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20. Is the "Historical Jesus" a Christological Construct?
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20. Is the "Historical Jesus" a Christological Construct? Barry W. Henaut From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. (Paul of Tarsus, 2 Cor 5:16) I regard the entire Life-of-Jesus movement as a blind alley. A blind alley usually has something alluring about it, or no one would enter it in the first place. It usually appears to be a section of the right road, or no one would hit upon it at all. In other words, we cannot reject this movement without understanding what is legitimate in it.' 1. Introduction: The Historical Jesus and the Christ of Faith Is the "historical Jesus" merely another theological construct, like the "Christ of faith"? To pose this question seemingly betrays over two centuries of usage and threatens to undermine an essential philosophical and historical distinction championed by David Friedrich Strauss. As a consequence of Strauss's famous 19th-century formulation, the "historical Jesus" is usually taken to refer to Jesus "as he really was," the historical human being who lived in Galilee and was crucified in Jerusalem (or at least what can be reconstructed of him using the tools of academic history). The "Christ of faith," in contrast, is taken to refer to the subsequent biblical proclamation of the risen Lord.2 As Leander Keck puts it, '"the historical Jesus' often has an anti-dogmatic, anti-theological, even anti-Christian ring."3 The reasons for this distinction are as well known as they are obvious: with the advent of the Enlightenment, scientific history could no longer make a straightforward equation of these two entities (i.e., Jesus as he lived versus the gospels' portrayal of this life). As will become clear, however, the methodological problems implicit in the reconstruction of the "historical Jesus," combined with the inevitable unconscious forces at work in the process of such analysis, ensure that every presentation of Jesus' life and thought creates a de facto Christ of faith. 1 MartinKahler, The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ, trans, and ed. Carl E. Braaten (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988 [1896]), 46. 2 David Friedrich Strauss, Der Christus des Glaubens und der Jesus der Geschichte: Eine Kritik des Schleiermacherschen Lebens Jesu (Berlin: Franz Duncker, 1865)—English translation: The Christ of Faith and the Jesus of History: A Critique of Schleiermacher's Life of Jesus, trans. Leander E. Keck (Philadelphia:Fortress, 1977). 3 Leander E. Keck, A Future for the Historical Jesus: The Place of Jesus in Preaching and Theology (Nashville: Abingdon, 1971), 18. 242 Whose Historical Jesus? 2. Martin Kahler: Against the Life-of-Jesus Movement A major contribution to the "Jesus of history" and "Christ of faith" controversy came at the close of the 19th century with Martin Kahler's The So-called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ. In conjunction with the work of Albert Schweitzer and Wilhelm Wrede, a major watershed can be marked in life-of-Jesus scholarship at the turn of the century. Kahler's analysis of the problem was to prove influential throughout mainstream biblical scholarship and neo-orthodox theology (especially upon Rudolf Bultmann and Paul Tillich). Indeed, in launching the so-called "new quest," Ernst Kasemann noted that, despite the (then) intervening 60 years, Kahler had never been refuted. Bultmann had really only "underpinned and rendered more precise the thesis of this [Kahler's] book."4 An examination of Kahler, therefore, will be helpful not only in setting out the problem but also in revealing a number of tensions and contradictions which remain unresolved even today. Regarding the entire life-of-Jesus movement as a "blind alley," Kahler sets out to understand the movement's strengths as well as its weaknesses. He argues that it is correct insofar as it sets the Bible (not the Jesus of History) against an abstract dogmatism. It becomes illegitimate, however, "as soon as it begins to rend and dissect the Bible without having acquired a clear understanding of the special nature of the problem and the peculiar significance of Scripture for such understanding."5 The life-of-Jesus movement divorces Jesus artificially from his importance (as expressed in the biblical Christ of Faith): "In this whole discussion we are trying to explain how inadvisable and indeed impossible it is to reach a Christian understanding of Jesus when one deviates from the total biblical proclamation about...