Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

Obviously the authors of this process were concrete persons, often even clergy or others commissioned by the church in some fashion. But they were supported by all those among the people of God who believed with their whole being and who for that very reason possessed the gift of discernment. Without the faith instinct of the many, without the sensus fidelium, the process of coming-to-be of the New Testament as the final, concluding book of the Bible would have been impossible. What would have happened without this ultimate critical process of discernment is evident in the apocrypha, which over long stretches are bizarre, confused, and unhistorical. A constant rereading of the immense apocryphal Jesus literature from the ancient church is urgently needed, because only that can show us how unique and precious are the gospels of the New Testament canon.

Faith as Recognition

What does all that mean for a book about Jesus? It shows that for a scholar who works theologically it cannot be a question of reconstructing a “historical Jesus” against the New Testament and its interpretation of the figure of Jesus. Any theologian who does that exalts herself or himself above the first witnesses and the church and thus abandons any chance of understanding Jesus.

Of course that does not mean that no scholar who works purely in the history of religions may study Jesus. Nor does it mean that such a scholar could not say a great deal about Jesus that is illuminating. But if a scholar in the field of the history of religion uses her or his methods cleanly, it will be clear at some point that she or he has reached a limit. That limit, that boundary, runs precisely where the interpretation of Jesus in faith begins. Why?

Faith always includes knowledge; it includes recognition. Certainly this is not the kind of knowledge or recognition that can make the thing it considers an “object,” standing over against it in distanced fashion and analyzing it impartially. In the natural sciences that kind of knowledge is fundamental and indeed indispensable. But there is another kind of human knowledge that occurs only in personal encounter. It responds to the other, surrenders itself to the other, and adopts the other’s view of reality. In theology this kind of knowledge is called “faith.”

Faith is true knowledge, true recognition, but a recognition of a different kind from that which analyzes, that is, literally, “dissolves.” Encountering another as a person definitely does not mean “dissolving” that person, taking him or her apart psychologically and thus seizing power over the other, but seeing the other in her or his difference, even strangeness. Whoever wants to truly recognize another as a person must expect to encounter the unexpected and be led into a new world of which one previously had no idea—a world whose strangeness fascinates but also frightens.

The student of religions who uses refined methods and so approaches Jesus “critically” will at some time arrive at a point at which she or he recognizes “critically” that one must abandon the usual standards of criticism and surrender to the different nature of this so very different person in order to do him justice.

Precisely here lies the point, or the boundary, where historical criticism also arrives by itself, where it must surrender its normal standards. It is only a very limited sector within the possibilities of human knowledge. The most important things in human life, such as affection, love, fidelity, and devotion, are based on a different kind of knowledge. As soon as historical criticism arrives at this boundary and honestly admits it, it points beyond itself. And that is, in fact, its greatest and loveliest possibility. It is precisely at this point that it is most appropriate.

So a purely historical approach to Jesus, or one undertaken entirely in terms of the study of religions, is possible. But it has its limitations. This book gratefully makes use of the primarily historical studies of many biblical scholars. Beyond that, it has not the least hesitation in critically reconstructing the original meaning of Jesus’ words and parables. A good deal of this book will be reconstruction. But I am convinced that in doing so I have no need to proceed against the knowledge of Jesus that belonged to the first witnesses or against the faith in Christ of the early communities.

Tensions within the Jesus Tradition