Facticity and Revelation in Grappling with the Relationship Between the Jesus of History and the Christ of Faith

A discussion post from a seminar on the historical Jesus at Bethel Seminary in 2020

No escape into pure facticity is possible among human actors seeking to address the actions, motivations, and influences of and on the historical Jesus—which itself, is a literary artifact. While also invariably worldview-shaped, a judicious use of evidence, critical reasoning, and analysis of existing perspectives can help establish a more discerning understanding of the historical Jesus. Those whose primary theory of knowledge is heavily shaped by materialist presuppositions will discount any literal interpretation of miracles attributed to Jesus in the gospels, including resurrection sightings, regardless as to how extensive the evidence may be according to the literary and historical resources.  Those who hold an inerrant view of Scripture will tend to accept the authenticity of the miracle stories and the resurrection narratives even though they may seem to contradict commonly accepted views of science and are contrary to the standards of analogical comparability—that of interpreting what was plausible in ancient history to that which is similarly so in the contemporary era. So, if miracles don’t occur in our times, they could not have occurred in biblical times (See Dawes, 28, on Troelsch). 

A third school of thought points to fundamental differences between what we can know though historical research and what comes to us through the revelation of the Christ of faith (Kasemann).  Some in this camp accept the general validity of the critical scholarship on the historical Jesus for what it discloses—something of the historical personage and his times—while making the primary point that what is of ultimate significance is the revelation of Christ, which can only be perceived through the revealed Word of God.  Between these two sources of knowledge—both highly partial in their own ways—there is an ineradicable gap which cannot be easily crossed.  Stated in other terms, the finite cannot contain the infinite in mediating the gap between history and faith.

Others (Bultman) maintain that the gap is not so much a purely philosophical one, but has to do with the radical difference in the historical times between that of the Palestinian world view of the first century and the modern world view of the 20^th and 21^st centuries.  According to Bultmann, what is of ultimate significance is the relevance of Christ’s universal message (the kerygma) in addressing the existential needs of people in the modern era.  While there may be much in the teaching of Jesus that speaks to these matters, there is also much that does not.  Nor does the constructed “three-story” world of the 1^st century (heaven, earth, hell) or its apocalyptic imagery make sense in light of current cosmological interpretations based on contemporary physics, biology, history, anthropology, and sociology.

I gravitate toward the third school, with the caveat that there is a good deal that can be known about the historical Jesus that additional research will likely further illuminate.  Nonetheless, given the ultimate grounding of revealed faith, I’m not so sure that “history,” as an academically disciplined body of study, has the capacity to disclose anything of absolute significance at that level.  Still, early Christianity, as a religious movement self-consciously rooted in historical claims, a great deal of knowledge may well be opened up about the life of the founder that can be highly useful as a resource for our understanding of history and for our faith.

 

Does the Epicenter Hold?

Initially published on the Theotalk listserv in 2002 or 2003. My understanding of Christianity has gone through many changes since then, but the position described below s a real place where more than a few of those grappling with the meaning of Christianity in their lives confront "the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3).

This discussion on what we do and can believe is one of the most important ones that I've ever witnessed on this list or anywhere else for that matter. I raise a few questions.

 ·           Is Christ is the way, the truth, and the life like no other, or is Christ a way, a truth, and a viable path to follow in opening doors to the holy, transcendence, or the more authentic life, however that may be defined?  This is a provocative question which I believe needs to be addressed in a range of forums, yet in a manner that cogently grapples with the historical impact of the traditional view that still shapes much of current Christian thinking.

 ·           Is the Christ story a myth or is it rooted in literal historical experience linked to the Jewish prophetic heritage and a belief in the physical Resurrection of Christ as a historical reality?  In a recent book, Garry Dorrien refers to Christ as "true myth."  If one were to push this, one might say, "Christ as a true myth.”

 The question of how do we know or to come to know is a major issue that requires resolution if 21st century people who live their daily lives in the secular arena are to make sense of the Christ experience.  A person shares the following:

  It makes us insecure, I guess, to have a truly living God, one whose many aspects we are ceaselessly discovering, one who turns up in the unlikeliest of places, one who constantly challenges us, one who consistently pushes and prods us into relationship with God and with each other and with all of creation, one who cannot be reduced to a cosmic machine (put in the right formula, and the right result will follow).  Personally, I fell in love with that living God a long time ago, and I don't understand any more now that I did then -- nor am I richer, more successful, or even necessarily happier, in fact just the opposite.  But I know I am in a living relationship with a living Being on whom I can depend.  How do I know that (what's the epistemology here)?  From a lame, hard-to-describe mixture of experience, reflection, praxis, more reflection, personal revelation (including Scripture and worship), collective experience, more reflection...

