![]() ![]() It was only, according to Dunn, with John and Hebrews, and not consistently there either, that the move was made to say that Jesus was actually divine, and that move could only be explained as a switch away from Judaism and into Hellenism. He argued at great length that Paul, despite popular opinion, did not articulate a high christology in Philippians 2, 1 Corinthians 8, and similar well-known passages, but rather expressed an Adam-christology in which Jesus’ humanity was highlighted, sometimes through the concept of Wisdom. James Dunn, in his Christology in the Making took it as axiomatic that a high christology meant a late, hellenized christology. Let me give three examples of the sort of position these assumptions produce, even among those who are self-confessed Christians. It is not only those on the extreme wing, such as Burton Mack, who believe and write this sort of thing. The NT itself, and traditional readings thereof, thus stand condemned of compromising the pure original message. Church and state settled down into their unworthy ménage, undermining the radical thrust of Jesus’ original message, and as part of the package they divinized Jesus the way Emperors used to divinize themselves. In particular, with the popularity of the hermeneutic of suspicion a third assumption has grown up alongside the other two, and I now regularly meet it all over the place: a high christology is really a political power play, as you can see by looking at what happened under Constantine. Most commentaries and monographs, articles and seminar papers, assume them, or at most make an almost mantra-like nod in their direction in order to seek elsewhere the origin of the strange belief in Jesus as simultaneously and fully divine and human. The study of Jesus and the early Church, particularly of the rise of early christology, has remained under the shadow of these two denials. One response to this offered by implication only, since no one would dare say such a thing out loud in the post-holocaust world was that Jesus opposed first century Judaism, broke out of its constraining shackles, and was at liberty to think and say what he liked, and the same went for his followers. ![]() The basic assumption of the impossibility of Jesus thinking himself to be in any way “divine” was regularly backed up by a second point, which remains very influential, still being taken for granted by probably the majority of scholars, including some who thing of themselves as “conservative.” No first century Jew, it is claimed, could think of himself in the way that Jesus, according to traditional readings of the NT, thought of himself. There are no short-circuited arguments in the kingdom of God. There is a sense in which I still believe this, but it is a heavily revised sense and must be struggled for, not lightly won. Lewis: Jesus was either mad, or bad, or he was “who he claimed to be.” Yes, we said, for anyone else to say such things would be either certifiably insane or at least wicked but, since it was true in Jesus’ case, it was neither. The stock answer from within the conservative Christianity which had nurtured me through my teens came from C.S. ![]() As a result, the christological answer was in the last analysis contained within the premises. First, in what sense, if any, can we meaningfully use the word “god” to talk about the human Jesus, Jesus as he lived, walked, taught, healed, and died in first century Palestine? In what sense might Jesus conceivably have thought in these terms about himself? Can we, as historians, describe the way in which he might have wrestled with this question within the parameters of his own first century Jewish worldview? Second, what happens to our sense of the identity of God when we allow our long historical look at Jesus to influence what we mean by the endlessly fascinating word?įrom the earliest days of my theological education I was faced with the comment that, of course, no sane human being could think of himself as in any way “divine.” I did not know at the time what a long intellectual history of this position had or the ways in which it was part of the Enlightenment project to split the worlds of divine and human so that nothing could pass from the one to the other. The question must be approached from both sides. ![]() To address the subject of the theological significance of the earthly Jesus I take as my topic the central question of Jesus and God. Originally published in Ex Auditu 1998, 14, 42–56. ![]()
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