Who Will They Be Saying That I Am?

William E. Reiser, S.J., Ph.D.

The Catholic World, Sept-Oct 1993 v236 n1415 p217(6)

Brief Summary: The image of Christ in theology has undergone a transformation from a supernal, divine being to a more human figure representing perfect compassion and understanding. This modern, historically informed view of Jesus can be expected to become more widespread as Christology advances.

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Nowhere has the impact of modern biblical scholarship been stronger than in the Christian community's ongoing effort to know and understand Jesus. For centuries, the accent of the Church's teaching about Jesus fell heavily on his being the divine Son of God. His humanity was always acknowledged, for the church confessed him to be "true God and true man." But this acknowledgement tended to be more notional than real. For many people, the Jesus of their prayer was full of divine qualities; he possessed miraculous powers to heal, to raise the dead and to walk on water; and he had divine insight into the human heart and into the future. At the same time, the person of Jesus had been cut off from his time and place within history. Whatever human traits he manifested appeared to be canceled out by his supernatural abilities as the eternal Son of God.

As biblical scholars examined the New Testament writings, the extent of the difference between the historical Jesus and the Christ of the church's faith became ever more evident. The gospel writers had shaped their stories about Jesus in terms of the readership they were addressing, a readership for whom the risen Christ had become vitally important. But the Jesus behind the story, that is, the Jesus who had been a companion of figures like Peter, John, Andrew, Mary Magdalene, and the others, was not the all-powerful divine Son of God of the church's piety and creeds. In fact, it was never Jesus' intention to start the church as we know it, let alone to found a new religion.

Modern New Testament studies are putting us increasingly in touch with the Jewishness of Jesus. It has been said that Jesus was a Jew, not the first Christian. He envisioned himself as engaged in a reform movement among the people of Israel, very much in keeping with the prophetic traditions of the Hebrew Scriptures. The continuities and discontinuities between Israel and Jesus, between Israel and the church, and even between the church and the historical Jesus, have been the subject of much discussion, and will probably continue to draw considerable scholarly attention.

Where are we now?

Today, there are two major stresses in Christology. The first concerns the humanness of Jesus. One reason for underscoring Jesus' humanity is the need to correct the dogmatic emphasis of the ancient Christian creeds. The highlighting of Jesus' divine status had paved the way for an eventual neglect of his being like us in all things, except sin (see Hebrews 4:15). A second reason is that a careful examination of the gospel narratives of Matthew, Mark and Luke has uncovered a picture of Jesus, as he might have been known and perceived by his contemporaries. The fourth gospel, on the other hand, frequently depicts Jesus making pronouncements about himself which the historical Jesus would never have made. More than any other New Testament writing, it was John's gospel that drove the church's reflection on Jesus in the direction of his possessing a divine nature. A writing which might have been described in its day as representing the doctrinal right-wing of Christian faith came to occupy center stage and became normative of the church's belief about the person and work of Jesus. What being Son of God means in Mark's gospel, for example, is not the same as what it means in John's.
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Where are we headed?

These remarks are necessary if we are to attempt to answer the question about the future of Christology. For in order to speculate about the future, one needs to keep in mind where we once were, and where we are now.

First, the stress on the humanness of Jesus will doubtlessly continue. If anything, it will grow even stronger. This will happen because the more we comprehend the difference between the actual story of Jesus and what the church later came to claim about him, the better are we going to understand his Jewishness, the culture and historical period of which he was a part, and his faith.

The Jewish roots of Jesus, and the relation between the faith of Israel and the faith of the church, are going to command greater attention. In the conclusion of his book The Partings of the Ways, the British Scripture scholar James Dunn raised a number of important issues which Christian theology is going to have to face, issues prompted by a heightened appreciation of the religious belief of Israel, which was also the belief of Jesus. In particular, while the author of the fourth gospel viewed himself as a monotheist, many of his fellow Jews did not. Dunn writes, "For John, Jesus was the incarnation not of the Son of God, but of God."

Where, however, does this claim lead? One begins to understand why Jews who wanted to remain faithful to their beliefs would resist claims about the divinity of Christ, for such claims threatened their belief in the absolute oneness of God. Another British scholar, Maurice Casey, has argued in his study From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God that any process of doctrinal development which would have made it impossible for devout Jews, such as the first disciples themselves, to embrace the gospel message as Jesus proclaimed it could not have been guided by the Holy Spirit. Otherwise, the very people for whom Jesus preached and gave his life would be excluded from the good news.

Second, Christology of the future will draw less on abstract speculation, and more on the gospels as narratives about Jesus and the kingdom of God. While there will always be speculative thinkers among us, the direction of future reflection is on the side of storytellers. The mind draws more life from imagination than from speculation; it delights in images more than in concepts. And when we pass along the faith to our children, we do so more through story and narrative than through creed and the abstractions of dogma.

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Third, Christology in the future will be even more closely aligned with the experience of the poor than it is now. …………………

Finally, Christology of the future will be increasingly local and "popular"; that is, it will represent a people's theology. Prior to Vatican II, theology tended to be more dogmatic in tone than scriptural and pastoral, and its intellectual center was largely European and medieval. Such theology was universal rather than regional; one form of theological reflection was supposed to meet the needs of the entire people of God. Conciliar theology, on the other hand, with its positive attitude toward culture and modernity, has tended to be far more open to the world. The theology associated with Vatican II has given us an updated understanding of Christian truth. Its renewing spirit has affected the way we view sacraments, the way we interpret church law, and the way we define ourselves as people of God. Vatican II preferred to adopt a tone and attitude that were more biblical and pastoral than dogmatic and legalistic.

Nevertheless, conciliar theology may very well prove to have been transitional. Its intellectual center was still European, even though its breathtaking achievement was the liberation of theology from the dogmatism of the past. At Vatican II, contemporary scholarship, like the modern world itself had finally won recognition by the church. Traditionalism, and the fear that drove it, was at last broken. But theology is more than an affair of scholars, and no single place can any longer lay claim to being the center of the church. The church is where: the people of God are. The very notion of center has changed.

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Who, then, will we be claiming that Jesus is at the dawn of the next millennium? Perhaps more than ever before, Jesus will be "a son of man." Jesus will be the people who hunger and thirst, who pray to God for justice and a dignified share of this world's goods. ……. The Jesus of the next century will be the teacher and martyr of justice, the one who bears unequivocal testimony to the dignity of each and every human being, and who defends the claims of the poor with his own blood.

Full Text: COPYRIGHT Missionary Society of St. Paul the Apostle 1993 Where have we come from?