 That is profound in every respect, though it still depends on where one is coming from.  If I am already basing my life on the central tenets of the Christian revelation, where it matters not whether one’s beliefs are based on "true myth" or historical revelation, then praxis, reflection, dialogue, Scripture, and worship are very much in order as the primary means of strengthening one's faith even in the midst of faith seeking understanding.  From this epicenter many of the questions that others and I have raised do not matter very much, as it is more than a little true, in any event, that belief itself is a form of understanding.  By believing, I come to understand certain things that would not otherwise be available to me through a studied stance of doubt or skepticism in a quest for knowledge alone.  From this base, it is Christ and Christ alone that I seek to know and to strengthen as the center of my identity, regardless as to how open I may be to other insights and other faith and secular traditions.  Whether it is true in fact, based on the epicenter of faith, for me, Christ is "the truth, the way and the life," like no other.  In the final analysis, that is all I need to know as long as faith remains the primary narrative of my life. Based on this line of thinking, I would also agree that one of the main purposes of congregational life and theology is to strengthen this faith walk stemming from the epicenter, even in the liberal denominations.  In whatever manifestations The Way may be ultimately interpreted, even the outer boundary of liberal congregationalism needs to somehow make sense of the mystery and accept the revelation, regardless as to how it enters into the lives of individuals or is interpreted.  Even liberal congregationalism needs to believe based on faith even, nay, especially, while striving to understand, lest the very prize be lost in the process of seeking surer knowledge.

However, for many, the epicenter no longer holds as the foundational source for believing.  For many, identity and consciousness are experienced pluralistically.  For many, this results in a rejection of the epicenter and an embrace of a life lived without the Christian revelation as a dominant source of identity.  The question for the liberal Christian community is (that is for those who do not reject the path of Christ at least as A Way), whether they have a God-shaped vacuum that can only be filled by the revelation of Christ?  Or, rather, whether they are able to live their lives equally well based on other myths or worldviews they may deem appropriate, without at the same time, rejecting the Christian narrative that plays some, not totally clear bearing on their lives?  If one holds that the vacuum is the core reality of human existence, then that requires some coming to terms with the exclusivity of Christ, however liberally adhered.  If one believes, rather, that there are various paths through which one can live their lives with authenticity, meaning, and love, then that would necessitate some coming to terms with the more radical implications of a more relativistic Christ.  That, in turn, would also require some rejection or modification of the claim that Christ is the truth, the way and the life, except for its existential value for the unique individual who may adhere to such doctrine.   Even then, if it is The Way that is subject to intensive immanent critique among the liberal household of faith, even that existentialist belief still requires some cogent articulation of the reasons for such adherence.

Taking this a step further, what do these issues have to do with liberal congregationalism in a post-Christian and postmodern culture and society?  In an earlier era, where many within the congregations and even in the broader society believed in, or at least did not directly challenge the epicenter, the church could afford to focus predominantly on The Story, regardless as to how literal or how figurative one took it. The issue at this time is that it is The Way as a singular, dominant narrative that is under profound scrutiny, even within the Christian community itself.  Outside the camp, there are wide sectors of people who do not believe or think about religious faith at all, who would view it to the extent they may think of it, as quaint, irrelevant, ludicrous, and in some cases, dangerous.  Not that much of this is fair or represents careful thought.  Nonetheless, this secular reality, including its legitimacy as a worldview needs to be addressed by the liberal Christian community in an unequivocally direct manner.

One of the needs of a 21st Christian liberal theology is to identify non-exclusive, but substantial ways of entering into public dialogue in a variety of settings in such arenas as business, law, politics, and academia.  At least in theory, this quest has been one of the compelling engagements of Hartford Seminary, as reflected in their simultaneous commitment to lay ministry and in the sustained dialogue the school promotes between Islamic and Christian scholars.  This effort needs to be more public and permeate more of the routine activities of congregational life.  While being open, tolerant, and inclusive, it also requires (I believe), ways to articulate Christian understandings and teachings as they may relate to these different sectors, so that a religious epistemology can enter into public discourse as an equal opportunity partner.  This requires subtle, complex work, but if Christianity is going to flourish in the 21st century outside of evangelical and fundamental sectors, it is going to have to find its voice in the public sector.  Such work will involve much more than praxis and reflection (though will require that!).  It will also require a publicly coming to terms and grappling with some of the most difficult issues facing postmodern liberal Christianity residing in the midst of the secular city in the articulation of its own voice amidst the complex pluralism of modern western existence.  This, it will need to do while experiencing the counter-pressure of the multitude of voices of fundamentalism and evangelicalism clamoring for security, certainty, and domination.

