These different approaches to sources lead to a different handling of the other key difference between Borg and Wright, their handling of story. There are two important aspects to story in relation to Jesus; the stories that we tell about him and the story that he told himself. The examples given earlier of the “many faces” of Jesus within twentieth century art are evidence of the multiplicity of stories currently told about Jesus.
In many respects, it is the quest for the Historical Jesus that has opened up the possibility of this multiplicity. This is ironic because the quest was an attempt to pin down the person of Jesus one way or the other. To demonstrate that the historical figure of Jesus either was just a man or was the Son of God as orthodox Christian belief states. Instead, far from establishing truth, it has led to pluralism of personal opinion about Jesus. As with all pluralism, the question is raised, are all stories/beliefs relative or is there a shared understanding to be gained? Both Wright and Borg would seem to argue for the latter. Wright argues for the centrality of the story that Jesus told, and within which he saw himself, as the common core to which we can turn. Borg, despite its ironic result, argues for identification of the actual words of Jesus through source criticism.
For Wright, human life can be seen “as grounded in and constituted by the implicit or explicit stories which humans tell themselves and one another”. Stories are “one key element within the total construction of a worldview”. Worldviews are a vital part of the historical hypothesis, both the worldview of the society/culture and the mindset of the individual within that culture. In searching for the aims of Jesus, Wright argues, “we are looking for a particular mindset within a particular worldview, quite possibly challenging that worldview in some ways, but with intentions that make sense in relation to it”. He sets Jesus and his mindset within the story of the coming kingdom of Israel’s God arguing that “the crucial element in his prophetic activity was the story, both implicit and explicit, that he was acting out”. This was “Israel’s story reaching its climax”.
Borg may accept the approach but not its conclusion. His reconstruction of Jesus’ mindset is built from a smaller pool of material than that of Wright. One effect of this approach is to divorce Jesus from much of the Gospel materials that explicitly link him to Israel’s meta-narrative, the story of salvation history. Borg views material from the Gospels that either makes an explicit reference to an Old Testament passage or prophecy, or material that is constructed to echo an Old Testament story, as history metaphorised. In this way, Borg isolates the historical Jesus from a key element in his context.
As well as taking this significant step away from the first-century context, Borg also sets the historical Jesus in the context of another story - the story of the history of religions. Aspects of this story could be told in terms of the first-century Jewish context. This would involve debates about syncretism, worship of idols and purity codes, but this is not the story that Borg tells. Instead Borg’s storybook is William James’ 1902 book, The Varieties of Religious Experience. The story within which Borg sets the historical Jesus is not a first-century one at all instead, it is a twentieth century history of religious experience. The categories that Borg uses to describe the historical Jesus are not first-century Jewish categories that Jesus and his contemporaries would have recognised and used. Instead, they are twentieth century categories used in academic cross-cultural religious studies.
In choosing, through his methodology, not to engage with Israel’s meta-narrative Borg loses not just valuable data for his hypothesis but two important dimensions of faith - revelation and relationship. Salvation history is where God communicates and interacts with human beings. The quest for the historical Jesus, like the history of religions, has a human starting point and is predicated on the basis of what is knowable through reason and empiricism. Salvation history, however, has a divine starting point and is predicated on the basis of God’s revelation of himself.
It is not a question of one being right and the other wrong, an either/or. That would be dualistic. It is a question of both/and. Without salvation history to provide its context, the quest for the historical Jesus is open to personal bias and restricted meanings. Without the kind of grounding in historical, cultural and psychological data that the quest for the historical Jesus has attempted to provide, salvation history exists solely as an internal hermeneutic and cannot effectively be communicated to those outside the Church.
We stand at a point in the history of Christianity where we no longer have to have the either/or, of saying either that it is all literally true or that none of it is literally true. We stand at a point in time where we can combine natural theology and revelation and where historical re-construction can be set within the meta-narrative of God’s acts in history. To do this, we need to examine all the source data with all the tools available, within the over-arching context of the story of God’s self-revelation within history. Only then will the radical Jesus emerge. The Jesus who “used the language of his time to give the old war cries a totally new and broader content”. The Jesus of God’s narrative, not the Jesus of our personal preferences.
