Jesus Christ in history and scripture: a poetic and sectarian perspective

Abstract

Jesus Christ in History and Scripture highlights two related bases for the current revolution in Jesus studies: (1) a critically-chastened world view that is satisfied with provisional results and (2) a creative (or poetic) use of the sources of study of Jesus.The first part of the book shows that precritical, critical, and postcritical epochs and attitudes (all alive today) support different sorts of knowledge concerning Jesus (historical reconstructions; historic memory and appropriations; imaginative, poetic, and artistic creations; and theological formulations) and that the Gospels themselves Support different sorts of knowledge and approaches. The Gospels were composed by Christians who combined historical information and historic memory in imaginative ways to present a Jesus who was relevant to their congregations as he was to the earliest disciples. The creative contribution that readers of the Gospels make in their reconstructions of Jesus is a recapitulation of the creative activities of the earliest evangelists.The central section of the book provides a philosophical rationale for correlating the historical-critical methods of biblical scholars and the rationalist methods of theologians and for correlating these modern Enlightenment modes of knowledge with feeling, lived experience, and praxis. It also traces the attempts to do justice to the historical Jesus with particular attention to the different philosophical and theological presuppositions supporting the different attempts.A final section discusses the values of non-foundationlist hermeneutical approaches for the broader questions of the use and authority of the Bible. In the end, ecumenical ratherthan divisive approaches are advocated. Different ways of doing church and different ways of discovering and creating truth demand an ecumenical approach.