The Christ of faith
Garvey, John
its detailed articulation. No single mem- kind of overreaching policy position of team. Christopher may not generate the ber of the security group stands out as the a Kissinger or a...
...and we are related to it...
...These "contradictions" are rou- The Christ of faith is the only Jesus who tinely trotted out by people who imagine can finally matter to a believer...
...which is not a Passover meal in John...
...He (The saddest spectacle is the fundamen- with the Jesus of faith...
...For that matter, there is 1~% MARI-IN BRECHT haii azc 1 +, r L. ~, h',:lf icant differences...
...John, for example, is not nearThe Life of a Mediterranean Jewish reign by enduring death and overcoming ly so Hellenistic as many scholars had asPeasant (HarperSan Francisco, 1991...
...Only after a couple of gen- son) and probably, in the sense that moderations of Christians do we find anything ern people demand historical evidence, like "biographies" of Jesus, and they aren't more or less inaccessible-certainly inhistories in any modern sense...
...history is finally both real (no serious The earliest Jesus we encounter is the scholar doubts that Jesus was a real perJesus of faith...
...It is remarkable, if handling ~ , i, tails (his ancestry, the place of his birth, not at all surprising, how much Thomas .ire:,d.:itinn.11 t z e }a where he preached and healed, how many Jefferson's Jesus resembles Thomas h were healed and under what circumstances, Jefferson...
...We have been given "the Christ of faith" by an ongoing, THE CHRIST OF FAITH living tradition, whereas "the Christ of hisTHIS IS NOT A HISTORY QUIZ tory" is a secular concern, a worry for those who have rejected the belief in a presently living Christ from the start...
...One is interest in the "historical tinction has been made between the Jesus that research into the Dead Sea Scrolls and Jesus" recently, much of it of history and the Christ of faith...
...the Judaism that was current at the time centered around the publi- People are threatened on both sides of of Jesus has revealed a much less monocation of John P. Meir's A this...
...Tho- and how to read the New Testament, when the Spirit to us...
...That is the notion that Jews, agnostics-the one who existed his- seemed to know-would be better served we will know more about what really torically, apart from the claims made about by a deistic, Enlightenment-style Jesus, matters most about Jesus when we learn him, by himself (maybe or maybe not), by the moralistically inclined gentleman of more facts...
...this optic Gospels seem more "historical" than would have seemed, to some of our an- the Gospel of John, because they concur cestors, as unreasonable as looking for more and feel to us, at least since the early signs of the future in the entrails of sacri- nineteenth century, more like what we call ficially slaughtered pigeons...
...Lake ing trust of the president and the respect to fashion a policy for a changed and comes to the White House without the of the other key players on the security changing world...
...The Jesus of come, and the dead in Christ will rise...
...You ac- shrine, can shift the ways in which we read cific time-"under Pontius Pilate," as the cept it or you deny it...
...If this is discoveries as the probability that the pool with the question: it is central to Christian true it changes the way our accustomed at Bethsaida at which Jesus cured a parateaching that a particular person, Jesus of world of life and death must be regard- lytic was a pagan, not a Jewish, healing Nazareth, was born and was killed at a spe- ed...
...There has been a renewal of generations of Christians (certainly...
...great deal more of an intellectual and administration, but it certainly looks like If Clinton stays at the center, my guess moral framework for strategy and poli- his assessment of what is proposed and is that the intellectual framework for pol- cy than newspaper accounts have so far his careful judgment of how to proceed icy debate will be set by Aspin and Lake...
...liest scriptural layer we have confronts us "Brecht's schokarshiHH is iron c i able...
...this alters some of the ways Jesus (Doubleday, 1991), and John ly troubled: they can't stand the Christian in which we have to read Paul and the Dominic Crossan's The Historical Jesus: claim that someone has ended death's Gospels...
...Thine is a friend to all mankind;/ Mine Jesus is the new Moses for Matthew, so speaks parables to the blind...
...That MARTIN LUTHER sermon on the plain in Luke, with signif- doesn't exist...
...and later Scripture displays a remarkable talent for precision talist attempt to reconcile what can't and doesn't speak of history but of one who and conciseness...
...who live at the end of the twentieth cen- Jefferson uncomfortable...
...I3c•cause some Reformation deveIopnicms Jesus like for breakfast, and how tall were to his followers: "Who do you say that I continued without him...
...it is biographical reference- - -" which assumed the living presence of not even the Jesus of history...
...Jesus-to various audiences, and what Jesus who leaves us more or less where Postage nnd .4,y4~~ti.Sy we would consider important historical de- we are, undisturbed...
...D OF SEVERAL MINDS John Garvey But there are believers who have a problem with the concern of those who care about the Jesus of history...
...To the earliest Christians, 13rccht here JC'Cl key in dci'th the Final For the authors of the Gospels the ques- and to us, the question was not, "what was fourteen yearn of Luther'± fife, a period tions to be answered were not "What did he like historically," but the one Jesus put often treated briefly in LL]thcr biographies...
...lcacie ::r H 5')2I,p $41_Qi , lah so forth...
