SEEKING THE IDENTITY OF JESUS-- PART ONE

I have been recently working through the volume edited by Beverley Gaventa (Princeton) and Richard Hays (Duke), entitled "Seeking the Identity of Jesus: A Pilgrimage" (Eerdmans 2008). The volume comes out of lengthy times of interaction and worship and presentations at the CTI (the Center of Theological Inquiry, which should surely be called the Center for Theological Inquiry) at Princeton. Here some sixteen scholars in the fields of Biblical Studies, Patristics, Systematics, Reformation History and Theology, Liturgy and other cognate fields got together to talk about the issue of the Identity of Jesus, in its various forms and facets, modes and meanings.

This volume can be seen as a sort of sequel to a previous such meeting of the minds at the CTI (some of the same minds and some different ones from the earlier project) which produced "The Art of Reading Scripture" (Eerdmans 2003), an equally interesting collaboration. This first post will be dealing with a central issue raised by this most recent collaboration, namely how do we get at the identity of Jesus, or better said, what is the identity of Jesus-- who is he, and what counts as knowing him? The second post will be a somewhat detailed review of this important book.

WHAT CONSTITUTES A PERSON'S IDENTITY?

Perhaps you will remember Jason Bourne, and "the Bourne Identity". What exactly was his problem? In short, he had lost almost entirely any memory of his earlier life, and had no idea who he was, or at least who he had been before he was completely and almost literally brainwashed. Or consider the case of the Altzheimer's victim. What happens to them? They lose their memory, and in extreme cases they lose all sense of who they are, their identity.

Identity, we are told is bound up in memory. But there is more involved as well. One's personality and also one's character have something to do with identity. When we ask however the question about Jesus' identity, things are by no means as straightforward as with the case of Mr. Bourne or the Altzheimer's victim. It is not surprising then that there have been over the course of church history enormous questions raised and discussed quite specifically dealing with the issue of the identity of Jesus, especially by those who believe he was both truly a human being and also truly divine.

Normally, when we talk about the identity of someone we are talking about a normal historical person and his or her life from womb to tomb, but in fact the story of Jesus begins before the virginal conception in Mary's womb and continues after his exaltation to the right hand of God. This is precisely why analyzing the historical Jesus would never be adequate to define the identity of that man. Information about him as a historical person is only at best a subset of the data for understanding who he was and is, for the same stories that tell us he was a man from Nazareth are also the stories that tell us he was so much more than that-- namely a pre-existent Son of God and a post- resurrection risen Lord.

The historian's Jesus, or the Jesus of the Jesus Seminar, or the Jesus reconstructed on the basis of normal historical study of ancient figures could at most only be a discussion about a part of who he was, if the Gospels and the rest of the NT are anywhere near to being right about him. And of course if there is one person about whom we cannot afford the blunder of mistaking the part for the whole, it is Jesus.

We live in a Jesus haunted culture that is Biblically illiterate, and so unfortunately at this point in time, almost anything can pass for knowledge of the historical Jesus from notions that he was a a Cynic sage to ideas that he was a Gnostic guru to fantasies that he didn't exist, to Dan Browne's Jesus of hysterical (rather than historical) fiction. The real value of actual historical research about Jesus is that it provides a hedge against the inflation and infatuation of giving free reign to one's imagination when it comes to the identity of Jesus. It is thus a good thing that the writers of "Seeking the Identity of Jesus' were all able to come to the conclusion that a non-Jewish Jesus is not the real Jesus at all, and this of course is precisely the problem with the Jesus of Gnosticism who is often anti-Semitic if not simply non-Semitic.

One of the problems of course for the historian in assessing Jesus is that the stories about him are suffused with theology. Theology is not something added to the Gospels like icing on a cake that could with some hard labor be removed from the surface and the substance of what was being investigated. No, the stories about the historical Jesus are inherently theological in character. This of course is because the author's believed that God was an actor in space and time, not merely an observor of history from a far.

