Paul Zahl Article on The Historical Jesus
The question of who Jesus was in world history and what he was really like can be unnerving for Christians. What if the view we have of him, as all-compassionate, universally and inclusively loving, embracing of every single sort of sufferer, the epitome of kindness and gentleness, were not a true one? What if the real Jesus, the "historical Jesus"-to use the common phrase-were different from the Christ of Tiny Tim and Mary Magdalene and "Away in a Manger," that essentially Christian picture of magnitude in meekness and power in weakness? What if the Jesus who really lived were different from the Christ-Child we love and revere? Even Saddam Hussein invoked Christ's all-compassionate character the day after he was condemned to death in Baghdad. And the president of Iran has called on President Bush to get in touch with the nonviolent and gentle Jesus of the New Testament. This is the Jesus "whom the world has gone after" (John 12:19), whose perfect mercy is the core of Christianity.Read the whole article here.
If you are at all interested in the Jesus Seminar, New Perspective on Paul, Biblical Theology, Rudolph Bultmann, or Albert Schweitzer - pro or con - this article is a brilliant must-read. - DOB
posted by David Browder at 4/13/2008 01:02:00 PM
9 Comments:
Paul's argument strongly suggests that any reading of the Old Testament which sees the temple worship, holy days, and even purity laws as God-ordained foreshadowing of Jesus as "the lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world" is somehow to be linked and equated with those who see Jesus as merely a brilliant rabbi. Both views, according to PZ's analysis, are part of a misguided so-called "Third Quest". This ignores the fact that all of the Reformers, both in England and on the Continent, saw Jesus as a fulfillment and completion of what God revealed of Himself in the Old Testament, and not as a contradiction of it. Jesus was clearly in profound conflict with many aspects of 1st Century Judaism, but he was in profound agreement with everything his Father had revealed of Himself in the Old Testament, when it is properly understood. This may sound "fundamentalist" to some ears, but this is clearly the view of all the Gospels. In addition, St. Paul is presented in Acts as making this argument of "Jesus fulfilling the Old Testament" over and over again to the Jews, many of whom were converted by it. The claims of this article are old hat for those of us familiar with Paul's views. I for one am not buying 90% of it.
The message of the "Third Quest" is not that Jesus was the fulfillment of the OT prophesies, but that he was the continuation.
Nobody would argue that the OT sacrificial system, or its corresponding purity laws, are not connected with Jesus' work on the Cross. What is being argued is that the situation under the Law, on account of Christ, is not fundamentally altered by His death.
Proponents of the "Third quest" argue that now that Christ has come, the promises that were available to the Jews in the OT are now open to the whole world. What they fail to take into account is the fact, documented throughout the OT, that the Law that promised life, actually brought death. . . (cf. Romans 7:10).
There is a fundamental disagreement over the place, role, function and effect of the Law. Paul Zahl's article displays one, of (admittedly) many different, views on the subject.
The different "quests" in many ways can be differentiated by their theological understandings of the Law. . . as can your rejection of this article.
sorry, I didn't mean to make that anonymous:) (not that it matters, I guess) And I would go back and correct some grammar if I could figure out how!
I agree with PZ on the role of the law in relation to grace. And I disagree with N.T.Wright and the whole "New Perspective" folks in their attempt to resuscitate the law in the name of "Jewish-Christian relations" (presumably to make both equally misserable). However, my problem with the article is that it does not distinguish between the OT and 1st Century Judaism when it claims Jesus' "discontinuity". This is an important distinction, but only if one has a conservative view of the Scriptures. If one sees the OT,as PZ does, as a very mixed bag of "a little bit God and a little bit man", then Jesus can be seen as setting himself up in direct conflict with, rather than as a fulfillment of, many of its precepts and religious structures. This is what I do not agree with.
Michael,
where does PZ talk of this "mixed bag". . .just wondering! It's not in the article; maybe its in his Christianity primer?
Wow. Log off for a couple of days and you find a great discussion.
Mike, to try and clarify in my mind what you are saying: you are saying that you agree with Jesus' discontinuity with 1st century Judaism but not a discontinuity with the OT message as a whole (Pentateuch, etc.)
Would you agree that Jesus has the divine right to reinterpret the Law? I'm thinking of Mark 7:19 and Matt. 8:21-22. The way I understand it, the authority of Christ trumps the need for a continuity of Scripture from one testament to another. This isn't necessarily liberal since Scripture narrarates and interprets what actually happened. Scripture being the "manger which holds the Christ" and all.
David
First, on the "mixed bag" front, PZ adhears to the "Word within the word" school, which I understand to be the neo-orthodox position, but there are of course many variants of how much is God and how much is man and in what passages. My own opinion is that what infuriates the "liberals" about PZ is that they know he shares much of their "liberal" view of Scripture, but draws very different conclusions from them in employing essentially the same exegetical tools. His views on Scripture are most plainly stated in the Primer, but as with most of PZ, one needs to understand the code and read between the lines.
And that is not a criticism, by the way. Anything else is just boring.
