This article is the ninth and the last part in my series of readings in the quest for the historical Jesus. I had seven with Rhodes Eddy and James K. Beilby and two with Herman Bavinck. I have no more time to read Benjamin B. Warfield’s The Historical Christ.
Return to the Historical Jesus
Among proponents of modern Christology, Bavinck gave special attention to Ritschl and his followers when it comes to the new interest in the study of the historical Jesus. He mentioned Hermann, Kaftan, and Häring. However, followers of Ritschl didn’t agree among themselves on what is certain in the study of the historical Jesus:
Some allow the image of Christ to impact people straight from the Gospels (Herrmann, Haupt); others think more in terms of a mediation by the Word and the church, by the example of Christians and the working of the Holy Spirit (Joh. Weiss, O. Ritschl, Max Reischle, Gottschick); some (O. Ritschl, Max Reischle, Häring) are more averse to philosophy and metaphysics; some less (Kaftan, Wobbermin, Wendt) (p. 266).
Nevertheless, “all of them consider themselves compelled by the natural and historical sciences of modern times to make a distinction between the historical Jesus and the Christ of dogmatics” (ibid.). Such a distinction is necessary because in their minds, “Greek philosophy and eastern metaphysics” “have corrupted and falsified the original gospel of Jesus” (ibid.). Paul was cited as guilty of such a fabrication. Lagarde accused Paul of such corruption of the original gospel of Jesus in four ways:
First of all, he introduced ‘the deification of the man Jesus’ and made of the historical Jesus a preexistent being who appeared for a time on earth and then again returned to heaven.
Second, he incorporated into the original gospel a ‘supernatural redemption’ consisting in the idea that the redemption of humanity was effected objectively, apart from these human beings themselves.
Third, he attributed to the sacrificial death of Jesus an ‘atoning significance’ and thereby laid the groundwork for the Catholic sacrifice of the Mass.
Fourth, he added to all this a doctrine of the sacraments as objective, self-operative mysteries.
Among these fourfold corruptions, Bavinck explained further the introduction of the objective supernatural redemption:
For Jesus the gospel was a matter between God and the soul, and redemption was a subjective experience, but in Paul’s thinking Christ comes to stand between God and humans and brings about our salvation apart from us” (p. 267).
This is the reason why Ritschl’s followers share this common motto:
From Paul and John we have to go back to the Jesus of the Synoptics, especially to the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount (ibid.).
Contrary to expectation, the studies on the historical Jesus, though appreciated by scholars, gave great uncertainty and unrest to others due to the realization of the great discrepancy between the new Christology and the Christ of the New Testament. Such is the impact of Harnack’s (one of Ritchl’s followers) lecture on the essence of Christianity. He explains the essence of Christianity as follows:
. . . the essence of Christianity consists in the assurance that, by the appearance, the doctrine, and the life of Jesus, people can incur the experience that God is their Father and that they are his children (ibid.).
These twofold ideas are popular among modernist theologians: the emphasis on the universal Fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of men.
Harnack argues that “for the moral person,” “there is a deep chasm between the visible and the invisible world, between the external and the internal, between flesh and spirit, between the here-and-now and the beyond, between God and the world” (ibid.). However, Christianity found a solution to this dichotomy and elevates humanity “on the side of God, furnishes them eternal life in the midst of time, and brings God and the soul together in union and communion” (pp. 267-268). This is what the foregoing twofold universal truths have accomplished. Moreover, we were told that Jesus’ message did not draw attention to himself but to the Father.
However, accepting these two universal truths does not mean rejection of Jesus’ uniqueness. Jesus is still accepted as “the guide to God and the way to the Father” (p. 268). Jesus “was and still remains today the personal realization and power of the gospel” (ibid). We derive the existence of personal lives in us from Jesus’ personal powers. There remains a place for faith in the gospel of Jesus, and that is how “we attain to communion with God, to peace of soul, to victory over the world” (ibid.). Nevertheless, this faith is not the same as the kind of faith understood by historic Christianity. Instead, this faith “does not consist in accepting a doctrine, for the gospel is not a doctrine but good news and consists in a moral experience, in doing the will of the Father, in a life in keeping with the gospel of Jesus, in a personal ‘experience’ of the soul, which Jesus effects in us by his appearance, word, and life” (ibid.).
From here, we can see the big difference between Harnack’s understanding of the essence of Christianity and the essence of Christianity found in church confessions for generations. For Ritschl’s school, the Jesus they proposed is the real Jesus of history in contrast to the image of Jesus embraced by traditional churches. They agreed to Wernle’s sentiment:
Christianity had for thousands of years forgotten who its Master was (ibid.).
The slogan “back to Jesus,” with its distinction between the historical Jesus and the apostolic Christ, had to face two serious inquiries:
Who, then, that historical Jesus had actually been?
How in the hands of the apostles had he been malformed into the Christ?
