| Christianity with minimal
Christology
What approach to New Testament sources for Jesus’ life and significance appear to inform Doogue’s assumptions? What view of Christian faith do these assumptions nurture? Hold these questions. v Much contemporary engagement with Jesus of Nazareth seeks to affirm two things—the retrieval of Jesus who is relevant to our time and Jesus without a “Christian veneer.” The first is explicit; the second is often implicit. Even with a desire for the extraordinary, a consistent presupposition is that we ourselves are normative for understanding either Jesus as an ethical exemplar or Christ as a symbol of appropriate human ideals. Yet neither says anything of Jesus Christ beyond what is deemed feasible by social consensus. Jesus who is historically plausible and able to be assimilated into our perspective has been a pervasive and explicit criterion for his contemporary acceptance; Christ who is religiously compatible as a universal symbol of human harmony is sustained in the context of religious pluralism. As either exemplary or symbolic, the universality of Jesus’ ethical values are shared with other historical figures or symbolised as “Christ” values within all. Both Jesus as example and Christ as symbol are arbitrarily lifted from the gospels according to presumed social norms, usually in resistance to Christian faith and testimony to gospel that speaks of his unique significance in a word otherwise for humanity. In seeking to make Jesus relevant, much is lost in promoting either Jesus as one among many exemplars of a “normative” humanity or Christ as a symbol of selected ideals. Many contemporary views of Jesus have their genesis in the nineteenth century, during which, theologians too easily assumed that only the simple “religion of Jesus” would secure his future relevance. The ethical and anthropological criteria informing this focus were selective, excising the gospels’ distinctive eschatological aspect—the future of God becoming a present reality, culminating in resurrection—in appraisal of Jesus’ identity and significance. v We can only assume that Doogue’s statement represents her views about Jesus and therefore Christianity. It exhibits many nineteenth century perspectives of Jesus that are frequently asserted today. First, how Jesus faced death, rather than his resurrection, “convinced” his followers that he “somehow represented divine forces.” This excision of resurrection replicates various expressions of historicism. Historicism is the quest for some plausible weave of sociological and cultural factors by which to interpret the past. That his creative vision survived with inspired disciples, was popular in nineteenth century romantic focus on heroic, revolutionary genius. Historicism and romanticism are essentially at odds but are often conflated in views of Jesus! Gospels tell another story. The gospels portray the disciples in despair. Foiled in their hopes for the future, they were without conviction of anything concerning Jesus’ life, which was now extinguished. They were fearful in the aftermath of his crucifixion, contrary to Doogue’s portrayal of the disciples’ resolute faith following his death. The association of Jesus and vague “divine forces” is a legacy of romanticism and later focus on comparative religion. By contrast, in biblical testimony, Yahweh in Israel is unlike any divinity of the nations; for Christians, this testimony is focused definitively in Jesus Christ. Second, that Christians forged novel faith and values “combined with the intricacies of Jewish religious politics” is expressed without awareness of the pervasive early Christian critique given of such religious politics—of tribal markers that delineate religious distinctions, such as circumcision and laws on cleanliness. Within his religious context too, Jesus was regarded with hostility. Selected Christian values are often described as “remarkable,” while being accounted for sociologically, merely within a first century context. This is evitable when approaching the New Testament within a historicist perspective in which Jesus represents a specific religious and ethical cultural legacy, with only vague references to the intangible, such as Doogue’s “somehow” and “divine forces.” By contrast, earliest Christian testimony articulates his unique significance for humanity beyond tribes and cultures. Christian faith affirms ancient imperatives to righteousness disclosed in Israel. Their focus in a new covenant written on the heart within the surprise of a Pentecost community represents the true novelty and scandal of Christian gospel. Third, in a common assertion of relativity—“one of the most significant radical activists in history”—Jesus is finally only one among several exemplary figures of history. This is an inevitable view within comparative religious perspective, which was developed in the late nineteenth century and reiterated in our time. Jesus pitched as a political activist is a recent focus replicating late eighteenth century assertions that Jesus was a revolutionary leader whose political message was drastically modified by the apostles. In the gospels, Jesus articulates in sayings and parables what seem bewildering values that refuse to endorse equity and just-desserts while offering a strange logic of forgiveness and undeserved grace; an imperative to render what is due to Caesar refuses revolution and violence. Another reality, otherwise than the most radical possibilities of human imagination, is offered instead. v It is common to refer to a minimalist Jesus whose example, teachings and vision we can reasonably aspire to and emulate. Yet no such Jesus is known to us. The only testimony to Jesus’ example and teaching we have, also presents his life and identity as Christ who is acclaimed Lord and saviour. It is only Jesus Christ of Christian testimony who gives us Jesus of Nazareth. His life is remembered because, according to this testimony, he was exalted by God in resurrection. Jesus of Christian testimony is the only historical person given to be followed, as our contemporary, through life in the Spirit. The separation of Jesus from Christian faith was a legacy of rationalist Enlightenment, culminating in methods that exalted selected profiles of Jesus, while diminishing or even hostile to Jesus Christ confessed as Lord within the relay of Christian testimony (there are hypotheses built on hypotheses concerning gospel sources and development that attempt to make this focus a later apostolic development, consistent with assumptions that it must be so!). In the absence of Christian testimony to resurrection, beyond mere reference to symbolism, there is no resolution of perennial human compromise, hubris and self-deception; there is no access to the eschatological reality that can sustain his paradoxical ethics. Losing life to affirm it—a crucial tone of the gospels—makes no sense without resurrection and its unique imprimatur of another life-giving reality intersecting our lives. Integral humanity is disclosed in Jesus Christ, not in competing versions of human behaviour and idealism. The gospels show Jesus’ ethics exceeding the horizon of human purview and possibilities—whether such possibilities are expressed through either Jesus or Christ unhinged from the testimony of Christian faith.
*“A
time to slow down and enjoy each other” The Australian (24.12.09) |
