The Historical Jesus and the Spirit

How do we know Jesus Christ? One way to know Jesus Christ is by reading Scripture, especially the gospels. But do the gospel accounts tell us the same exact story? No they do not. Each of the gospel accounts tells the story of Jesus in a different way. As a result of this, biblical scholars have concluded that the gospels were written decades after Jesus' death, and further, the stories were changed prior to their being written down. If this is true, what were the original words and deeds of Jesus? and what was added, deleted, and changed prior to its being written down? This question led to what has been called "the quest for the historical Jesus." This was the attempt to determine the exact words and deeds of Jesus through a scientific study of Scripture.

The "questers" soon discovered that the early Christians were not interested in writing a precise historical account of Jesus' life, nor did they seem to find it amiss to interpret the stories of Jesus in light of the resurrection, the fulfillment of the Old Testament revelation, as well as conditions in the churches of their time. How are we to understand this theologically?

With respect to Trinity, no person of the Trinity acts without the other two. That is, when God the Son spoke and acted, his words and deeds as recorded in the gospels did not exist apart from the work of the Father and the Spirit. The Spirit took the original words and deeds of Jesus and located them in an interpretative context. There is no pure, objective Jesus apart from human interpretation, just as there is no Son without the Spirit. For this reason, the gospels do not present Jesus in a objective, perfectly accurate historical fashion, but as interpreted by the Spirit for the original readers.

To what degree was the original history interpreted and readapted? I am not sure we can determine this exactly. The quest for the historical Jesus led to consensus on certain matters, that Jesus lived, proclaimed the Kingdom of God, preached a radical ethic, was crucified, and, according to his disciples, was raised from the dead. After that, there are differing conclusions. Bultmann, for example, does not believe that Jesus arose from the dead in any objective fashion. He adopts strict "scientific" criterion for what is possible. Others, those who believe in miracles for example, can believe that Jesus arose from the dead in a more literal sense. How are we to judge between these differing conclusions?

As proclaimed throughout this website, I do not think we can adopt Bultmann's approach for interpreting Scripture. I believe that God does miracles, and many gospel accounts present God's saving healing power. During his lifetime, Jesus blessed, healed, judged, forgave, and led people into obedience to God. The gospel writers wrote with the hope that the risen Jesus would do the same today. Who was the historical Jesus? What did he really say or do? Do we really need to know in exact detail, as if the gospel writers wrote like tape recorders? I don't think so. But what do we need?

We need the substance, the saving substance of the gospel accounts. To receive this we need to carry out a careful, intense, analysis of the text. But this alone is not enough. We need to be open to the Spirit in prayer, hope, and repentance, believing that God will effect in us the very deeds narrated in the gospels. When that happens, we will discover their historicity, not in exact detail as they once literally occurred, but in their saving power. (Plenteous Harvest, June, 1993.

Comments

This essay requires some comments. The second sentence states that "One way to know Jesus Christ is by reading Scripture, especially the gospels." More needs to be said at this point. The authoritative, decisive, and reliable way of knowing Jesus Christ is Scripture. Scripture is the norm of faith for Anglicans. (Article VI) Here is Anglican scholar Reginald H. Fuller,

The Bible alone (in this sense the Anglican Churches accept the Reformation principle of sola scriptura) contains the primary authoritative witness of the mighty acts of God in salvation history (see pp. 93 5). No other book, however primitive or inspiring, can add anything to the witness of these acts of God, however much it may contribute to our understanding of them. This is because the saving acts of God took place once for all, and with the events there is also a once for all authoritative witness.(1)

The third paragraph ends with the sentence, "For this reason, the gospels do not present Jesus in a objective, perfectly accurate historical fashion, but as interpreted by the Spirit for the original readers." This requires amplification.