Responding to the first question, the scholars came up with diverse interpretations. Those who accept the testimony of the New Testament agreed that the Christ of John and Paul is the same Christ found in the Synoptic Gospels. The attributes of the Synoptic Jesus "are lofty self-consciousness, messianic dignity, divine sonship, the power to do miracles and forgive sins, an unparalleled position in the kingdom of God, the atoning power of his suffering and dying, the resurrection and glorification with the Father, and the coming again unto judgment” (p. 269). “It is the same Christ who comes out to meet us throughout the New Testament” (ibid.). Those who advance modern Christology have to take Bavinck’s statement seriously about the witness of the New Testament:
The Synoptic Gospels are no less apostolic than the letters of Paul and were written down even later than the letters. Of controversy concerning the person of Christ, there was never any sign among the apostles. They all confessed their faith and found their salvation in the same Christ, even though it is true that—depending on their character and experiences—they picture him from various perspectives (ibid.).
And so by rejecting Paul and John, modern theologians failed to find the real “historical” Jesus. Determined to distinguish the original Jesus from the corruption of the disciples, such a reduction method was proven “endless and led to boundless caprice” (ibid.). Observe how Bavinck describes the confusion that came out from this quest of the historical Jesus:
Everyone fashioned a Jesus on his own and in the end found the Jesus whose image he had concocted earlier in his own mind. To Carlyle he was a hero, to Strauss a religious genius, to Renan a liberal reformer and preacher of humanity, to Schopenhauer a herald of the negation of the will to live, and to Proudhon a social reformer (ibid.).
One would wonder now how scholars would resolve the tension created by these studies, teaching in universities the Christ of professors and yet still preaching Jesus as the truth and the life to common people. Even with the Messianic character of Jesus, many scholars prefer to maintain the affirmative response, and yet others would insist on the negative response. Given the wide divergence in opinion about this issue, some concluded “that on account of the faulty and tendentious character of the sources, we will probably never get to know anything with certainty concerning Jesus and that even his existence is subject to serious doubt” (p. 270).
Turning our attention to the second question, the response is more diverse. Some believe that even prior to the existence of Christianity, a Jesus cult already existed, and later the Jews connected this cult to their Messianic expectation.
Bavinck elaborates the alternative scenario that other scholars published as a response to the second question:
As a result of oppressive social conditions in Jerusalem, a church had formed there that was constructed along communistic lines and that, under the influence of the ideas of the time, attributed to Jesus—a person they venerated, who had died a martyr’s death—all sorts of noble predicates such as a supernatural conception, miraculous powers, resurrection, elevation to the right hand of God, and a speedy return for judgment. As to the ideas that formed the Christ figure, some favor Old Testament prophecies or the apocalyptic expectations of the Jews then living; others the Buddhist teachings that then gradually began to penetrate the West or, more generally, the syncretistic blend of a variety of Eastern and Western, Jewish and Greek ideas that characterized the first centuries of the Christian era (pp. 270-271).
Bavinck warns that if the above position is taken, then “reverence for the person of Jesus is lost” (p. 271). Jesus himself was considered complicit in this narrative falsification. See how far has this mythological explanation departed from orthodox Christology:
So it happens that in recent times there have arisen men who regard Jesus as a victim of heredity who suffered from epilepsy, paranoia, and hallucinations; who fostered megalomaniacal ideas about himself, and when he became disillusioned in his expectations with respect to people, he sought to get back on top by a tour-de-force (p. 272).
One good thing that emerged from this trend in the quest for the historical Jesus is the realization of other scholars “that the historical Jesus and the apostolic Christ cannot be separated in the manner the Bible critics had initially pictured to themselves” (ibid.). It is now clear that “the Christ of Paul and John is no other than the Christ of the early church and corresponds in all respects to the Son of Man drawn for us in the Synoptic Gospels. One cannot honor Jesus without accepting him as the Christ, the Son of the living God” (pp. 272-273).
Even in modernist circles, a need for a Christology “that is related to the historical Jesus and the apostolic witness” is increasingly recognized. Scholars who have been influenced by both Schleiermacher and Ritschl are now maintaining “Jesus not just as a prophet, teacher, and example but specifically also as a revelation of God, as a person who lived in communion with God in an entirely unique sense, in whom God dwelt as in no one else, and through whom God therefore revealed himself in a particular and absolute way” (p. 273). Bavinck emphasized that if Christ is to be maintained in this role and rank as proposed by these modernist scholars, “if he is going to be not the subject but the object and center of the Christian religion, and if this Christian religion is to preserve its uniqueness and not degenerate into an idolatrous Jesus cult, it is not enough for Christ to be in God (ἐνθεος), but he must himself be God (θεος), the only begotten of the Father. With this change in trend in the quest for the historical Jesus, “the truth and value of the deity of Christ have again been rightly placed in the foreground by others" (ibid.). Bavinck was glad “that, finally, the connectedness of dogmatics with the confession of the church has again been restored, for throughout all the centuries the latter has confessed the crucified and risen Christ as its Lord and its God” (pp. 273-274).
This ends my series in the study of the historical Jesus.
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