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.