The delicate threads that hold together the New Testament documents have
been shown to be converging upon one single point.
Evangelists, editors, theologians;
narratives of miracles, records of parables,
collections of sayings;
argumentation, discourses, controversies;
difficult problems in textual criticism, subtle changes in the
meanings of words;
all this varied material concentrates upon and has its origin in one single, isolated, historical event.
The final task of the historian is to gather up the evidence and to describe that event in such a manner that
it is shown to lie within the structure of human lift and to be intelligible in that context.
Further, it must be described in
such a manner that the emergence of the primitive church is also intelligible on the basis of the life and death of Jesus of
Nazareth.
For any historical reconstruction which leaves an unbridgeable gulf between the faith of the primitive church and the
historical Jesus must be both inadequate and uncritical: inadequate, because it leaves the origin of the church unexplained; and
uncritical, because a critical sifting of the evidence of the New Testament points towards the life and death of Jesus as the
ground of primitive Christian faith, and points in no other direction.
The critical historian is not concerned with the ultimate truth of what Jesus taught, but only with the
actual substance of his teaching.
It is not for him to judge whether the significance, which lie assigned to his actions and to
his person, was in the end true, but only to make clear what significance he did in fact give to his work.
The historian of
primitive Christianity is a mere hewer of wood and drawer of water;
it is his function to act as the slave of the theologian or of
the philosopher, as the slave also of the simple believer or of the equally simple unbeliever.
After all, it is as important for
the believer to know what he disbelieves as it is for the believer to know what he believes;
and the philosopher as well as the
theologian must be able to form a clear notion of what he is handling when he comes to deal with the mainspring of the Christian
religion.
The historian has therefore to make clear and accessible the material, which has shown such remarkable ability to
galvanize thought and faith and unbelief.
The historian, then, is neither an apologist for the Christian religion nor an apostle
of irreligion;
still less is he an interpreter of the New Testament in terms of modern thought.
He does, however, claim the right
to present, to the best of his ability, a distinct and concrete historical figure on the basis of a critical method of historical
investigation;
nor can he be dissuaded from doing this, even should the result prove inconvenient.
What, then, does in fact emerge?
First, a clear negative conclusion.
A biography of Jesus cannot be provided.
Further, no single incident in his life or fragment of his teaching, if it be isolated
from its context and detached, can be rendered intelligible, even if it be judged to be historical.
From a mere collection of
fragments, selected from the whole tradition and arbitrarily declared authentic, no outline of the concrete figure of Jesus can be
drawn which for one moment carries conviction.
If such a selective method be adopted, we might picture a religious personality who
taught the 'brotherhood of men' and the 'fatherhood of God';
or we might roughly sketch an ethical system on the basis of a few
aphorisms, and suppose that Jesus was a teacher of ethical principles;
or we might sketch the career of a reformer of Jewish
piety; or we might discover a religious mystic, or disclose a man possessed of intense spiritual insight depending upon a peculiar
religious experience;
or indeed, by piecing together a different selection of fragments, we might equally well describe the
epiphany of a divine person who at no point touched human life as we know it.
But these would be, not historical reconstructions,
but simply selections of what seems to us convenient, or edifying, or useful, or monstrous.
An historical reconstruction is possible only when the uniform nature of the whole material at our disposal
is perceived, so that each fragment is seen not only to be part of the whole, but to contain the whole;
or, to put it differently,
so that each fragment of it not only rests upon a common background, but expresses it.
To lay bare this uniform nature, this
background, is to discover the Jesus of history.
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No single strand in the evidence deprives Jesus of the conscious sense that he
was bringing into being a new order and working out a purpose ‑ in complete isolation.
Nowhere in the New Testament are the
writers imposing an interpretation upon a history.
The history contains the purpose, and is indeed controlled by it.
That is to
say, the historian is dealing in the end with an historical figure fully conscious of a task which had to be done, and fully
conscious, also, that the only future which mattered for men and women depended upon the completion of his task.
The future order,
which it was the purpose of Jesus to bring into being, depended upon what he said and did, and finally upon his death.
This
conscious purpose gave a clear unity to his words and actions, so that the actions interpret the words and the words the actions.
