Why Christians Must Search for the Historical Jesus

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Luke Timothy Johnson’s recent article in BR and the book on which it is based raise a question of profound importance for Christian faith and theology. The question is immediately clear from their titles. The book is called The Real Jesus and subtitled The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels.¹ The article is called “The Search for (the Wrong) Jesus.”² It is those single words “misguided” and “wrong” that I intend to debate in this article and to oppose with an equally single word, “necessary.”

My counter-proposal is that historical Jesus research is theologically necessary for Christianity or, at least, for Catholic as distinct from Gnostic Christianity.

Catholic (or incarnational) Christianity³ believes that the material universe was created by the one and only good God and was therefore radically good, that Jesus was utterly, fully and totally human, and that to confess his divinity could in no way diminish his muddy terranean origins. Gnostic (or docetic) Christianity⁴ believes that the material universe was created by an evil God or Godling and was therefore radically evil, that Jesus’ body could only be a docetic, apparent or seeming one (dokein is “to seem” in Greek), and that to confess his humanity is to render his divinity absurd. One says that Jesus hurt when he was struck, bled when he was pierced and suffered when he was crucified. The other says that Jesus left no footprint when he walked on the sand, cast no shadow when he walked in the sun and laughed from Olivet as his seeming body died on Golgotha.

Before I can focus on that central question of the historical Jesus and Catholic Christianity, however, I need to leave aside certain distractions and temptations.

One distracting temptation is the vast amount of silly-argument in Johnson’s article and book. I use that phrase as a technical term for any argument that can be turned equally against its user, especially when that user seems oblivious to the danger. An example: The Real Jesus says that the method in my own book The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant is “fixed” (that is, the outcome is predetermined) because I accept certain apocryphal gospels as independent of the canonical ones.⁵ Counter silly-argument: Johnson’s method is “fixed” because he considers all apocryphals to be late and dependent on the canonical gospels.

Well, actually, I would never use a word like “fixed” of another scholar’s method because that term bespeaks a deliberate will to deceive. It is, therefore, not an acceptable expression within academic as distinct from political debate. But, in any case, the temptation of silly-argument and invective is to foster disputation by denying competence, impugning motivation, calling names and ridiculing positions rather than by debating ideas. One of the things I learned from examining the debate between Christian Jews and non-Christian Jews in the first century is that rhetorical terrorism identifies the loser not the winner in the dispute. So despite my ethnic heritage and Joyce’s immortal injunction, “For Erin, boys, go brawl,” I refuse the temptation to descend to Johnson’s low level of public discourse. And even if I did I’d prefer a rapier to a hatchet. Johnson’s rhetoric simply distracts from his central challenge.

Another distracting temptation is implicit in the two halves of the book’s subtitle. It seems to hint that anyone who misguidedly searches for the historical Jesus does not accept the truth of the traditional or 036canonical gospels. I emphatically deny that conjunction. The canonical gospels are absolutely true as gospels. They openly and honestly admit that they are not neutral history or straight biography. John’s account of the passion, for instance, describes Jesus judging Pilate rather than the reverse: Power and Truth locked in conflict and Truth won. I do not accept any of that as journalistic information describing how it actually happened, but I consider it to be profoundly true nonetheless.

There is a truth of factual happening. There is also a truth of parabolic narrative. Nothing whatsoever is gained by confusing these equally valid but different modes of truth. Nothing whatsoever is gained by arguing for or against truth without specifying which type is under discussion. Is the Good Samaritan story true or not? There is only one proper preliminary answer. Do you mean factually or fictionally, historically or symbolically true? And, having answered that minor or preliminary question, you can then get on with the major or ultimate one: Are you willing to live like that person, be he factual or fictional, historical or symbolical? Scholars may disagree on whether a gospel incident is historical or metaphorical (a question of mode), but that is absolutely different from asking whether a gospel incident is true or false (a question of value). Could I patent that distinction and announce Crossan’s First Law: mode precedes value? The confusion of history and truth in Johnson’s subtitle simply distracts from Johnson’s basic challenge.

A further distracting temptation is the amount of time and space Johnson devotes to criticizing various contemporary reconstructions of the historical Jesus. If the entire project (reconstructing the historical Jesus) is radically wrong to begin with, if it is theologically misguided from start to finish, why bother with individual publications, whether by the Jesus Seminar, John Meier, John Spong, Barbara Thiering, A.N. Wilson, Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan or Burton Mack?

