Some questions on Jesus from N T Wright

I’m still in the introduction to N T Wright’s Jesus and the Victory of God (ok, I’m reading this excellent book for the second time!).

In his chapter on the ‘Third Quest’ Wright offers five, or six, questions that have emerged from this ‘Third Quest’ and are worthy of being answered.

1. How does Jesus fit into Judaism?
2. What were Jesus’ aims?
3. Why did Jesus die?
4. How and why did the early Church begin?
5. Why are the Gospels the way they are?

Clearly these questions belong together. It is possible to offer an answer to one without addressing the others, but any such answer will necessarily have implications for the other four.
These questions cannot be answered either by theology or by history alone, but require a combination of history and theology to provide any reasonable answer.

The historical fixed points are:
1. Second Temple Judaism
2. About 100 ad the existence of a vibrant and growing Christian Church.
Between these two points we have the life and death of Jesus, the beginnings and expansion of the early Church and the writing of the Gospels. N T Wright is correct to challenge us that any account of Jesus must address all of these points.

The rejection of history as important in the study of Jesus has been made in a number of ways. Amongst others Bultmann rejected the Jesus of history as compromising the Christ of faith. One should encounter Jesus afresh in the existential moment of encounter and there is no need for a Jesus of history. A certain type of piety also rejects the Jesus of history, this is done for faith, or as it is claimed to promote faith, we approach the Gospels, and other New Testament writings with faith and when challenged by history retreat into a form of faith which rejects all need for evidence from history.
Both of these forms of rejecting history are themselves to be rejected.

Our Christian faith rests upon the history of God’s work of Salvation in and through Jesus Christ his Son, who is this Jesus of history. This Jesus must recognisably be located within second Temple Judaism and there must be in his life and death something of such significance as to explain the growth and expansion of the Church within just a few decades of his death.

The possible sixth question is, ‘So what?’ Why after all these years are we still bothering with Jesus? Why is it we can leave him alone and carry on without him? What difference does a historical account of Jesus, his life and death make? Or, what difference would an historical account that disproved the Gospels historical claims make? These are questions that thinking disciples of the Lord Jesus cannot fail to address.

I'm re reading N T Wright's Jesus and the Victory of God. If you haven't read it then give it a try, it is well worth it.

His section on Burton L Mack (and the Question of Q) pages 35-44 is interesting as it connects with a post on reading the bible I made earlier.

Wright suggests that Mack has allowed his antipathy towards late 20th Century American Christianity colour his reading of the gospel of Mark in a major way. Mack reconstructs a Jesus who resembles a 'Cynic sage, spinning aphorisms designed to subert his hearers social and cultural worlds' (p. 37) Mack achieves this by excluding from his consideration of Jesus any material that is apocalyptic or eschatological. Well if you leave out half the gospel material no wonder you end up with a view of Jesus quite different from that presented in the gospels!

In my earler post - On Bible Reading, Sat 7 March - I was challenging that way of reading the bible which ignores passages or material which the reader doesn't like, or doesn't want to submit to. One of my Professors, the late Bob Carroll, was fond of saying 'Read the text', all of the text. If at the end of an exposition there was surplus text left lying on the table Bob would be hugely critical. (And those who knew Bob would not know him as a conservative Biblical scholar!).

We simply cannot read the parts of the bible we want to read and ignore all the rest and then claim to be scholarly, or historical, or whatever. This is not to exclude the valuable work of textual criticism which highlights for us passages we should rightly be suspicious of, e.g. the endings of Mark's gospel. What the Church has always needed is a commitment from her members to the whole word of God: to read with faith and reverence, to study with all the tools and ability God has given us, to obey in lives given to following this Jesus who is both Christ and Lord.