From John_Dominic_Crossan@info.harpercollins.comTue Feb 27 12:40:17 1996 Date: Sun, 18 Feb 1996 15:16:08 -0500 From: John Dominic Crossan To: JESUS2000@info.harpercollins.com Subject: Jesus Debate: Week 1, Primary Message (Crossan) THE NECESSITY OF HISTORICAL JESUS RESEARCH FOR CHRISTIAN FAITH John Dominic Crossan Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies, DePaul University, Chicago INTRODUCTION Luke Timothy Johnson's recent book The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels (HarperCollinsSanFrancisco, 1996) and his article "The Search for (the Wrong) Jesus" in Bible Review for December, 1995, raise a question of profound importance for Christian faith and theology. What is the relationship between the historical Jesus and Christian faith? This posting summarizes a longer reply to appear in Bible Review for April, 1996. Basically, and in summary, to his words "misguided" and "wrong" I oppose my word "necessary." Our disagreement is actually the contemporary restatement of a very, very ancient debate, one as old as Christianity itself, the fight between Catholic or Universal or Incarnational Christianity and Docetic or Gnostic or Spiritual Christianity. Do not confuse that ancient term Catholic with the contemporary term Roman Catholic. Catholic/Universal/Incarnational Christianity believed that the material universe was created by the one and only good God and was radically good. The human body was therefore profoundly good. And Jesus was utterly, fully, and totally human just as we are, and that to confess his divinity could in no way diminish his true humanity. Docetic/Gnostic/Spiritual Christianity distinguishes between the Good God of pure spirit and the Evil God or Godling who created the material universe which, so created, was therefore radically evil. We humans were good spirit trapped in evil matter. Jesus' body could only be a docetic, apparent, or seeming one (dokein is to seem in Greek), and that to confess his true humanity was to render his divinity absurd. There were, of course, all sorts of divisions within those two groups and other groups besides them in the rich plurality of earliest Christianity, but, for my present purpose, that somewhat over-simplified divergence can stand. My counter-proposal to Luke is that historical Jesus research is theologically necessary for Christianity or, at least, for Catholic as distinct from Gnostic Christianity. PART I. A WAR OF GOSPEL TYPES Here is the basic question. There was only one Jesus and there should be only one Gospel about him, only one "Good News" that proclaims him as both good and news, so why are there four gospels in the New Testament? By four, I mean more than one, two is already a problem. Even as that fourfold canonical set was slowly attaining ascendancy within Catholic Christianity in the second century, Marcion, in the 140s, wanted to eliminate all save one and Tatian, in the 170s, wanted to laminate them all into a single integrated super-gospel. One Gospel therefore one gospel. Why then these four? There were actually at least four different TYPES of gospel as Christianity moved from the first into the second century and when that is recognized it becomes clear that our fourfold canonical set represents the choice of one TYPE over the others. It was not just a war of gospels but a war of gospel types and eventually one TYPE won and to make that clear, all its representatives were retained. TYPE 1 is the Sayings Gospel model represented, for example, by the Q Gospel (discovered as a source within Matthew and Luke) or the Gospel of Thomas (discovered in Coptic at Nag Hammadi in 1945 and thence recognized in Greek fragments from Oxyrhynchus at the turn of the century). In this type the emphasis is on the words of Jesus, on sayings, parables, short dialogues, but not so much on incidents, events, miracles, or on passion accounts and risen apparitions. TYPE 2 is the Biography Gospel model represented, for example, by Mark or any of the canonical gospels. In this type the emphasis is on the life of Jesus, on words and deeds together, and it ends with a detailed passion, risen apparitions, and the departure of Jesus. TYPE 3 is the Discourse Gospel represented, for example, by the Apocryphon of James (also discovered in Coptic at Nag Hammadi). This type begins where that previous one ends. It starts with an apparition of Jesus and continues thereafter with heavenly revelations usually in the form of questions and answers between disciples and Jesus. It is almost the distinctive gospel type of Gnostic Christianity. TYPE 4 is the Biography-Discourse model represented, for example, by the Epistula Apostolorum (discovered in Coptic and Ethiopic versions at the turn of the century). In this type there is a deliberate fusion of Biography in sections 1-12a and Discourse in sections 12a-51 as Catholic Christianity attempts to subsume for itself that distinctive gospel type of Gnostic Christianity. When my initial question is placed against our much wider contemporary knowledge of gospel types, a relatively clear answer is possible. The basic fight is between Type 2 and 3, between the Biography or narrative gospel of Catholic Christianity and the Discourse or revelation gospel of Gnostic Christianity. Within that antagonism, Types 1 and 4 had no future. Type 1 was too ambiguous: it could be drawn, as was the Q Gospel, into the Synoptic tradition, or, as was the Gospel of Thomas, into the Gnostic tradition. Type 4 was also too ambiguous: no matter how Catholic its content, its dominant format was too Gnostic for comfort. What was necessary, in this fight, was a clear indication that only Type 2 was normative for Catholic Christianity and, to make that point, the major available examples of that type would ALL be accepted. Thereafter, it was hoped, when one spoke of gospel, one spoke only of Type 2. PART II. INTERLUDE FOR CONFESSION Before continuing, a few words of theological confession are in order. First, my own religious sensibility is profoundly and irrevocably within Catholic Christianity rather than within Gnostic Christianity. I probably could no more change that than I could change being Irish. It is far deeper than documentation or anything that I can fully understand. Second, I can understand and sympathize with Gnostic Christianity. I can acknowledge its early, continuing, and important conflict with Catholic Christianity. I can accept, in the first or the twentieth century, both Catholic and Gnostic believers within the community of Christianity. Third, if (and it is a very big if) a Gnostic Christianity would have involved the true equality of women and men at least within the ideal community of the Church, I could mourn its failure to prevail as normative Christianity. Fourth, I do not presume that Catholic Christianity itself had necessarily to prevail. If, for example, the Roman Empire had officially declared at a very early date that Christianity