From Luke_Johnson@info.harpercollins.comTue Feb 27 12:41:22 1996 Date: Sun, 25 Feb 1996 18:59:59 -0500 (EST) From: Luke Johnson To: Jesus2000@info.harpercollins.com Subject: Primary Message Week 2 (Johnson) I. Faith and History (Revisited) In my book, I challenged the assumption that history could be normative for faith. I did this in two ways. First, I defined history narrowly in terms, not of what happened in the past, but the construction of human knowledge about the past. By so doing, I emphasized the inevitably selective and partial character of all history, as well as its revisionist character. Second, I gave a strong reading of the resurrection as the originating and defining element in earliest Christianity, and as a religious experience that can be called "real" even if it cannot be verified historically. My point in this is that history ought not to be equated with reality, and that it is possible to speak of dimensions of human experience that are at once profoundly real yet properly not historical. Much of what is most interesting about human existence, in fact, escapes the cognitive net of the historical, without in the least ceasing to be real; leave aside religion: think only of music, art, dance, and all the shades of being in love. From the time of Strauss's LIFE OF JESUS CRITICALLY EXAMINED, the appropriate methodological EPOCHE concerning the transcendent has slipped into an inappropriate ontological denial of the transcendent, thus: as historians we cannot toucb miracles, because history deals with the world of human events in time and space, a universe of secondary causes and effects...fine...but this quickly becomes, as historians we can declare that miracles don't happen. where such epistemological distinctions become pertinent to the study of Jesus is obvious. It seems appropriate to engage in the strictest, most critical analysis of "what can historically be ascertained about Jesus." Although that quest has certain frustrations built into it, still it is a reasonable venture. Given the nature of historical inquiry, furthermore, such analysis can legitimately bracket the transcendent. Thus, such study can confirm that Jesus had a reputation as a healer. It can even argue to the occurrence of healings (someone who was sick got well). But as history, it cannot say anything about God's power at work in such events. But by the same token, neither can history DENY God's power at work in such events. This comes home especially with the resurrection. If the resurrection is understood as the continuing powerful personal presence in the world among believers, history can neither confirm nor deny the reality of that claim. It can only confess its inability to verify it. Nor should history seek to reduce such a claim to something that it can call historical, and thus adjudicate (it was a vision, a dream, an hallucination, a cognitive adjustment). History is not the only way of knowing nor the supreme adjudicator of reality. I find it odd when those who align themselves in some way with the christian tradition also adopt the opposite position from the one I have just sketched, and propose that historical reconstruction of Jesus should not only be taken as defining his "reality" but also be determinative/normative for christian belief, in which the resurrection has been the key to the true perception of his identity. II. Personal History: Events or Character? In this section, I want to shift gears and address the issue of what is "historical" about persons, anyway. In my book, I observe that, with some variations, historical Jesus books do five things. 1. They isolate traditions about Jesus from other canonical writings (especially the letters of Paul). 2. they dismantle the narrative structure of the canonical gospels, seeing them as theological constructs. 3. The put the individual units (pericopes) of the gospels concerning what Jesus said and did through a process of testing for authenticity, in comparison and competition with other non-canonical Jesus traditions. 4. they use an alternative "framework" for understanding Jesus in place of that provided by the Gospel narratives, derived from historical analogy, anthropology, etc (for Crossan, "the peasant," for Borg, "the charismatic"). 5) the "authentic pieces" are then fitted into this new framework, to provide the "historical Jesus." The fourth and fifth steps make perfectly good sense, once the first two steps are made. The reason? A pile of pieces ---sayings, deeds--- do not constitute a story, and without story there cannot be character, and without character, there cannot be meaning. Once that given by the gospels is abandoned, another must be imported. All the sifting and sieving of the individual pieces leads nowhere by itself. Crossan calls the opening selection of authentic traditions in his HISTORICAL JESUS a "score to be played." More accurately, it is a set of notes that still needs scoring, which is what his social reconstruction does, put the notes into a score. The procedure bears unwitting testimony to the fact that when it comes to an individual human beings, history involves not so much what they said and did as it does the pattern of their lives, their CHARACTER. A quick analogy. If I were quizzed about Mother Theresa's birthplace, age, language, career moves, I may well be wrong on every count. I am certain that I know none of her sayings, and have only a vague grasp of her specific deeds. Yet, if I say that "Mother Theresa has lived a life of service to the poor in India during my lifetime in a way that has made her a symbol of selfless devotion," I would come close to capturing her historical character and significance. In contrast, if I knew every one of her words and deeds, and had all the facts perfectly, yet said, "While posing as a lowly nun, Mother Theresa worked to overthrow the Indian government by establishing cells of local resistence," I would miss the most important thing about her, the meaning of her life, both for herself and those who knew her. Now, what puzzles me most about current historical Jesus work are the first two stages enumerated above. Why discard the evidence of Paul (and other early writings like Hebrews and James)? Why deconstruct the narratives of the Gospels? It is not because the narratives themselves divinize or dehumanize Jesus. On the contrary. Despite the wonders and the post-resurrection perspective that creeps in and pervades the story, the Jesus of the Gospels is remarkably recognizable as a specific human person. What is more remarkable is that, despite the Gospels' notorious inconsistency on matters such as the wording of jesus' sayings, or the time and place of his deeds, or even which deeds he did, they are as equally consistent on the matter of Jesus' character. This character is found, not in the indiviudal pericopes, but in the NARRATIVE PATTERN OF THE COMPOSITIONS THEMSELVES. Jesus' character in the canonical Gospels is as a man who in obedience to God gives his life in service to other humans. Now, Paul is also notoriously lacking in specific references to the incidents of Jesus' life (except for a few sayings). But Paul does confirm, in various asides, the fundamental elements of the story-line as found in the Gospels. More significant by far, Paul adverts with some frequency and in key places to the same NARRATIVE PATTERN as that found in the Gospels. He also shares the understanding of Jesus as a Jew who in obedience to God gave his life in service to others. Paul and the canonical Gospels precede all other evidence about Jesus by a long stretch. They agree on this critical point of Jesus' character. And when Paul in 1 Cor 11:23-25 quotes the words of Jesus at the last supper precisely to remind the Corinthians of the essential pattern of self-giving that should be theirs if they are to have the "mind of Christ" (1 Cor 2:16), pattern and specific memory coalesce. I know, my colleagues, that my proposal goes against the grain of current scholarly orthodoxies that insist on Paul and Palestinian Christianity being kept in sealed and non-commubnicating compartments. I am sully aware of the position that the Gospel pattern is itself taken over from Paul's theology and imposed on the Jesus traditions at a later date. My question to you is, do these recent theories really best account for the evidence? Does it really work to term this character of Jesus cultic/mythic? If it is not for Martin Luther King or Ghandi or Mother Theresa, why should it be for Jesus? Doesn't it make good sense of human experience, and make good historiographic method as well, to suppose that the memory of the basic story pattern is the first and most formative, preceding the collection and organization of sayings and deeds? I think so. And in the case of Jesus, I argue that the evidence of Paul, Hebrews, and the four canonical Gospels point to the earliest formative memory of Jesus being that of his character as a human person giving his life in service to others. Unless and until earlier and more reliable evidence suggests that this was not Jesus' character, then I think this gets us ---far more than the sorting through of sayings and specific actions --- as close as we can to "the historical Jesus."