The dichotomization of the christological paradox in the history of Christian thought and critical biblical scholarship

Again and again throughout the history of Christian thought theological apologetics has dissolved the great ironic paradox of Jesus Christ into binary oppositions. In these historical contexts cultural relevancy has prevailed, and the underlying philosophical ideology has generated a disastrous subversion of the apologetic formulations of Christology in the New Testament. By calling this dichotomization into question, this essay intends to promote a postmodern hermeneutics that preserves the christological paradox and orients the constituting consciousness of theologians and scholars to both a spirituality of "being-affectedby" the biblical witness to Jesus Christ and a faith that will initiate action toward the transformation of society.


INTRODUCTION
The dialectics of Western philosophy have structured the ambiguities of human existence as polar opposites and constituted a kind of ontological pollution system: being versus appearance, soul versus body, mind versus matter, identity versus difference, nature versus culture, good versus evil, presence versus absence, speech versus writing, life versus death.The two terms in each binarity, however, are not regarded as equal entities.
As Jacques Derrida has shown, the second term of each pair is generally viewed negatively as an inferior reality, something to be overcome, possibly by a third entity or synthesis (Derrida 1981 :viii, 3-59).
Characteristic of the history of Christian thought is a similar inclination toward the dichotomization of paradox.This has been especially true of the confessional formulations of christology, which have been adopted by the Church either in accommodation with or in reaction to a particular philosophical orientation.More recently it has been evident in biblical scholarship's quest of the historical Jesus.The New Testament's presentation of the paradoxical unity of Jesus Christ has been dissolved into a set of polarized realities: Jesus versus the Christ, or the Christ against Jesus.The one, either Jesus or the Christ, is considered to be superior to the other, and consequently is theologically or philosophically dogmatized as the basis of Christian faith.
What is the christological truth of the Christian faith?Is it the reality of Jesus alone, apart from any and every Christological attribution of deity?Is it the divine reality of the Christ, whose relationship with the physical nature of Jesus of Nazareth was nothing more than a temporary conjunction or even an illusion?Or is it the ongoing confessional activity of interpreting Jesus as the Christ eschatologically and soteriologically on the basis of his resurrection from the dead?Of these three alternatives, the first two have tended to be predominant throughout the history of Christian thought, and with them their attendant conceptions of salvation.The third, however, which unites the Christ title -even in all its historical variations -with Jesus of Nazareth in an acknowledgement of a pioneering conjunction of heaven and earth, of the divine and the human, is the great paradox which the New Testament promotes.
Nevertheless, already twenty-five years after the beginning of the Christian movement Christians in the city of Corinth were differentiating between Jesus and the Christ on the basis of a protognostic orientation.Apparently in their view Jesus was only the physical bearer of the Christ.Since material reality, including the human body of flesh and blood, is subject to the capricious and unstable forces of Fortune, Jesus was to be cursed, while the spiritual reality of the Christ, which transcended the material world, was to be worshipped and praised.Salvation was mediated by spiritual participation in Christ's transcendence and manifested itself above all in the gifts of knowledge and

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HTS 57(1&1) 1001 Digitised by the University of Pretoria, Library Services Herman C Waetjen glossolalia.The binary opposition, which these Corinthians had constituted, is implied in the Apostle Paul's refutation of 1 Corinthians 12:3, "No one speaking by the Spirit of God says, 'Jesus anathema!' or 'Jesus be damned!'And no one is able to say' Jesus is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit" (Schmithals 1961(Schmithals , 1969;;Conzelmann 1975:204-205).

