Scot, Once again you’ve hit the bullseye dead center. Both the historical constructs and the theological constructs are human constructs. Though such constructs may be helpful, and even insightful, it is the God-breathed Scriptures alone that are authoritative and it is their Jesus alone with whom we must reckon. The Church, which owes her existence and understanding to the apostolic witness, does not have the option or prerogative of choosing any other Jesus. To do so is to break her connection with her Source and lose her life-flow from her Head. Neither the historical constructs nor the theological constructs of human derivation can merit the trust or reliability of our Good Shepherd’s voice, which comes to us exclusively in his Word as attested to by his Church. We know his voice and will not listen to another’s. We make no apologies for this. Thank you once more for noting the distinction that truly matters.

Scot,
I appreciate this sound stance that you have taken.

Many of these same considerations come up when studying the history of the development of Judaism. How does knowing what Judaism was like thousands of years ago affect practice today?

Thanks Scot for the clarification. I must admit I found it odd that you used Wright in the negative because I have always found his arguments to be in favour of the historicity of the gospel eyewitness.
Are you making the distinction between scholars who accept the historicity of the gospels as eyewitness testimony (as Bauckham does) and those who refuse to believe or use the gospels as historically accurate (in the Bultmann fashion)? I must admit I am still a little confused but I think I am beginning to understand what you are saying.

Right. We need to fully know and recognized Christ. This is because if our knowledge of the Lord is different from the truth – we might end up praising to a wrong God. Some Christians believe that Christ is just a human, some Christians believe He is a God. With this – they are praising different Jesus.
For me, Christ is the savior of the Church – not only our personal savior. This is what is written in the Bible.
Ephesians 5:23
“For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.”
Colossians 1:18
18And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.

Mark,
It has nothing to do with our ability to prove the historicity of the Gospel depictions of Jesus. I believe that, and so does Tom Wright (and Bock, Keener etc). This is not at all about eyewitness testimony vs. inauthentic and inaccurate.
The issue is “reconstructing” what the “real” Jesus was like. Historical Jesus studies, by design, are about getting behind the Gospels to find what the reals — vs. canonical — Jesus was like. The issue is what the historical Jesus enterprise is all about: it’s assumptions are that the canonical Gospels are not entirely historical and the Creedal Jesus is much later imposition and, on that basis, reconstructing Jesus as he really was.

I appreciate what you are saying, but I am troubled by this line:
“The Church’s Jesus or the historian’s Jesus?”
It rings of the science v. faith debates, or a “Scandal of the Evangelical Mind” problem.
I don’t think you meant it that way though.

Rick,
Yes, it has nothing to do with the point.
Here’s the point, though: The Gospels themselves are the Church’s understanding of Jesus. To get behind the Gospels, dismissing some of what they say and adding other things not in them, ends up in one way or another in rejecting the Church’s Jesus. What we believe about Jesus comes to us in the Gospels. To reconstruct another Jesus, which is what the historian’s Jesus is, is a way of rejecting the Church’s Jesus.

Four years ago I wrote a post reviewing some insights on these issues from Craig Hill in In God’s Time: The Bible and the Future.
We are distant from the NT in both time and culture. Too much of conservative Christianity reads the NT with no appreciation for the distance. The Bible is a non-contextual ahistorical set of prescriptions to be discerned and followed. Too much of the higher critical school is about doing an end run around Scripture … and the deception and error contained therein … to get to the “real” Jesus behind the NT. Craig Hill who wrote:
“Can one bypass the New Testament and get directly to Jesus? Only if one is content to find a projection of oneself. To know and to listen to Jesus necessarily means knowing and listening to Matthew and John and Paul. The New Testament books are irreplaceable guides into an otherwise inaccessible territory; they are the gold standard against which all claims about Jesus must be tested.” (26)
The only Jesus we have is the Jesus that comes to us through Scripture … from that historical cultural context into ours.

Scot-
I agree, but are there not historians, such as Wright and Bauckham, that fully utilize the Gospels in their historical work?
If so, does Gospel + background type research reject (or change) “the Church’s Jesus”?
Perhaps I am just getting unnecessarily concerned about your use of the term “historians”, when in fact you don’t mean it as a blanket statement about all historians.
Captcha: the elusive

Rick,
Understanding the Gospels, the Church’s Jesus, in the historical context is not under question. So, no, that kind of work does not change the Church’s Jesus.
Again, historical work, yes. Reconstructing Jesus, no — well, “no” in the sense that it is not the Church’s Jesus.