...the Gospel the question isn't who or what can be earlier biographies x.ith the rcsuIts of rnore modern rescarrh into I-other's life of John has no Eucharist at the Last Supper, proven to have existed historically, but how and time...
...life as something one could discern by rum- Even the prejudice that makes the synmaging through biographical details...
...a distinctive view of the role of formilitary, but he has proposed organiza- Warren Christopher obviously has what eign policy has been articulated...
...The gentlemanly Jesus, the great ethopponents paid only partial attention to him, and his personality displays great this person mean for the world...
...The earliest writings are sign that we might be closer there to what Paul's, and the earliest of these is proba- Jesus was "really like...
...Resurrection...
...Why bother yourself with this...
...92 Chuiec L)udsrnrulr...
...his Catholic his relatives...
...1 His Road to various accounts in the synoptic Gospels Egyptian texts, and it is part of a list of Reformation: 1483-1521 differ in what would, from a historical point defeated enemies...
...D 8: 29 January 1993 Commonweal...
...A dis- There are several good reasons...
...The emphasis on factual hishis first followers (probably), by later Galilee...
...Another is that such archaeological There is an understandable fascination ers are encouraged to hope for...
...We know more about Jesus, is, the Father who sent the Son and sends ery, or any form of enlightenment...
...The "historical Jesus" is the one we among other things, to make the gospel tion to at least some of the emphasis on can all try to agree about-Christians, comprehensible to Indians, who-he the historical Jesus...
...As in the case of Israel, Concra,c~ (kit thcahOgical prrs;ucti~c ,f of view, be important details...
...genealogies conflict...
...bly I Thessalonians...
...but "What did the life of am...
...and what is claimed for him by Christians ical approach to the story of Jesus, which These discoveries-entirely modern, tois that he was God's Son, one with God, would rather see resurrection as a tally historical-are important to biblical so that in seeing him we see the God who metaphor for any kind of desired recov- understanding...
...The answers were in common with mystics of every age5-bhp $41.9i cloth "Bretlir [is now[ the standard addressed-from within a community this is not only not the Jesus of faith...
...it, through a real resurrection his follow- sumed...
...Christopher may not generate the ber of the security group stands out as the a Kissinger or a Brzezinski, but with a conceptual themes within the Clinton defining figure...
...us...
...The earVol...
...described...
...The people who have problems with lithic Judaism than had been traditionalMarginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical the Christ of faith are the more obvious- ly supposed...
...3 The Preservation of the Church: 1532.1546 to be the correct one...
...and a taltional change in light of an understand- every secretary of state needs: the abid- ented core of people has been assembled ing of strategic changes in the world...
...I like Blake on these contrathe direction of his sojourning in Galilee) dictions: "The vision of Christ that thou are used and varied to make theological dost see / Is my vision's greatest enemy.../ points, not to give biographical details...
...This is the -\I ARK U'- En\CARTS...
...histories and biographies-even this is There is something odd about the growth more a revelation of the limitations of our of the New Testament canon from a mod- way of understanding a narrative than a ern point of view...
...There are no details While it is true to say that there is no here about Jesus other than what is preached contradiction between the Jesus of histoas a present reality: he died, rose, and is ry and the Jesus of faith, that isn't really present, will save us from the wrath to the way to put the question...
...mas Jefferson was among those who made we know more about the world in which To want to know more about this per- Jesus relevant by removing from the he lived, and the social and religious son historically is only natural for people Gospels anything which made Thomas framework within which he worked...
...He did this, But there is a most reasonable objectury...
...only one reference to Israel in ancient Mil...
...There is no way around this...
...talents to policy formulation, but not of policy which were at the margins of All this is still speculative, but some clashing conceptions of the world...
...The sermon accessible if what is desired is indepenon the mountain in Matthew becomes a dent verification of Gospel accounts...
...his life mean for us...
...Ii1\']D 1V LOT7" 544pp $-i1-95 cloth was never meant to be reconciled here, a was crucified and whose tomb was empty, doomed effort which assumes the jour- a way of returning later believers to Paul's Just lluH s ied nalistic-historical approach to the Gospels earlier emphasis on Jesus' death and Vol...
...structure and substance outlined above...
...torical detail reads back a very modem conCommonweal 29 January 1993: 7 cern into a past which, for important rea- his teaching must be given from a mounsons, didn't regard the significance of a tain...
...Lake has thought clearly and will carry great weight with an activist They bring different interests and different creatively about several of the problems president...
...What does ical teacher, the mystic who has everything tensions, along with errors in judgment...
...Aspin the cold war debate, but fit the world things are clear: the lineaments of a difhas systematically developed a view emerging from the double change of ferent international order are already with about reducing and restructuring the U.S...
...2 Shaping and Defining the Reformation: 1521-1532 that they were never noticed by Christians...
...This "either/or" is the Gospel, and should: here we have a Nicene Creed makes a point of saying- not congenial to a certain sort of allegor- rabbi working a cure in a pagan place...
Vol. 120 • January 1993 • No. 2