EARL Y CHRISTOLOGIZING IN A CONTEXT OF OPPOSI-TIONAL DUALISM
In the following centuries the problem of the union of Jesus and the Christ absorbed theologians, philosophers, and ecclesiastics in a seemingly interminable dispute to resolve once for all what nature of deity could be attributed to the humanity of Jesus, and what nature of humanity could be attributed to the deity of the Christ.If Jesus was the Christ, God's Son, how real was his humanity?On the other hand, if God alone is unbegotten and eternal, and everything else belongs to God's creative activity including the Son, what kind of deity is attributable to Jesus (Pelikan 1971, I:ln-200)?
Virtually everyone who theologized out of a Platonic or Neo-Platonic perspective formulated a christology that was more or less self-contradictory and, if measured by New Testament criteria, heretical.Middle Platonism conditioned the religious philosophy ofOrigen while Neo-Platonism molded both sides of the Arian-Athanasian controversy that the Council of Nicea and its Nicene Creed attempted to resolve.Presupposed was the metaphysical reality of an unbridgeable chasm separating God, the One, from the created order of the Many.If, therefore, Jesus is the Christ, on which side of this rift did he originate?
Origen  of Alexandria -and later Caesarea -formulated the first comprehensive synthesis of biblical revelation and Middle Platonism.It was a religious philosophy that, like the thought of Philo of Alexandria, attempted to integrate the Scriptures with Greek philosophy and proved to be equally contradictory.God, the One, is self-existent and eternal, but becomes Manifold through the agency of the Logos.
Engendered by the One, the Logos shares in the essence of God.As John I: I declares, the Logos is 8E05 (God); or, in the words of Hebrew I :3, the Son is "the radiance of God's glory and the representation of God's essence (hypostasis)."For Origen the Logos is the Son, and the Son is the Logos: "In the Logos one may see the Son, and because He HTS 57(1&1) 1(J(J1 107 Digitised by the University of Pretoria, Library Services The dichotomization o/the Christological paradox is in the Father He may be said to be in the beginning" (Origen I,17).As the Logos the Son is homoousios t6 patri (the same substance with the Father) (Origen xiii, 25).
Consequently, on the one hand, there never was a time when there was no Son or Logos.
That is, there never was a time when God was without Consciousness or Wisdom (Origen 1,42;11, I;Hamack 1961,11:355).Yet because God's consciousness or wisdom is not identical to God, the Logos is only 81005, not 0 81005 (the God) (Origen 11, 2)."One might assert, and with reason, that God Himself is the beginning of all things, and might go on to say, as is plain, that the Father is the beginning of the Son; and the demiurge the beginning of the works of the demiurge, and that God in a word is the beginning of all that exists" (Origen I, 17)."For if human beings are according to the image, but the image according to the Father; in the first case the Father is the n CxPX~ of Christ, and in the other Christ is the CxPX~ of human beings, and human beings are made, not according to that of which He is the image, but according to the image."(Origen I,19)."But Christ is demiurge as a beginning (CxPX~), inasmuch as He is wisdom.It is in virtue of his being wisdom that he is called CxPX~.For Wisdom says in Solomon, "God created me the beginning of His ways, for His works," so that the Logos might be in an CxPX~, namely in wisdom" (Origen I, 21).
But not the God, with the definite article denoting the "Father" or, as Jesus refers to this supreme Being in Jn 17:3, "the only true God".The Logos, the Son, Christ, as the demiurge, is the "archetypal image ... who was in the beginning, and who by being with God is at all times God, not possessing that of himself, but by his being with the Father ... " (Origen 11, 2).Because "the Son [the Logos] has a distinct nature of his own," there can be no union between God the Creator and the Logos.As Origen states in Contra Celsum VIII, 12, " ... they are two distinct existences (hypostases), but one in mental unity, in agreement, and in identity of will" (Chadwick 1953:460-461; Origen Contra Ce/sum VIII, IS).
As the being who stands between the One and the Many, neither uncreated as God nor created as the spiritual and physical worlds, the Logos is "the other or second God" (deuteron theon).In as far as he comprehends in himself all the forms of creation, he is Digitised by the University of Pretoria, Library Services