Isn’t this “historical Jesus” work similar, in some ways, to the processes used by early church leaders to determine the canon of scripture in the first place? If so, are we choosing those historians over more current ones?
Just trying to sort through your point.

Not all persons who support historical criticism aim to go over and against the church’s teaching on Jesus.
Christ Jesus, as the Logos, the Word of God, does not belong to the church and he does not belong to the historian. Jesus as Creator, owns both history and the church. I do not think that the only way we get to Jesus is Scripture. If he is a Person, and is a personal savior, we also encounter him and his words through other persons (Matthew 25) and even in visions like African American woman evangelists in the 19th century like Jarena Lee and Julia Foote. I think these encounters of Jesus are compatible with Scripture because, the Bible, as canon, is a measuring rod, but like I said, Jesus is not the church’s property. It is the other way around. He transcends even “the church’s” (which ever one we are talking about) interpretation of himself.

A well made distinction, Scot. In some ways it is about where the center of trust is. The specific historians you are critiquing do not trust the Gospels, thus enter into the study with a presupposition that things MUST be removed or rejected. We, on the other hand, trust the Gospels, but do not always trust our ability to get it right, thus affirm the need for historical study to help illuminate the Gospels. In other words, anytime we “get it wrong”, we go in with the assumption that the failing is in our understanding and not inherent to the text. (Funny enough, I have spent the last few days reading “A New Vision for Israel”, so your obvious affirmation of historical understanding was never in question for me). Is that right?
I would be interested in your response to Scott (#12).

Scot,
Keep beating this drum. Sometimes the laity sees things like this as unimportant nuance happening in academia.
This is critical.
There are academic types who play dirty pool with the sound of reason and measure.
Peter Balla’s Challenges to New Testament Theology gives a fairly comprehensive survey of the state of the historical arguments and problems that the academicians have made for themselves. It’s a tad dense, but well worth the time and struggle for those interested in this matter.

Scot,
Thanks for your important critique of the anti-church bias in the historical Jesus enterprise. A question, though: Can’t part of your argument against historical Jesus study be applied to any text that requires interpretation? Let’s take the book of James, for example. Scholars argue that the text does not mean what it seems, the next generation advances new and quite different interpretations, commentaries replace commentaries, and the laity throw up their hands in despair: If even the experts disagree, how can we hope to interpret it for ourselves? I think this plurality is an unfortunate, but necessary implication of serious study (and it doesn’t necessarily lead to despair). Every interpretation of the book of James is a construction; any attempt to say what James really meant will presumably find itself up against established tradition. As a good Protestant, I’m not offended when a convincing interpretation of the book of James overturns what the church has always believed about James. Just as the inevitable plurality of interpretations of James don’t mean that we should call a halt to scholarly study of James, the inevitable plurality of interpretations of Jesus doesn’t count against the Quest.
As a good Protestant, I’m not about to let a reconstruction of the historical Jesus replace the authority of the four canonical Gospels, but I think the incarnation requires historical study of Jesus, and that means facing the uncomfortable possibility that the results of one’s historical investigation may not coincide with the Evangelists’ portraits. Since it is required by the incarnation, historical study of Jesus is a priori theologically significant, but that doesn’t make it a safe enterprise. To be sure, the canonical Gospels (the “church’s Jesus”) have theological priority, but I guess I’m not sure we are permitted to choose either the church’s Jesus or the historians’ reconstructions; each requires and is informed by the other.

Scott,
Thanks for the clarification. I only read your article once, but I was confused by it, in part because your description of the “heyday for the historical Jesus” seemed to put N. T. Wright and Ben Meyer in the same sinking ship as John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg. Perhaps other readers failed to note the distinction you were trying to make, and have now made, because your description of the historical Jesus enterprise does not make a very clear distinction between the very different agendas and presuppositions of the scholars mentioned above. Yes, you mention debates between Wright and Borg, but you still include them both in the historical Jesus enterprise, which you then dismiss. I don’t believe Wright would disagree with the distinction you are making, but your article doesn’t really give him room to be on your side. Perhaps that is why Wright himself seemed confused by your article. In sum, I find your Response to the Responses both helpful and necessary.