The story that we tell about Jesus and the way in which we tell that story is vital because it is not simply about a theoretical set of our beliefs but about the story within which we will live out our lives. The story that Jesus told and within which he lived has to operate for us, as Christians, as a regulative narrative. We cannot do that if we extract Jesus from his context within the story of God’s dealings with the world in history through Israel (both the Jewish people and the Church). This is why Wright’s emphasis on the importance of faith knowledge in relationship with historical knowledge is spot on and to be defended against the arguments of Borg.
In Sophie’s World, the philosopher Alberto Knox hopes that Sophie’s religion teacher will “succeed in showing what a exceptional man Jesus was”. Knox’s letter continues:
“With Jesus we see how dangerous it can be to demand unconditional brotherly love and unconditional forgiveness. Even in the world of today we can see how mighty powers can come apart at the seams when confronted with simple demands for peace, love, food for the poor, and amnesty for enemies of the state.”
It is easy, in this debate over sources and story, historical knowledge and faith knowledge, understanding Jesus in context and Jesus’ self-understanding, to lose sight of the point that, in knowing not just the meaning of Jesus but the man himself, “Jesus [will] inspire us to prolong the logic of his own ministry in an imaginative and creative way amid changed historical circumstances." We must tell and act out our story within the story that Jesus told and lived, as opposed to telling the story of Jesus from within our story, our understanding and our sources.
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Gavin Bryars - Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet.
Showing posts with label borg. Show all posts
Showing posts with label borg. Show all posts
Friday, 30 January 2009
Sunday, 25 January 2009
The meaning of Jesus (4)
Interestingly, in their discussion of sources both Wright and Borg separate knowledge from history and knowledge from faith. Indeed, Borg is worried by Wright’s use of the term ‘faith’ at all and prefers to use the phrase ‘metahistorical factors’. By this he means initial presuppositions which, while they have a logical basis and can be evidenced up to a point, cannot be conclusively proved but do govern the researcher’s response to the historical data. Belief in God is one metahistorical factor. The separation between historical knowledge and faith (however labelled!) knowledge serves to suggest that historical knowledge is more objective and evidenced. This is still the popular view of knowledge that derives from scientific process and both maintain this view with their distinction. Both make a point of emphasising the extent to which non-historical factors influence historical knowledge, nevertheless both do make the distinction.
What this distinction masks is the extent to which historical knowledge (as with scientific knowledge) is faith knowledge. Philip Sherrard has given forceful expression to this view:
“Every thought, every observation, every judgement, every description whether of the modern scientist or of anyone else is soaked in a priori preconceived built-in value-judgements, assumptions and dogmas at least as rigid, if not more rigid (because they are so often unconsciously embraced) than those of any explicitly religious system. The very nature of human thought is such that it cannot operate independently of value-judgements, assumptions and dogmas. Even the assertion that it can constitutes a value-judgement and implies a whole philosophy, whether we are aware of it or not.”
Lesslie Newbigin highlights the work of Michael Polyani who argues that “the time has come for a shift in the balance between faith and doubt in the whole enterprise of understanding, a recognition that doubt – though always an essential ingredient – is always secondary and that faith is fundamental. His book [Personal Knowledge, 1958] is a massive attempt to demonstrate that all knowledge of reality rests upon faith commitments which cannot be demonstrated but are held by communities whose “conviviality” is a necessary factor in the enterprise of knowing”. Faith cannot be bracketed out of the historical equation in the way that Borg wants. It is fundamental to human knowing and needs to be recognised up front.
This has clear implications for Borg’s approach to the sources as it emphasises the extent to which his methodology depends on presuppositions. Each element of his methodology could be reversed or be used to extract a different understanding from the data. So, for example, a ‘late’ source could be a more accurate report of Jesus’ actual words than an ‘early’ source or multiple attestation could confirm agreement about an interpretation and not be a sign of historical factuality. No process for sifting historical information is objective, all represent interpretation of history.