More specifically they believed that Jesus was the Incarnation of the second person of the Trinity, and so history could hardly be parsed out from God talk-- theo-logia. Robert Jenson brings this up in an emphatic way in his essay "Identity, Jesus and Exegesis" in the aforementioned volume when he says "you cannot accurately pick out Jesus of Nazareth without simultaneously picking out the second person of the Trinity, and you cannot accurately pick out the second person of the Trinity without in fact simultaneously picking out Jesus of Nazareth...when we ask about the identity of Jesus, historical and systematic questions cannot be separated." (pp. 46-47). I would put it a little differently saying that historical and theological questions cannot be radically separated when it comes to Jesus.

Jenson points us to the sentence "Jesus is risen". As he stresses, the word risen refers to something that happened to Jesus in space and time. Resurrection is then not in the first instance about resurrection appearances which disciples saw, or thought they saw. Nor is it about visions of Jesus disciples such as Paul may or may not have had. In other words, resurrection is not and cannot be reduced to a purely human psychological category or phenomena.

What the early church proclaimed in the first instance was that Jesus was risen, and this was just as much apart of the historical story about Jesus, as for example the claim that Jesus was born. Its just that post-Enlightenment persons (sometimes called modern persons), have been used for too long to assume that there are certain things that cannot and do not happen in human history, in particular actual divine intervention, or as we call them miracles. But of course, since no one's knowledge of the human realm is exhaustive how could anyone prove the negative that "miracles cannot happen"? It is in fact impossible to prove such a negative assumption without exhaustive knowledge of the inner workings of history and space and time. And no one but God has such knowledge.

Jenson makes his point this way "The character of the predicate '...is risen'... is not only a concept predicated of Jesus' story [e.g. ex post facto], it is itself part of the story." (p. 47). Exactly so. What the Gospels are, are theological history writing. Not history without theology, and not mere theologizing added after the fact to history, or theologizing done in the form of narrative and history writing. No, what we have in the Gospels is theological history writing, which is simply one sort of history writing, a sort that was very common in antiquity (see e.g. Herodotus the father of history writing), and more rare in our day. Its rarity today is not because we are so much wiser than the ancients, or because the divine Elvis long since left the building. It is in fact because we are not as wise as the ancients when it comes to historical matters that are miraculous and theological in character.

Identity, is in fact a slippery term in English. The Gospel writers do not do a lot of overt editorializing about who Jesus is. They use the method of indirect portraiture, allowing Jesus' words and deeds to speak for themselves and reveal his true character. And there is a wisdom in this because it means they are attempting to step out of the way, for the most part, and let Jesus speak and act for himself. Did you notice they nowhere give a physical description of the man, but most moderns seem to be pretty sure they could pick him out of a line up at Pontius Pilate's police station? The ancients knew that it was the content of his character not the color of his skin or eyes or hair that truly mattered.

But these Evangelists are also wise enough to know that Jesus' identity is not just a matter of telling what he said and did. His identity is perhaps just as much revealed by what happens to the man quite apart from his conscious decisions and actions--- for example the virginal conception in Mary's womb, or when God raised him from the dead. Jesus is only the risen Lord because God raised him from the dead. If you do not realize that who you are is as much a matter of what happens to you quite beyond your control as well as the facets of your life you can control, then you have not plumbed the depths of the nature of human identity.

In my earlier work written 20 years ago "The Christology of Jesus" (Fortress Press), I focused on the issue of the identity of Jesus, and one thing I pointed out is of course not only that identity is something that develops over time, even in the case of Jesus (see e.g. Lk. 2.41-52), but I stressed that who a person is, who a person thinks they are, who a person claims to be, and who others think that person is, can all be distinguishable and different things.

Jesus could have been the savior of the world, and quietly set about the task of doing the job without ever having made public claims to that effect. Other people could have thought of Jesus as a Zealot, but their thinking or claiming it did not make it so. My point in stressing this, is that the public claims and acclaims and refutations about the identity of Jesus are at best one inadequate clue to who he was, and who he thought he was.