Scott S, no I’d say not. The canoniclers were determining things on the basis of apostolicity and fittingness-with-Regula Fide. They were not deciding what was authentic historical tradition and what was added. The HJ enterprise is all about determining what is authentic and what is not and reconstructing the Jesus that is left over.
Rod, I would say a proposal that doesn’t distinguish the authentic from the inauthentic is not HJ enterprise. If it thinks its all authentic, then it is probably not HJ studies. Yet, some study the Gospels and totally ignore John and ignore much of the Synoptics that isn’t germane to their reconstruction of Jesus.
d.miller, intense historical work on James that doesn’t aim to find the “real” James behind the current letter is not analogous.
Tim, there is only reason I put Tom Wright (Ben Meyer does get into distinguishing authentic from inauthentic) in the group, and no matter what I say he was hugely influential in HJ studies, and that reason is this: he reconstructs Jesus (an end of exile Jesus). Yes, I know Tom thinks that is exactly the Jesus of the Gospels.

“the historical Jesus enterprise has one major goal: to separate the real Jesus from the Church’s beliefs about Jesus and to reconstruct what the real Jesus was really like, in spite of what the Church has always believed.”
See, and that’s the VALUE of it. “what the church has always believed” is a VERY sketchy category. which church? and how do we know that they’re not wrong about something in there?
for example, let’s say serious historical inquiry by Wright (or Bauckham or Bock or Keener etc.) overturns in a very subtle way, something the church has “always believed,” like the kingdom of God, or Jesus’ intentions, or something, and in so reconstructing Jesus, makes the Bible more clear, worthy of faith and helpful.
In such a scenario, your criteria of “what the church has always believed” becomes cripling. it’s precisely what prevented the catholic church from benefiting from the reformation properly.
***My own historical study of jesus by people like NT Wright, Ben Witherington, Darell Bock, (and YOU) DID “separate the real Jesus from the my church-taught beliefs about Jesus and reconstructed what the real Jesus was really like, in spite of what i had always believed.” ***
THAT IS THE VALUE OF IT, NOT THE PROBLEM WITH IT. Without it, I would still be an uneducated, theologically immature christian.

Leo, what the church has always believed is found in the Four Gospels.
The significant, and enduring, contribution of the Wrights (Ben doesn’t have a historical Jesus book on Jesus himself; he reviews scholarship; Darrell’s is a Gospels Jesus) has been to crack open a human Jesus vs. a docetic Jesus so prevalent about orthodox/evangelical Christians. So, “your church-taught beliefs” I suspect were about an almost unreal/unhistorical character.

Scot,
I think it might be possible to do a HJ study “through” the Gospels not over and against them. Moreover, my concern is that we lose the historical Jesus as a first move in NT Theology, then we’ll end up back in the old Form Critical pattern whereby the Gospel’s tell us more about what Christians believed about Jesus rather than about Jesus himself.

You make the very last question of your post too easy. I would, perhaps, have a much easier time making a decision if it weren’t for the fact that so many historical studies have produced portraits of so many different historical Jesus’s. While the same may be true of the “Church’s Jesus”, there is far less variations in the portraits offered of the Jesus of testimony. If every critical historian essentially came to the same conclusion on Jesus, then I think I (we?) may be more hard-pressed to choose the historical Jesus over the Church’s Jesus.

This was a significant issue on the first day of the Wheaton Theology Conference–the day focusing on N.T. Wright’s understanding of the gospels. Richard Hays and Marianne Meye Thompson worried about Wright’s distancing himself from theology, the fourth gospel, the church, the creeds, and historical theology. Do you really think you are doing objective history? Wright, as I understood him, defended himself in two ways. First, he claimed to be tying one hand behind his back for the purpose of engaging apologetically with the presuppositions of historical Jesus scholars and new atheists. They don’t accept the Gospel of John or miracles so Wright would not utilize these arguments either. This to me is a fairly sound argument. He is arguing that this is not his own true presuppositions but for the purpose of debate he will engage on his opponents’ terms. Second, he argued that indeed he is suspicious about the church tradition and historical theology–feeling that it has led many people in the church astray and is what he is trying to correct in many of his popular writings. This is surprising for an Anglican bishop but not for a New Testament scholar–the latter whom tend to be serially suspicious of theology. Hays and Thompson were sympathetic to this argument but were disturbed that Wright does not see theology and New Testament as mutually sharpening. They asked, “Tom, haven’t you been positively influenced (unconsciously perhaps) by theology? Is it a coincidence that your conclusions are so similar to those of theology?” They were generally puzzled by Wright’s resistance to admitting that he is not completely doing “objective history.” The audio and video of the 2010 Wheaton Theology Conference talks are available online for free. http://www.wheaton.edu/wetn/lectures-theology10.htm
I hear Scot saying that Christians should not accept the altogether arbitrary rules of the historical Jesus game. Rather, we accept theology (church) and New Testament historical work (Scripture) as the two absolutely inseparable necessary parts of Christian reading of Scripture. Again, Bock, Keener, Wright, and McKnight are all fundamentally on the same page but some are better than others at articulating theologically and philosophically what they are doing.

