N. T. Wright’s Kingdom New Testament

Earlier this afternoon I ordered N. T. Wright’s translation of the New Testament, The Kingdom New Testament.  I had intended on purchasing eventually, but Scot Mcknight’s post on it convinced me to order it today.

I highly recommend you looking into purchasing it, as it will aid you in seeing the New Testament through fresh eyes.  Read it along side of the version(s) you tend to read and compare it stylistically.

I intend to write a follow up post on what I think about it and will include some well known favorite verses and compare them with well known translations.

Things I don’t do that other Bible students tend to do

This is a personal confession of mine.  I have found very few people who hold these convictions, especially those who are Bible/theology/ministry/religion students.   I do not write in, highlight, or underline things in my books.  I just don’t.  Never have.  Not even in my own Bible.  I like to try to keep my books as neat looking as possible.  I do not bend the cover back, I hate the crease that sometimes goes down the spine of a book, so I try to keep that from happening.  This might sound silly, but I like my books to look nice.  If I do take notes on a book, I do it on my computer or in my Moleskine.

I recently visited Candler School of Theology at Emory University and had a really great experience there.  When I visited Pitts Theological Library they had recently received a certain theologian’s personal library.  I thought about how great it would be to look through them and see all the notes and markings….but recently I got to thinking, if I were to donate my personal library to a school’s library, there would be nothing in them for people to look at!  Seriously.  Well if that happens, I want to apologize in advance….many years in advance.  Maybe I will at least write my name in the front of all my books.

Another thing a lot of my friends do that I just don’t do is listen to different pastors’ sermons on podcasts.  I have done this a little bit, but mostly with the church I am involved with in Lakeland and a couple of sermons by Rob Bell.  I will watch videos of pastors like Francis Chan, Matt Chandler, and others, but only short videos.  I just can’t get into listening to sermons all the time.  I know a lot of people that love to listen to Judah Smith, Mark Batterson, Andy Stanley, and others…but I just don’t really do that.  Maybe I should.  But as of yet, I do not have a pressing desire to do so.

I have listened to a couple podcasts from N. T. Wright and Peter Rollins, but that’s about it.  I guess I’d rather read what they say.  Now I have seen both of these guys give lectures and loved them both, but listening to the podcast is a little different to me.

Anyway, here is a poll about writing in your books.

A call to pastors and readers of the Bible everywhere

Since going to college one of the main things that has changed is my approach to scripture.  Before, I used to read it devotionally and I also considered that “study.”  But I think the spiritual disciplines of devotional reading, meditation, memorization, and study are all different things that should be given some time.

From my experience, there is a lot of devotional reading, and little to no study.  The Bible studies that I have encountered, say in small groups, has typically been “let’s read this together and pull life lessons out of it,” which is beneficial for community, but if that is all study is I think we have missed something.

This has been extended to preaching and church life as well.  Pastors love giving life lessons, which again are great and probably more beneficial than the strange medium between topical and expository preaching I have encountered in the past where the exegesis has missed the mark and the topic is loosely connected to whatever scriptures are read.  But most people in churches are oblivious to the very things that shaped these writings and the people who wrote them!

I want to challenge everyone to take a day a week in your devotional life and devoted to study.  If you are reading through a book of the Bible devotionally, use the same book and study!

Perhaps you are unsure where to start when it comes to studying scripture, and there are several approaches, but I can honestly say the best way it to find some resources that are available to you.  The difficult part is there are few commentaries and resources freely available on the internet that are any good, so it takes knowing what you’re looking for.  I suggest starting by adding some books to your library and reading some blogs!  Below are some suggestions, some I have read, others I intend to read:

Books on historical-context (primarily New Testament):

The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus by Dale Allison
Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes by Kenneth Bailey
Paul Through Mediterranean  Eyes by Kenneth Bailey
Jesus and the Eye Witnesses by Richard Bauckham
Jesus, Paul, and the Gospels by James Dunn
The Historical Jesus of the Gospels by Craig Keener
The King Jesus Gospel by Scot McKnight
The Jesus Quest by Ben Witherington III
The Challenge of Jesus by N. T. Wright
Simply Jesus by N. T. Wright
Paul in Fresh Perspective by N. T. Wright

If you’re willing to take on a larger reading project, take on N. T. Wright’s Christian Origins and the Question of God series, I myself have just started to dive into it.

Volume 1:  The New Testament and the People of God
Volume 2:  Jesus and the Victory of God
Volume 3:  The Resurrection of the Son of God
Volume 4 and 5 have not yet released.

Some books on interpretation (I have not read many, but know a couple):

Grasping God’s Word by J. Scot Duvall and J. Daniel Hays
How to Read the Bible for all its worth by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart (and all the other books that come in this series)
The Blue Parakeet by Scot McKnight

Commentaries (pricey, but you can maybe find them in libraries)

The New International Commentary on the New/Old Testament
The World Biblical Commentary
The Expositors Bible Commentary
The IVP Bible Background Commentary

Various commentaries by specific scholars.  A lot of the scholars who have written the books above have commentaries on specific books as well.  You can also find commentaries by all kind of Church fathers, from early church fathers, to the Reformation, to now.

Blogs (some that I read regularly):

Scot McKinght’s blog Jesus Creed
Andrew Perriman’s blog P.OST
Ben Witherington’s Blog The Bible and Culture
I also regularly read a blog called Near Emmaus

So start simple, get a book on interpretation and a book on the Gospels and start in Matthew.  Or get a book on Paul and dive into Ephesians.  It’s a great start, and the more you study, the more books and commentaries you learn about from everyone’s use of them in their bibliographies.  I promise you it will change how you understand scripture in a good way.  You may think that it will give you a big head and make you a dry person spiritually, but the opposite is true.  When you learn something new, something will explode in your soul that causes you to worship God deeper and appreciate scripture more.  Make it simple and include it in your devotional life. If you are a pastor, you will be surprised how much this improves your preaching.  If you are a follower of Christ, you will have a clearer, richer picture of who Jesus was and is and how to follow him as well as appreciate the diversity within his kingdom.

The Marta, the tract, and the elder

An interesting thing happened to me today that made me really ponder what I thought about assurance of salvation and how I could express the fact that I am a part of the kingdom of God with words.  Here’s the story…

I had a trip planned with my brother and a friend of mine to go to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, GA.  We had planned to ride the Marta, which is the public transportation train system if you are not familiar, and while on the train a small elderly Asian woman was walking up to people and getting really close to them in their seats.  At first I thought she was trying to sell them something because of their responses, and I thought to myself how much I hoped she did not come over to us.  She passed us to talk to another guy and I sighed with relief as our exit station was coming up, but unfortunately she turned around right to us and shoved these papers really close to us with arrows all over them.  ”You born again?” she immediately asked us.  I responded and spoke for all three of us and said “yes, we are” “all born again?  He born again?  You?” “Yes.” I responded again.  ”Where you going?  Where you going when you die?” she pressed us to answer. (I learned later my brother wanted to say “SPACE!”).  So without wanting to answer the question out of being very uncomfortable, the train beginning to stop at our station, and the complexity of my actual answer that I would not expect her to understand, especially with the language barrier, I defaulted to what I usually say when people attempt to give me tracts and witness to me.  I placed my hand on my chest and said “I’m actually going to school to be a pastor.”  Now usually, the person lights up and says something like, “Oh!  Really?!  What denomination?  What school?…oh it’s so nice to see young men like you wanting to enter into the ministry!” or something like that.  Not this woman.  She responded with “Oh, school to be a pastor?  So where you going when you die?” and at that the train was really stopping and we had to get off.  After an awkward moment before the doors opened and us trying to ignore her as she kept asking where we were going when we died, we got off the Marta and headed on our way and laughed a bit about the situation.

