When I teach the basic theology course, one of my lectures goes something like this: Christology -- the doctrine of Jesus Christ -- can only be discovered "from behind" (in contrast to the distinction commonly made between "from above" [high Christology] and "from below" [low Christology]). We only know Jesus by following him with humility and critical faithfulness. All of life, as Martin Luther put it, is lived coram deo, "in God's presence" (Matthew 10.24-25, 2 Corinthians 3.18).
By contrast, modern theology turns to vain historical criticism in order to establish "what really happened" and thereby appreciates Jesus only at a distance. This is what I call the "Jesus action figure" problem. They will end up bending Jesus and posing him in the easiest way possible to make sense of the stories and thereby create a bigger, wider gulf between Jesus and ourselves. Abstract theology and shallow sentimentality both imply a false Christology (see Paul's point in Philippians 3.8).
This is what New Testament scholars call the traditionsgechichte paradox. On the one hand, the Jesus traditions lying underneath the Gospels have undoubtedly been shaped by the interpreters and custodians of that tradition; but on the other hand, the shapers of that tradition were themselves somehow shaped by the historical Jesus.
Who Jesus is really can't be known apart from the post-Easter stories attributed to him in the Gospels. And those can only be heard by someone willing -- even if humbly and hesitantly -- to get behind him and actually listen to the stories. The sorts of detached observation that so many moderns believe they can have simply doesn't work. Witness how you learn to become a good football player. You attach yourself to your coach. You listen to him, do what he says and does, day in and day out, in order to learn to play football.
Same goes for finding Jesus. You simply have to commit to following him.
And the really difficult part comes when you actually make that commitment, you have to do so as part of the larger band of folks who are learning Jesus. Discipleship to Jesus means learning Jesus with and through disciples.
The remarkable Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, Mark's stark and moving narrative, Luke's beautifully remembered stories about Jesus and his followers, the symbolically rich and mystically charged stories of John -- they're all produced by folks who shared stories together of the Man who walked and talked and discipled them.
At every point, Jesus is filtered through the discipleship tradition. You can only meet him face to face when you're traveling dusty roads with others who travel those same roads in an effort to hear Jesus aright. Even when it's from an historical point of view, you can't detach Jesus from his followers. You can't know Jesus any other way than "from behind".
So the "quest" to find Jesus that's so popular in academic circles is a misguided one. There is no "historical" or "real" Jesus apart from the Jesus of disciples and discipleship. Jesus can only be known in the narratives that are told about him. So there is no untheological or atheological Jesus. Research can only happen when you've given him a commitment.
Students, of course, find this perspective jarringly off-putting. They think education means learning to listen in a detached observational view. But, as I insist in every one of my courses, nowhere does the academy believe that. A view from nowhere is a view for nothing by no one. You're only going to see what you've learned to see when you've committed yourself to a discipline that has teachers. And when it comes to Jesus, those teachers are the ones who've committed themselves to following Jesus and listening to him as he's remembered in the stories told about him by disciples.
In short, the only way to find Jesus is to find a disciple.
By contrast, modern theology turns to vain historical criticism in order to establish "what really happened" and thereby appreciates Jesus only at a distance. This is what I call the "Jesus action figure" problem. They will end up bending Jesus and posing him in the easiest way possible to make sense of the stories and thereby create a bigger, wider gulf between Jesus and ourselves. Abstract theology and shallow sentimentality both imply a false Christology (see Paul's point in Philippians 3.8).
This is what New Testament scholars call the traditionsgechichte paradox. On the one hand, the Jesus traditions lying underneath the Gospels have undoubtedly been shaped by the interpreters and custodians of that tradition; but on the other hand, the shapers of that tradition were themselves somehow shaped by the historical Jesus.
Who Jesus is really can't be known apart from the post-Easter stories attributed to him in the Gospels. And those can only be heard by someone willing -- even if humbly and hesitantly -- to get behind him and actually listen to the stories. The sorts of detached observation that so many moderns believe they can have simply doesn't work. Witness how you learn to become a good football player. You attach yourself to your coach. You listen to him, do what he says and does, day in and day out, in order to learn to play football.
Same goes for finding Jesus. You simply have to commit to following him.
And the really difficult part comes when you actually make that commitment, you have to do so as part of the larger band of folks who are learning Jesus. Discipleship to Jesus means learning Jesus with and through disciples.
The remarkable Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, Mark's stark and moving narrative, Luke's beautifully remembered stories about Jesus and his followers, the symbolically rich and mystically charged stories of John -- they're all produced by folks who shared stories together of the Man who walked and talked and discipled them.
At every point, Jesus is filtered through the discipleship tradition. You can only meet him face to face when you're traveling dusty roads with others who travel those same roads in an effort to hear Jesus aright. Even when it's from an historical point of view, you can't detach Jesus from his followers. You can't know Jesus any other way than "from behind".
So the "quest" to find Jesus that's so popular in academic circles is a misguided one. There is no "historical" or "real" Jesus apart from the Jesus of disciples and discipleship. Jesus can only be known in the narratives that are told about him. So there is no untheological or atheological Jesus. Research can only happen when you've given him a commitment.
Students, of course, find this perspective jarringly off-putting. They think education means learning to listen in a detached observational view. But, as I insist in every one of my courses, nowhere does the academy believe that. A view from nowhere is a view for nothing by no one. You're only going to see what you've learned to see when you've committed yourself to a discipline that has teachers. And when it comes to Jesus, those teachers are the ones who've committed themselves to following Jesus and listening to him as he's remembered in the stories told about him by disciples.
In short, the only way to find Jesus is to find a disciple.