Christology and history: A review essay

Theology Today, Jul 2000 by Keck, Leander E

Christology

By Hans Schwarz

Grand Tapids, Eerdmans, 1998. 325 pp. $25.00

Jesus as a Figure in History: How Modern Historians View the Man from Galilee

By Mark Allan Powell Louisville, Westminster John Knox, 1998. 238 pp. $24.95.

New Testament Christology By Frank J. Matera

Louisville, Westminster John Knox, 1999. 307 pp. $26.95.

Wherever Jesus matters, there too is christology, be it explicit or hidden, for its task is to say why he matters. This generic understanding of christology applies also to those portrayals of Jesus that are determined to rescue him from christology, for they assume that because he matters he ought to be emancipated from Christian doctrine. Christology, in other words, accounts for the assumed or avowed significance of this particular Jew. Because "Jesus" is not the name of a Christ figure but of a historical person, christology is forever intertwined with history; conversely, asserting the significance of his history and accounting for it implicates some form of christology, whether conceded grudgingly or confessed gratefully.

Until the modern era, it was taken for granted generally that Jesus' own history and christology were of a piece, like two sides of the same sheet of paper. For the past two centuries, however, this symbiotic relation between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith has been put on the defensive. As a result, it has become widely accepted that "the real Jesus," the Jesus of history, differed-sometimes drastically-from the confessed Jesus Christ. Today it is no longer debated whether the Jesus of history differed from the Christ of Christian christology, including the Jesus Christ of the Gospels; the debates are about the extent and nature of the differences, and their impact on christology.

Of the three books under review here, it is Schwarz's Christology-a concise yet comprehensive restatement of classical christology from preexistence to parousia-that addresses the role of history in christology. Accordingly, Schwarz first surveys the "Search of the Historical Jesus," then summarizes "The History of Jesus" himself before briefly discussing the New Testament and four eras in the history of christology (the ancient, the medieval, the Reformation, and the modern). Schwarz insists that today the starting point of christology must be both "the words and deeds of the historic person of Jesus of Nazareth," whose place in Judaism must be taken seriously even if "the Jewish Jesus stays on the human level and does not mediate God" but "only gives a different interpretation of the law."

Schwarz is quite aware of what starting with the Jesus of history entails. It entails first of all accepting unreservedly the efforts to reconstruct the Jesus of history on the basis of historical criticism: "We should not be afraid to delve into the `quagmire' of historical critical research or fear that in doing so we become dependent on the ever-shifting results of New Testament exegesis." It also entails understanding what historical criticism can and cannot do: "By its very presuppositions historical research can never show us that Jesus was the Christ or , . . the historic manifestation of the divine Logos." What it can show is "the human person of Jesus insofar as this person is still traceable." But what finally matters is whether, as a result, the identification of the Logos with Jesus "is even permissible" (emphasis added). Thereby, Schwarz implies that while this research cannot demonstrate the truth of christology, it can disallow christology's claims if the disparity between it and the reconstructed Jesus is too great.

Schwarz, however, is not as free of dependence on the results of critical research as he implies, for he goes on to say that the minimal permissibility cannot rely on "supposedly unique events such as the virgin birth, miracles or Christ's resurrection" because historians can point to parallel beliefs about other persons. Nor does christology's validity depend on demonstrating Jesus' use of messianic titles for himself, though Schwarz thinks it "very probable" that Jesus understood himself as the Son of Man and the Isaianic Suffering Servant. Nonetheless, he contends that beginning with the Jesus of history requires continuity between "Jesus' own selfunderstanding and intentionality . . . and the church's christology;" otherwise even a dogmatically correct christology will be docetic. Yet this requisite continuity does depend on what is only "very probable."

Not surprisingly, he faults structuralist, narrative, and reader-response ways of reading the Gospels for not establishing "the connection between the Jesus of history and the resultant kerygma," but welcomes the once "new quest" inaugurated by Kasemann four decades ago because it addressed the continuity issue. Schwarz's survey of Jesus' life and teaching identifies elements of the needed continuity, for example, the apocalyptic Son of Man sayings, Jesus' altering "the relationship of the people to the Law itself," and especially his "I am" in response to the high priest's question, "Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?" (Mark 14:61-62; altered by Matthew and Luke!). According to Schwarz, here Jesus "actually did act in God's place" by using the revelational formula ego eimi, and so verbalized the self understanding that had shaped his whole mission. But in conceding that the passage may well have been "carefully edited," Schwarz again grants that the requisite historical continuity between Jesus and christology depends on the results of historical criticism that are by no means secure.