Borg’s methodology also betrays a lack of understanding of literary and linguistic process. He argues that “Metaphorical language is intrinsically nonliteral”. This is true, but inadequate. Metaphorical language is nonliteral but the object the metaphor relates to can be literal. One strand of literary criticism, for example, focuses on the extent to which biographical data features in an author’s fictional work. This strand recognises the extent to which fictional material can contain a historically factual event. As a creative writer, I can recognise the way in which all historical factual events recorded in writing (whether fictional or not) are altered in the process. All writers select, emphasise and metaphorise in recording or re-creating historically factual events. This is precisely what we should expect to find when examining any document of any era. In addition, metaphor can focus on other aspects of the events (i.e. emotional or relational) rather than the historically factual aspects. None of this invalidates the reality of the historically factual event that is being re-presented or that underlies the re-presentation, even when this is set in an entirely fictional context. Borg’s inclination, however, is to assume that all metaphorical narratives in the Gospels are not historically factual and contain only metaphorical truth.
Borg’s methodology risks the bracketing out of valid evidence and the misinterpretation of evidence that it retains. Jesus portraits produced by those advocating the quest for the historical Jesus have often been ones in which he is a vastly reduced figure from that found in the orthodox tradition, and often accord with the authors’ other interests.
Borg’s methodology derives from the Enlightenment thinking that produced modernism. As such it displays both modernism’s belief in the objectivity of its methods and the tendency towards deconstruction and specialisation that is a key characteristic. While Borg personally rejects some of the restrictions of modernist thought, his methodology exhibits the dualism inherent in modernism. Newbigin has noted modernism’s separation of facts from values and it’s assignation of facts to a public sphere of objectively verifiable data and faith to a private sphere of personal values. Borg’s acceptance of a split between the Jesus of History and the Christ of Faith is a sign of the extent to which his methodology derives from modernism's dualism.
The alternative, taken by Wright, is to see a continuity between the pre-Easter and post-Easter Jesus and to include all the evidence within the hypothesis before making distinctions between data. Borg thinks that source criticism and redaction criticism, do not allow us to state that Jesus understood himself to be the Messiah. He argues that Wright is setting aside two hundred years of scholarship on the sources but this alternative does not set aside source criticism. Rather, use is made of it at a different point in the process of forming an hypothesis. Instead of it being fundamental to the process, it is used as one of many tools necessary for the examination of all the evidence. This wider ranging toolkit includes tools that Scot McKnight thinks he and fellow historians (such as Borg and Wright) have put to one side, such as: etymology; linguistics; hermeneutics; and narrative. Having used these tools which, taken together, point towards Jesus understanding himself to be the Messiah, the arguments that Jesus did in word and action claim to be the Messiah look less unlikely. Using the historico-critical approach is not an argument for removing all other tools from the toolkit. That this is sometimes done is not a sign of historical rigorism but of personal agendas.
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Violent Femmes - Jesus Walking On Water.
What this distinction masks is the extent to which historical knowledge (as with scientific knowledge) is faith knowledge. Philip Sherrard has given forceful expression to this view:
“Every thought, every observation, every judgement, every description whether of the modern scientist or of anyone else is soaked in a priori preconceived built-in value-judgements, assumptions and dogmas at least as rigid, if not more rigid (because they are so often unconsciously embraced) than those of any explicitly religious system. The very nature of human thought is such that it cannot operate independently of value-judgements, assumptions and dogmas. Even the assertion that it can constitutes a value-judgement and implies a whole philosophy, whether we are aware of it or not.”
Lesslie Newbigin highlights the work of Michael Polyani who argues that “the time has come for a shift in the balance between faith and doubt in the whole enterprise of understanding, a recognition that doubt – though always an essential ingredient – is always secondary and that faith is fundamental. His book [Personal Knowledge, 1958] is a massive attempt to demonstrate that all knowledge of reality rests upon faith commitments which cannot be demonstrated but are held by communities whose “conviviality” is a necessary factor in the enterprise of knowing”. Faith cannot be bracketed out of the historical equation in the way that Borg wants. It is fundamental to human knowing and needs to be recognised up front.
This has clear implications for Borg’s approach to the sources as it emphasises the extent to which his methodology depends on presuppositions. Each element of his methodology could be reversed or be used to extract a different understanding from the data. So, for example, a ‘late’ source could be a more accurate report of Jesus’ actual words than an ‘early’ source or multiple attestation could confirm agreement about an interpretation and not be a sign of historical factuality. No process for sifting historical information is objective, all represent interpretation of history.