Or did Johnson only decide that the project was theologically misguided when results started to become theologically disturbing? If there was an international gathering of marine engineers to debate the flotational integrity of Noah’s Ark, would it be necessary to criticize individual proposals or would it suffice to dismiss the entire project as radically misguided from the beginning? The distracting temptation here is to defend this or that historical reconstruction, to defend, for example, the Jesus Seminar’s media relations by asserting that if public biblical education must be done, one should criticize those who do it badly only after first criticizing those who do not do it at all. But all such defenses and rebuttals, however legitimate, simply distract 037from Johnson’s central challenge: The search for the historical Jesus, he says, is a fundamentally misguided activity for Christian believers.

One final point: At the start of The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant, I wrote, concerning historical Jesus research, that “there were always historians who said it could not be done because of historical problems. There were always theologians who said it should not be done because of theological objections. And there were always scholars who said the former when they meant the latter.”⁶ Johnson clearly and cleanly belongs in the second category (it should not be done because of theological objections). I am extremely nervous when scholarship declares that Jesus is historically unknowable, as if we cannot do with Jesus exactly what we must do with any figure of the past, that is, give our best reconstruction. Such objections cloak Jesus in a cloud of unknowability, a mystery of untouchability and a transcendental negativity that strike me as theologically rather than historically based. But Johnson’s objection is quite explicit in its source. It comes from within his faith as a Christian and a Roman Catholic. That vastly facilitates my response on the same level, from within my own faith as also Christian and also Roman Catholic.

In the middle of last October, I was the guest of Professor Sean Freyne for a lecture and seminar at the University of Dublin’s Trinity College. After the 038seminar we drove out to the city’s southern suburbs to visit the Chester Beatty Museum, of which Sean is a trustee, a position guaranteeing us a very gracious personal tour by the director. Beatty made his money in modern mining and spent it on ancient manuscripts, chosen especially for their fullness and beauty. At the moment the museum is somewhat hidden away among rows of elegant homes, but within the next few years it will relocate to larger, more accessible space within the historic ambience of Dublin Castle. That new location may also allow a fuller display of Chester Beatty Papyrus I, of which only a few pages are now on public view. But that document, known also as Papyrus 45 in the sequential listing of New Testament papyri, is the earliest extant copy of the four gospels, and it dates to between 200 and 250 C.E. It is also very incomplete—with one chapter of John, four of Matthew, eight of Luke and ten of Mark. But the important point is that the gospel-as-fourfold, with the four elements in the sequence Matthew-Mark-Luke-John, is here present for the first time in manuscript evidence. That the fourfold character and set sequence were already well known by the end of the second century is clear, for example, from texts written between 180 and 200 C.E. by Irenaeus, the early Church father and bishop of Lyons. And by now, of course, that fourfold sequence is so traditional that we seldom think much about it.

In the second century, however, at least two Christians—Marcion and Tatian—wondered about it. There was, after all, only one Jesus, and therefore only one good news about Jesus, so why should there be more than one written gospel? Not just why should there be four, but why should there be more than one? Marcion was expelled from the Roman Church in the early 140s for accepting only Luke as the single, valid gospel, for dismissing the Christian Old Testament and for establishing a purified edition of Paul’s letters. It is hardly likely, at that early date, that Marcion knew a fourfold gospel from which he chose only Luke, but he did know Paul’s use of “gospel” in the singular and so would have found only one written version acceptable. It is almost like a preemptive strike against the fourfold gospel. The four, before they existed as fourfold, became one.

Tatian too was expelled from the Roman Church, and he composed his Diatessaron, or Four-as-One Gospel, in the late 170s or early 180s. As best we can tell today, he carefully interwove the four gospels, some other materials, and his own ascetical tendencies into a single unified whole. The four, after they existed as fourfold, became one.

These two examples by Marcion and Tatian of a single, unified gospel serve to press the question: Why was the fourfold gospel maintained as such even though four divergent versions of Jesus’ life and death might prove problematic in their combined presence, let alone in their careful comparison?