Now I know plenty of people that when she asked the question would boldly state “I am going to Heaven when I die to see my Lord and king, Jesus Christ!  I am a Christian!”   But I couldn’t.  I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.  Now there are a few reasons for this.  First, I was definitely weirded out, these types of things tend to take people off guard.  I admired her courage and zeal, but I am against that type of “evangelism” and am not fond of that type of gospel.  The second was because of my own views on heaven and hell.  I am unsure that immediately after death I will go to either a place called heaven, or a place called hell.  By this, I do not mean to say I do not think I am a part of God’s kingdom, but rather I question where anyone goes immediately after death.  For Paul and his contemporaries the emphasis was on resurrection and new creation.  This came from the Jewish idea of resurrection for judgement.  There was an eschatological judgement where everyone was risen to either be proclaimed as in right status and standing with God and came to inherit new creation, or for judgement, whatever that looks like (hell, annihilation, etc).  So my answer would not be one she was looking for.  I could not tell her exactly where I will be when I die, as a Christian it will be somewhere with Christ, but not what we westerners think of when we hear the word “heaven.”  The last thing is, I am not certain about my views on assurance of salvation!

Now let me clarify, I am a follower of Christ, I believe in the gospel, that Jesus is Lord, that he is God incarnate, who lived, died on the cross according to the scriptures, was buried, was bodily raised from the dead according to the scriptures, appeared to Peter and the other disciples, and ascended.  I believe I am filled with the Holy Spirit.  I have been baptized.  I observe the Eucharist.  I have a relationship with God and devote time to tend to it.  I go to church, I serve in church, I am all in!  I believe I experience God’s kingdom now on earth. I believe in the inner witness of the Holy Spirit and sincerely believe I am going to inherit new creation with Jesus as king.  But can I absolutely know this for sure?  And if I do absolutely know, does that mean I can measure whether others are in or out?

It is not my job to say whether anyone is in or out, it’s clearly the job of God.  Jesus tells an interesting parable in Luke 18:9-14 of a pharisee and a tax collector.  For us, when we read it, we already know the pharisees as “those ignorant, overly confident, self-righteous guys over there,” and know that Jesus regularly uplifted those who were looked down upon in his society, but to his original audience the idea of the tax collector being the one justified and the righteous pharisee not being so was audacious!  Now the lesson of the parable is two-fold.  First, you cannot really know who is justified and who is not, because here the irony is the pharisee believes he is, when in fact he is not.  The second is the minute you say to yourself, “okay Jesus, I got the lesson of the parable, the pharisee is out, and the tax collector is in….so this one is in, and this one is out!  Got it!” you’ve already missed the point of the parable.  God is the one who justifies, forgives sin, and knows the heart of women and men.

So to me, and maybe even to others, I am obviously justified, I am a part of God’s kingdom, but maybe I am just a pharisee.  Maybe what I believe is the inner witness of the Spirit is just my own witness that I have gotten used to as it has regularly drowned out the voice of God.  Maybe this is the case.  I do not believe it is, but maybe it is.  Is it for me to know?  If I do know, does that not just give me the ability to say, “this person it not like me, so they must not be in”?  Perhaps this is what has many Evangelicals in trouble is because we do this often and are seen as hypocritical self-righteous people who only care about ourselves and not the needs of others.

So maybe you can answer for me.  Can we absolutely know and be absolutely assured of salvation?  Do we just trust in God for our assurance without our knowing?  Am I asking the wrong questions?

Another question I would like to ask for fun is, when you get approached by someone trying to witness to you and hand you a tract, what is your default saying?

The Human Faces of God by Thom Stark

I just recently finished my contribution to a collective blog review of Thom Stark’s The Human Faces of God.  I reviewed chapter 3, Inerrancy Stunts Your Growth.  Check it out at Scripture and Inspiration.

2012 here we come

Since the end of the fall semester I have found myself contemplating Biblioblogging again.  Initially I wanted to do a lot more with this blog including posting my research papers, discussions I had with professors and friends, and even some book reviews, but as you can see all that is here is two papers I did for Theology I and II.  I am hoping to engage more in this, so to do so I am broadening my topics.  I am really interested in culture, both church culture and culture at large, so I want to start engaging in some of that.  Now unfortunately, a lot of cultural topics as of late and in the upcoming months have been and will be political.  I used to love politics, but I have really come to dislike them.  However with the emergence of such movements as Occupy Wall Street and all of its branches, it seems impossible not to discuss these.

What all this has to do with blogging, for me anyway, is I want to do more of it.  So 2012 is the year of blogging for me. The year is starting with an extended period at home for me since I go to Israel to study abroad starting in mid-March, so there will be some open time for me.  But I do not really want this to just be a Biblioblog, I want to add a personal element and a creative element if possible.  Being a young Pentecostal I long for more scholarship, but I also would not stand for dry ivory-tower constant theological discussion.  I want the experience.  I want the real community.  I want creativity.  So I hope I can convey this here.

To somewhat fulfill my promise, I have already been involved in a blogging project that is an extensive review and interaction with Thom Stark’s book The Human Faces of God (You can find the book here).  The book is a recent (and very important) work against the doctrine of inerrancy, specifically as defined by some leading Evangelicals in the CSBI articles. Several friends and I had agreed to read the book over Christmas break and do blogs on specific chapters.  We are just now getting it all started.  There have been opening comments on chapters 1 and 2 by my friends Stephen and Dan and soon I will be adding my own contribution on chapter 3.  So be on the look out for that and please interact with us.  The blog is found here at Scripture and Inspiration.

Here’s to a new year!

Grace and peace.

-Cris Donlon

A Narrative Approach to Justification: God’s Redemptive Story

Everyone enjoys a good story.  Stories are such an integral part of culture that give voice to a community; the principles they hold to, the hardships they have faced, the glory they have received, and where they fit into the ongoing larger story of humanity.  The authors of scripture too expressed their story, but in a unique way that included more than all of these things because they understood themselves to be a part of the redemptive work of the creator God.  This God created the universe and the world that they lived in.  He created all the plants, the trees, the oceans, the shorelines, the skies, and all that inhabited them and he called it “good.”  Then at the climax of the creation narrative he created humanity, both male and female, to care for his entire creation and have perfect communion with him.  However, catastrophe struck, and the hands he trusted his creation with had disobeyed him; they had fallen, and sin began to permeate this world created good.  This created a problem for both God and humanity:  humanity needed a way back to their purpose and communion with God, and God had to enact a plan to redeem the whole cosmos.  So God called out a man named Abram to the land of Canaan and said to him, “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:2-3).  Then God promised Abram more offspring than the stars in the sky and sealed this promise with a covenant.

It is out of this covenant with Abram that God began to unfold his redemptive plan, which includes the story of Israel and is ultimately accomplished in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  This narrative framework is the context, more specifically first century Second-Temple Judaism, that Paul and the other New Testament authors found themselves in and thus the context their writings should be understood in. The doctrine of justification by faith must also be understood in Paul’s historical context and narrative framework.  No single doctrine has been as disputed as justification by faith, which is considered the main cause of the Protestant Reformation and, according to Luther, is the “article upon which the church stands or falls.”[1] The distinction of the doctrine of justification as well as its spotlight in current theological and exegetical debate are more than ample reasons for trying to come to an understanding that is as true to Paul’s understanding as possible.

