to make sense of the death of Jesus, who, by the time Mark wrote, was accepted as God’s anointed one, the Messiach, the Christos. For the earliest believers this would be quite a stumbling block since in all the messianic expectations of the OT there is no evidence of a belief in a Martyr Messiah. Mark used, possibly following the teaching of Jesus himself, texts from Isaiah which speak of God’s Servant taking the message to the Gentiles, suffering and being rejected. In their original context these sayings*3 had no reference to a Messiah, indeed, it seems that it was the “holy remnant” of Israel who suffered for the nation as a whole. Another very important interpretative element in Mark (which is taken over particularly by Luke) is to see Jesus in his ministry fighting with the powers of darkness who appear again and again in the form of demons causing sickness, paralysis and blindness. Mark suggests that the earthly rulers of Rome and Jerusalem joined forces to destroy Jesus: thus Mark notes that as Jesus died a great “darkness came over the whole land”. *4
Can We See an ‘Historical’ Jesus?
Can we get behind this interpretive element to meet Jesus the Rabbi as he went to the Synagogue? This question has been at the center of much scholarship for over a hundred years: it has been named ‘the Quest of the Historical Jesus’. Some have felt that we can get behind the interpretive screen, so to speak and others that it is a hopeless quest. Perhaps a very tentative consensus has settled on a middle position. Careful and intensive work suggest that it is possible to identify the very earliest traditions about Jesus and the reporting of his message.
The Parables
The primary source is the parables. Linguistic analysis strongly suggests an Aramaic undertone, and though Jesus might have known a little Greek (the land, after all, was occupied by Greek speakers) he almost certainly spoke Aramaic. The parables strongly suggest that the fulcrum of Jesus’ message was the coming of the Kingdom (more properly, “the Rule”) of God, which, you may recall, is the very first thing that Mark records Jesus proclaiming after his baptism. Many of the parables begin with “The Kingdom of God is like … a father who had two sons…a merchant in the market for pearls … a shepherd seeking a lost sheep". The parables often imply a reversal of human standards and expectations, suggesting a view of God far from a narrow, exclusive legalism. *5 The strange parable of the farmer who paid all the day workers the same irregardless of how long they had worked, sets out the “amazing grace” of God, one of the central themes of at least two of Paul’s letters.
God's Grace & Jesus' Openness
This view of God as, one might say, ‘profligate’ was (and, one might say, still is) infuriating to legalist authorities, and Jesus put it into practice in his open table fellowship, which, the gospel writers note, caused grumbling and then, enmity. This openness, his willingness to put love of people before the strict letter of the law and the politics of the Jewish rulers dependent on Rome seem enough to account for Jesus’ arrest and execution. This approach seems to give us the outlines of a picture of the historical Jesus. What follows on the execution, however, is beyond history. It is based on the faith of that small band of disciples who understood that the powers of darkness had not defeated God, but believed that the power of love had overcome hate, and that life was stronger than death.
A Picture and a Portrait
This presents us with two pictures of Jesus, rather like two photos printed one over the other and we cannot have one without the other. If we are looking for something like a modern biography, the NT will disappoint us: we do not know, for instance the color of Jesus’ hair or eyes; we do not know if he was tall or short; we do not know if certain food gave him indigestion. Those earliest followers in the Way had known Jesus as a man and friend, set at a certain point in the flux of history; he was in no way a mythical divine hero to them like the gods of the Hellenistic world, but from the beginning they sensed that he was adopted by or exhibited or shared in the Divine; (all these positions were held and debated in the early centuries), and that, of course, definitively colors the portrait that became the norm, what later was to be called the “orthodox” view.
The Other Writings of the N.T.
I am aware that time is almost out, and I have not even looked at the rest of the N.T. That may seem strange particularly because the earliest of Paul’s letters were written something like 10-15 years before Mark wrote the first gospel. On the other hand, the Letters, by and large, take for granted the traditions that were encapsulated by the Evangelists, and, as a result, we find few references to events in the life of Jesus. The exception to this is the way the letters, particularly Paul’s, concentrate on the death and resurrection of Jesus, suggesting various metaphors as ways to explain how God rescues fallen humanity through the death and resurrection of Jesus. *6 Perhaps the most succinct summary of this in the whole N.T. corpus is in Paul’s Second Letter to Corinth: “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation”. *7 Paul is also considerably exercised by the fact that God’s chosen people, Israel, seemed to be rejecting the Messiah, and he employs all his Rabbinic skills in an attempt to show that the Scriptures can be read to show that Jesus is the next stage of salvation, beyond the preparation provided by the Torah.
The Proclamation
We cannot end without noting the Acts of the Apostles; in the first ten or so chapters, Luke gives us a glimpse of the beginnings of the Church, or perhaps one should say ‘churches’, as new tiny communities sprang up outside Palestine. Most interesting is the series of speeches Luke reports. There is a common pattern, that looks, incidentally, very like the framework of Mark’s Gospel:
The work of Jesus is to rescue humanity from its self-made chaos, a chaos exemplified by the evil powers that cause madness, and all kinds of human sickness.
The healing stories, indicate that the power of God is working through Jesus;
His activities, in welcoming those regarded by the Law as unclean, bring him into conflict with the authorities, who in alliance with the demonic forces, conspire to destroy him.
The apparent victory of these powers as Jesus dies on the cross, is reversed by the mighty action of God who declares the ultimate victory of good over evil, love over hate in the Resurrection of Jesus.
I end with another quotation (edited) from Norman Perrin, which points us on to the theme of next week’s lecture: *8
"[Jesus] who proclaimed the Kingdom of God began himself to be proclaimed as (a) the one about to return on the clouds of heaven. {Apocalyptic Christianity} (b) as the one who “died for our sins and was raised for our justification”: {Paul} (c) as “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”. {Johannine literature}. *9
1 Manuscripts & the Text of the New Testament. Edinburgh 1995 p 77
2 This is one among hundreds of occasions when John gives information not found in the Synoptic Gospels.
3 Found in Deutero Isaiah. Chs. 40-52
4 Mk. 15.33 There is also more than a hint that the powers of darkness and chaos, overcome by Yahweh in the command 'let there be light', here seem to have returned in victory.
5 St. Paul grasps this central point in I Cor. 1.25 – “Gods’ foolishness is wiser than human wisdom”. Who but a fool would send off a feckless 18 year old with half his equity?
6 One should also note Paul’s account of the Last Supper, the earliest we have, and several references the actual words of Jesus.
7 II Cor. 5.18f
8 Jesus in Dogma – The Age of Controversy
9 Op.cit. 302
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