The question, then, for many of us who have been informed by a Christian sensibility, but do not necessarily embrace the epicenter as foundational, is the meaning of Christian identity within the context in which we live.  Many things at this time are wide open about faith, including sources of revelation, how we know or even how we can believe, particularly if the desire to believe is not uniform or central; or if there is little compelling reason to believe, particularly on the more exclusive tenets of Christ as the way, the truth, and the life?   What does it mean to embrace Christ as a way, a truth, and as a life even in the midst of embracing other identities?  What does it mean if the center does not hold?

The Challenges of Modernity for Evangelical and Mainline Protestantism

 Originally published on the Theotalk Liseterv in 2002 sponsored by the Connecticut Conferenceof the United Church of Christ

Through Christianity certain individuals seek to make sense of their lives.  This they believe takes place through a connection with a force that resides within them, which is also a power that is ineradicably beyond human experience and comprehension.  Christian theologians have referred to this as the immanent-transcendent dynamic.  In various times in the history of Christianity one or another of these aspects of faith has been emphasized.  In the fullness of the Christian faith, which is both a system of thought and a living presence that can never be fully grasped by human reason, these dynamic aspects creatively contribute to an integrative understanding that honors both human experience and the belief that meaning resides in a transcendent source which then enters into it.  This "beyond" is what Christians refer to as "God."  Other religions also believe in God, but Christians believe that God is mediated to human beings in a unique way through Jesus of Nazareth, referred to in their book of Scripture as the Christ.

 This "Christ" is depicted in the New Testament in the several gospels that purport to give a running account of the life, ministry, death, and Resurrection of Jesus, and in a more formally theological depiction in various letters and other books of the New Testament.  Many of these latter texts were authored by their chief interpreter, Saul of Tarsus, originally a Jewish Pharisee who some point to as the founder of Christianity, who, after conversion, took on the name of Paul and the title of Apostle.

 What makes this complicated is that although the synoptic Gospels (the books of Mark, Matthew and Luke) have the surface feature of a narrative, they were written some 40-60 years after the death of Jesus and after the letters of Paul.  They are not primary sources of the actual life of Jesus, but theological statements of the Christian community, which posited Jesus Christ as the redeemer of the world and Son of God, the only true mediator between God and humankind.

 For some 1850 years Christians who appropriated the teaching of the Christ through an empathetic reading of the Scripture, the various teachings of the church, and what they refer to as the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, did so in a relatively unproblematic way.  That is because they understood that the Christ portrayed in the New Testament was synonymous with the historical experience of Jesus of Nazareth and his earliest followers.  Then, other outlooks came to the fore, as science, historical research, and literary studies opened up the New Testament to new critical scrutiny, leaving gaping questions among those who are compelled to take modern scholarship seriously. 

 These scholarly intrusions need to be grasped within a broader paradigmatic shift within Western consciousness with the scientific revolutions of the 16th and 17th century, the Renaissance, and the 18th Century Enlightenment, which enshrined human reason as the creative power through which humankind could progressively control the social environment.  Add to this the theory of evolution, critical historical scholarship, the secularization of the western university system, and the industrial revolution, the quaint faith of Christianity in which the exclusive savior of human history was uniquely revealed to a particular people, began to lose its substantive hold on significant portions of the European and American publics.

 Within the Christian sector there were various responses to the challenges of western modernity.  In one sector, there was a call to embrace the fundamentals of the faith that took as its operating strategy a more or less flat rejection of these influences and an acceptance of an inerrant scripture as the literal word of God.  I will not pursue the fundamentalist thread here, though it has its own complex history and is worth more than a little study among serious students of 20th century American Christianity.  The other response, that of Christian liberalism, sought to re-integrate the core precepts of the Christian faith within the basic premises of modern scholarship and the social and cultural currents of modern social life.  While fundamentalism represented a strong pull toward the transcendent pole, liberalism emphasized God's immanent embodiment in human experience and culture in which it was often difficult to distinguish the classic Christian concept of the Kingdom of God with the quest for progressive human improvement.  On the one hand, those of a more radical secular slant wondered why liberals had to refer to God talk at all.  On the other hand, fundamentalists criticized Christian liberals as selling out the basics of the faith in what they viewed as the futile effort explain the Biblical belief in a transcendent God embodied in a literal Christ, in secular terms. 

 Liberal Christian denominations continue to be caught in a bind.  What makes this particularly difficult is the persistence of a wide gulf between 20th century Christian theologians and seminarians and the average man and woman in the pews.  Many of the issues of modernity are studied in seminaries with considerable sophistication, but liberal preachers are generally reluctant to bring much of the more radical implications of these insights into the pews in Sunday morning sermons.  In addition, such insights seldom provide the framework to inform both youth and adult Sunday School instruction.  