So what was Paul’s context?  N. T. Wright argues that Paul found himself at a point where three worlds met:  First century Second-Temple Judaism, Greek Hellenistic culture, and the Roman world.[2]  The Jewish world Paul found himself in has become a central area of study within the last generation and now has a clearer picture portrayed than in times past.  Jews within the first century were quite the multi-dimensional people that stemmed out of the issues of,

What it meant to be part of God’s people, to be loyal to Torah, to maintain Jewish identity in the face of the all encroaching pagan world, and to wait the coming of God’s kingdom, of the ‘age to come’ promised by the prophets, of Israel’s redemption, hoping that when that day dawned one might have a share in the coming vindication and blessing.[3]

The Greek influence was manifested in the Greek language, rhetoric, philosophy, and writing style that is seen in Paul’s own writings.[4]  The Roman world served as the conduit through which the Jews of the time saw themselves in a continuous exile under the rule of a pagan nation.[5]  There was, however, the emerging Christian world that Paul was also a part of that was quite different than the other three worlds were used to as it was “not defined by ethnic origin, nor by social class; it was neither a club, nor a cult, nor a guild”.[6]

Paul’s context can also be described as narrative. The Jews were very familiar with the narratives within the Torah and the Prophets.  Greeks and Romans were very knowledgeable of their own myths, plays like Oedipus, and to popular stories by Homer, Virgil, and Livy. It is often thought that Paul resembles the Greek philosophers who sat and thought about abstractions on objective truths and whose work was quite systematic, when in actuality, Paul, in view of the larger narrative of God, humanity, and creation, saw himself in a unique part of this narrative and wrote to specific audiences to deal with their issues.  Mark Strom protests this systematic view of Paul and his writings with the strong statement, “This, as we shall see, is Plato, not Paul.  Paul’s letters are reduced from rich and provocative narratives and improvisations to a data base for systems of theology.”[7]  So if scripture is to be viewed as narrative, then it is easy to see why Paul eludes to many of the same Old Testament narratives in his writings; that is, to express to those communities he is writing to where they fit into God’s narrative.

The climax of the narrative of scripture for Paul is the story of Jesus Christ; he sees Christ as the New Adam in 1 Corinthians 15:45, the one who distributes equally to the Jew and Greek the blessing given to Abraham in Galatians 3:14-29, and the one who declares those whose faith is in Christ’s death and resurrection in right standing before God as covenant members in Romans (both in the present and the future!).  Ben Witherington illustrates this by saying,

The various narratives about Christ alluded to or mentioned in Paul’s letters provide a setting for understanding his Christology.  The identity of Christ is revealed by his words and deeds, the parts he plays in the human and divine drama.  This story is an eschatological story for it is about the final things God does for creatures and creation.[8]

So what Paul says about what part Jesus plays in the narrative between God and humanity expresses how the audience of his letters should understand Christ.

With Witherington’s statement in mind, what then happens when Paul alludes to the Old Testament narratives that he typically uses in Adam, Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, Job, Deuteronomy, the people of Israel and the Prophets?  According to N. T. Wright one small reference or allusion to a familiar narrative would awaken the entire narrative as a whole in the mind of the listener or reader.[9]  He also includes “narratives within which the speaker and hearer believed themselves to be living”[10] to further drive his point that Paul saw the story of Christ opening a new chapter, within the single God and humanity story line, that he himself was living in.[11] Paul’s allusions to these stories were not to cherry-picked proof texts, but because he saw himself, as did the Second-Temple Jewish world, as actors within this narrative.[12]

So the narrative is laid out:  the creator God is also the God of the covenant, the covenant is put into place to redeem creation, and the people of the covenant cry out to God as the creator when the promises of the covenant are in question (Psalm 19, 74, 147).  God has enacted his redemptive plan to reverse the sin brought by Adam through his covenant with Abraham, but the children of Abraham are sinful themselves and are not faithful to the covenant thus “postponing” God’s promises to Abraham of inheriting the world.  How can God put the world back to rights and be faithful to his covenant with Abraham when Israel is just as sinful as the Gentiles are?  This is the question Paul presents in his epistle to the Romans which is centered in the dikaiosyne theou, or the “righteousness of God” and justification by faith.

 

Justification and the Old Perspective

            Ever since the Protestant Reformation under Martin Luther, the doctrine of justification by faith has become central to the church.  This has been expressed in mainly soteriological terms; mainly that no one is righteous and in order to be saved one requires the righteousness of God in order to be proclaimed justified before God.  This justification only comes by faith in Jesus Christ who then imputes his righteousness to the sinner.  This righteousness is a moral righteousness that Christ expressed while on earth and remains Christ’s; in John Owen’s words, it does not make one inherently righteous, but it is understood as an action towards another (i.e. imputed righteousness) and one is pronounced righteous.[13]  Justification can only come through the imputation of Christ’s righteousness and not through works of the law.

Justification is also to be understood as a forensic term.  R. C. Sproul says that Christ is declared guilty by God when the sin of the world is imputed onto him, he dies, but rises again and is able to impute his righteousness that was merited by perfect obedience, and declares the guilty sinner righteous. [14]  Thomas Oden also expresses justification as, “the pardoning act of the Supreme judge of all, by which he pardons all the sins of those who trust in the pardoning work of Christ in our place on the cross.  In this way the righteousness of Christ is applied to the believer.”[15]  This understanding of justification as forensic comes from the law court language that Paul uses in Romans, which historically is what brought Luther to the conclusions he came to in opposition to Roman Catholic views of the justification of sinners, again in soteriological terms, as making the sinner “inherently righteous.”[16]

Along with the law court language of justification lays the phrase “the righteousness of God.”  This phrase is understood by John Piper to reflect upholding God’s glory by doing what is right, which is only described in doing what is related to God, “This means that the essence of the righteousness of God is his unwavering faithfulness to uphold the glory of his name. And human righteousness is the same: the unwavering faithfulness to uphold the glory of God.”[17]  Piper’s understanding is a little different than scholars like Tom Schreiner who understand the righteousness of God to refer to his judgment of sin for justification, thus relating it back to forensic terms.[18]  But, to be sure, when God judges sin he is glorified, and the sinner that is justified then glorifies God, so it all seems to work together in some ways.  Schreiner also argues that, “Righteousness often has a forensic character in Paul, denoting God’s gift to his people.”[19] So this goes back to imputation, and also critiques Piper since righteousness within a law court setting denotes a gift to people rather than glorifying the judge.

So justification according to the Old Perspective can be summarized as the following:  everyone is unrighteous, both Jew and Gentile.  The Jews had the Torah that proved that no one could earn salvation, and the Gentiles have no excuse since the law was written on their hearts.  Since both Jew and Gentile are guilty of sin and deserve equal punishment of God’s wrath they need Christ to come and live in perfect obedience to fulfill the law and take upon their sin, die, and resurrect.  God then gives the gift of Christ’s righteousness to those who have faith in Christ, who was their substitution, by imputation, and are justified by their faith in Christ and are redeemed.