The same purpose, which caused the whole material in the tradition to move inexorably towards the crucifixion, forced the
theologians to concentrate upon his death in their endeavour to expose the meaning of his life.
Nor is this purpose, which binds
together the life and the death, in the least degree unintelligible as it is presented in the New Testament.
The purpose of Jesus
was to work out in a single human life complete obedience to the will of God ‑ to the uttermost, that is, to death.
The
three great New Testament theologians saw this and expressed it quite clearly;
indeed, this purpose alone makes sense of the
tradition preserved in the synoptic gospels:
'Then said I, Lo I am come
(In the roll of the book it is written of me)
To do thy will, O God.' [Heb.x.7]
'Being found in fashion as a man,
He humbled himself,
Becoming obedient even unto death,
Yea, the death of the cross.' [Phil.ii.8]
'I can of myself do nothing:
As I hear, I judge:
And my judgement is righteous;
Because I seek not mine own will,
But the will of him that sent me.' [Jn.v.30]
The recognition of this obedience of Jesus must not, however, be used to simplify the event.
It cannot be
concluded that much of the New Testament is filled with unnecessary complication that serves only to obscure the simplicity of a
human consciousness of obedience to the supposed will of God.
For, as we are reminded by the parenthesis in the passage quoted
above from the Epistle to the Hebrews, it would be wrong to regard Jesus as a man mystically conscious of the need of obedience.
The whole tradition agrees in depicting his obedience to the will of God as entirely unique, isolated, and creative:
he
consciously wrought out in flesh and blood the obedience demanded by the Old Testament scriptures and foretold by the prophets.
His obedience springs from no mere attempt to range himself amongst the prophets of Israel, or amongst the righteous men of old,
or amongst the best of his contemporaries, but from the consciousness that, according to the will of God, the whole weight of the
law and the prophets had come to rest upon him, and upon him only.
This underlies the whole tradition about him.
Consequently, if
we are to be true to the evidence, the recognition of the necessity of this unique and creative obedience must be thrown back upon
Jesus himself.
The author of the fourth Gospel summarizes this when he writes:
'The Word became flesh.' [Jn.i.4]
That is to say, the Word of God ceased to be expressed in a literature or in a prophecy, and became embodied
in human flesh, and there the Old Testament was fulfilled.
The whole record concentrates, then, neither upon a righteousness of
the heart nor yet upon a righteousness of the spirit of man, but upon a spiritual righteousness of the heart passing outwards
into concrete speech and action, and finally into the bloody scene of the crucifixion.
In this particular history, in this scene
of flesh and blood, the creative obedience to the will of God was wrought out.
The uniqueness of the obedience of Jesus in the
midst of opposition and of complete misunderstanding, dictated by a creative and penetrating insight into the meaning of the Old
Testament scriptures, is not an invention of the theologians or of the evangelists.
This was the conscious purpose, which lay
behind, and conditioned his words and actions.
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But the obedience of Jesus was also a conscious conflict.
It was a contest
with the prince of evil for the freedom and salvation of men and women.
Upon the outcome of this contest depended human freedom
from sin.
'Shall the prey be taken from the mighty?
Or the captives of the terrible be delivered?
But thus saith the Lord,
Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away,
And the prey of the terrible shall be delivered:
For I will contend with him that contendeth with thee,
And I will save thy children.' [Isa.xlix.24, 25]
Thus Jesus wrestled with the terrible and mighty power of evil in order that it might be compelled to
disgorge its prey.
In his power over possessed men and women he saw the prey being actually disgorged.
The whole New Testament
rings with the sense of freedom from sin.
But this freedom rests neither upon a spiritual experience nor upon a myth, but upon a
particular history that lies in the immediate past and to which the original disciples had borne witness.
The freedom of the
Christians was known to rest upon a victory won in the life and death of Jesus.
Here again, this primitive Christian confidence is
not a piece of theologizing;
it runs back to the meaning which Jesus assigned to his own actions, which is reflected in the
temptation narrative, in the Beelzebul speech, in certain sayings, and in the whole detailed description of the confident manner
in which he handled physical disease.