 Part of the challenge of modernity is the degree to which, if any, one can assume the historical accuracy of the New Testament portrayal of Jesus of Nazareth.  While the scholarship may vary somewhat, there is a substantial swathe of research which posits a wide gap between the historical Jesus and the Christ of the New Testament.  Then there is the broader question of what to make of other religious teachings as Planet Earth moves increasingly toward a global world.  Is there still a meaningful place even for a modified Christian exclusivist viewpoint in the belief that God is revealed in particularly unique and superior way than in other religious traditions?  While much contemporary theological scholarship assumes a more inclusive stance, the extent to which such insights have seeped into contemporary Christian consciousness is another matter.  To be sure, there is a certain acceptance of inclusion among many enlightened Christians.  Yet, the fuller implications of this turn, which requires a very subtle reading of the New Testament, will necessitate nuanced and courageous work among Christian theologians and congregationally based ministers, along with the support, and where relevant, the leading, of an educated lay public.  In short, a sophisticated congregational theology of inclusion has not been substantially worked out, and the lack thereof is a serious shortcoming toward any revitalization of a mainline Christian vision.

Reflections on Paul Tillich’s Notion of the Theonomous

 From a seminar on on at Bethel Seminary on Theology and Contemporary Culture

Introduction

In highlighting sharply distinctive points of reference, McClendon, in Witness: Systematic Theology, Vol 3, draws out Paul Tillich, Julian Hartt, and John Howard Yoder in broadly typological terms, with Tillich representing the cultural point of reference, Hart, the theological, and Yoder the ethical/political.  While his selection is rooted in a typological motivation, he has chosen well, given Tillich’s substantive work on the important role of cultural analysis in the shaping of theological investigation, Hart’s on the depth of his theological rooting in the centralities of the Great Tradition of Christian orthodoxy, and Yoder’s emphasis on the non-violent politics of Jesus of Nazareth, sifted through a sharply-focused ethical lens.  Moreover, his discussion of these modes of Christianity is “thicker” than the very broad-based typological presentation of H. R. Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture.

Typology is useful in identifying distinctive points of (in this case, theological) reference, which, however, can mask the ways in which the representative theologians speak to the concerns of the others in the given model.  Thus, Tillich also embraces the theological significance of the centrality of the risen Christ, and clearly addresses ethics, while Hart—as McClendon notes—also addresses culture, rooted in the same mid-20^th-century concerns (especially existential anxiety) that influenced the later Tillich.  As McClendon also observes, Yoder addresses culture and the orthodox Christian faith tradition, along with his particular concern for a radical non-violent ethics that eschews just war theory, based on his interpretation of the first century mission of Jesus of Nazareth.  There is value McClendon’s model-based approach that allows him to establish “a three-stranded cord—which opens space for his notion of a theological “trajectory—in which the whole is stronger than any of its contributing parts” (p. 49), a point which neither Tillich, Hartt, or Yoder would deny.

I focus my substantive comments here by drawing out McClendon’s analysis of Tillich.  Specifically, McClendon identifies two major aspects of Tillich’s work: the emphasis he places on culture in giving shape to the critical theological issues of any given historical context through which Tillich introduces his intriguing term, “theonomy,” and his theology of “correlation,” which many interpret as the necessity to define the Christian faith through the prism of pressing contemporary, commonly viewed, secular concerns and frames of reference—not totally accurately—at the expense of a more vital appreciation of the centralities of the Christian faith.

Caveat

As a prelude, I share many of the critiques of Tillich issued by McClendon and Hartt.  Those criticisms are well taken of Tillich not relying sufficiently on the inscripturated Word of God embodied in Scripture, his relative failure to embrace the Great Tradition of Christian orthodoxy in its full Chalcedon incarnational and Trinitarian meaning, and his unique terminology through which he characterizes the human encounter with the holiness of God—new being, ultimate concern, theonomy, Kairos, as well as his symbolic understanding of God as the Unconditional (McClendon, pp. 39-40).  With this concern noted, my goal in this post is to present something of the significance of Tillich’s “apologetic” theology of culture, with the hope that it provides a valuable perspective on the Christ-culture relationship that evangelicals and other more traditional orthodox Christians can draw on.  In this, I am echoing Richard Lints’s challenge that, in the case of his writing, “conversation with postmodern theologians will stretch evangelicalism like it has never been stretched before.”  As Lints further statesin The Fabric of Theology, “there is no guarantee that evangelicalism will not break [through the encounter]—except for God’s faith to be faithful.”  As he concludes: “for a people whose collective memory includes the cross as well as the resurrection of Christ, this may well be a discomfiting comfort” (p. 256).  So, it may be for evangelicals in the risky encounter with the theology of culture of Paul Tillich.