Justification and the New Perspective

            Justification means quite a different thing for the New Perspective than the Old Perspective, though it does engage the soteriology of the Old Perspective.  For the New Perspective, Paul’s use of the word dikaiosyne theou, “the righteousness of God” and how it relates to the Jews in the first century, the law, and justification has to be recognized within Paul’s own context.  E. P. Sanders recognized that Paul was not rejecting Judaism because of self-righteous attempts at salvation by works.  Stephen Westerholm summarizes Sander’s points as the following:  “The Jewish boasting rejected in Romans 3:28 is not that which expresses pride in human achievement but rather that which assume and relies on the special privileges granted to Jews,”[20]

In its context the statement in Romans 9:32 that Israel sought righteousness not by faith but by works cannot mean that Jews failed because they observed the law in the wrong way.  Their problem, as the immediate sequel shows, is their lack of faith in Christ…Nor does the claim in 10:3 that Jews try to ‘establish their own’ righteousness refer to a self righteousness based on personal achievements in keeping the law.  In the immediate context Paul even commends the ‘zeal of the Jews,’[21]

“Nor does Philippians 3:9 condemn any supposed self-righteousness by Jews.  Paul does reject the righteousness of the observant Jew, but again this is not because there is anything inherently wrong in such righteousness.”[22]

James Dunn agrees with Sanders that Protestant interpretations of Paul have incorrectly reconstructed the Jews to look like semi-Pelagians or Roman Catholics in the Middle Ages.[23] Dunn also recognized that the law was given to show who was already a part of God’s covenant, so Paul’s Jewish opponents were not trying to achieve justification through self-righteous works, but were limiting God’s covenant to ethnic identity, which they found in Torah.[24]

Finally N. T. Wright makes an explicit claim as to what justification is according to the New Perspective, “Justification is not how someone becomes a Christian.  It is the declaration that they have become a Christian.”[25] Wright’s understanding of Paul’s meaning of the righteousness of God, justification, the gospel, the law court language, and the works of the law are heavily reliant on Paul’s narrative, first century Second-Temple Jewish context.  Wright uses the Qumran text 4QMMT, written in the same context of Jesus and Paul, as an example to show,

‘Justification by works’ has nothing to do with individual Jews attempting a kind of proto-Pelagian pulling themselves up by their moral bootstraps, and everything to do with the definition of the true Israel in advance of the final eschatological showdown.  Justification in this setting, then, is not a matter of how someone enters the community of the true people of God, but of how you tell who belongs to that community, not least in the period of time before the eschatological event itself, when the matter will become public knowledge.[26]

Justification then is not the center of Paul’s message, though it is a part, Jesus Christ is.  So the gospel is not proclaiming a system of salvation, but is the “proclamation that the crucified Jesus of Nazareth has been raised from the dead and thereby demonstrated to be both Israel’s Messiah and the world’s true Lord. ‘The gospel’ is not ‘you can be saved, and here’s how’; the gospel, for Paul, is ‘Jesus Christ is Lord.’”[27]  Soteriology, then, is not what is meant by justification by faith not by works of the law, but it’s about the identity of the people of God, not limited to a specific race of people, members of the covenant of Abraham that God is using to set the cosmos to rights.  Soteriology is the, “key the melody is set, not the actual melody itself.”[28]

So what was the law if it too is not a system of how one “gets to heaven” and what was it?  Wright’s answer is God gave Israel the Torah, “as the way of life for the people with whom he had already entered into covenant, and whom he had now rescued from slavery.  The Torah was itself the covenant charter, setting Israel apart from all the other nations.”[29] Even John Calvin viewed the law a positive thing and a reminder of the Abrahamic covenant, not a replacement (imagine what evangelicalism would look like if it followed Calvin’s covenant theology rather than Luther’s view of the law as a scare tactic).[30]  The law was to distinguish Israel from the other nations, but there was a problem, it seemed to amplify Israel’s sin (Romans 5:20).  To Paul, the purpose of the law was to prove that Israel was as in Adam as the Gentiles were, and since Israel was the representative of all humanity, Jesus, as the Messiah, was Israel’s representative.[31]  It was not following the laws of Torah that justified; most Jews understood that following the works of the law do not justify,[32] but it was covenant membership that justified, expressed in the markings of the covenant (circumcision, Sabbath, feasts, etc).  So the Jews thought God would proclaim them in right standing because of what marked them as covenant members racially and nationally, and then in the last day would restore Israel.

Paul’s use of the law court metaphor and dikaiosyne theou must also be understood within his context.  Wright argues that dikaiosyne theou, or the righteousness of God should be understood to mean covenant faithfulness.  The translation is “righteousness” because faithfulness does not carry the sense of justice that God must redeem the cosmos, which he plans to do through his covenant.[33]  Wright points to the passages of Colossians 1:15-20, 1 Corinthians 15, and Romans 1-11 where Paul uses Old Testament narratives and the use of the creator God as the covenant God to show that the covenant is the single saving plan through Israel for the world now fulfilled in Jesus and so his righteousness should be understood with this in mind.[34]

Dikaiosyne theou was also a term used within a law court setting to denote the status of vindication by the declaration of a judge.[35] The righteousness of the judge can be understood as the right standing declared by the judge since the court has found in that person’s favor.  So Paul’s argument in Romans is that God, as the supreme righteous judge, declares the Jew and the Gentile, whose faith is in Christ, as righteous, or in right standing (within the covenant).  Because God is righteous, he does this impartially since both Jew and Gentile are both equally in Adam; no one can be justified by the works of the law (the national markings of the Jew in the Torah), only by faith in Jesus, the true Israel, thus making them covenant members.  So the righteousness of God when used to define God’s own righteousness is his covenant faithfulness and as a judge it is his commitment to judge sin impartially; when God’s righteousness is attributed to believers it denotes their status of right standing declared by God as covenant members.

Justification:  A Narrative Approach

            To understand what justification meant to Paul, one must not ignore the narrative framework of God’s single redeeming plan through Abraham and his family, Israel, to bless the world, ultimately fulfilled in Jesus.  This has been one of the primary mistakes of the Old Perspective. They have made the mistake of viewing scripture as a database of proof texts for their systematic theologies; after all, who can argue with scripture?  Along with this, the first century Second-Temple Jewish world Paul found himself in has been ignored.  John Piper even argues that using Second-Temple texts may cause the reader to misunderstand the first century meaning.[36]  This is an interesting position—if the understanding of words and meanings cannot be reliant on several sources of the same context as scripture, then what understanding should one rely on?  Essentially Piper is arguing for a fifteenth century understanding rather than a first century understanding, which is ironic since the Reformers argued to go back to the original languages and writings.  Along with this, Piper’s argument that it is a remarkable claim to say that the church has misunderstood justification for fifteen hundred years sounds more like the argument of tradition over scripture from the Catholics than it does the Protestant argument for Sola Scriptura.[37]

There has also been a misunderstanding of what is meant by dikaiosyne theou.  Within the Protestant tradition it has meant a moral righteousness that Jesus merited that is then imputed to the believer.  John Piper’s argument for imputation comes from Paul’s quotation of Genesis 15:6 when using the phrase “credited to him as righteousness” where he argues that credited means imputed.[38]  There are some theological and logical problems with the view of imputation:  the historical theological problem is if the first century law court usage of the word “righteous” is the understanding Paul had in mind, then it denotes the status that the law court has found in favor of that person, not the moral behavior they have demonstrated to earn this favor (if a judge happened to find in favor of someone who really was guilty they are not moral, but they have the status of right standing).  Above and beyond that, the only other time the words “credited to him as righteousness” has been found in scripture is in Psalm 106 when talking of Phineas’ intervention of the plague and is accompanied by “for endless generations to come.”  If one looks back to the story of Phineas in Numbers 25 God makes a “covenant of peace with him” of “lasting priesthood” because of his intervention.  Jews reading this Psalm, as argued earlier in this writing, would have realized the reference and the whole narrative would have come alive.  Thus, “credited to him as righteousness” is understood to be entrance into a covenant.  This is not transfer of moral uprightness from one to another, so Piper actually unintentionally argues for “credited to him as righteousness” meaning entrance into covenant membership.