Borg’s methodology also betrays a lack of understanding of literary and linguistic process. He argues that “Metaphorical language is intrinsically nonliteral”. This is true, but inadequate. Metaphorical language is nonliteral but the object the metaphor relates to can be literal. One strand of literary criticism, for example, focuses on the extent to which biographical data features in an author’s fictional work. This strand recognises the extent to which fictional material can contain a historically factual event. As a creative writer, I can recognise the way in which all historical factual events recorded in writing (whether fictional or not) are altered in the process. All writers select, emphasise and metaphorise in recording or re-creating historically factual events. This is precisely what we should expect to find when examining any document of any era. In addition, metaphor can focus on other aspects of the events (i.e. emotional or relational) rather than the historically factual aspects. None of this invalidates the reality of the historically factual event that is being re-presented or that underlies the re-presentation, even when this is set in an entirely fictional context. Borg’s inclination, however, is to assume that all metaphorical narratives in the Gospels are not historically factual and contain only metaphorical truth.
Borg’s methodology risks the bracketing out of valid evidence and the misinterpretation of evidence that it retains. Jesus portraits produced by those advocating the quest for the historical Jesus have often been ones in which he is a vastly reduced figure from that found in the orthodox tradition, and often accord with the authors’ other interests.
Borg’s methodology derives from the Enlightenment thinking that produced modernism. As such it displays both modernism’s belief in the objectivity of its methods and the tendency towards deconstruction and specialisation that is a key characteristic. While Borg personally rejects some of the restrictions of modernist thought, his methodology exhibits the dualism inherent in modernism. Newbigin has noted modernism’s separation of facts from values and it’s assignation of facts to a public sphere of objectively verifiable data and faith to a private sphere of personal values. Borg’s acceptance of a split between the Jesus of History and the Christ of Faith is a sign of the extent to which his methodology derives from modernism's dualism.
The alternative, taken by Wright, is to see a continuity between the pre-Easter and post-Easter Jesus and to include all the evidence within the hypothesis before making distinctions between data. Borg thinks that source criticism and redaction criticism, do not allow us to state that Jesus understood himself to be the Messiah. He argues that Wright is setting aside two hundred years of scholarship on the sources but this alternative does not set aside source criticism. Rather, use is made of it at a different point in the process of forming an hypothesis. Instead of it being fundamental to the process, it is used as one of many tools necessary for the examination of all the evidence. This wider ranging toolkit includes tools that Scot McKnight thinks he and fellow historians (such as Borg and Wright) have put to one side, such as: etymology; linguistics; hermeneutics; and narrative. Having used these tools which, taken together, point towards Jesus understanding himself to be the Messiah, the arguments that Jesus did in word and action claim to be the Messiah look less unlikely. Using the historico-critical approach is not an argument for removing all other tools from the toolkit. That this is sometimes done is not a sign of historical rigorism but of personal agendas.
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Violent Femmes - Jesus Walking On Water.
Wednesday, 21 January 2009
The meaning of Jesus (3)
Borg and Wright begin by debating how and how much we can know about Jesus. Their arguments focus on what sources we can use and the way in which it is legitimate to use them. This debate is foundational to discussion about Jesus. Decisions made here either open up or close off sections of the New Testament as canonically received and radically alter what can confidently be said about Jesus historically. Borg and Wright make different decisions and the differing amounts of New Testament data drawn on, as a result, affect the Jesus portraits they paint. One significant difference in their respective portraits is that of Jesus’ self-understanding.
Wright suggests that the different types of knowledge of Jesus gained through history and faith, need to be brought together. In the historical field, his argument is that as much material as possible should be brought into play without preconception. From examination of this material a hypothesis is developed. This is tested against the criteria “of getting in the data, doing so with appropriate simplicity, and shedding light on other areas of research”. In relation to Jesus’ self-understanding, Wright’s hypothesis is that Jesus’ beliefs were those of a first-century Jew i.e. he was “committed to the coming kingdom of Israel’s god”. However, Jesus differed from most first-century Jews in believing that the kingdom of Israel’s God was “coming in and through his own work”. Examining all of Jesus’ implicit and explicit statements, stories and acts in the context of first-century Israel leads to this hypothesis.
If the hypothesis stands up historically, then it also needs to be tested against the knowledge that comes by faith. Wright believes that, as Christians, we are in a continuing relationship with the person of Jesus. The test is then, to what extent does the person that emerges from the hypothesis accord with the person known through faith.