First, the Scriptures are interpreted from faith to faith and the guide for that faith is the regula, the Creeds of the Church. The Creeds themselves, however, are derived from Scripture. J.N.D. Kelly, puts it this way,

That the church in the apostolic age possessed a creed in the broad sense of a recognized body of teaching may be accepted as a demonstrated fact. But it is permissible to take a further step. There is plenty of evidence in the New Testament to show that the faith was already beginning to harden into conventional summaries.(2)

But the second century conviction that the "rule of faith" believed and taught in the Catholic Church had been inherited from the Apostles contains more than a germ of truth. Not only was the content of that rule, in all essentials, foreshadowed by the "pattern of teaching" accepted in the apostolic Church, but its characteristic lineaments and outline found their prototypes in the confessions and creedal summaries contained in the New Testament documents.(3)

Further, as is well known, the creeds guided the correct interpretation of Scripture. This became especially critical in the church's battle against the gnostics, and in this struggle, Irenaeus played an important role. He emphasized the role of the Creeds in understanding Scripture, a position the church has recognized for centuries. Here is a standard comment, taken from a text on the history of biblical interpretation.

Above all for Irenaeus, who is defending the main stream of Christian faith against able enemies, there is one standard of correct [biblical] interpretation. The standard is the rule of faith as preserved in church in the apostolic succession. Although this view is more fully developed at a later date, Irenaeus is really the father of authoritative exegesis in the Church. In his opinion truth is to be found only within the Church.(4)

Among Christian creeds, the Nicene Creed stands at the fore. It is recited each Sunday throughout Christendom. I will now draw upon the Nicene Creed to make sense of the historical Jesus and the Spirit. Before that, however, a detour to introduce the theological word "appropriation" might be helpful.

Since God is one in three, each of God's acts involve all three persons of the Trinity. Nevertheless, each person of the Trinity is prominent in a special way in each of God's acts. For example, the Nicene Creed states that God the Father is the "maker of heaven and earth." This implies that the Father is involved in a special way in creation. Nevertheless, the Creed also says that "all things were made" through Jesus Christ with the result that Jesus Christ was also involved in creation. The Spirit is the "giver of life" which indicates his role in creation as well. In other words, creation is a special work of the Father, yet the Son and Spirit were involved as well. The term for this is "appropriation," creation is appropriated to the Father. Similarly, salvation is appropriated to Jesus Christ. As stated in the Creed, "for us and for our salvation he [Jesus Christ] came down from heaven." Both Father and the Spirit, however, were also involved in salvation since the Son is "eternally begotten of the Father" and born "of the Holy Spirit." The "one holy catholic and apostolic church" and the "life of the world to come" are appropriated to the Spirit, yet both the Father and the Son are involved in these divine acts as well. In short, the term "appropriation" means that a given reality has a special relationship with one person of the Trinity, while recognizing that the other two persons are involved as well.

By appropriation, the gospel narratives belong to God the Son. He is the subject of the four gospel narratives. Further, the Creed states that the Spirit "proceeds from the Father and the Son," to quote the Nicene Creed. Since the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, this implies that the Son is prior to the Spirit, which in turn implies that the gospel narratives (appropriated to the Son) are prior to the Church (appropriated to the Spirit). In other words, from a creedal perspective, the gospels created the church and not conversely. If the church created the gospels, then the Creed should say that the Son proceeds from the Father and the Spirit, implying that the gospel accounts of Jesus Christ were essentially created as the church (appropriated to Spirit) reflected on its own created life (appropriated to the Father). From these considerations it follows that the substance, the essential saving acts, the life of Jesus Christ, was prior to the church and not conversely. Since the early disciples knew that their life derived from Jesus Christ, they recorded his saving acts in the gospels rather than allowing themselves and future Christians to write their own accounts of Christ's life on the basis of their experience.

Those who believe that the church essentially created the life of Christ do not claim that the early church self consciously set out to rewrite his life. They would say that the early Christians were primitive people, and as a result, they clothed the mystery of Christ's presence in a mythological narrative which spoke of his heavenly origin and miraculous powers. These additions substantially augmented and transformed the historical Jesus into a heavenly figure who did miracles. The Creed is instructive here. It affirms Christ's heavenly origin, "God from God, Light from Light." It recognizes the fact of miracle, "born of the virgin Mary" and "on the third day he rose again." A faithful interpretation of Scripture begins with these presuppositions, and they can be substantiated by anyone willing to enter into the miraculous life of the risen Christ today. As that happens, it becomes even more obvious that the purpose of Scripture is to proclaim Jesus' saving acts as types of what Jesus does now, and further, that he created the church and not conversely.

