Jesus said to the Episcopalians and Lutherans and ex-Catholics, “Who do you say that I am?” They replied, “You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground of our being, the kerygma of which we find the ultimate meaning in our interpersonal relationships.” And Jesus said, “What?”
When books sold for $2.95 in the leading new testament scholar Raymond E. Brown published a 109 page study called “Jesus: God and Man”. (1967) I have a signed copy from a trip to a Catholic School in San Antonio where he was lecturing. My seminary classmates had not heard of him, so they scanned the book I had since college on the drive from Austin. Professor Brown posed 2 questions : 1. Does the new testament call Jesus God ? and 2. How much did Jesus know? He answers from a purely exegetical point of view, without speculation. During his lifetime which definitions of his identity did Jesus reject or accept? This question of Jesus’ self- knowledge carefully looks at how he perceived his mission.
Though it is much more complex, the successive decades were peppered with a plethora of Jesus books. The basic learnings were: 1. the canonical Jesus (the Jesus of the 4 gospels) is primarily seen through the lens of the emerging Christian community. There is no bare and uninterpreted Jesus….. 2. The emphasis on his divinity overshadowed his humanity in the developing tradition… 3. Jesus, the messenger of the kingdom of God had become the message itself… 4. The previously held interpretations of Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet began to be challenged.
Brown maintains that the new testament does call Jesus God, but only in the later part of the developing tradition. In the gospels Jesus never uses the title God for himself. For the Jewish world, “God” meant God the Heavenly Father. To apply this term to Jesus who was not the Father and who was on earth made no sense. Only later was it understood that “God” could be used in a broader sense to include both the Father and the Son and eventually the Spirit. Jesus would not have thought of himself as God, the Father in Heaven. It is clear that the way Jesus speaks of God as Father (Abba, Daddy) indicates that he claimed a special relationship to God. Primarily in the Gospel of John, written to prove Jesus is the Son of God, the author allows the Jesus of glory (post -easter) to speak in pre-easter moments.
So the 2 basic questions Brown addresses are very difficult to answer in a simple manner. Perhaps Jesus is such an enigmatic figure we can only continue to seek to be informed by those who devote their life’s study to the theological and exegetical task.
If you have not seen them, or would like to refresh your minds, I will be showing several videos that update this fascinating quest to understand Jesus and God.
Please sign up to attend by calling the office 928 537 7830 or sign up in the parish hall. 1. From Jewish peasant to the Face of God, Wed. August 30th @ 2 p.m. 2. Seeing God Again:What’s at stake, Wed. Sept 6@ 2 p.m.