If you just focus on the Christological labels you will not sufficiently plumb the depths of who he was and is, not least because Jesus was a remarkably complex person, or as Eduard Schweizer said long ago... he was the man who fit no one formula, could not be pigeon holed. Just so. This is why a titles approach to discerning the identity of Jesus, while necessary, will never be sufficient, especially in regard to understanding his true and full humanity. Assessing the identity of a living person is less like assessing a marble statue and more like assessing the boundaries and character of a lake which while, it has some constant elements (e.g. water, and a generally given shape) nonetheless is constantly in motion and can be seen from ever fresh and new angles. (see Derek Parfit's comment on p. 310 of the book).

Of course the great problem in assessing Jesus' identity is that even given the conclusion that he is truly human and truly divine, figuring out what the Bible says about the relationship between those two natures has been the subject of no end of debate and church councils in church history. Unfortunately in conservative Christian circles we have tended to stress one side of the balance, namely the divine side, more than the other, seeing Jesus as sort of 90% divine and 10% human. Of course the Jesus seminar and others, seeking to redress the balance have wanted to stress the exact opposite proportions (Jesus lite, less filling but still tastes great!) if not denying Jesus any divinity at all.

Part of the problem with this debate was that the Greek notion of the impassability of the divine (i.e. that the Eternal does not change, and is not subject to change) has been interjected into the discussion. But the problem with using this notion to help get clarity about the identity of Jesus is that when the NT says things like "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever" it does not mean Jesus never suffered on the cross, or that Jesus never underwent any changes, or that Jesus had no emotions. It simply means that his character was consistent throughout and beyond time--- he was manifestly always the same person in the sense that he had the same character always. It requires real exegetical gymnastics with the NT text to try and conclude that the incarnation did not involve the second person of the Trinity incorporating some real, and indeed physical change into the Godhead. But this brings up another crucial point.

Jesus's identity cannot be adequately assessed by accounting for what can be said about him in distinction from and in isolation from all other beings. This is of course an important question-- asking what makes him unique. But what the Gospel writers say is that we understand him best when we understand whose he was (God's only begotten Son) which is to say, who he was in relationship to God (Son of God, God's Anointed one) and who he was in relationship to us (the Son of Man, the Lord of the church, the head of the Body of believers and so on).

Jesus' identity is as much revealed in his relationships as in isolation. And this brings up perhaps the most crucial point of this first post. What the Gospel writers insist is that Jesus cannot be understood or truly known apart from not only belief in God, but a certain knowledge of the relationship of God to Jesus, as well as of Jesus to God's people both Israel and the Church. This is precisely why the Fourth Evangelist writes at the end of his narrative. "these things are written so you might begin to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God". He presupposes that one already is at least open to believing in God before assessing the identity of Jesus. This means that truly seeing and knowing Jesus of course requires faith. While our world may use the cliche "seeing is, or leads to believing" what the Gospel say is that "believing leads to seeing" when it comes to the identity of Jesus.

In his helpful essay "The Historian's Jesus and the Church" Dale Allison concludes as follows: "Every piece of evidence we have indicates that from the beginning Jesus, whatever appellation he did or did not bestow on himself, was the leader, and everyone else a follower. He was the teacher, while everyone else usually listened; he was the main actor while everyone else for the most part observed. There is no tradition in which Jesus is not front and center. Moreover the primitive proclamation "God raised Jesus from the dead," however one accounts for it, was no reason to crown him Israel's king or to see him as a ruling lord-- unless he was antecedently hoped to be such.... The early interpretations of the Easter events presupposed Jesus' pivotal eschatological role; they were not its source." (pp. 92-93).