One obvious answer is that those were the only four that existed and so their choice was a total collection. Or, maybe, there were many more and these were but a random sample. If we had no examples of other gospels still extant, the choice would seem to be between these options. But, in fact, we do have other gospels, and not only other gospels but other types of gospels and, when those other types are compared with the canonical foursome, what stands out is that we have on our hands not just a war of gospels but a war of gospel types.

I concentrate here on two different gospel types of which we have several examples. I deliberately use the vaguer term types to avoid the problems of more technical terms like genres since different genres are preserved under each type. Also, my point is not whether a given work does or does not call itself a gospel but how it does or does not describe the words and deeds, and life and death, of Jesus. No chronological claims or historical priorities are implied by the order of the discussion following.

The first gospel type, say type A, includes the canonical foursome and, although the terms are not exactly appropriate, we could call them “narrative or biography gospels.” They appear, to a casual observer’s first glance, to describe the life of one Jesus of Nazareth in his Jewish homeland during 042the early first century C.E. They conclude with brief post-crucifixion incidents such as the empty tomb and/or risen appearances.

The second type, type B, is now very evident especially after the discoveries of Gnostic materials at Nag Hammadi in the winter of 1945.^a This type starts where the former ends. Jesus appears to the disciples after his resurrection and the narrative continues in a mix of monologue and dialogue, of questions and answers, between them and him. These could be called “dialogue or discourse gospels.” An example is the Apocryphon of James, from the first codex of the Nag Hammadi Library. On its time and place: “The middle of the 2nd century should be regarded as the latest possible date of composition…[but the] writing might date from a period as early as the second half of the 1st century…[and] a Syrian-Palestinian provenance is more plausible than Egypt.”⁷ The opening of the Apocryphon of James frames it as a letter containing secret teaching:

Now, [while] the twelve disciples [were] all sitting together, recalling what the Saviour had said to each one of them, whether in secret or openly, and putting it in books—I m[yself] writ[ing] down what is in th[e] aforesaid (secret teaching)—lo, the Saviour appeared [after] he had been gone from [us] (and) [we had] been wai[ting] for him, 550 days after his resurrection from the dead. We said to him…But Jesus said…They all answered…He said…

In this type, the risen Jesus speaks and the disciples, especially Peter and James in this case, ask questions. But the striking feature is not just the dialogue phenomenon but the fact that it all takes place after the resurrection. If type A gives us twenty chapters before the resurrection, type B gives us twenty chapters afterwards.

The contrast between the two types, between the narrative- or biography-gospel type of Catholic Christianity and the discourse- or dialogue-gospel type of Gnostic Christianity, may be underlined by looking at some other early texts.

Once type A and type B are clearly delineated, it becomes possible to see more clearly another gospel type that is probably much earlier than either of them. It is “a sayings or aphorisms gospel,” and I will call it here type C. One example of this type is the Q Gospel, the hypothetical text necessitated by the order and content of common material in Matthew and Luke that does not derive from their Marcan source.^b On its time and place: “Q in its final redaction…originated…in western Syria or Palestine…[and] the entire development of Q…must be dated within the first three decades after the death of Jesus.”⁸ Another and even better example of type C is the Gospel of Thomas, from the second codex of the Nag Hammadi Library, known completely only in that Coptic version but also very partially in Greek fragments. On its time and place: “We can only say that there is much in favor of the view that Thomas originated about the middle of the 2nd century in eastern Syria, although admittedly the collected sayings material may in part go back even into the 1st century.”⁹ It is composed of short sayings of Jesus or brief question-and-answer, comment-and-response interchanges between generic “disciples” or specific named ones such as Mary, Salome or Peter. But is it the earthly or heavenly Jesus who speaks? You could argue that the “woman from the crowd” in the Gospel of Thomas 79 and the “coin of the tribute” in the Gospel of Thomas 100 both bespeak an earthly situation, but the question is probably best answered by the opening phrase, which describes what follows as “the secret words which the living Jesus spoke.” These are the words of the Living One, yesterday, today and tomorrow, and the text’s author or community would probably find that distinction between earthly and heavenly Jesus misguided or wrong, to borrow Johnson’s language. But, in any case, as type A and type B gospels developed into conflict between each other, type C was doomed as much by form as by content. Type C gospels were almost lists-of-sayings gospels with few tied-to-the-earth incidents and with minimal narrative or biograph-ical frames. As such they could very easily be pulled into the orbit of Gnostic Christianity. The Q Gospel survived only as hidden within the texts of Matthew and Luke; the Gospel of Thomas survived only as hidden within the sands of Oxyrhynchus^c and Nag Hammadi.