In referencing Tillich, I draw on Paul Tillich: Theologian on the Boundaries  (http://fortresspress.com/product/paul-tillich-theologian-boundaries), which includes a comprehensive 23-page introduction by editor, Mark Kline Taylor.  For the purposes of this post, I highlight two short selections that deal, respectively, with Tillich’s “theonomous” theology of culture and his theology of correlation.  The first is titled, “Religion and Secular Culture” (pp. 119-126); the second, “The Problem of Theological Method” (pp. 126-141).

Tillich’s Notion of the Theonomous

In the first article, Tillich introduces his concept of the “theonomous” as the spirit of God which can break in within any historical moment, whether commonly viewed as secular—which, when disconnected from the holy devolves into the “autonomous” sphere—or its opposite, the formally religious, when disconnected from the immanent and transcendent power of God, which Tillich refers to as a state of “heteronomy.”  Tillich makes a distinction between theonomy, which refers to the potentiality of such breaking in of the spirit of God within any given historical (as well as personal) movement or moment, and the Kairos as “the fulfilled moment of time in which the present and the future, the holy that is given and the holy that is demanded [by the theonomous potentiality of a given moment] meet, and from whose concrete tensions the new creation proceeds in which sacred import is realized in necessary [contextual] form” (Taylor, p. 57).  That is, when the spirit of God moves from the potential to the fulfilled in any given cultural context.  This is at least what I think Tillich means.

Tillich’s theological focus emerged amidst the breakdown of the known world order in the chaos and violence that sprang forth in Europe in the cataclysmic events of World War I and its 30-year aftermath, with the rise of Nazism, the economic depression of the 1930s, WWII, the holocaust, the atomic bomb and the emergence of the Cold War. Within this cauldron, old religious certainties broke down for Tillich and the need for a new world order of God’s indwelling within history was called for, in order for the power of God to reappear in a world gone fundamentally astray, not unlike the new world order promised by Second Isaiah amidst the Babylonian onslaught that threatened to tear apart the very fabric of Israel’s identity as Yahweh’s special people.  In Tillich’s terminology, as in Israel of old, the foundations were truly shaken in the post-1918 European cultural, social, political, and religious world order. 

Initially, Tillich linked a theonomous potentiality to the underlying spirit of democratic socialist movements, which in the upheavals emerging from the Nazi onslaught and the Soviet gulags, turned demonic.  By the 1950s he pinned his hopes in the emergence of a “sacred void” (p. 124) as a counter-response to the existential angst in the mid-century age of alienation and despair.

For Tillich, “a theonomous culture expresses in its creations an ultimate concern and a transcendent meaning not as something strange but as its own spiritual ground” (p. 121), whether a social movement, a work of art, a psychological theory, a historical explanation, or even a religious movement.  The issue for Tillich was not whether the potentiality for God’s indwelling—what Old Testament theologian Walter Brueggemann refers to as “hope within history”—was formally religious or secular, but that it carried within it the living spirit of God’s immanent transcendence, which brought “new being” and new life through its manifestations and symbols in response to a given period’s “ultimate concern.”

Tillich’s theology was very much rooted in existential theology in the realization of, and working through anxiety, the consequence of human guilt, estrangement from self, others, and God in the quest for the “courage to be” through which the power of transcendence has the capacity to break forth.  As expressed by Tillich, “religion is ultimate concern; it is the state of being grasped by something unconditional, holy, absolute.  As such it gives meaning, seriousness, and depth to all culture and creates out of the cultural material a religious culture of its own” (p. 123), regardless of whether formally acknowledged as religious. 

A Few Words on Tillich’s Correlation Methodology

 Because my text on Tillich’s concept of theonomy is already overly long, I will by-pass a substantive discussion of his methodology of correlation, other than to highlight a few key points and passages. One is his distinction between kerygmatic and apologetic theology.  The first he defines in predominantly biblical or classical theological terms as commonly identified in traditional orthodox Christianity.  The second (and only the second) he links to given “prephilosohical and philosophical interpretations of reality” (p. 138), broadly speaking, through which to engage the culture. His methodology of correlation pertains to the second sphere, only; however, the terminology he draws on to describe his understanding of the presence and power of God is implicitly linked to the language forms and underlying presuppositions of existential philosophy and mid-century depth-psychology. 

McClendon is correct in critiquing Tillich’s underdeveloped utilization of the fullness and depth of the OT and NT biblical narrative, a problem that is partially offset in Tillich’s published collections of sermons, particularly, The Shaking of the Foundations.  Nonetheless, in the following passage, at least, the similarities between Tillich and Hartt are not that far apart even though the latter uses more formal traditional Christian terminology than the former.  According to Tillich:

“If the question implied in human finitude is the question of God and the idea of God is the answer to the question, then modern [mid-century] existential analysis of human finitude becomes extremely valuable for the theological treatment of God. [Viewed thusly], God becomes the correlate to human anxiety and contingency.  He becomes the symbol of a ‘transcendent courage’, in which the characteristics of finitude, as essential insecurity, loneliness, having to die, etc. are overcome. In this way the idea of God attains existential significance” (p. 140).