Just so. The Gospels stories are not examples of prophecy historicized (by which I mean faux history made up on the basis of a certain reading of OT prophecies), nor are they like Aesop's fables, or legendary material found in the Illiad and the Odyssey, much less like the stuff of Egyptian or Greco-Roman myths. No, these Gospel stories are tied down to specific times and places and persons who witnessed, experienced, were changed by encounters with Jesus both before and after Golgotha.

The Gospel writers set out then to reveal the faces, or multi-faceted identity of Jesus. As Fred Buechner said long ago, he had a face which was not a front behind which he hid, but rather a frontier, the outer most visible edge of who he was. In him was no shadow of turning, no dissembling, his character was authentic, honest, had integrity-- he was as advertised by the Evangelists. His was a face which has led millions to follow or flee him for all of their days for over 2,000 years. Its time for all of us to face up to that Face, and so be transformed and conformed to the image of the one whom we admire and love and serve. We have a choice-- shall we go on being a Jesus haunted culture, or a Christ like one.

THE PARABLE OF THE PEAR TREE

Our Asbury student Scott Cozart told the following parable in chapel this morning.

A father wanted to teach his four sons the lesson of not judging something or someone too quickly, and so he called his four sons together and said "I have a task for you. I want you, my eldest son to go out into our fields and take a look at the pear tree and come back and tell me what your evaluation is of its condition."

So the eldest went out and saw the pear tree. But it was winter, and the son saw the tree on a harsh winter day and reported back and said to his father. "I see nothing of promise about the tree. It appears old, and gnarled and has no blooms on it at all. I doubt it will survive the winter."

Three months later the father sent the next eldest son out in the spring to evaluate the pear tree. The son came back saying "The tree is very beautiful, with white blooms, but it seems purely ornamental, it has no fruit, nor any sign of ever bearing any. I doubt it will be of much practical use to us."

Three months later the father sent the third from the eldest son out in the summer. The son went out to see the tree and came back reporting: "the tree seems to be growing and doing well, and it is full of leaves, and I could see some fruit, so I picked one and tasted it, but it was bitter, not fit for human consumption. I doubt it will prove of much use to us."

Finally three months later the father sent his youngest son out to see the tree once more. This time the tree was full of ripe beautiful golden and red pears. The son tried one and came back with the glowing report "Father we must come quickly for the harvest is upon the tree, and it is heavy laden and needs us to pick the pears for they are ripe and delicious now."

The father called his four sons back together, and said, "You see each of you have observed well the condition of a the tree at a particular season of the year, but your judgment of the tree was only partial, and made too quickly based on what you saw on only the one occasion. See to it that you never judge human beings this way. Never evaluate them too quickly or on the basis of one encounter, for it is unfair and unwise. Indeed all living things should only be evaluated over the course of time and after repeated careful inspection, for who knows but the ugliest and most unproductive of living things might some day turn into the most beautiful and fruitful."

ASBURY NAMES NEW PRESIDENT

ASBURY SEMINARY ELECTS NEW PRESIDENT
WILMORE, Ky. (Feb. 17, 2009) – Timothy Craig Tennent, Ph.D., of Ipswich, Mass., has been elected the eighth president of Asbury Theological Seminary by the Board of Trustees. Asbury Theological Seminary, a private graduate school in the Wesleyan tradition with an enrollment of more than 1600 students, offers master’s and doctorate degrees in theology, biblical studies, missions and ministry studies.

Tennent, 49, comes to Asbury Seminary from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Mass., where he has served as professor of world missions and Indian studies since 1998.

Dr. Dan Johnson, chairman of the Board of Trustees stated, “The board is very excited about the unanimous election of Dr. Tennent. Dr. Tennent is a scholar’s scholar, a professor’s professor. He is a world Christian with world vision who will take Asbury Seminary into wonderful new arenas.”

“I am honored to have been selected to be president of Asbury Theological Seminary,” Tennent says. “We are delighted to be moving to the historic and beautiful garden area of central Kentucky. My wife, Julie, and I have always said that wherever God sends us, we will go. God has taken us to China, India, Nigeria and many beautiful churches in the southern United States and in New England. Now we have the great opportunity to help Asbury work with a global constituency and play a stronger role in preparing ministers from around the world for God’s work around the world.”