On the other hand, since all persons of the Trinity are involved in each of God's acts, it must be said that the Spirit did play a role in the formation of the gospel accounts. This did not mean that the Spirit created a new Jesus. The gospel accounts were written to reveal the words and deeds of Jesus as a saving message for those who believed on him. Therefore, when the church recorded the things he did in the flesh, their focus was salvation, how his words and deeds blessed, healed, delivered, forgave, and reconciled sinful, lost human beings. It was understood that the risen Jesus still did those things by means of the gospel message made alive by the Spirit. As a result, other matters were are not at the fore of the gospel accounts as recorded by the early church. For this reason, the New Testament writers were not at pains to write precise historical biographies of Christ. Such accounts may be of interest to devotees of the historical/critical method, and to fundamentalists eager to save the jot and the tittle, but for those in need of salvation, other matters stand supreme. For that reason, I was willing to state in the above essay that we do not really need to know the exact historical details of Jesus' words and deeds, as long as we have the substance of his saving acts. In fact, I do not think the exact historical details can ever be known. If Truth is given by exact historical detail, then each historical event described in Scripture must include all the events that led up to it and all those that followed from it since no event is isolated from other events. That is impossible: "Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written." (John 21:25) No, Truth is given by the Word and the faithful witness of the Spirit which reveals the saving substance of his words and deeds.

The above claims are faith statements. If someone wants to believe that the church created the gospels, and there are those who do, they cannot be refuted by compelling evidence. Other than the gospels themselves, and a few scattered references from other sources, we have no other accounts of the life of Christ. We were not there to see how the gospels came to be, and therefore, we do not know exactly how the early church recorded the original historical events. Given the differences between the four gospel accounts, it is obvious that a degree of interpretation did take place. For example, Luke and Matthew differ on the order of the temptations. Does this imply that Jesus was not tempted? Is the order decisive at this point? Do we need that level of accuracy? If we did, why do Matthew and Luke disagree? Or, should we claim that Jesus was tempted on two different occasions and that Luke records one and Matthew the other? To me, it makes more sense to believe that Christ was tempted in different ways and on a number of occasions, and that both accounts summarize the substance of his temptations while focusing on one period of unusually intense temptation.

This view of the gospels does not fully accord with evangelicalism, nor with fundamentalism, nor does it comport with a liberal understanding of Scripture. I would have to ask, however, what the gospels are about if not salvation, and why would Scripture narrate Jesus' saving deeds if he does not do them today? And further, if he did such deeds, would not those who wrote them down need to summarize, combine, abbreviate, and work out implications? Would they not do the same with his words? Shouldn't some sort of selection and summation process take place since it is manifestly impossible to record everything he did? Is personal saving Truth an exhaustive account of facts, or a potent message that captures the heart of the matter? Further, as the disciples came to recognize the Lord Jesus as the Word, Deed, and Image of God, would they not coordinate his earthly life with the revelation of God's words, deeds, and appearances in the Old Testament? Didn't Jesus himself teach them to do so? Would not the Spirit enable them to do this truthfully, or is Truth given apart from the work of the Spirit? As I see it, the biblical text preserves the substance of Jesus' words and deeds, but its passages are not always exact historical accounts that would correspond in every detail with specific historical events. If that were the case, the Spirit would be nothing more than a video camera, and this would deny that the Spirit is a person of the Trinity who has a significant role to play in the work of revelation.

The fact that the Spirit had a positive role to play in the formation of the gospel narratives, and that this role was not simply a parroting of historical facts, does not imply that the details of Scripture are unimportant. As described in other essays, as God speaks, God the Word takes form as the biblical text. As this happens, God the Word is identical to the text, and the "details" of the text matter. The text, all of it and each word, is the Word of God made objective by the Spirit.