In short, any religious or theological response to the gospel needs to be linked to the questions and concerns people actually identify, in which a correlational methodology is designed for this expressed purpose.  For Tillich, the response is ultimately rooted in the living God, though he expends a great deal more energy than most in probing the implicit and explicit questions rooted in culture through a stimulating faith-culture dialectic.  As he puts it, “question and answer must be correlated in such a way that the religious symbol is interpreted as the adequate answer to a question implied in man’s [sic] existence” (p. 139), clearly, a high bar.  In this emphasis Tillich played a most formative role within the various contextual theologies of the second half of 20^th century into the first two decades of the 21^st century, particularly death of God theologies of the 1960s, and, in his initial search for the Kairos in democratic socialism, in the liberationist theologies of Latin America. 

Concluding Note

As McClendon notes, Tillich is a theologian of culture to be contended with, perhaps more than he acknowledges, his substantial critique notwithstanding.  A critical question remains on the extent to which thoughtful evangelicals can appropriate significant aspects of his theology of culture, while remaining thoroughly rooted in their own prevailing traditions, particularly, in movements of God within history that are not expressly religious, in the spheres of art, literature, science, philosophy, and culture, the respective spheres that McClendon addresses in Witness.  As we go forward, it will be instructive to see whether a Tillichian theology of culture can effectively be drawn upon to complement McClendon’s own cultural theology, or for that matter, the Christ-culture relationship in Henry’s Uneasy Conscience and in H. R. Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture. 

 

 

The Intellectual Influences on Social Darwinism in Theological Perspective

From a seminar on at Bethel Seminary titled, Theology in Contemporary Culture

 When I read Thomas Kuhn’s (1962) Structure of Scientific Revolutions, I gained a general familiarity of the extent to which science—whatever its illumination of the natural world—is a socially constructed discipline, in which the precepts of any given subfield are canonically derived from the fields of knowledge and the forms of investigation that underscore its legitimation.  As knowledge accrues, more or less unproblematically, a field develops in a “normal” fashion in a successive building block accumulative process. Problems emerge, but can be typically resolved within an existing frame of reference, a process Kuhn refers to as “normal” science. At critical points, a given discipline experiences anomalies sufficiently disruptive to result in a “paradigm” change of an existing model.  A given model, however long standing—such as the shift in physics from Newton’s unchanging laws of motion—gives way when the anomalies of the given paradigm are too great to subsume, and when an alternative interpretation of more comprehensive scope emerges—Einstein’s theory of relativity and quantum mechanics—that provides a more comprehensive understanding of how the laws of the universe operate.

While Kuhn dealt primarily with changes in scientific thought, his work includes discussion of the mediation of scientific thought through communities of scientific investigators and their roles in defining the realm of the canonical in the formation of accepted scientific standards and in signaling the need for paradigmatic change.  With that backdrop, I was able to process Murphy’s social construction and historical impact of Darwin’s theory of evolution and the exploration of alternative interpretations that could have emerged had the social climate for the reception of such work developed in directions different that which actually transpired in the second half of the 19^th century. 

In Ch. 3, Nancey Murphy, in Witness: Systematic Theology, Vol. 3, does a nice job in articulating the social and intellectual context in which Darwin’s work took shape and received into the European and U. S. intellectual and religious cultures, particularly in mediating the tension in the natural theologies, respectively, of William Paley and Thomas Malthus. From the former, Darwin drew out the importance of design in his inescapable anthropomorphizing theory of “natural selection” (p. 111). From the latter he drew on the notion of “survival of the fittest” as a core metaphor for depicting the competing forces in nature underlying his theory of “natural selection” based on more rather than less effective adaptation of a genetically differentiated organism to thrive in any given environment.

While not directly intended by Darwin, the underlying metaphors of his theory of evolution, in which “natural selection” emerged through a “struggle for existence and the “survival of the fittest,” gave shape to a highly competitive social ideology in which those who succeeded in the social and economic arena deserved to do so based on their natural merits.  In turn, government or charitable organizations—including the church—should not support those who failed because to do so violated the natural laws of the social universe.  19^th century intellectuals associated this form of social Darwinism with “laissez-faire liberalism,” in which the government’s role was to protect the liberty of individuals and not meddle in improving the affairs of social classes, since such efforts, being contrary to the laws of social and biological nature would only be counterproductive.  This was prevailing viewpoint that provided scientific justification to the captains of industry and their managers and an explanation for the increasingly sharp class divisions which characterized European and U. S. society in the era of the second industrialization and imperialistic expansion into Africa, Asia, and Latin and South America.  In the U. S., this era was dubbed as the Gilded Age, recently highlighted in a PBS American Experience series (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/gilded-age/).  Mark Twain and Charles Dudley dubbed this era as The Gilded Age, the title of their novel. 