Finally, there is one other text that helps 043us understand the early conflict of gospel types. It is hardly a type since there seems to be nothing else quite like the Epistula Apostolorum, a text known in Coptic fragments and Ethiopic versions. On its time and place: “The content and form of the tradition point to Lower Egypt…about the middle of the 2nd century.”¹⁰ In terms of content, it is explicitly in favor of Catholic and against Gnostic Christianity.

The form is especially interesting because it actually combines type A and type B, although with far more space for the latter than the former. Of its 51 present units, only 3–12a summarize in swift outline the canonical gospel accounts of Jesus’ words and deeds, life and death, burial and resurrection. But the rest, 13–51, is a post-resurrectional dialogue with repeated interchanges between the risen Jesus (“he said”) and the apostles (“we said”). Here, in 12a, type A converts smoothly into type B:

But we touched him that we might truly know whether he had risen in the flesh, and we fell on our faces confessing our sin, that we had been unbelieving. Then the Lord our redeemer said, “Rise up, and I will reveal to you what is above heaven and what is in heaven, and your rest that is in the kingdom of heaven. For my Father has given me the power to take up you and those who believe in me.

Since the content of that type B section is anti-Gnostic rather than Gnostic, its form is probably a very deliberate attempt to create a type AB that would defeat Gnostic Christianity with its own gospel type now filled with Catholic or incarnational content. But, as history worked out, the future belonged not to type B or even AB, but to type A triumphant. If from the third century we have only that one fragmentary papyrus codex containing the four Catholic gospels, from the fourth century we have two full parchment codices, from the fifth century four more full versions, etc., etc.

There were, of course, minor wars between individual gospel versions, for example, Matthew and Luke against Mark and the Q Gospel or even the Synoptics^d against John. But the major war was not just between individual gospels, but between gospel types. For Catholic Christianity, a gospel must be like Matthew, Mark, Luke and John to be a gospel. What is not like them is not a gospel. In the conflict between types, it was important to keep together as many representatives as possible of the narrative or biography gospel that had become the official Catholic gospel type and so, eventually, the only gospel type. Clearly that is why Catholic Christianity maintained that fourfold gospel, despite any problems among the gospels that comparative readings might entail.

But now, before I say how all that dictates my response to Johnson’s article and book, a few confessions are in order as I shift from a historical to a theological argument.

First, my own religious sensibility is profoundly and irrevocably within Catholic Christianity rather than within Gnostic Christianity. I probably could no more change that than I could change being Irish. It is so for deeper reasons than documentation can supply or than I can fully understand. Second, I can sympathize with Gnostic Christianity, I can acknowledge its early, continuing and important conflict with Catholic Christianity, and I can accept, in the first or the twentieth century, both Catholic and Gnostic believers within the community of Christianity. Third, if (and it is a very big if) a Gnostic Christianity would have involved the true equality of women and men at least within the ideal community of the Church, I could mourn its failure to prevail as normative Christianity. Fourth, I do not presume that Catholic Christianity itself was necessarily destined to prevail. If, for example, the Roman Empire had officially declared at a very early date that Christianity was an illicit superstition and that denouncers would obtain a Christian’s possessions, I could easily imagine Christianity, had it survived at all, becoming officially and normatively Gnostic. As their world became more and more experientially evil, Gnostic rather than Catholic Christianity could easily have become the much more persuasive option. Finally, I think that Catholic rather than Gnostic Christianity is in far greater continuity with the historical Jesus, but I do not know whether that is a historical or a theological judgment or even how to decide which it is. In any case, in what follows, be aware that I am personally committed to the narrative-biography rather than the dialogue-discourse gospels and to Catholic rather than Gnostic Christianity. If, of course, I was debating Catholic as against Gnostic Christianity, I would have to argue differently and I admit extreme difficulty in seeing whether such a debate would be between faiths or between theologies. But I do not have that difficulty here and now because I presume that Johnson and I are debating within Catholic Christianity and that when his book’s subtitle speaks of Traditional Gospels he means the four canonical gospels. From here on, therefore, I will speak simply of Christianity, but in full awareness that I am equating, be it as faith or as theology, Catholic Christianity with Christianity itself.