And in response to David: You are right in your understanding of my position. I see Jesus as being extremely harsh in his criticism of the midrashic tradition that was so vibrant in 1st Century Judaism, as reflected in Matt. 8:21-22 which you mention. This is one of Jesus' lines of attack. Some of the other comments on the Law, meaning the OT Mosaic law, reflect Jesus seeing that Law through the lens of the Cross, as he saw everything else. This is reflected in the other passage you cite, Mark 7:19, where the author interjects (from beyond the Cross) "Thus, he declared all food clean." Of course, Jesus did not do this explicitly at the time, but rather reminded his disciples of the symbolic nature of the purity laws of the OT, and that the power of these laws is in the underlying reality they are intended to symbolize. This theme is something that is extremely common in the Prophets. (Joel 2:13 Rend your hearts and not your garments. Hosea 7:14 They do not cry to me from the heart, but they wail upon their beds..., etc.) In fact, Jesus seems pretty wimpy on the "inward vs. outward" criticism compared to Isaiah 66: 2-3 "But this is the one to who I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word. He who slaughters an ox is like one who kills a man; he who sacrifices a lamb, like one who breaks a dog's neck; he who presents a grain offering, like one who offers pig's blood; he who makes a memorial offering of frankincesse, like one who blesses an idol."
This continuity is to be expected, from my perspective anyway, since Jesus is the same God that inspired these men to write these things in the first place, and he is the same God who gave Moses the law and at the same time gave him the temple worship as an intended imperfect way of seeking His grace and atonement from the law's just demands, looking forward to the completion of that grace in the Cross. But the most explicit expression of the continuity of the OT with Jesus comes in his own words in Matt. 5:17 "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I say to you until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished." And it was accomplished, on the Cross. Sorry for the long post, but I think this is an important distinction to make.
I think it is a very specific neo-orthodox way of interpreting Scripture if Ernst Kasemann would indeed call himself neo-orthodox. By saying that, I hope I am representing PZ's position accurately. If I am not mistaken, the Gospel is transcendent and the rest of the Bible is to be interpreted by the Gospel instead of vice versa. That is the way I understand what he is saying although I am still working out exactly how that works.
One thing that is certainly discontinuous in OT vs. NT is the full range of the Gospel in the NT. The people of the OT could not have possibly known the full extent of the love of God. The Law did not communicate that. Of course, there was election in the OT sense and a form of Atonement. Certainly, there was grace involved in the OT. I myself have been caricatured by being accused of saying the opposite. I've been called a Marcionite and all the rest. Not by you, obviously, because we agree on almost everything and are good friends.
The thing is that the grace in the NT blows everything else off the map. There is a continuity between the testaments but I think the discontinuity relative to the revelation of the love of God is unequalled in the OT. Certainly it is there because it is the same God. No one from the OT could have ever guessed, however, that the love of God existed to the extent that He would take human form and allow Himself to be humiliated and killed by the very ones who sought to deify themselves.
The problem with the 3rd quest for the Historical Jesus is that it tries to tame the overwhelming blast of what the NT has to say for the sake of continuity. The NT is adjusted to fit the OT in this sort of mellow continuum intead of allowing the NT to jump off the charts. Both testaments are forced into this idea of "covenental nomism" in the New Perspective version.
I'm not as mad at Biblical Theology in the traditional sense but it sure seems to chisel on the NT so it will fit in the old. There is some good "two covenant" theology here. Mike Horton is one of these, as is our new OT professor, Don Collett, who is amazing. I'm thinking here primarily about "one covenant" Reformed doctrine which says that the Law is to show an already redeemed people how to live. They take this idea from the OT to the NT for the sake of continuity.
It seems in all of this that one-way and unconditional grace in the form of love and freedom gets lost inthe shuffle.
David
David, I do agree with the basic impulse you have expressed, and that is that Jesus should be seen as fantastically and overwhelmingly unique in a life-giving and completely shocking way. Any view of the "continuity" of Jesus that detracts from that shock value of grace is something to be opposed with everything we can throw at it. But the continuity I am speaking of only amplified the unique grace of God in Jesus. As an example, I would ask: Do the OT passages of Handel's Messiah detract from its impact? On the contrary, the power of the work lies in the comprehensive blending of both OT and NT passages, all pointing to the magnificence of a redeeming and gracious Christ.
The OT is not a threat to the unique place of Jesus. St. Paul did not see the Law that way at all. In Romans 7:12-13 he says: "So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin,producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure." This is Luther's "Second Use", as you know. It is a GOOD thing, and the begining of grace, but not the end. The same is true of the temple sacrificial system. This is pointed out in Hebrews 10:1-4: "For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sin? But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sin every year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins."
In these and many other passages in the NT there is the clear view expressed that God in the OT Law/Temple revelation gave what was intentionally weak and unable to deal with the depth of human frailty, in order to set the stage for the coming of Christ. This is why we are so viscerally opposed to Christian versions of the Law and sacramental pomp and circumstance that promise some form of victory over sin. God gave these things for the purpose of graciously showing us they don't work, and to show us that nothing does "work" short of the unmerited love of Christ in the midst of our weakness!!! The attempt to return to these things is really to forget that God gave them in the first place to show our weakness in the face of His glory, to drive us to the Cross. So, the continuity of God in the OT/NT is both ironic and profound, and exhalts Jesus in a way that a two dimentional "continuity/discontinuity" debate cannot, as I see it anyway.
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