was an illicit superstition and that denouncers would obtain a Christian's possession, I could easily imagine Christianity, had it survived at all, becoming officially and normatively Gnostic. As their world became more and more experientially evil, Gnostic rather than Catholic Christianity could easily have become the much more persuasive option. Finally, I think that Catholic rather than Gnostic Christianity is in far greater continuity with the historical Jesus but I do not know whether that is an historical or a theological judgment or even how to decide which it is. PART III. THE NORMATIVITY OF THEN-IS-NOW I take as conclusion, from that preceding analysis, that the four canonical gospels are normative as type within Catholic Christianity. They are normative not just in their content but in their form, not just in their matter but in their mode, not just in their product but in their process. But what is that form, mode, process? It is that peculiar interpenetration of past and present, that special intertwining of then and now whereby those gospels always go back to the historical Jesus and speak thence to new situations and problems. Jesus-then becomes Jesus-now. No, better: Jesus-then is Jesus-now. They are always talking about and from the 20s of that first common-era century. But they are also talking about and to the 70s with Mark, or the 80s with Matthew and Luke, or the 90s with John. Gospel is good news: good means from somebody's specific point of view; and news means it must be permanently updated for different times and places. But the way the gospels of Catholic Christianity do that is always to have the one and only Jesus of the 20s speak directly to the changing presents they represent. Lest this discussion is too abstract, I give you concrete examples of what I have in mind by comparing the start and end of the passion narratives in Mark and John. Watch as each author goes back to the same moment in time and place and has the Jesus-of-then speak very differently as the Jesus-of-now. We call it the Agony in the Garden but there is no Garden in Mark and no Agony in John. In Mark it is Jesus who is prostrate on the ground (14:33-35), who asks if the cup of suffering could be avoided although he is willing to accept it if necessary (14:35-37), and who watches his disciples abandon him and flee (14:50-52). In John it is the full 600 soldiers of Jerusalem's auxiliary cohort who are prostrate on the ground (18:4-6), while Jesus asserts his unqualified intention of accepting the cup of suffering (18:10-11), and then commands the cohort to let his disciples go (18:7-9). Two radically different interpretations of the same event. As history, they cannot both be true, even if we were never able to tell which, if either, actually happened. But as gospel they are both true. Mark describes the Son of God almost out of control, arrested in agony, fear, and abandonment. John describes the Son of God in total control, arrested in foreknowledge, triumph, and command. Each interpretation spoke directly to and from the experience of the writers' communities but different experiences begot different theologies of the passion's inception. If we turn to the ending of the passion in Mark and John we find exactly the same process. The moment is the same in each, the last words of Jesus on the cross just before his death. In Mark 15:34-37 Jesus cries out "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" The bystanders mistake Jesus' last words by taking "My God" or "Eloi" for "Elijah" and derisively attempt to keep him alive for a few extra minutes to see if the prophet comes to his aid. The drink is their own mocking idea. In John 19:28-30, of course, there is no cry of desolation and no mockery, and the drink is Jesus' idea and brought at his command. For Mark, the passion of Jesus starts and ends in agony and desolation. For John, the passion of Jesus starts and ends in control and command. But I repeat, as gospel, both are equally but divergently true. Both speak, equally but divergently, to different times and places, situations and communities. Mark's Jesus speaks to a persecuted community and shows them how to die. John's Jesus speaks to a defeated community and shows them how to live. My main point, however, is to note how each evangelist goes back to moments in the life of the historical Jesus, be it arrest or death, and builds a dialectical process of past/present and then/now in which those twin elements interpenetrate and interweave totally together. Those are but focal instances of how the Catholic Christian gospels consistently work and my counter challenge to Luke Johnson postulates that dialectic as normative for Catholic Christianity past, present, and future. Jesus-past acts and speaks as Jesus-present; Jesus-then acts and speaks as Jesus-now. And that is how he is Christ and Lord. We are asked, by the New Testament, to watch that process occur four times. Four should be enough to get the point since, at least in Indo-European tradition, a triple repetition is usually considered adequate to establish pattern. Those four are our mistress models, our master examples. Catholic Christian faith IS that dialectic itself, modeled in our canon, repeated again and again in our tradition, and proposed anew today wherever faith is dynamically alive. That means that modern Catholic Christians have work to do which involves bringing two sides of a dialectic into contemporary fusion. And that fusion is both necessary destiny and dated doom. That is not because of our errors but because of different places, not because of our mistakes but because of different times, not because of our failures but because of different people. First, the historical side of that dialectic involves our very best reconstruction of the historical Jesus by contemporary standards not because they are infallible but because they are our best available. No cheating and no special pleading. No history masquerading as theology nor theology masquerading as history. That reconstruction is of "the facts of history" within, of course, all the permanent vagaries and uncertainties that incarnation celebrates. Second, Christian faith must confess what that historical Jesus means for now. Faith is never in facts but always in a fundamental meaning or profound interpretation of those facts. If we had a totally accurate video of Jesus' life, we would know that some people found him criminal and wanted him executed, others found him divine and wanted him worshipped, and others, I suppose, found him boring and wanted him ignored. We would, when the video ended, still have to decide where we stood or knelt. The "real" Jesus, to borrow Luke's titular term, is neither Jesus-then OR Jesus-now but the dialectic of them both. The "real" Jesus is, and always has been within Catholic Christianity, BOTH Jesus-then AND Jesus-now, but so integrated that they are Jesus-then AS Jesus-now.