The logical problem is what it would mean for a judge to impute his own righteousness to a person.  What makes a judge a righteous judge?  N. T. Wright makes a compelling argument against the logic of the imputation of the judge’s righteousness,

A righteous judge is one that conducts the case impartially, in accordance with the law, to have punished sin and upheld the defenseless innocent ones.  If the judge imputed his righteousness to the defendant that would imply the defendant now has all those qualities.  The righteousness of the defendant implies the status that the court has found in favor of the defendant.  This shows that God’s righteousness (his covenant faithfulness) and the righteousness of the defendant (the status of covenant membership) is different, though the terms are the same.  The term is due to the close relationship, not the identity.[39]

When the court rules in favor of someone, they simply do not have the same qualities as the judge that judged them, and so it makes more sense to recognize that “righteousness” does not mean moral uprightness, but rather the declaration made by the judge that the court has found in favor of someone.

Finally, justification should be understood as eschatological.  Israel wanted God to do for it what God had already done to Jesus by bringing him to life in the eschaton.  So,

Eschatology:  the new world had been inaugurated!  Covenant:  God’s promises to Abraham had been fulfilled!  Law court:  Jesus had been vindicated—and so all those who belonged to Jesus were vindicated as well!  And these, for Paul, were not three, but one.  Welcome to Paul’s doctrine of justification, rooted in the single scriptural narrative as he read it, reaching out to the waiting world.[40]

The declaration that one is a covenant member in the present gives the assurances that the future verdict will be the same for those who are indwelt with the Holy Spirit in accordance to the whole life lived.[41]  This is also the practical application of justification as well:  if a believer is declared a covenant member and a part of Abraham’s family (Paul’s argument in Romans 4—that is Abraham is not the Gentile’s father in the flesh, but by grace), then the believer is to be a light to the world and bless the nations, and do these good works through the power of the Holy Spirit received at the confession of the death and resurrection of Jesus.

This is the narrative of justification:  the creator God that created all the plants, the trees, the oceans, the shorelines, the skies, and all that inhabited them and called them good also created humanity, male and female, at the climax of creation.  But humanity disobeyed God and sin began to permeate the world, which had been created good.  God needed to put the entire cosmos back to rights so he called a man named Abram to the land of Canaan and promised to make a great nation out of him that would bless the world.  He promised him more offspring than the stars and sealed this promise with a covenant.  After many years Abraham’s children became very numerous, but were enslaved by the mighty Egyptians, so God called a man named Moses to deliver his people.  Moses was able to deliver the children of Abraham, called Israel, with the aide of God.  God then gave them the Torah, which was the certificate of the covenant that he had made with Abram.  However, God made sure Israel knew that if they could not be faithful to the Torah then foreign nations would rule over them.  Israel did not remain faithful to the words of the Torah and were driven out of the land God had given them and they were in exile; ruled by pagan foreigners.  Eventually Israel was able to re-inhabit their land but they were ruled over by pagan nations–one after another.   They believed they were in exile even in their own land.

God remained faithful to his covenant with Abram, but the only way he could fulfill his promise of Abram’s descendants’ inheritance of the world was to open the covenant to Gentiles, and he needed Israel to be faithful to follow through with his promise.  So he sent his son, Jesus, who lived a perfectly obedient life, died, and rose again.  Because of this, God extended his promises to the Gentiles so all that would put their faith in Jesus as Lord would be declared covenant members with the assurance of resurrection on the last day.  It was in God’s mind all along to redeem the cosmos through Abram, through Israel, ultimately fulfilled in Jesus, and soon the world will be put to rights when heaven and earth are fully consummated.  God will declare the verdict of justification and call those indwelt with his spirit righteous.  So justification is not, as has been supposed, just about how an individual comes into right relationship with God; that occurs, along with the forgiveness of sins, at the proclamation of belief in the gospel that Jesus died and rose from the dead. These are implied in being a covenant member, but it is the declaration that God accepts those whose faith is in Jesus as part of his single saving plan through Abraham through Israel ultimately fulfilled in Jesus.

---

[1] R. C. Sproul, Faith Alone: The Evangelical Doctrine of Justification (Grand Rapids: Baker Pub Group, 1995), 18.

[2] N. T. Wright, Paul: In Fresh Perspective (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009), 3-4.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid., 5-6

[6] Ibid.

[7] Mark Strom, Reframing Paul: Conversations in Grace and Community (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2000), 14.

[8] Ben Witherington, III, Paul’s Narrative Thought World (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994), 84-85.

[9] N. T. Wright, Paul: In Fresh Perspective (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009), 8.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid., 9.

[12] Ibid., 11.

[13] John Owen, Justification By Faith (n.p.: Sovereign Grace Publishers Inc., 1959), 125.

[14] R. C. Sproul, Faith Alone: The Evangelical Doctrine of Justification (Grand Rapids: Baker Pub Group, 1995), 104.

[15] Thomas C. Oden, The Justification Reader (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002), 36-37.

[16] John Owen, Justification By Faith (n.p.: Sovereign Grace Publishers Inc., 1959), 124.

[17] John Piper, The Future of Justification: A Response to N. T. Wright (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2007), 64.

[18] Thomas R. Schreiner, Paul, Apostle of God’s Glory in Christ: A Pauline Theology (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 201-203.

[19] Ibid., 204.

[20] Stephen Westerholm, Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The “Lutheran Paul and His Critics” (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003), 160.

[21] Ibid.

[22] Ibid.

[23] Ibid, 183.

[24] Ibid., 190-191.

[25] N. T. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said (Oxford: Forward Movement Publications, 1997), 125.

[26] Ibid, 119.

[27] N. T. Wright, “New Perspectives on Paul,” N. T. Wright Page, http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_New_Perspectives.htm (accessed April 1, 2011).

[28] From N. T. Wright’s 2010 Evangelical Theological Society plenary speaker session.

[29] N. T. Wright, Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2009), 72.

[30] Stephen Westerholm, Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The “Lutheran Paul and His Critics” (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003), 50.

[31] Ibid., 180-181.

[32] Frank Thielman, Paul and the Law: A Contextual Approach (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 1995), 238-239.

[33] N. T. Wright, Paul: In Fresh Perspective (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009), 24.

[34] Ibid., 27-34

[35] N. T. Wright, Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2009), 69.

[36] John Piper, The Future of Justification: A Response to N. T. Wright (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2007), 34-36.

[37] Ibid., 60.

[38] John Piper, Counted Righteous in Christ: Should We Abandon the Imputation of Christ’s Righteousness? (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2002), 53-55.

[39] N. T. Wright, “Romans and the Theology of Paul,” N. T. Wright Page, http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Romans_Theology_Paul.pdf (accessed April 1, 2011).

[40] N. T. Wright, Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2009), 101.

[41] Ibid., 251.

Was the Jesus of the Gospels the Real Jesus? A theology research paper for Dr. Joe Davis

Was the Jesus of the Gospels the Real Jesus?