Wright supports this approach on the basis that:
Wright suggests that the different types of knowledge of Jesus gained through history and faith, need to be brought together. In the historical field, his argument is that as much material as possible should be brought into play without preconception. From examination of this material a hypothesis is developed. This is tested against the criteria “of getting in the data, doing so with appropriate simplicity, and shedding light on other areas of research”. In relation to Jesus’ self-understanding, Wright’s hypothesis is that Jesus’ beliefs were those of a first-century Jew i.e. he was “committed to the coming kingdom of Israel’s god”. However, Jesus differed from most first-century Jews in believing that the kingdom of Israel’s God was “coming in and through his own work”. Examining all of Jesus’ implicit and explicit statements, stories and acts in the context of first-century Israel leads to this hypothesis.
If the hypothesis stands up historically, then it also needs to be tested against the knowledge that comes by faith. Wright believes that, as Christians, we are in a continuing relationship with the person of Jesus. The test is then, to what extent does the person that emerges from the hypothesis accord with the person known through faith.
Wright supports this approach on the basis that:
- it protects against undue distortion of the hypothesis by personal preconceptions. The inclusion of all the available data introduces more puzzles or alternative theories into the process. The difficulty of developing a hypothesis that genuinely addresses these issues is likely to ensure that easy conclusions on the basis of preconceptions are not made. Developing a hypothesis that includes all the evidence also means that problems cannot be solved in advance by bracketing out data on the basis of pre-determined assumptions;
- it applies the method of hypothesis and verification that is considered valid within scientific research; and
- bringing the two fields of knowledge together counters the split world of Enlightenment thought in a way that is consistent with the unity of Biblical thought.
Borg cannot accept this position. He argues that Wright is “setting aside two hundred years of scholarly work on the sources” in arguing for the inclusion of all the data, and risking the incorporation of data that is not evidence. He claims to be worried by Wright’s use of faith knowledge but also argues that truth cannot be reduced to factuality and views modernity as narrow for holding this to be the case.
Borg views many of the Gospel stories as history metaphorised. That is, these stories are not historically factual reports but, as metaphors, they tell do us what Jesus is like, and this information is true. Therefore, it is not essential for the gospel stories to be grounded in particular historical events for them to be true. Nor is it essential whether or not Jesus thought he was the Messiah. For Borg, in his context of higher education and cross-cultural studies, this understanding of the gospel materials represents an intellectually credible approach to which his audience can relate. Borg argues that the “older tradition of Christianity has ceased to be compelling for millions of people … They find that if they must take the Bible literally, they cannot take it at all”.
Borg argues that the Gospels require us to read them in this way. They are part of a developing tradition about Jesus within the early church and contain early and late material, which can be identified and separated. Early material gets us closer to the historically factual words and actions of Jesus. Early materials found in more than one source are more reliable still. Using this core of reliable materials, a hypothesis can be built against which the remaining material can be sifted. Later material or material from one source can only be considered as historically factual if it fits the hypothesis. All other material must be viewed as history metaphorised.
Wright argues against this approach in two main ways. First, it doesn’t work. There is no unanimity among scholars about which material is reliable. Proponents of this approach produce very different portraits precisely because they do not agree which material is to be included in the controlling hypothesis. Second, the approach makes assumptions about the outcome of the investigation before considering any of the evidence. The assumption is made that much of the material is later than Jesus’ lifetime and an unnecessary methodology (which doesn’t work) created to identify and extract these materials from the equation.
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Johnny Cash - Personal Jesus.
Monday, 19 January 2009
The meaning of Jesus (2)
In 1973 Larry Norman released The Outlaw, a song summarising fashionable twentieth century portraits of Jesus. These portraits - Outlaw, Poet, Sorcerer, and Politician – are, essentially, four separate stories. Different aspects of Jesus’ character, sayings and actions are selected and presented from four different narrative perspectives. The four portraits or stories have, therefore, significant differences. Norman rejects all four as partial and concludes:
“some say he was the son of god a man above all men
but he came to be a servant and to set us free from sin
and that’s who i believe he was cause that’s who i believe
and i think we should get ready cause it’s time for us to leave.”
The twentieth century has been unlike other historical ages in producing a multiplicity of images and stories of Jesus, images and stories which are often a complete reversal of the orthodoxy endorsed by Norman.