Tennent received his M.Div. in 1984 from Gordon-Conwell; the Th.M. in ecumenics, with a focus on Islam from Princeton Theological Seminary; and did graduate work in linguistics (TESL) at the University of Georgia. He completed his Ph.D. in non-western Christianity with a focus on Hinduism and Indian Christianity in 1998 at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

He is also one of the first four graduates from a new leadership development program funded by the Lily Foundation and developed by In Trust, a nonprofit organization committed to strengthening boards and governance in North American theological schools.

The leadership training program “covered innovation in everything from theological practice, shared governance, fundraising, negotiating personal dynamics in education to working with boards,” Tennent says. “During the three-year program, I met with dozens of deans and many presidents from schools across the theological spectrum, and learned a great deal about many of the unique challenges that we are facing today.”

Tennent is passionate about classical, orthodox theological education.

“I am alarmed by the growing trend away from serious theological reflection and do not believe that the church will be adequately prepared to face the challenges of pluralism and post-modernism without a more robust theological preparation,” he says. “I am also passionate about the emergence of the Majority World Church. I believe that the Western church continues to have an important role in global missions, in partnership with the increasingly vibrant Majority World Church.”

FROM THE CATATONIC TO THE CATASTROPHIC

Ah to be a cat..... they rule their own little world and blissfully ignore all the dangers. And worse, they know they rule their owners.

I was listening to Vermont radio and a comedian came on and told the following story: "Husbands if you want to find out whether your wife on Valentine's loves you or her cat more try the following: 1) shred her favorite red dress, then 2) pee on her favorite carpet; then 3) sleep as long as you like, get up whenever you feel like it; 4) then go out at night, and come back whenever you like and then see if 5) your wife comes to the door and says to you "Oh honey there you are, I am so glad to see you, I was so worried about you!"

Vote for your favorite cat picture below.

BW3

FLOAT LIKE A BUTTERFLY, BE LIKE A STING

When I went to the University of Durham there was a young man who had been playing in jazz clubs in Newcastle, the next train stop north and had been an English teacher. His name was Gordon Summner, and he had a magic voice and played a mean bass as well. He was discovered by a drummer looking for someone to help him start a punk rock group, and the rest was history. That bass player became Sting, one of the finest rock artists of the fifth and final great wave of the rock era. Here is a small sampling of some of his solo work, with a glimpse of his and Trudy's Tudor mansion which houses his recording studio. Enjoy, BW3

THE WESTON PRIORY--WESTON VT.

I have already commented on the Weston Priory in a previous Vermont post. Here are some pictures from the Priory I took while there. BW3

TWO MEN LEAVING ON THEIR OWN TERMS-- GRAN TORINO AND THE WRESTLER

I was riding through Egypt and my guide was waxing eloquent about Clint Eastwood. He loved the Dirty Harry and spaghetti Western movies he had made. My druthers would be for the more serious Eastwood-- the Eastwood who directed such classics as Bird, or the recent excellent movie "The Changeling", or some of his war flicks.

But Clint Eastwood is an icon that transcends genres and it truly boggles my mind that whilst he has already won a Best Actor award for Gran Torino, he wasn't even nominated for an Oscar for this role, which in my mind may be the best (and some say will be his last) acting job he has ever done. Gran Torino is one hours and 56 minutes of morality play, with the two central figures being the young Catholic priest and Mr. Kowalski, not exactly an enthusiastic church attender. It raises important questions about life and death, and how we should view those two verities or imposters, and at the same time raises equally important issues about racism and overcoming it when one sees the true humanity of the 'Other', and when one realizes the 'Other' is also one's neighbor.