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God's "first cause" (Origen Contra Celsum V, 39).As Harnack (1961, 11:356) expresses it, "He is already the first stage of the transition from the One to the Manifold, and, as the medium of the world-idea, his essence has an inward relation to the world, which is itself without beginning."Origen builds the paradox on John 1: 1.
First, that the Logos was in the beginning, as ifhe was by himself and not with anyone, and secondly, that he was in the beginning with God.And I consider that there is nothing untrue in saying of him both that he was in the beginning, and in the beginning with God, for neither was he with God alone, since he was also in the beginning, nor was he in the beginning alone and not with God, since "He was in the beginning with God." (Origen, John 11,4-5) Because the Logos, by comprehending all the forms of creation, has "an inward relation to the world," he does not bear the unchangeable nature of God.He is a manifestation of deity, but in as far as he is a being that God originated, he is a "hypostasis" and a "demiurge" (Origen, John I, 40; Pelikan 1971: 172-200).This ambiguous location of the Logos between the self-existent God and the created world sub-ordinates the Logos to God and consequently, like the cosmology ofPhilo, constitutes a static hierarchical order (Philo, Who is the . In that static hierarchical order the Holy Spirit is the transition from the Logos to the realm of the ideas and the great diversity of spirits which the Logos created.Human spirits belong to this descending gradation, and, like all created spirits, are pre-existent and eternal.But, as a result of the Fall, they have been transformed into souls, incarcerated in material bodies, and subjected to the earthly warfare between angels and demons.Their sojourn on earth is designed to enable them to achieve purification and to return to "the likeness of God," the Logos, from whom they originated (Harnack 1961, 11: 365-380).
The contagion of sin is also a condition endemic to creation, and expiation is necessary in order to enable human souls to recover their identity as spirits and return to their origin.In accordance with the New Testament, Origen acknowledged Christ as "the Digitised by the University of Pretoria, Library Services The dichotomization of the Christoiogicai paradox incarnation of the Logos" who made expiation for humankind by offering his death as a sacrifice acceptable to God and simultaneously as a ransom paid to the devil (Origen, VI, 35-37;Harnack 1961, 11:367-368, n.l).But Christ, according to Origen's Middle Platonism, cannot be a true enfleshment of the Logos, for the Logos cannot unite with matter.Consequently, the incarnation of the Logos was limited to the soul of Jesus, and through the soul with his body (Origen, John I, 30;Harnack 1961, II:370).

John
For Origen, however, redemption is essentially a return to union with the Logos, and that requires knowledge.Jesus Christ, therefore, as the limited incarnation of the Logos, is principally a teacher who reveals the depths of that true knowledge which the Eternal Gospel, revealed in the Scriptures, imparts: how human beings can purify themselves and unite with the Logos in order to recover their deity.Eschatology, therefore, determined Origen's soteriology, above all, the eschatology adopted from Cor 15:28, " ... so that God might be all things in all things" (Origen, John I, 37).

ARIUS, ATHANASIUS, AND THE NICENE CREED
Lucian (possibly ofSamosata) appropriated Origen's doctrine of the Logos but dissolved its ambiguous relationship with the Godhead.The Logos was not "the same substance (ousia) with the Father."Arius, his most notable student, followed him in identifying the Logos, or the Son, with the created order.If Athanasius' derogatory account of Arius's theology is reliable, Arius believed that the Son was brought into being by God's wisdom, and, therefore, by participating in this Wisdom, the Son is called Wisdom or Logos (WiIliams 1987: 100).Since God cannot generate anything out of God's own essence nor communicate that essence to the creation, the Son cannot participate in God's substance (ousia) and therefore is totally independent of God.God alone is anarchos (without beginning); the Son, in contrast has an arche (beginning), and for Arius that is the beginning of the created order.

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Arius' philosophical presuppositions forced him to assert a difference of ousia between the Father and the Son and to choose the term ktizo (create) as the basic description of the relationship between them.But once having drawn the basic distinction in this way, his aim is to emphasize in the highest