After four hundred years of no prophetic voice it seemed to the Jews that Yahweh was silent; though they made sacrifices to him, he did not seem pleased, even more so he seemed displeased since they were conquered by a pagan nation, and their king was a Hellenized Edomite.  However there were rumors of a man from Galilee, in a town called Nazareth who was healing the sick, feeding the hungry, helping the poor, raising the dead, and doing miraculous signs wherever he went.  Some said he was Elijah, others said he was a prophet that would end the silence of Yahweh, still others said he was his forerunner John the Baptist, but it was Simon Peter, a disciple of his, that said he was the Christ, the son of the living God.[1] This claim by Peter about Jesus of Nazareth had a lot of implications, which the Westminster confession illustrates as,

The Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, being very and eternal God, of one substance and equal with the Father, did, when the fullness of time was come, take upon Him man’s nature, with all the essential properties, and common infirmities thereof, yet without sin; being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the virgin Mary, of her substance. So that two whole, perfect, and distinct natures, the Godhead and the manhood, were inseparably joined together in one person, without conversion, composition, or confusion. Which person is very God, and very man, yet one Christ, the only Mediator between God and man.[2]

This is how Jesus is portrayed in the Gospel accounts, and for centuries the authorities within the church did all they could to stop the spreading of the heresies that challenged the Jesus of the gospel traditions.[3]

However since the late 18^th century there has been a quest to find out who Jesus really was outside of the gospel accounts; this is the nature of the explosion of scholarship on Christology and the Historical Jesus studies.  Many scholars have struggled with the question of who Jesus was, and whether or not the gospels are an accurate source of understanding Jesus’ life, so much so that the debate has continued into the present time with three different quests, and the movement into a fourth quest.  These issues are very prevalent and have to be understood as well as answered, and the answer points to the living Jesus who was born of the virgin Mary by way of the Holy Spirit, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, suffered, died, was buried, and on the third day was bodily resurrected, and ascended into heaven to be seated at the right hand of God.[4] To verify this, this writing will cover two areas of study:  the historical reliability of the Gospels, and an understanding of the quest for the Historical Jesus.

The Historical Reliability of the Gospels

The gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the richest sources on the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  The biggest question surrounding the gospels as a historical source is, “are they accurate?”  If they are, then one can assume that the Jesus portrayed in the gospels did live, but if not then, as Craig Blomberg announces in The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, “Unless the gospels narrate events which really happened and which offer one the opportunity to experience a quality of existence available in no other way, then there is no rational explanation for the formation of the early church and for the nature of its preaching.”[5] So if the early church believed their faith was based on history, how can one know today?

To understand the gospels, one must take an in-depth look at their genre.  If the gospels are just simply mythology, then they can be disregarded altogether and can be regarded as a more ancient Aesop’s fables.  However it is undeniable that the gospel accounts, especially Luke’s, are about real historical events, places, and people, but if the gospels are simply historical accounts then problems arise.  There are some discrepancies between the gospels when recalling the same event, for example, Matthew’s sermon on the mount and Luke’s sermon on the plain, or the chronological placement of Peter catching an abundance of fish either during his calling as a disciple or after Jesus’ resurrection.  The gospels cannot wholly be regarded as chronological historical accounts of the life of Jesus.

Blomberg covers various possible genres for the gospels, but exposes problems along with those.  He looks at the possibility of Mark as an apocalypse, but states that generally these are filled with bizarre visions, angelic figures, and symbols, which are not seen in Mark.  Another suggestion is aretalogies, which focuses on the life of a “divine man” and are usually exaggerated tales of a famous hero, but there is no clearly defined pre-Christian category for a “divine man,” and more than likely one did not exist.  He notes that some scholars view them as comedies and tragedies, but dismisses this since dramas are not contingent on historicity, and can “recount historical or fictitious events” (Blomberg 187, 237).  He covers midrash, which is the theory that the gospels are all retellings and new interpretations of the Old Testament, but notes that they do not recount the sacred history of the Jewish people, but rather follow the person of Jesus.   The fifth form he covers is similar to the style which follows Old Testament figures, such as Moses or the prophets, but notes that these texts are focused more on the story of God’s work with the Jewish people rather than the person as the gospels do.  The gospels as whole parables is another possibility he dismisses on the grounds of James William’s critique of this view in his book Gospel against Parable, which argues, “the gospel genre came about by the combination or juxtaposition of two somewhat opposite fields of meaning:  The parable (‘realistic fiction based on the extension of a metaphor’) and biography (a more historical structuring of the ‘virtuous deeds and teachings of a hero)’” (Blomberg 1987, 238).[6]

Biography has been proposed as a possible genre, however the modern genre of biography is not an adequate depiction of the gospels since generally modern biographies limit the freedom of the author, and are generally chronological in nature.  For the gospels to be put in the category of biography, a more ancient form that is closer to the date of the writing of the gospels with some of the similar features must be attributed to them.  Such a style of biography, one for noble Greeks and Romans, was put forward as a great possibility of style for the gospels since they shared similar features as that of other known Greco-Roman biographies.  Richard Burridge in his book, What Are the Gospels? takes an in depth look at the Greco-Roman style of biography and how all four gospels fit into the genre.

Burridge uses the first section of his book to look at the uses of form criticism and redaction theory to evaluate the gospels, and he says of them, “As we have just shown, failure to recognize the diversity of the range of generic features has been a consistent problem of most treatments of the genre of the gospels, leading to their ultimate failure”.[7] He says this mostly since form critics, such as Bultmann, try to prevent an analysis of literary genre to have much influence.  However, since looking at literary genre takes so many factors into account, Burridge groups them as opening features, subject, external features, and internal features, while taking subject to being the most important for determining if it is a noble Greco-Roman biography.[8]

After a thorough analysis of the gospels, Burridge very convincingly establishes all the gospels’ genres as noble Greco-Roman biographies.  This is significant since noble Greco-Roman biographies allowed for placement of text, as well as setting, and exclusion or inclusion of related thought to emphasize a certain point, or to help the understanding of a certain audience; this is clearly seen in the gospels as the authors wrote to different audiences, and possible inconsistencies become an understandable emphasis to allude to those audiences. When perusing the synoptic gospels he indicates that all three use either a formal preface, or a commencement with the subject’s name as an opening feature, Jesus as the subject of a vast number of the verbs, as well as much of the text dealing with his crucifixion and death, external features such as mode of representation, size, structure, and scale are similar to those found in other noble Greco-Roman biographies, as well as use of many oral and written sources to provide characterization by word and action, and internal features such as setting, topics, atmosphere, quality of characterization, and range of purposes  are comparable as well.  He then states, “they exhibit more of the features than are shown by the works at the edges of the genre.” (Burridge 1992, 218).[9] He then evaluates the gospel of John and finds distinctly similar features as the synoptic gospels, which bring him to proclaim, “These results place the Fourth Gospel clearly in the same genre as the synoptic gospels, namely [noble Greco-Roman]”.[10] However, just because all the gospels are the same genre, reflect historicity, and their discrepancies are seemingly eliminated, it does not mean they are absolutely reliable.

So how exactly can anyone know the gospels are historically reliable?  And should they be assumed unreliable until proven reliable, or vice-versa?  William Lane Craig proposes they should be considered reliable until proven wrong and gives five criteria for why:  there was insufficient time for legendary influence to expunge historical facts, the gospels are not analogous to folk tales or urban legends, the Jewish transmission of sacred traditions was highly developed and reliable, there were significant restraints on the embellishment of traditions about Jesus, such as the presence of eyewitnesses and the apostle’s supervision, and the gospel writers have a proven track record of historical reliability. [11] To further examine this one must look at specific examples that fall under each criteria Craig has submitted.

First, the time between the life of Jesus and the writing of the gospels was not enough time for myths and legends to creep in.  For instance, the latest gospel, John, is dated in the 90’s AD about 60 years after the death of Jesus,[12] and Mark, the earliest gospel is dated late 50’s or early 60’s, about 30 years after the death of Jesus [13](though Mark includes information from a very early source, closer to the death of Jesus).  This is very early in contrast to the first narrative of Alexander the Great’s reign which was written 300 years after he died, and the best was written almost two centuries after that.[14] We also see strange legendary markings on pseudo-gospels that arise later, such as the Gospel of Peter, which has Jesus coming out of the tomb with his head reaching beyond the heavens and a talking cross, or the Acts of John, where Jesus is seen by different people as an old man, a handsome young man, or a child, all at the same time. [15] Clearly these were not accepted by the church intentionally, and a strong reason being because of the distinct legendary Christology within these books, whereas books like John, Revelation, and Hebrews were accepted as a sort of ceiling for Christology within canonical writings.