Of the four gospel accounts, the gospel of John might appear to have the weakest connection with the original words and deeds of Jesus. Raymond Brown, renowned authority on John, states the matter in these words,

From all these remarks it should be clear why we must be very cautious about the use of John in scientifically reconstructing in detail the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, even as we must be careful in so using the other Gospels. We do believe that John is based on a solid tradition of the works and words of Jesus, a tradition which at times is very primitive. We believe that often John gives us correct historical information about Jesus that no other Gospel has preserved, for example, that, like John the Baptist, Jesus had a baptizing ministry for a period before he began his ministry of teaching; that his public ministry lasted more than a year; that he went several times to Jerusalem; that the opposition of the Jewish authorities at Jerusalem was not confined to the last days of his life; and many details about Jesus' passion and death. Yet, in evaluating the Johannine picture of Jesus, we cannot neglect the inevitable modifications made in the various stages of Johannine composition.(5)

Here we see the following: First, the text of John's gospel is "based on a solid tradition of the works and words of Jesus, a tradition which at times is very primitive." In other words, John's gospel is not a flight of fancy, rather, it is rooted and grounded in the original words and deeds of Christ. Secondly, there were "modifications made in the various stages of Johannine composition." Thirdly, in spite of the gospel's foundation in original events, the modifications are sufficient to make it difficult to "scientifically" reconstruct "in detail the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth." The phrase "scientifically reconstruct" would mean a reconstruction in which the details of the life of Jesus could be affirmed with a very high probability of their occurring exactly as narrated by the text. Brown would, however, claim that one can know the basic contours of Christ's life, and even that many details did actually take place. Given that the gospels writers had to summarize what they knew of Jesus, I believe that many of the details given in the gospels did take place in various ways, but not always exactly as narrated by the text itself.

Further, there are those in the church who, on the basis of John 16:12-14, would claim that John's gospel gives warrant for valid revelation beyond or even contrary to the biblical revelation. If anything, Raymond Brown, a Roman scholar would be tempted to make that claim. Here is his view John 16:12 14.

Roman Catholic theologians have seen in it a reference to continued unfolding of dogma during the period of the Church's existence. Yet we should be made cautious by comparing it to xv 15 which seems to exclude further revelations ... More likely vs. 12 means that only after Jesus' resurrection will there by full understanding of what happened and was said during the ministry, a theme that is familiar in John (ii 22, xii 16, xiii 7). ... It is unlikely that in Johannine thought there was any concept of further revelation after the ministry of Jesus, for Jesus is the revelation of the Father, the Word of God.(6)

Verse 14 [Jn. 16:14] reinforces the impression that the Paraclete brings no new revelation because he receives from Jesus what he is to declare to the disciples. Jesus glorified the Father (xvii,4) by revealing the Father to men; the Paraclete glorifies Jesus by revealing him to men.(7)

According to Brown, John's gospel proclaims that it was the Spirit that enabled the disciples to grasp the full significance of Jesus' words and deeds culminating in the resurrection. By the inspiration of that same Spirit the gospels were written. As the Spirit of Truth, the Spirit did not go beyond the apostolic testimony of the eye witnesses themselves, even as the Spirit shaped the text according to the fullness of that revelation. As that happened, the Spirit revealed Jesus as a saving Word, "the revelation of the Father, the Word of God."

Summing up, the gospels, by appropriation, belong to Jesus Christ. He created them by his words and deeds, and this implies that they substantially reflect what he actually said and did. The Spirit, however, has a positive role to play, for God is one and each person of the Trinity is at work in the action of the others. That role is witness, a faithful and true witness who fashioned the text as a saving Word of life grounded in the words and deeds of the historical Jesus who acts today to save as he always did.

Endnotes

1. Booty, John and Sykes, Stephen. eds. The Study of Anglicanism. London: SPCK/Fortress Press, 1988, p. 82.
2. J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds. Third Edition. New York: David McKay Company, Inc., 1972, p. 13.
3. J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, p. 29.
4. Grant, Robert M. A Short History of the Interpretation of the Bible. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1963, p. 72.
5. Brown, Raymond E. The Gospel According to John. Vol. I, I XII, Vol. II, XIII XXI. The Anchor Bible. New York: Doubleday, 1966, pp. L LI.
6. Brown, p. 714.
7. Brown, p. 716.