Focus, now, on those four canonical gospels—but on their manner, rather than their matter, on their form rather than their content, on how they say rather than what they say. By what they say I mean, for example, that Jesus commanded us Christians to love our enemies (which regularly we do not) and not to divorce our spouses (which regularly we do), to give our goods to the destitute (which regularly we do not) and not to judge one another (which regularly we do). By how they say I mean that peculiar interpenetration of past and present, that special intertwining of then and now whereby the Christian gospels always go back to the historical Jesus and speak thence to new situations and problems. Jesus-then becomes Jesus-now. No, better than that: Jesus-then is Jesus-now. (I remind you that I am now using Christian gospels to mean Catholic Christian gospels since, quite clearly, the Gnostic Christian gospels had a very different process).

Lest this discussion get too abstract, I give you concrete examples of what I have in mind by comparing the beginning and end of the passion narratives in Mark and John. In what follows, each writer establishes with similar method (how) and yet with very different content (what) that past-as-present, that then-as-now, in their respective accounts of Jesus’ final hours.

The passion of Jesus opens with his arrest, and both Mark and John agree on that event’s location:

[Jesus and the disciples] went out to the Mount of Olives…to a place called Gethsemane.

(Mark 14:26, 32)

Jesus…went out with his disciples across the Kidron valley to a place where there was a garden.

(John 18:1)

The place was the Garden^e (John) of Gethsemane (Mark), across the Kidron valley (John) on the Mount of Olives (Mark). They agree more vaguely on time: for Mark it is Passover Eve, but for John it is the night before Passover Eve. But we 044begin in the then of the past, firmly located in time and place upon this earth. But thereafter their descriptions diverge quite radically even when they record the same events. I focus especially on three elements—ground, cup and flight—to emphasize how differently each writer interprets these same details.

Ground. Who is prostrate on the ground? For Mark it is Jesus himself. But for John it is the arresting cohort (speira), that is, the full complement of about 600 Roman auxiliary troops protecting Jerusalem. We call that event the Agony in the Garden, but for Mark there is agony without garden, for John there is garden without agony:

[Jesus]…began to be distressed and agitated. And said…“I am deeply grieved, even to death”…And he threw himself on the ground.

(Mark 14:33–35)

Jesus, knowing all that was to happen to him, came forward and asked them, “Whom are you looking for?” They answered, “Jesus of Nazareth.” Jesus replied, “I am he.”…When Jesus said to them, “I am he,” they stepped back and fell to the ground.

(John 18:4–6)

Cup. For both Mark and John, Jesus is, of course, obedient to the will of God. But in Mark he prays for the cup of suffering to pass him by if at all possible, while in John there is no such hesitation. Others may have a problem with that destiny but, for John, Jesus has no such problem:

[Jesus] prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. He said, “Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want, but what you want”…But one of those who stood near drew his sword and struck the slave of the high priest, cutting off his ear.

(Mark 14:35–36, 47)

Then Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it, struck the high priest’s slave, and cut off his right ear. The slave’s name was Malchus. Jesus said to Peter, “Put your sword back into its sheath. Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me?”

(John 18:10–11)

Flight. All the disciples abandon Jesus and flee into the night in Mark. But in John they leave at Jesus’ command in order to fulfill the scriptures; and the command for the disciples to flee is given not to them but to Jesus’ captors:

All of them [the disciples] deserted him and fled. A certain young man was following him, wearing nothing but a linen cloth. They caught hold of him, but he left the linen cloth and ran off naked.

(Mark 14:50–52)

[Jesus] asked them, “Whom are you looking for?” And they said, “Jesus of Nazareth.” Jesus answered, “I told you that I am he. So if you are looking for me, let these men go.” This was to fulfill the word that he had spoken, “I did not lose a single one of those whom you gave me.”

(John 18:7–9)

Two radically different interpretations of the same event. As history, they cannot both be true, even if we are never able to tell which, if either, actually happened. But as gospel they are both true. Mark describes the Son of God almost out of control, arrested in agony, fear and abandonment. John describes the Son of God in total control, arrested in foreknowledge, triumph and command. Each interpretation of the events speaks directly to and from the experience of the writers’ communities, but different experiences beget different theologies of the passion’s inception.