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Digitised by the University of Pretoria, Library Services Herman C Waetjen possible degree the qualifications which require to be made in the understanding of those basic distinctions.(Wiles 1962:345) Accordingly, although the Son is to be identified as "a creature, he is not as one of the creatures" (Wiles 1962:344-345).For within that qualification he is nevertheless the  1961, IV:48).He belongs to the Godhead and therefore is independent of the creation.As the Son, he is co-eternal with the Father and of one and the same substance (homoousios) with the Father.Although Athanasius employed the designation, "the Word" or "the Word of God," he rejected Origen's doctrine of the Logos, and therefore did not regard the Word as the agent of creation (Hamack 1961, IV:49).God generated the world directly and without any intermediary.
But mysteriously and wonderfully, the Christ, as "the fullness of all Being," united with a body of flesh and blood in Mary's womb in order to communicate the divine nature to all human beings (Harnack 196,IV:35).
But hc took our body -not just any body, but from a virgin inviolate and incorrupt, who had not known a man: a body pure and without stain from any human intercourse.He, the Almighty, the Artificer of the universe, made a temple for himself in the womb of a virgin: his own body .... Thus, taking a body like our own, because all were subjected to the corruption of death, in his extreme humility he offered his own body to the Father as a victim in death.
HTS 57(1&1) 100/ 111 Digitised by the University of Pretoria, Library Services The dichotomization of the Christological paradox Perceiving that corruption could not be abolished otherwise than through death, but also knowing that he himself, the Word, the Son of the Father, could not die, he assumed a mortal body.In this way, united to the Word who is above all, this body was to die for us, and furthermore, made incorruptible by the Word dwelling within it, would have the power by his resurrection to banish corruption for all others as well.(Athanasius, in Hamman 1993:68).This is the nature of salvation which Jesus as the second Person of the Trinity makes possible, and it is this soteriology that is the objective of Athanasius' christology (Harnack 1961, IV:26, n.3).Yet in spite of the Son's incarnation, there is almost no trace of his humanity in this christology (Harnack 1961, IV:45).For as the Christ, Jesus is inseparable from God, and the gift of deification could not be imparted if he did not participate in the unity of the Godhead.In spite of its inherent contradictions, its great virtue, as Harnack professes, was that, unlike the christology of Arius, it promoted "the religious conviction that Christianity is the religion of perfect fellowship with God" (Harnack 1961, IV:49).
It was primarily through Athanasius' influence on his clerical predecessor, Alexander, the bishop of Alexandria (Hamack 1961, IV:26, n.I), one of the prominent figures at the Council of Nicaea, that the core of his christology was expressed in the doctrinal declaration of the Nicene Creed (Harnack 1961, IV:26).This Creed, however, was designed to overcome the cosmological dualism of Gnostic speculation and perhaps also to resolve the ambiguity of the religious philosophy of Origen (Harnack 1961, IV:59).God is One! Judaism, New Testament Christianity, even Neo-Platonism acknowledged that.But which work was to be attributed to this One God? Creation or redemption?Or both?And ifboth, how could they be attributed to One God in a cultural context that was dominated by Neo-Platonic dualism?In order to reunite the work of creation and the work of redemption as the undertaking of one and the same God, the theologians and clerics, who adopted the Creed of Ni ca ea, established the unity of God in terms of the doctrine of the Trinity, but at the expense of the humanity of Jesus Christ.
He is, as the revised form of the Creed asserts, God of true God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father (homoousion t6 patri), through whom all things were made, things in heaven and things on earth; who for us men and for our salvation came down and was made flesh, and became a human being, suffered, and rose on the third day, ascended into the heavens, is coming to judge the living and the dead.(Bettenson 1947:36) Not surprisingly, the christological problem remained unresolved, that is, the relationship between Jesus and the Christ, between his humanity and his deity -and, as an attendant consequence, the nature of the salvation he inaugurated.The effort to overcome the Neo-Platonic dualism that had conditioned earlier theologies and religious philosophies only aggravated the christological issue by identifying Jesus Christ onto logically with the Godhead by the usage of the hotly disputed philosophical terms: ousia (being) and homoousios (substance).But how is that descending movement from heaven to earth achieved, that is, from ek tcs ousias tou patros (originating from the being of the Father) and homoousion to patri (one substance with the Father) to "and was made flesh and became a human being"?(Pelikan 1971, I:226-266).Is Philippians 2:7 presupposed?
Did the descent involve a kenosis, an emptying of divine "being" and "substance"?
Because the Creed said nothing about that, it begged the question of the union between the humanity and the deity within the historical person of Jesus of Nazareth.
Instead of uniting the church theologically, the Creed engendered greater alienation.A coalition was formed only a few years after its adoption, which resolved to eliminate the Nicene Creed from the confessions of the church on the ground that it was unbiblical.A new formulation was needed, if only to resolve the relationship of the two natures of Jesus the Christ and, hopefully, to restore the unity of the church.