For the second point, Craig simply says, “Tales like those of Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill or contemporary urban legends like the “vanishing hitchhiker” rarely concern actual historical individuals and are thus not analogous to the gospel narratives.”[16] The third point, Jewish transmission of sacred text was highly developed and reliable, is mostly in consideration of the relationship between Jews and oral tradition.  Xaiver Leon-Dufour states,

These then are certain general considerations which must be kept in mind when assessing the reliability of oral traditions about Jesus:  we are dealing with a world in which memories were far more exact than our own; even in English, many of the Lord’s sayings are unforgettable; many of the sayings which we possess only in Greek are evidently translations from Aramaic; from the beginning, the gospel was preached both in Greek and in Aramaic.[17]

When assessing these facts about Jewish oral tradition, it is hard to say it is a natural version of the “telephone game,” especially when Jewish young men are taught from a very young age to memorize the Torah, as well as many of the pneumonic devices included in Jesus’ teachings, and also meetings of the breaking of bread where the words and acts of Jesus were surely talked about on a weekly or even daily basis.

Craig’s fourth point is that tampering with the actual events of Jesus’ life was under strict restraints since there were still eyewitnesses and apostles living at the time the gospels were written.  If the gospel writers had added miracles, sayings, works, and actions that Jesus never did, obviously the eyewitnesses, the apostles, those that were healed, and those that had heard of Jesus would oppose the gospels.  Richard Bauckham illustrates the importance of eyewitnesses in the culture to historiography at the time of the writing of the gospels by looking at several writings about history and eyewitnesses from Polybius, Alexander, Lucian, Thyucydides, and most notable Papias.  Papias talks about a living voice, which most notably means a living source, and not just oral tradition.[18] More specifically, Bauckham means,

What is most important of our purposes is that, when Papias speaks of a ‘living and surviving voice’, he is not speaking metaphorically of the ‘voice’ of oral tradition, as many scholars have supposed.  He speaks quite literally of the voice of an informant—someone who has personal memories of the words and deeds of Jesus and who is still alive.[19]

More specifically, these informants are John the Elder and Aristion. [20]

The last point Criag makes is that the gospel writers have a proven track record, most notably, Luke.  The two New Testament books, the gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles (or simply, Acts) were both written together as one book (known as Luke-Acts), but were then separated to group the gospels together at the beginning of the New Testament.  At the beginning of the gospel of Luke, Luke makes an opening address similar to that of a Greek historian,

Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word.  Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.[21]

Luke’s gospel is known for being very specific about things and events that would be very informative to his reader to show historical reliability, such as chapter 1 verse 5, “In the time of Herod king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah; his wife Elizabeth a descendant of Aaron”.  There are several instances of these historical milieus all throughout Luke-Acts.  Craig, in his debate with John Dominic Crossan of the Jesus Seminar, says of Luke-Acts’ historical nature,

This has been excellently demonstrated by Colin Hemer in his recent volume The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History. Combing through the Book of Acts, Hemer finds a wealth of historical detail that has been verified by archeological and papyrological findings.  These findings show that Luke is a consummate historian in the Book of Acts (and I believe in the Gospel of Luke).  The judgment of Sir William Ramsay still stands”  ‘Luke is a historian of the first rank…this author deserves to be placed among the very greatest of historians.’[22]

Because of all these criteria, and the answers provided by an array of scholars, both Christians and non-Christians, the gospels surely reflect the Jesus who actually walked on earth.  As Luke Johnson, a New Testament scholar at Emory University, says, “Even the most critical historian can confidently assert that a Jew named Jesus worked as a teacher and wonder-worker in Palestine during the reign of Tiberius, was executed by crucifixion under the prefect Pontius Pilate and continued to have followers after his death.”[23]

Though the gospels have been shown to be historically reliable documents, as well as consistent, does this actually mean there is no other way to look at Jesus?  Could it be possible that the gospels and the manuscripts they are based on are simply, as Bart Ehrman contends, misquoting Jesus?[24] How much do Greek based, Neoplatonic, rationalistic presuppositions that permeate western thought cause a misunderstanding of biblical hermeneutics that should have a more Hebraic understanding of Jesus and how he looked to people in his cultural context?  These are some of the questions that are essential to understanding Jesus that the Historical Jesus quests have tried to answer.

The Historical Jesus

The attempt to find the historical Jesus has been exactly what some have used to describe it: a quest.  Since the late eighteenth century, scholars have attempted to find the Jesus behind the gospel narratives, but this brought on many problems.  The first quest to find the historical Jesus failed by attempting to distinguish the Jesus of the gospels from the Jesus of history, which ended by way of Albert Schweitzer, who shed light on the fallacious attempts to finding Jesus by taking him out of the gospels, making him formless, and projecting modern, liberal theological and philosophical ideologies onto him.[25] The second quest took into account that Jesus could not be removed from the gospels, but perhaps the early church theology that permeated the gospel accounts could be in order to discover what Jesus really said and did.[26] However, as shown earlier in this writing, the gospels have been shown to be historically reliable, and to ignore the majority of the gospels is to ignore the direct impact that the Jesus who really walked the earth had on many people whose proper disposition was to resist such an impact.

The third quest, however, has been quite successful in understanding who Jesus was by looking at what he said and did within first century Jewish context and culture. [27] A large part of this quest is looking at the content in the gospels and figuring out how a Galilean Jew in the first century would understand the certain terminologies, phrases, diction, and ideas presented.  This is thoroughly explained by James Dunn, who says,

As one can discern the shape of the seal from the mark it leaves on the paper, so we can discern the shape of Jesus’ mission from the impression he left on his first disciples:  Not the ‘historical Jesus,’ as though he was some objective artifact that we could prise from the traditions and from whom we could then brush off the dirt (faith) of the intervening ages, but the historic Jesus, the one who left the impact still evident in the Gospels, the one who transformed fishermen and tax collectors into disciples.[28]

It is clear the Jesus of faith cannot be separated from the Jesus of history, since Jesus himself was a strong man of faith, who brought about faith within his disciples to leave all they had to follow him, and continued to birth faith throughout the world.

But how should Jesus be viewed?  And just because the gospels are reliable, and the recognition of their inclusion has been accepted does this mean all of their claims are true?  Probably the best way to view Jesus and answer this question is by looking at Jesus through the lenses of an eschatological, or more specifically an apocalyptic, prophet.  This was Albert Schweitzer’s contention, though his conclusions are a bit skeptical.

When viewing Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet, there are those, such as Schweitzer and Dale Allison, who have argued that Jesus expected the end of the world within the lifetime of his disciples.  They contend that he believed it so strongly he gave his life for it, but since the end of the world never came, he simply failed.  Allison says in his book, Jesus of Nazareth:  Millenarian Prophet,

Jesus’ generation, however, passed away.  They all tasted death.  And it is not the kingdom of God that has come but the scoffers who ask, where is the promise of his coming?  For all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.  Jesus the millenarian prophet, like all millenarian prophets, was wrong:  reality has taken no notice of his imagination.[29]

Allison further expresses what he believes Jesus’ eschatological expectations were in his book, The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus,

More precisely, he envisaged, as did many in his time and place, the advent, after suffering and persecution, of a great judgment, and after that a supernatural utopia, the kingdom of God, inhabited by the dead come back to life, to enjoy a world forever rid of evil and wholly ruled by God.[30]

In light of Allison’s apocalyptic, end-of-the-world Jesus, it is easy to deny many things that are proposed by the gospels, as well as most of the New Testament.  In this framework, Jesus would not be able to be resurrected from the dead, many sayings attributed to Jesus would not actually be from him, and many other ideas about Jesus could not happen.  But is this framework dedicated to the attempt of the third quest, that is, to look at Jesus within first century Jewish cultural context?