The story of "Gran Torino" is set in the rust belt, in this case Michigan, and Mr. Kowalski continues to live in his old neighborhood which has now largely been taken over by Orientals. Walt Kowalski, Korean Vet that he is, has the expected prejudices about such people. He has just lost his wife and wishes to be left alone, but somehow his neighbors who are Hmungs, keep impinging on his life and Walt begins to see them as in some ways preferrable to his own children who hardly even visit him, and whom he simply pushes away with his gruff manner and the usual expletives. But lurking inside that tough as nails demeanor is a real human being that needs to get some monkey's off his back (and when you hear them in the confessional, they are surprisingly few) and one expects that he will be delibrately adding to his sin list thereafter as well.

The Vietnamese/Cambodian neighbors are remarkably friendly, and Walt gets caught up in their lives, not least because there is a Hmung gang which keeps bothering the brother and sister and their whole family who are his neighbors. Walt, must figure out a way to put a stop to the gang, and the issues is forced when the sister is raped and beaten by the gang. Along the way, Walt tries to help the brother grow up and become a man. But what does that entail? Does it entail returning fire for fire, bullets for bullets? Walt doesn't want Tao (the brother) involved in such violence. Though their relationship began badly when Tao tried to 'boost' Walt's prize 1972 Gran Torino, it goes uphill thereafter.

This movie is rated R due to some of the language and violence (though there is actually surprisingly little of that for an Eastwood film). I can actually recommend this film as a fine study in morality, honesty, overcoming racism, learning to be a neighbor, and even self-sacrificial behavior. Though there is an apparent similarity between Mr. Kowalski and 'Randy Ram Robinson' (aka the star of The Wrestler), in that both go out on their own terms, the comparison between the two, and the two movies ends there.

"The Wrestler" has been universally praised as the great return to form of Mickey Roarke and also Marissa Tomei and indeed both do a remarkable job of embodying their roles as wrestler and erstwhile stripper. This movie in fact gets almost the maximum rating one has ever seen for a movie (98% after many reviews) whereas Gran Torino clocks in at 77%. Whilst 'The Wrestler' is indeed gritty and gives one the real feel of the life of a self-confessed "broken down ole piece of meat" (AKA an old wrestler over the hill and on fumes), so much so that the movie is deliberately filmed with a grainy look and spares nothing in depicting the gore of even 'fake' championship wrestling where people do indeed get hurt, this movie does not in any way have the heart or 'redeeming value' of 'Gran Torino'.

Randy 'Ram Jet Robinson, goes out on his own terms which means turning his back on his daughter and even on a woman he really cares about in order to hear the adulation of the crowd and please them one more time. The movie accurately portrays what a fickle mistress fame is, and fading glory.

By contrast, Walt Kowalski comes across as a self-sacrificial saint in comparison to Mr. Robinson, one who goes out helping others. In the end the best thing about "The Wrestler" is the poignant theme song Springsteen wrote for the movie, as in the end one feels very little sorrow for "Ram" and the movie, while striving for pathos, never quite gets there.

Gran Torino also has a fine theme song, composed by Eastwood with the help of Jamie Cullum, a Brit jazz pianist and vocalist of some note. Both movies end with the theme played for the first time and do sum up the films rather well. One produces only pity for "one trick pony" the other real tears, wishing one could have known better Walt Kowalski.

To be clear and succinct. I do not recommend "the Wrestler" for Christian families or Christians of any kind (not least because there is too much time spent in strip clubs in this film). Though Gran Torino has some language issues, it hardly deserves the R rating it got and I do commend it to mature Christian persons looking for the answer to the question that lawyer asked Jesus long ago--- "and who precisely is my neighbor?" This is the film that should have gotten the Academy nominations 'the Wrestler' got.

BW3

VERMONT REVISITED: CODA

Here are a few of the many shots I took in Vermont over the last month. Kudos once more to the Dumas' for allowing me to stay and work in so beautiful a place. All these shots are from in and around the Grafton, Ludlow, Chester, Windham area.
Enjoy. BW3