THE CHALCEDONIAN CREED
Approximately 125 years later a new creed was codified at Chalcedon that was directed against all those who subverted the mystery of the incarnation by asserting two natures in As in the case of Luther, Calvin's christology is oriented toward soteriology, and it is a soteriology that requires the accentuation of Jesus' deity.As intensely as the incarnation of the Son of God is stressed, Calvin was still theologizing within the Neo-Platonic dualism of the deity and the humanity of Jesus Christ, and within that dualism the weight naturally falls on the former.Mysteriously and wonderfully, he contends, " ... the Son of God descended from heaven in such a way that, without leaving heaven, he willed to be borne in the virgin's womb, to go about the earth, and to hang upon the cross.yet he continuously filled the world even as he had done from the beginning!"(McNeill 1960, 1:481).
That the Son of God, in his incarnation, can remain sinless is attributable, according to Calvin, to the purity of Mary's "seed" and the sanctification of the God's Spirit.
... if Christ is free from all spot, and through the secret working of the Spirit was begotten of the seed of Mary, then woman's seed is not unclean, but only man's.For we make Christ free of all stain not just because he was begotten of his mother without copulation with man, but because he was sanctified by the Spirit that the generation might be pure and undefiled as would have been true before Adam's fall. (McNeill 1960, 1:481)   Unlike Luther, however, Calvin remains faithful to the Chalcedonian doctrine of the two separated natures in the one person of Christ.
On the other hand, we ought not to understand the statement that "the Word was made flesh" in the sense that the Word was turned into flesh or confusedly mingled with the flesh.Rather, it means that, because he chose for himself the virgin's womb as a temple in which to dwell, he who was the Son of God became the Son of man -not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person.For we affirm his divinity so joined and united with his humanity Because theoretical knowledge was prejudicially limited to the domain of the natural sciences, the humanities were subjected to the methodology of the natural sciences -with far-reaching hermeneutical consequences.The universal truths that are derivable from the Bible by human reason, however, must correspond to contemporary human experience.But this hermeneutical identification is a critical undertaking and should be restricted to the educated elite (Harrisville & Sundberg   1995:44-45).By inaugurating the ideology of "an unmediated knowledge of Scripture," based on Cartesian epistemology, Spinoza laid the foundation for the Bible to become the object of historical science, but one that utilized the methodology of the natural sciences (Harrisville & Sundberg 1995:45).Reimarus attributed the Christian movement to the mythologizing and theologizing of Jesus according to the other contemporaneous messianic expectation of Judaism, the eschatological trajectory of Jewish apocalypticism.Christianity, therefore, is the product of "the system of Jesus' disciples."By adopting the myth of resurrection, they invented the Easter event of his rising from the dead, but only after concealing his body and waiting fifty days for its decomposition.Other features were drawn from Jewish apocalypticism that gave rise to the attendant proclamation of his ascension into heaven and his imminent return to enact divine judgment.The scandal of his death on the cross was resolved by interpreting it redemptively as an act of substitutionary atonement.

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The opposition between "the system of Jesus" and "the system of his disciples, which subsequently engendered the differentiation between "the Jesus of history" and "the Christ of faith," " ... hung a millstone about the neck of the rising theological science of his time" (Schweitzer 1959:26).Although refutations from various perspectives were attempted, they were essentially ineffective.Under the influence of the rationalism of discarding historical fact and ironically ended up maintaining the wedge between "event" and "truth."Within the epistemology of the Age of Enlightenment, God's incarnation in a particular human being, like Jesus of Nazareth, remained unthinkable.Jesus and Christ continued to be antithetical realities.
Ironically, the "first quest" was concluded by Albert Schweitzer.Like his predecessors, he attempted to reconstruct the life of Jesus on the basis of an historical criticism that, by its implicit identification of history with nature, presupposed a causal nexus that precluded divine intervention.Yet after reviewing the history of the entire enterprise, he found meaning in a mystical Jesus, independent of historical knowledge.The epistemology of Immanuel Kant may well have determined this reorientation, for it was after he had completed his first doctoral dissertation, subsequently published under the title, The Religious Philosophy of Kant from the "Critique of Pure Reason" to "Religion within the Bounds of Mere Reason, that he turned to theology and specifically the problems of