N. T. Wright critiques the idea of Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet meaning he sees the end of the world as immanent by looking at what “apocalyptic” actually means.  He states,

First-century Jewish apocalyptic, is not the same as “end-of-the-world.” Instead, it invests major events within history with their theological significance. It looks, specifically, for the unique and climactic moment in—not the abolition of—Israel’s long historical story. We must: renounce literalism, whether fundamentalist or scholarly. Apocalyptic is the symbolic and richly-charged language of protest, affirming that God’s kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven—not in some imagined heavenly realm to be created after the present world has been destroyed.[31]

Clearly Allison’s assertions are based on a common western presupposition of the word “apocalyptic” meaning “end of the world,” which cause him to interpret passages, such as Mark 13 and many other specific verses that he lists in both the books mentioned earlier, incorrectly.  This is in direct contrast to looking at Jesus correctly through his cultural context.

Ben Witherington further comments on this, saying,

Neither Jesus nor other early Jews (or most Christians) were talking about the end of the world writ large, but only the end of a particular, more narrowly defined, world order.  This was true even when they used the dramatic apocalyptic language of cosmic cataclysm (stars falling, moon turned to blood, etc.) to describe such events.[32]

Seeing Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet in terms of the end of the world order present at his time fits very well with the gospel tradition.  Jesus came proclaiming the reversal in the order of life: the first shall be last, and the last shall be first.  He preached to the poor, he called for the caring of the widow and the orphan, he recognized women as disciples, he recognized children as respectable persons, he ate with tax collectors and sinners, he reached out to the prostitute, he talked to and cared for foreigners, he liberated those who were oppressed, and he healed those who were sick and disabled.  This is the nature of the eschaton; Jews were not looking for the destruction of the world, but the restoration of their independence and land where Yahweh reigned as king on earth in the Promised Land they were given.[33] This is why Jesus prayed, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”[34] so the kingdom of God could be displayed through his life, which modeled how God’s people ought to live and will live; his actions and miracles, which showed infirmities, demonic possession, and oppression would be eliminated in God’s reign; and through his death and resurrection, which displayed the present sufferings, but also the first fruits of the resurrection.

This apocalyptic Jesus is the Jesus of the gospels.  He proclaimed the reign of God as a present reality, but not yet fully consummated through the joining of the new heaven and the new earth.  The climax of history to Jesus was not the end of the cosmos, but on Calvary, where he would initiate the renewal of earth and give a taste of the full forgiveness of sins that would take place in the eschaton.  Everything Jesus did gave the expectancy of the eschaton where there is no more sickness, oppression, or sin; the divine came to earth to show the kingdom of God was forcefully advancing toward the world.  This apocalyptic Jesus believed in his mission and message so strongly that he used his life as a parallel to the most central part of his culture:  the Temple.  It would be destroyed, but renewed into something greater with a greater purpose, as humanity became the Temple for the Holy Spirit.

Some may be uncomfortable with the thought of Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet, especially since western culture has this set idea of Jesus as God and he cannot be anything else.  N. T. Wright presents an answer to this perfectly,

My proposal, then, is not that we assume that we know what the word “God” means, managing somehow to fit Jesus into that. Instead, I suggest that we think historically about a young Jew, possessed of a desperately-risky— indeed, apparently crazy—vocation, riding into Jerusalem in tears, denouncing the Temple, dining once more with his friends, and dying on a Roman cross, and that we somehow allow our meaning for the word “God” to be re-centered around that point.[35]

This challenge should be embraced by Jesus’ followers as it was by his disciples.  Perhaps the current understanding of the Jesus of the gospels is not the proper understanding at all, but a fresh look at these incredible writings written about Jesus through the eyes of a Galilean Jew in the first century could help Jesus’ modern followers and skeptics alike understand who he was.

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[1] Matthew 16:13-20 New International Version

[2] Center for Reformed Theology and Apologetics, “Westminster Confession of Faith.”  Center for Reformed Theology and Apologetics, http://www.reformed.org/documents/wcf_with_proofs/ (accessed November 2, 2010).

[3] This is not implying the early church was organized enough to have control over all documents and movements; this writer is not a proponent of the “Davinci Code” theory.

[4] Creeds of Christendom,  “The Nicene Creed.” Creeds of Christendom, http://www.creeds.net/ancient/nicene.htm (accessed November 2, 2010).

[5] Craig Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels (England Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1987), 58.

[6] Ibid, 236-238

[7] Richard Burridge, What are the Gospels? (New York, NY: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1992), 109.

[8] Ibid, 111.

[9] Ibid, 218.

[10] Ibid, 239.

[11] Reasonable Faith, “Rediscovering the Historical Jesus:  The Evidence for Jesus,” Reasonable Faith, http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5207 (accessed November 7, 2010).

[12] Walter A. Elwell, and Robert W. Yarbrough, Encountering the New Testament, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 1998), 110.

[13] Ibid, 89.

[14] Frank L. Holt, Alexander the Great and the Mystery of the Elephant Medallions, (Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2003), 18.

[15] Paul Foster, “The Gospel of Peter,” Expository Times 118, no. 8 (May 2007): 318-325. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed November 7, 2010).

[16] Reasonable Faith, “Rediscovering the Historical Jesus:  The Evidence for Jesus,” Reasonable Faith, http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5207 (accessed Novmeber 7, 2010).

[17] Xaivier Leon-Dufour S. J., The Gospels & the Jesus of History (New York, NY:  William Collins Sons & Co, 1968), 196.

[18] Richard Bauckham, “THE EYEWITNESSES AND THE GOSPEL TRADITIONS.” Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 1, no. 1 (January 2003): 60. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed November 9, 2010).

[19] Ibid, 41.

[20] Ibid, 32.

[21] Luke 1:1-4 New International Version.

[22] Paul Copan, Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up?:  A Debate between William Lane Craig and John Dominic Crossan (Grand Rapids, MI:  Baker Books, 1998).

[23] Luke Timothy Johnson, The Real Jesus (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1996), 123.

[24] Bart D. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus:  the Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (New York, NY:  HarperCollins Publishers, 2005).

[25] William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2008), 289-290.

[26] Ibid., 290-294.

[27] Ibid., 294-296.

[28] James K. Beilby and Paul Rhodes Eddy, The Historical Jesus: Five Views (Downers Grove, IL:  InterVarsity Press, 2009), 206-207.  James D. G. Dunn’s contribution.

[29] Dale C. Allison, Jesus of Nazareth:  Millenarian Prophet (Minneapolis, MN:  Augsburg fortress, 1998), 218.

[30] Dale C. Allison, The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2009), 95.

[31] N. T. Wright Page, “The Historical Jesus and Christian Theology,” N. T. Wright Page, http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Historical_Jesus.htm (accessed November 10, 2010).

[32] Ben Witherington III, The Jesus Quest:  The Third Search for the Jew of Nazareth (Downers Grove, IL Intervarsity Press, 1995), 225.

[33] Ibid.

[34] Matthew 6:10 New International Version.

[35] N. T. Wright Page, “The Historical Jesus and Christian Theology,” N. T. Wright Page, http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Historical_Jesus.htm (accessed November 10, 2010).