Peggy Rosenthal described this phenomenon well when she wrote the following about the ways in which poets have described Christ over the centuries:
“Reviewing how the figure of Jesus has looked to twenty centuries of poets is like watching the Gospels’ central character change costume and reinterpret his part on the changing stage of successive cultures’ construction of life’s meaning. First we see a glorious Christ the King who is all at once every good figure, from Cultivator to protective Wing to celestial Milk out-pressed from a young bride’s fragrant breasts. Then the fourth-century East produces the mind-bending figure of the Creator tucking himself into his creature’s womb, while the West shows us the Virgilian Shepherd moving through sylvan mazes to recover his lost sheep. The Middle Ages develop the typological figure who redeems every detail of past history, culminating in a Christ as Celestial Center from whom all meaning radiates through an allegorical system of correspondences, over a stage swelled to cosmic size. With the Renaissance and the Reformation, the figure of Jesus comes down to earth, indeed into each human being’s individual core, where meaning is now seen to reside. On the stage of the individual heart, the Baroque drama of anguished love between God and the unworthy human lover is played out. Jesus’ own human feelings take center stage for Romantic poets; without losing his divinity, Jesus becomes a Romantic hero, sadly alienated from society but moved by a sympathetic nature. With modernism, Jesus is no longer God but merely human, a shrunken yellowed body hanging purposelessly on a dim stage, where the light of trust in any transcendent meaning has gone out.
But along with this diminished figure, the twentieth century produces many other figures of Jesus as well, so that the century’s stage shows us simultaneously a variety of different characters, some playing off each other, some acting in worlds of their own – indeed as in a postmodern drama. So we see one Jesus at the very edge of the stage, moved to the margins of his own story, pondered by poets suspicious that he or anything else can be known. Elsewhere Jesus is actually pushed offstage altogether, though his place can be taken by a humanity now itself possessing divine creative potential. Or, absent, Jesus can be searched for, sensed, or in an unexpected spot suddenly seen. In other places, Jesus is not only present but is an imposing archetypal figure: as political symbol of a nation’s sacrificial suffering or of its resurrecting power, he can appear dressed as the divinity of another religion or be made to join the native dance in one spot and to contend against native gods in another …
The drama goes on. Poets, whose vocation it is to give voice to their culture’s deepest perceptions, show no signs of losing interest in the challenge posed by the Gospels’ central figure.”
This explosion of imagery and narrative has resulted from a loosening of Biblical bonds brought about by the quest for the historical Jesus. By questioning whether the Jesus portraits painted by the Church were accurate representations of the historical Jesus, artists and writers were released to re-create Jesus in a thousand different images or stories (often in their own or their cultures’ image). The quests, and the resultant reaction, produced a divide between the Jesus of History and the Christ of Faith, opening up the possibility that the Jesus of History could be the reverse of the Christ of Faith. Equally simplistic, came the fundamentalist reaction seen in The Outlaw: “that’s who I believe he was cause that’s who I believe”.
This opposed opinion and the issues emerging from it, form the background against which Wright and Borg write. In this context, they are to be applauded for conducting a debate and producing a book, in a spirit of mutual respect and understanding while still clearly staking out alternative positions. Underpinning their positions are two key areas – sources and story - where decisions are made which significantly alter the Jesus portraits drawn.
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Larry Norman - The Outlaw.
“some say he was the son of god a man above all men
but he came to be a servant and to set us free from sin
and that’s who i believe he was cause that’s who i believe
and i think we should get ready cause it’s time for us to leave.”
The twentieth century has been unlike other historical ages in producing a multiplicity of images and stories of Jesus, images and stories which are often a complete reversal of the orthodoxy endorsed by Norman.