If we turn to the ending of the passion in Mark and John, we find exactly the same process. The moment is the same in each, the last words of Jesus on the cross just before his death:

Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” When some of the bystanders heard it, they said, “Listen, he is calling for Elijah.” And someone ran, filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.” Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last.

(Mark 15:34–37)

After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfill the scripture), “I am thirsty.” A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the wine, he said, “It is finished.” Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

(John 19:28–30)

In Mark, the bystanders mistake Jesus’ last words by taking “Eloi” for “Elijah” and derisively attempt to keep him alive for a few extra minutes to see if the prophet comes to his aid. The drink is their own mocking idea. In John, of course, there is no cry of desolation and no mockery, and the drink is Jesus’ idea and brought at his command. For Mark, the passion of Jesus starts and ends in agony and desolation. For John, the passion of Jesus starts and ends in control and command. But I repeat, as gospel, both are equally but divergently true. Both speak, equally but divergently, to different times and places, situations and communities. Mark’s Jesus speaks to a persecuted community and shows them how to die. John’s Jesus speaks to a defeated community and shows them how to live.

My main point, however, is to note how each evangelist goes back to moments in the life of the historical Jesus, be it arrest or death, and builds a dialectical process of past/present and then/now in which those twin elements interpenetrate and interweave. Those are but focal instances of how the (Catholic) Christian gospels consistently work and my counter challenge to Johnson postulates that dialectic as normative for (Catholic) Christianity past, present and future.

My argument has been built from the fourfold gospel in the New Testament canon. Jesus-past acts and speaks as Christ-present; Jesus-then acts and speaks as Lord-now. We are asked, by the New Testament, to watch that process occur four times. Those four are our mistress models, our master examples. They are normative, in other words, not just in terms of matter or content, but especially and even more basically as an interpretive method, in terms of mode or form.

But maybe that normativity extended only to the canonical foursome back then and not to the permanent structure of Christian faith ever after?

To answer: Look at our Christian language, at the way we have always spoken about Gospel and gospel(s). We use exactly the same word to mean the good news of the Kingdom of God and to mean a specific format for that proclamation. Gospel means both the proclamation that God’s radical justice demands a world of communal egalitarianism as well as the four canonical versions of that announcement.

Romans or Ephesians, Hebrews or Revelation also contain that Gospel but we do not call them gospels in the same way we do Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Our Christian destiny is especially Gospel-as-gospel. In other words, that gospel format of past/present and then/now is normative forever for the Gospel itself. It is because of that normative process that each Christian generation is called both to reconsider the historical Jesus and simultaneously to reinterpret that figure as Christ or Lord. Each side of that dialectic must be done over and 045over again. No generation ever gets it right forever. The best we can do, and it is more than enough, is to get it adequately right for here and now. That is not personal or individual humility but structural or systemic destiny. We are doomed not by error but by time, not by mistake but by change. It is an ultimate betrayal of Jesus to think that either history or theology has him down once and for all forever. What is permanent is the dialectic.

Two corollaries: First, the historical side of that dialectic involves our very best reconstruction of the historical Jesus by contemporary standards, not because they are infallible but because they are our best available. No cheating and no special pleading. No history masquerading as theology, nor theology masquerading as history. But, of course, once again, even the moment’s best theory and method, evidence and argument, decision and conclusion are eventually doomed, as is that moment’s best theology. We love and love what vanishes, what more is there to say? (Yeats, not Joyce, that time.) But Christian faith is that dialectic itself, modeled in our canon, repeated again and again in our tradition, and proposed anew today wherever faith is dynamically alive.

Second, our faith is not in history but in the meaning of history; not within a museum, but within a church.

Luke Timothy Johnson’s recent article in BR and the book on which it is based raise a question of profound importance for Christian faith and theology. The question is immediately clear from their titles. The book is called The Real Jesus and subtitled The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels.1 The article is called “The Search for (the Wrong) Jesus.”2 It is those single words “misguided” and “wrong” that I intend to debate in this article and to oppose with an equally single word, “necessary.” My counter-proposal is that historical Jesus […]