A rant on the historical Jesus

In this blog post, I am going to express my dissatisfaction with the Christian obsession with the historical Jesus.

In my experience, and especially here at Union Theological Seminary, students are especially eager to hear about the historical Jesus, as a way of reconciling themselves with their Christian upbringing. It seems to me that many Christians are disappointed with the ways in which they were disenfranchised within their previous Christian community (as I was…twice), but still have a love for Christianity and an appreciation of their upbringing. They thus choose to reconcile the two by figuring out what the “historical” Jesus believed and thought, as if this will help them become more convinced of their current (liberal/Protestant) viewpoint of Christianity and allow them to dismiss criticisms they faced at prior Christian communities because they now know the “real” Jesus.

I find this attitude to be extremely problematic on a number of levels.

First, I find it problematic that they believe there is a “true” way of understanding Jesus. Jesus is never apart from historical context, that is true. However, the historical Jesus is never apart from the interpreter’s context either. Albert Schweitzer, a famous scholar of the historical Jesus school, said that historians and theologians looked down into a well to find the historical Jesus – and they found only their reflection staring back at them. He wrote that the major German historians and theologians had made Jesus out to be just like them, with their own concerns. Jesus, for them, was one who was a moral teacher, an exemplar, a person that preached a message of love, forgiveness, and general capitalistic German ideology of the day. What the historians wanted to find, they found.

Schweitzer convincingly argued that writings about Jesus were best understood when Jesus was viewed as an apocalyptic prophet, a doomsdayer that believed the end of the world was in sight. The “historical” Jesus, Schweitzer felt, was completely unconcerned with morality or love or good works because the end is coming.

Nonetheless, Schweitzer did acknowledge that the “historical” Jesus is not good to believe nowadays; thus, his fellow German historians and theologians were right to preach a different Jesus, a Jesus of love, morality, good teaching, and exemplar living. Schweitzer’s only critique was that they should be honest and acknowledge that Jesus, in Jesus’ context and time, did not believe like them.

My reasoning for describing Schweitzer’s revolutionary book is primarily to show that there isn’t a “historical” Jesus apart from the interpreter’s context. The German theologians looked down into a well and found only what they wanted to find. Schweitzer, I believe, had good reasons for viewing Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet of judgment – that is, after all, how I personally view Jesus (mostly). However, the idea that we can leave our biases and our contexts and our upbringings and our wishes is naïve at best, and, at worst, will only cause us to become more secure in our justifications and our current views.

Secondly, I find the quest for the historical Jesus to be a fruitless venture. Not only do I believe we are going to be heavily influenced by our biases and our wishes for how we want Jesus to be, but I am convinced that there is too little information about the historical Jesus to even believe that the pursuit is worthwhile. The few fragments we have about the historical Jesus are written decades after Jesus died. Ranges for the Synoptic Gospels are between 40 CE and 110 CE, the Gospel of John is usually dated post-90 CE. In all cases, the writings are not designed to be historical anyway. Writing during the time was often polemical, and it was designed to convince one of a certain view. Historical accuracy, myth (often taken from other mythic ideas from other cultures), and personal experiences are all blended together. The idea that one could somehow, from the very few sources we have, decipher a code that will give us the infallible view of the historical Jesus is simply unbelievable. The Gospel writers were not intending to do so, and we should not strive to do so either. There is not enough evidence, as if evidence would be sufficient to convince anyone anyway.

Thirdly, I find the attitude that I described above regarding the quest for the historical Jesus to be problematic because it totally ignores the reality of the Christian Church. In all honesty, Jesus is not important because of who he was in the Judean context. Jesus is important because the Church proclaims his resurrection by God. My faith isn’t shaken if Jesus’ corpse got up, walked through walls, and then flew up into the sky behind some cloud where Jesus’ body is now hanging out in space. The portrayal of the resurrection and the ascension are vitally important for any Christian faith – but it needs not be literal corpse-raising. MAYBE Jesus’ corpse rose from the dead and flew into the sky, as the Gospel accounts say. I don’t personally believe that, and I find that idea to be ridiculous.

It seems to me that both a literal and an anti-literal view should be faulted for the same reason – they are missing the point. One does not feel secure in the Christian message because a corpse was raised, and neither is one devastated because a corpse wasn’t raised. The point of Jesus’ life and ministry, and death and resurrection, is bound up in the Church’s proclamation, as witnessed to in the Creeds, the practices, and the daily living of the Christian Church. I am not interested in Jesus, just as I am not interested in the historical fellow of Buddha or Confucius. (And at least Buddhists and Confucians do not care about the historical founder!)

But I do care about Christ.

Jesus the Christ is extremely important to me, and I will probably never lose this excitement and identity with Jesus the Christ. How one could choose to ignore church tradition (of 2000 years) is beyond me. The Christian Church makes up my identity. The Church’s followers have shaped me and my beliefs and my experiences of God. It is the height of arrogance to deny the multitude of saints any significance in the pursuit of one’s personal religion or “relationship with God”. The Confucians and the pagans were absolutely right to emphasize the importance of one’s ancestry, both for grounding of oneself but also for one’s personal edification. The idea that I would have to reinvent all of my spiritual practices, or investigate every single one of my beliefs regarding God and the Church and spiritual matters is the height of arrogance and naivete. A better response, I think, is to take what the Christian doctrines are concerning Jesus the Christ – and then compare them. Christianity is not monolithic, despite what anyone says. There are many competing traditions for understanding Jesus’ atoning work of salvation, for understanding the Ascension of Christ, for understanding the importance of Jesus Christ’s life and work. Holding them in tension, in their multiplicity, and understanding one’s experiences in light of them, and understanding others’ experiences and beliefs regarding them is, to my mind, a much greater and important and fruitful endeavor.

The Church must constantly be challenged by the revelation of Jesus Christ. The Church must always find itself in a state of confession, both of its sins and of its grounding in Jesus Christ. I feel great resonance with Barth’s emphasis on the Church proclaiming the Gospel as it has been revealed in its life and action, in holy Scripture, and, most of all, in Jesus the Christ. Though I do not agree with Barth’s conclusions, because he remains trapped in a dogmatic circle, I do nonetheless agree that one cannot separate the “historical” Jesus from Jesus the Christ, and I wouldn’t want to.

I am uninterested in the “historical Jesus.” I am, however, VERY interested in Jesus the Christ, as it has been handed down to me by Christians throughout the ages, and as it has been written down in holy Scripture. Far better to be challenged by the stumbling block of Jesus Christ than to use any historical research to justify my own position, even if I am justifying myself because of pain that I have suffered in my past. Yes, it is absolutely important to achieve healing over what others have done to you. I am still trying to do so. And yes, it is absolutely important to acknowledge where one has come from, and to appreciate one’s past for all the things one can appreciate. It is important to redeem one’s past insofar as one is able.

However, becoming attached to an impossible goal, which will only further strengthen one’s dogmatism and estrangement from Christians throughout the ages only results from misguided Enlightenment thinking and serves to undercut our unity with Christian writers and thinkers throughout the ages. The Holy Spirit binds us together, in Christ. Let no person put this connection asunder.