Peggy Rosenthal described this phenomenon well when she wrote the following about the ways in which poets have described Christ over the centuries:
“Reviewing how the figure of Jesus has looked to twenty centuries of poets is like watching the Gospels’ central character change costume and reinterpret his part on the changing stage of successive cultures’ construction of life’s meaning. First we see a glorious Christ the King who is all at once every good figure, from Cultivator to protective Wing to celestial Milk out-pressed from a young bride’s fragrant breasts. Then the fourth-century East produces the mind-bending figure of the Creator tucking himself into his creature’s womb, while the West shows us the Virgilian Shepherd moving through sylvan mazes to recover his lost sheep. The Middle Ages develop the typological figure who redeems every detail of past history, culminating in a Christ as Celestial Center from whom all meaning radiates through an allegorical system of correspondences, over a stage swelled to cosmic size. With the Renaissance and the Reformation, the figure of Jesus comes down to earth, indeed into each human being’s individual core, where meaning is now seen to reside. On the stage of the individual heart, the Baroque drama of anguished love between God and the unworthy human lover is played out. Jesus’ own human feelings take center stage for Romantic poets; without losing his divinity, Jesus becomes a Romantic hero, sadly alienated from society but moved by a sympathetic nature. With modernism, Jesus is no longer God but merely human, a shrunken yellowed body hanging purposelessly on a dim stage, where the light of trust in any transcendent meaning has gone out.
But along with this diminished figure, the twentieth century produces many other figures of Jesus as well, so that the century’s stage shows us simultaneously a variety of different characters, some playing off each other, some acting in worlds of their own – indeed as in a postmodern drama. So we see one Jesus at the very edge of the stage, moved to the margins of his own story, pondered by poets suspicious that he or anything else can be known. Elsewhere Jesus is actually pushed offstage altogether, though his place can be taken by a humanity now itself possessing divine creative potential. Or, absent, Jesus can be searched for, sensed, or in an unexpected spot suddenly seen. In other places, Jesus is not only present but is an imposing archetypal figure: as political symbol of a nation’s sacrificial suffering or of its resurrecting power, he can appear dressed as the divinity of another religion or be made to join the native dance in one spot and to contend against native gods in another …
The drama goes on. Poets, whose vocation it is to give voice to their culture’s deepest perceptions, show no signs of losing interest in the challenge posed by the Gospels’ central figure.”
This explosion of imagery and narrative has resulted from a loosening of Biblical bonds brought about by the quest for the historical Jesus. By questioning whether the Jesus portraits painted by the Church were accurate representations of the historical Jesus, artists and writers were released to re-create Jesus in a thousand different images or stories (often in their own or their cultures’ image). The quests, and the resultant reaction, produced a divide between the Jesus of History and the Christ of Faith, opening up the possibility that the Jesus of History could be the reverse of the Christ of Faith. Equally simplistic, came the fundamentalist reaction seen in The Outlaw: “that’s who I believe he was cause that’s who I believe”.
This opposed opinion and the issues emerging from it, form the background against which Wright and Borg write. In this context, they are to be applauded for conducting a debate and producing a book, in a spirit of mutual respect and understanding while still clearly staking out alternative positions. Underpinning their positions are two key areas – sources and story - where decisions are made which significantly alter the Jesus portraits drawn.
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Larry Norman - The Outlaw.
Saturday, 17 January 2009
The meaning of Jesus (1)
Marcus Borg and Tom Wright, together with their mentor George Caird, represent an important strand in thinking about the Historical Jesus. Their national and political approaches criticise earlier schools of thought such as: the eschatological orientation of Johannes Weiss and Albert Schweitzer; the Protestant liberalism of Adolf von Harnack and his followers; and the German existentialism of Rudolf Bultmann, Günther Bornkamm and Hans Conzelmann. Their jointly authored book, The meaning of Jesus, is a readable and stimulating introduction to their shared approach and to the wider debate.
Despite their commonalities, Borg and Wright take sufficiently different stances for there to be a genuine debate covering many of the issues raised by the search for the historical Jesus. Their differences arise from their methods, personal interests, work contexts and faith journeys. Borg divides the Gospel materials into history remembered and history metaphorised while Wright argues for the basic factuality of the Gospels. Wright approaches the historical materials on the basis of hypothesis and verification: the most satisfactory hypothesis being the one that incorporates the most data. Borg operates on the basis of source criticism, constructing his hypothesis from the sources considered to be earliest. Borg teaches comparative religion in secular institutions and so his portrait of Jesus is painted in language that is not exclusively Christian and emphasises features common to cross-cultural religious experience. Wright is a Church of England Bishop with a fascination for first-century Judaism so, in describing Jesus uses Judeo-Christian terminology and sets him emphatically within his context. Borg’s faith journey has involved rejection first of an undiscriminating Christianity that says it is all true, then of a narrow modernism that says none of it is literally true, so it is not true at all. His approach, therefore, is concerned to make intellectual distinctions between literal and metaphorical truth. Wright’s faith journey, however, has seen his historical debate contained within a continuing, though at times troubling, walk with God. His approach, therefore, is inclusive of that knowledge which comes through relationship.