Murphy points to a more benign interpretation of social Darwinism  underlying a reformist impetus that undergirded the progressive movement of the early 20^th century based on the capacity of society to evolve through intentional social policy, an orientation that led to the improvement of the conditions of humankind in support both of “liberalism and socialism” (p. 113). While “Darwin’s theory [was able to] lend itself to a multiplicity of…different directions” (p. 114), the ideology of laissez faire individualism based upon the survival of the fittest had (and continues to have) an enduring impact on U. S. and European social practices, leading to a number of malignant outcomes.  Murphy does a nice job in illustrating how such a position was embedded in the social, intellectual, religious and scientific thinking of the late 19^th century.

In the later sections of Ch. 3 Murphey also illustrates that the constrained language that gave shape to the emphasis in evolution on competition masked some of the more symbiotic and cooperative ways in which animals interacted with each other in their natural environments and draws implications as well for the evolution of human morality predisposed to such cooperative designs.  In this interpretation, “‘the most effective ‘struggle’ for life is mutual cooperation,’” (p. 117), undergirded with a degree of altruism intrinsic to animal behavior.  Throughout Section 3, Murphy provides wonderful examples of animals, mostly within a clan network within a species, cooperating with each other, sometimes at risk of an individual animal’s own narrow interests, even to the point of survival.  One sees something of this sort on many of the PBS Nature Series, very powerfully reinforced in Jane Goodall’s decades-long studies of the social life of chimpanzees.  Murphy does not want to over-romanticize this altruistic and communal focused impulse in the animal world.  Nonetheless, she makes the critically important point that even today, such an emphasis in the biological sciences is minimized in the works of Dawkins and other contemporary biologists because they are presupposed to identify a “selfish” gene underlying even the most apparently benign altruistic behavior.

In Section 4, Murphy draws out the implications of a richer view of biology for a theology rooted within the context of an “embodied selfhood,” which underlies creation theologies often underplayed in perspectives based on a radical polarity between the spirit and the flesh.  A critical point of her discussion in this section is that our moral sense of the human community has an evolutionary grounding in the animal kingdom.  That whatever one is to make of any literal interpretation of the Adam and Eve narrative, a sense of religious identity had its formation within the hominid species itself, and not just with homo sapiens.  Based on the archeological and geological evidence, “burial practices and cave drawings of Neanderthals are often taken to show religious awareness” (p. 126).  Consequently, Murphey wonders whether Neanderthals also had souls.

 Murphy does not probe into the extent to which any such reality poses fundamental challenges for traditional Christian theology, but her embodied understanding of human reality puts to rest any theology based on body/soul dualisms of any sort.  She implicitly contends that Christian theology can carry the full weight of contemporary science.  From her vantage point, it is easier to grasp the interface between science and religion when the spiritual and embodied dimensions of human understanding are more thoroughly integrated.

Murphy’s discussion is wide ranging, covering many critical areas.  Given her emphasis on evolution, it would have been interesting to see how she would have processed the arguments of intelligent design within the context of her obvious respect for and understanding of evolutionary theory.  From what I can see, she has no problem in squaring a mature, scientifically informed Christian theology with evolutionary biology, as such. For those interested in such an interface see the Biologos website https://biologos.org/.  Their discussion of biological evolution is particularly instructive https://biologos.org/blogs/archive/biological-evolution-what-makes-it-good-science-part-1

Wright and Crossan on the Historical Jesus and the Christ of Faith: What Matters and What Does Not

From a seminar at Bethel Seminar on the historical Jesus

I appreciate N.T. Wright’s long-term commitment to interpret the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith in light of each other.  His three-volume Christian Origins series is a mammoth effort to bring these two perspectives into critical and sympathetic relationship to each other (https://www.amazon.com/gp/bookseries/B010L7JS5O).  His second volume, Jesus and the Victory of God, is the most germane of these texts for our course.  Many of his views on the relationship between the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith are put in juxtaposition to those of Marcus Borg in the much shorter, The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions.  My own review of this book can be accessed here.  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06VWN5P8H/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

I empathize with Wright’s aspiration and also agree that the historical Jesus of the first century and the Christ of faith are invariably linked.  How could they not be?  That said, there are two issues I would like to raise.  The first is, in what sense might they placed in such proximity.  The other is the ultimate usefulness of the juxtaposition.  To what extent does it invariably lead to good history? To what extent does such a quest (and it can only be a quest) for the historical Jesus contribute to a strengthening of one’s Christian faith?