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Thus far it might be argued that the evidence points to a strange human act
of will by which Jesus determined to obey the will of God as he had extracted the knowledge of it from a persistent study of the
Old Testament scriptures, and by which he also determined to conceive of his life as a personal conflict with the prince of evil.
It might also be argued that he supposed that the carrying out of his determination to the point of a voluntary death would be
fraught with immense consequences for men and women;
that he would, in fact, by an act of utter obedience, bring in the new order,
or, as it were, wrench it from the hands of God himself.
This would make the New Testament in the end anthropocentric, for it
would revolve round a human act.
But this is not the truth.
No New Testament writer could think of Jesus as the Greeks thought of
Prometheus.
We must therefore conclude that Jesus himself did not think of his life and death as a human achievement at all.
Language descriptive of human heroism is entirely foreign to the New Testament.
The event of the life and death of Jesus was not
thought of as a human act, but as an act of God wrought out in human flesh and blood, which is a very different matter.
The event
was conceived of as a descending act of God, not as the ascending career of a man who was successful in the sphere of religion.
No
New Testament writer could think of Jesus in Pelagian terms.
[The doctrine that the human will is of
itself capable of good.]
The concrete event, which was Jesus of Nazareth, was for them the sphere in which God had effected
a mighty action for the salvation of men.
Again, this was no mere piece of theologizing, but the very way in which Jesus himself
regarded his ministry.
Human flesh and blood, words and actions, were, as it were, caught up, controlled, energized by the Spirit
of God, by the Son of God, so that St. Paul could speak of Christ Jesus as him in whom 'dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead
bodily' [Col.ii.9], just as the author of the fourth Gospel could write of the Word becoming
flesh.
This emphatic assertion that Jesus is the sphere of the action of God presumes the theocentric atmosphere in which Jesus
lived and died.
His obedience was surrender to the unique and active operation of the living God.
He expressed this by the
relation of the Father to the beloved or only begotten Son.
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The final paradox can now be stated.
The action of the living God,
which took place in a single human life,
carried with it no spectacular display of supernatural power.
For in the end, and here the New Testament authors speak with united voice, the action of God took place in complete humiliation
and in what appeared to be remarkable weakness.
The salvation of God occurred not in one who possessed plenary power or lived in
the light of an open vision of his glory;
it occurred in human faith and temptation and in a single, isolated figure.
Yet the
knowledge of God and his righteousness became available for men through the display of his power in the weakness of a single
concrete life and death.
The stone which the builders rejected became the head of the corner, and St. Paul could write:
'We preach Christ crucified,
Unto Jews a stumbling‑block,
And unto Gentiles foolishness;
But unto them that are called,
both Jews and Greeks,
Christ the power of God,
And the wisdom of God.
Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men;
And the weakness of God is stronger than men.'
[I Cor.i.23‑25]
In this Pauline passage is expressed with penetrating insight the conscious background of the life and death
of the Jesus of history.
He acted and spoke and died as the slave of God, confident that his slavery would bring into being the
new people of God.
Primitive Christianity came into being because the Christians believed what he had said and done to have been
the truth.
The whole spiritual and moral power of the primitive church rested ultimately, not upon a mystical experience, but upon
its belief that what Jesus had asserted to have been the purpose of his life and death was in very truth the purpose of God.
Further than this the historian dare not and cannot go.
On the basis of a purely critical examination of the New Testament
documents he can reconstruct a clear historical figure, which is an intelligible figure; and he can, as a result of this
reconstruction, show that the emergence of the primitive church is also intelligible.
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The resurrection belongs properly outside the sphere of the historian,
because the truth of what Jesus claimed is beyond his judgement, and because the Omega as well as the Alpha, the Ending as well as
the Beginning [Rev.i.8], belongs only to God.
The historian must, of course, insist that St. Peter
and St. Paul and others were convinced that they had seen him risen.
But the resurrection itself belongs to Christian faith since
it is never described as the survival of a human personality, but as the ratification by God of the obedience of Jesus and of his
righteousness.
The resurrection is therefore meaningless and ultimately trivial apart from the belief in the active power of the
living God and in the ultimate truth of what Jesus said and did.
It is also meaningless apart from the recognition that a
particular historical life and death can have universal and ultimate significance.
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