One of the most fascinating aspects of the book is their unresolved debate with post-modernism and relativism. Both are at pains to flag up the provisional nature of the conclusions that they draw, influenced, as they understand themselves to be, by the factors noted above. Yet neither can abandon the belief that objective truth can be attained through the application of scientific methodology to historical evidence.
That their debate with post-modernism is unresolved and that they clearly believe in the validity of the quest for the historical Jesus means that they do not fully engage with other approaches to the Gospels. Scot McKnight made a telling comment when he said that: “Historical Jesus study today is actually the place many of us who were once Gospel students belong, since we were more often than not concerned with history than with the literary and narrative shapes.”
Borg and Wright, while the comparison of their differing perceptions does genuinely open up debate, do not engage in this book with other approaches to the Gospels such as the literary and narrative approaches that McKnight mentions. Interpretive thinking often occurs within specialist and developmental streams and, as a result, individual interpreters do not engage fully with the range of insights available across the specialisms and within less contemporary aspects of the interpretive tradition.
The result is that the title of their book cannot be fully accurate. ‘The Meaning of Jesus’ cannot be fully identified through the historical approach alone or by the political and national approach that Borg and Wright share or through their particular enthusiasms. The meaning of Jesus will only become fully apparent through a broader, less partisan endeavour.
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Steve Taylor - Jesus Is For Losers.
Despite their commonalities, Borg and Wright take sufficiently different stances for there to be a genuine debate covering many of the issues raised by the search for the historical Jesus. Their differences arise from their methods, personal interests, work contexts and faith journeys. Borg divides the Gospel materials into history remembered and history metaphorised while Wright argues for the basic factuality of the Gospels. Wright approaches the historical materials on the basis of hypothesis and verification: the most satisfactory hypothesis being the one that incorporates the most data. Borg operates on the basis of source criticism, constructing his hypothesis from the sources considered to be earliest. Borg teaches comparative religion in secular institutions and so his portrait of Jesus is painted in language that is not exclusively Christian and emphasises features common to cross-cultural religious experience. Wright is a Church of England Bishop with a fascination for first-century Judaism so, in describing Jesus uses Judeo-Christian terminology and sets him emphatically within his context. Borg’s faith journey has involved rejection first of an undiscriminating Christianity that says it is all true, then of a narrow modernism that says none of it is literally true, so it is not true at all. His approach, therefore, is concerned to make intellectual distinctions between literal and metaphorical truth. Wright’s faith journey, however, has seen his historical debate contained within a continuing, though at times troubling, walk with God. His approach, therefore, is inclusive of that knowledge which comes through relationship.
One of the most fascinating aspects of the book is their unresolved debate with post-modernism and relativism. Both are at pains to flag up the provisional nature of the conclusions that they draw, influenced, as they understand themselves to be, by the factors noted above. Yet neither can abandon the belief that objective truth can be attained through the application of scientific methodology to historical evidence.
That their debate with post-modernism is unresolved and that they clearly believe in the validity of the quest for the historical Jesus means that they do not fully engage with other approaches to the Gospels. Scot McKnight made a telling comment when he said that: “Historical Jesus study today is actually the place many of us who were once Gospel students belong, since we were more often than not concerned with history than with the literary and narrative shapes.”
Borg and Wright, while the comparison of their differing perceptions does genuinely open up debate, do not engage in this book with other approaches to the Gospels such as the literary and narrative approaches that McKnight mentions. Interpretive thinking often occurs within specialist and developmental streams and, as a result, individual interpreters do not engage fully with the range of insights available across the specialisms and within less contemporary aspects of the interpretive tradition.
The result is that the title of their book cannot be fully accurate. ‘The Meaning of Jesus’ cannot be fully identified through the historical approach alone or by the political and national approach that Borg and Wright share or through their particular enthusiasms. The meaning of Jesus will only become fully apparent through a broader, less partisan endeavour.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Taylor - Jesus Is For Losers.
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