Andy, thanks for taking this to the Wheaton conference. That was an important discussion there.
But, my point is not just about the rules of the game. I can live with those and we have to live with those, and Tom does live with those.
But the issue for me is “intent” and “aim”: the HJ “game” or “enterprise” has one intent — to find the real Jesus who was overcooked and overinterpreted by the apostles and the Gospels, not to mention the Creed, are overcooked. Thus, we need to get behind them to find what Jesus was really like.
I want ordinary folks to see that this is what the game is all about. We have benefited enormously from HJ studies and studies about Jesus. No one disputes that; I think I’ve made a few offerings myself.
But let us not forget that the Jesus many are so connected to is the Jesus reconstructed by historical Jesus game scholars and that Jesus is almost always less than the one offered in the Gospels and the Creed.
Does this mean fideism, or let’s just trust the Church, so that our faith is really faith in the Church? No. But we cannot dismiss this important item: Jesus was “interpreted” and “rendered into meaning” by the apostolic witness, and that derives of course from Jesus’ own “interpretations of himself,” and that apostolic witness became the Gospels and the gospel and the Creed. So the Jesus of the Gospels is the apostolic rendering of Jesus.

Agreed.

Historical Jzus!?!
The persons using that contra-historical oxymoron (demonstrated by the eminent late Oxford historian, James Parkes, The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue) exposes dependancy upon 4th-century, gentile, Hellenist sources.
While scholars debate the provenance of the original accounts upon which the earliest extant (4th century, even fragments are post-135 C.E.), Roman gentile, Hellenist-redacted versions were based, there is not one fragment, not even one letter of the NT that derives DIRECTLY from the 1st-century Pharisee Jews who followed the Pharisee Ribi Yehoshua.
Historians like Parkes, et al., have demonstrated incontestably that 4th-century Roman Christianity was the 180? polar antithesis of 1st-century Judaism of ALL Pharisee Ribis. The earliest (post-135 C.E.) true Christians were viciously antinomian (ANTI-Torah), claiming to supersede and displace Torah, Judaism and (“spiritual) Israel and Jews. In soberest terms, ORIGINAL Christianity was anti-Torah from the start while DSS (viz., 4Q MMT) and ALL other Judaic documentation PROVE that ALL 1st-century Pharisees were PRO-Torah.
There is a mountain of historical Judaic information Christians have refused to deal with, at: http://www.netzarim.co.il (see, especially, their History Museum pages beginning with “30-99 C.E.”).
Original Christianity = ANTI-Torah. Ribi Yehoshua and his Netzarim, like all other Pharisees, were PRO-Torah. Intractable contradiction.
Building a Roman image from Hellenist hearsay accounts, decades after the death of the 1st-century Pharisee Ribi, and after a forcible ouster, by Hellenist Roman gentiles, of his original Jewish followers (135 C.E., documented by Eusebius), based on writings of a Hellenist Jew excised as an apostate by the original Jewish followers (documented by Eusebius) is circular reasoning through gentile-Roman Hellenist lenses.
What the historical Pharisee Ribi taught is found not in the hearsay accounts of post-135 C.E. Hellenist Romans but, rather, in the Judaic descriptions of Pharisees and Pharisee Ribis of the period… in Dead Sea Scroll 4Q MMT (see Prof. Elisha Qimron), inter alia.
To all Christians: The question is, now that you’ve been informed, will you follow the authentic historical Pharisee Ribi? Or continue following the post-135 C.E. Roman-redacted antithesis?an idol?

the main problem is that there is not one thing that we can believe, once we say that this is right or true, the very next dat, something else crops up and we are confused as to what to believe and what to deny, once this problem of multiply theories is solved, we might have a definite answer