Both Crossan and Wright seek to place Jesus in his first century, Jewish, Mediterranean context, even as Crossan places more weight on Hellenistic influences in Galilee, while Wright places his focus in the Jewish grounding of the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth.  Through their research, both scholars give an account of the rise of Christianity as well as the specific ministry of Jesus that took place around 30 CE.  Both scholars draw on historical conjectures (i.e., hypotheses) based on their respective presuppositions about how God works in history, their best understanding of what actually happened surrounding the events of Jesus of Nazareth, and their own academic training. That is, both scholars work with a theory of the case around which they construct their version of the historical Jesus. 

I am in no position to evaluate the historical soundness of either scholar’s positions in a substantive way, even as I view Wright’s Jesus and the Victory of God a marvelously impressive study that has drawn me in a great deal.  I only know that both scholars proclaim their faith in Christ and each presents a radically different historical perspective, especially of the events surrounding the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus and the emergence of the early church. I’m not sure of the dating of the texts that make up the Q source, but they do not focus on the crucifixion and resurrection.  Clearly, the evidence (through Paul) points to an early resurrection tradition, including a burial (1 Cor 15:4), but nothing like the full-scale narratives at the end of each gospel which were constructed from 30-50 years after the events to which they refer.

In any event, neither Crossan nor Wright (nor anyone else of whom I am aware) has direct, primary material of the events surrounding the life, ministry, and death and resurrection narratives of Jesus, dating back to the early 30s. Therefore, each of these scholars has had to undertake their studies using inferential reasoning, evidence that they view as germane, and various scholarly methodologies that provide probes into this period of time.  Undoubtedly, there were eyewitnesses, which are embedded in the gospel narratives, the letters of Paul, and Acts, but accurately sifting what they may lay witness to is a perilous undertaking, and anything but self-evident even though as eye-witness accounts, if they could be effectively extracted, would be potentially fruitful in strengthening or challenging particular arguments.

When I was converted to Christianity in 1972, I encountered what I believe, was the risen Christ (the Christ revealed in and through the New Testament).  When I came to faith, I took the revelation that was given to me with radical seriousness—as my ultimate vocabulary and my ultimate concern, to use the phrase of the theologian, Paul Tillich.  That faith calling has its own unique resonance. It is different than any other source of knowledge, understanding, or conscious awareness, even as it has a relationship to various sources of cognition and emotional perceptiveness that give shape to human awareness.  The prompting of that still, small voice (i.e., the Holy Spirit) has a relationship to history; whether so-called sacred or secular.  It has a relationship to the scholarship that has given shape to the three quests under discussion in this course.  In what specific ways I am uncertain, especially in relationship of the historical personage of Jesus of Nazareth to the Trinitarian Father, Son, and Spirit, as it relates to the most fundamental question: “but who do you say I am?”  That is, except to say that there is a relationship, however much the mystery of this revelation is beyond my capacity to grasp.

If N. T. Wright is closer to the mark, then there very well may be close symmetry to the actual life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth and that portrayed in the Gospels.  If Dom Crossan is closer to the mark (and I’m not arguing that he is), then the gap between the actual life of Jesus of Nazareth and the Gospel portrayals may be more sharply divergent than many Christians are willing to allow—and then what, if that is so, or nearer to the mark than Wright?  Where do we go from here? 

The short of it is I do not accept history as having the capacity to disclose absolute truth, even though its insights are enormously important. Likewise, I do not accept a historically literal view of the Gospel narratives as similarly synonymous with the actual events they describe, without denying that they may be close.  That is, with Wright, I acknowledge that there could be a close correspondence between the passion stories as narrated in the four gospels and what actually happened surrounding the events of the early 30s.  And then again, maybe not (Crossan) and that’s the issue, and I don’t know that this is a resolvable matter. 

That given, I draw upon the entirety of the New Testament canon as a most primary source for grounding my faith in the revelation of the risen Christ, which includes, and I believe, somehow subsumes the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. In this, as I have elsewhere written, is what may be “the confluence of what is commonly referred to as natural and supernatural forces” operative in the relationship between history and the risen Christ as “more complexly intertwined than we can ever or are ever called upon to discern.”   In response to this mystery of faith in the One  who “will…give life to [our] mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in” us (Rom 8:11), I hold as an ultimate hermeneutic Paul’s proclamation that “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor. 5:19).  I believe this holds, whether Wright or Crossan is closer to the mark, in which the history of Jesus and his times, was both a lived one in real time, and one in which God, the Father was and is in the resurrected Christ reconciling the world to himself. Academic history can provide clues about this, but the revelation transcends that which can be discerned through naturalistic forms of human knowledge.  We see, but only so through a glass darkly, and that is a wonder in itself.