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Digitised by the University of Pretoria, Library Services Herman C Waetjen the life of Jesus.He wanted to solve the enigma of the Last Supper by exploring its development from "the faith of Jesus into the faith of primitive Christianity" (Schweitzer 1949:32).His investigation led him to conclude that for both Jesus and the earliest Christian community the elements of the meal had no symbolic representation of Jesus' body and blood.The supper was simply a celebration of the future "kingdom of God" and its attendant messianic banquet, represented by the bread and the wine, over which prayers of thanksgiving were spoken (Schweitzer 1949:35).
Like his pioneering predecessor, Hermann Samuel Reimarus, Schweitzer identified Jesus with a particular eschatological-christological trajectory that emerged from the Hebrew Scriptures.The former had linked Jesus to the Messiah/Son of David expectation; Schweizer opted for the trajectory of Jewish apocalypticism.Jesus, believing that the end of the world was at hand, announced the coming of a new moral order, "the kingdom of God," which would be established by "the Son of Man."But while he proclaimed the kingdom's imminence to his contemporaries, he secretly believed that when it arrived, he would be manifested as "the Son of Man".Schweitzer summarized his view of Jesus' career dramatically in his best-known book, The Quest of the Historical Jesus: There is silence all around.The Baptist appears, and cries, "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand."Soon after that comes Jesus, and in the knowledge that He is the coming Son of Man lays hold of the wheel of the world to set it moving on that last revolution which is to bring all ordinary history to a close.to identify himself as a disciple of Jesus.The failure of Jesus' "eschatological fanaticism" did not disillusion him; it did not detract from his personality nor cancel the validity of his world-denying ethics as the very essence of religion (Schweitzer 1949:53-59).
He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side, He came to those men who knew Him not.He speaks to us the same word: "Follow thou me!" and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfil for our time.
He commands.And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience who he is.(Schweitzer 1959:403) From within the epistemological perspective of Kant's practical reason Schweitzer was able to hear and obey Jesus' call to undertake a medical mission in Africa.From within that same perspective he was also able to pronounce a judgment that terminated what is now regarded as the first "Quest of the Historical Jesus.""Those who are fond of talking about negative theology can find their account here.There is nothing more negative than the result of the critical study of the Life of Jesus" (Schweitzer 1959:398).Herman C Waetjen Kahler & Braaten 1964:58).Is it the continuity with our being or is it the discontinuity he embodies as the enfleshment of the Word?

THE SHIFT FROM JESUS TO THE CHRIST
Kahler was by no means a docetist.He did not intend to establish a binary opposition between Jesus and the Christ.Incarnation was central to his understanding of "the biblical Christ of faith".He acknowledged the true humanity of Jesus and regarded it to be identical to ours.What distinguishes Jesus and establishes "an insunnountable barrier" between him and universally sinful humanity is his sinlessness (Kahler& Braaten 1964:25-26).This singular characteristic of Jesus' life, which Kahler insists must be taken into account in order to reconstruct "a fully authentic picture of Jesus" that is validated by the New Testament, defies the scientifically-detennined presuppositions of historical criticism.Indeed, the empirical perspective of historical-critical theory and its foundational location in the Cartesian dualism of "subject" and "object" prevents any such oriented investigation from taking into account an idiosyncrasy like that of Jesus' sinlessness.
Kahler's attitude toward historical criticism, however, is inconsistent.While he rejects the adequacy of historical criticism in reconstructing the life of Jesus, he admits "that historical research can help explain and clarify particular features of Jesus' actions and attitudes as well as many aspects of his teaching" (Kahler 1953:54;Kahler & Braaten 1964:26-27).If the Gospel traditions do not lend themselves to a discrete and certifiable differentiation between the historical realities of Jesus' life before his crucifixion and the ongoing process of interpreting his person and work that the Easter event inaugurated, how can historical criticism explain and clarify any features of Jesus' actions and attitudes?It seems that historical criticism must contradict its own methodological orientation by initially acknowledging the validity of Kahler's "historic biblical Christ of faith" and then proceeding with the historical investigation of its presentation in the New Testament Gospels.
Kahler, of course, is correct in his judgment that historical criticism cannot deliver what it seems to promise, namely the consummate knowledge that can establish the truth of the Christian faith.But his differentiation between "the so-called Jesus of history" and "the historic biblical Christ of faith" poses a dichotomy not unlike that of Kant's differentiation between empirical reason, the operational realm of historical criticism, and Digitised by the University of Pretoria, Library Services The dichotomization of the Christological paradox metaphysical reason, the operational realm of faith.Historisch or the historical, is the arena of human activity and interaction that requires critical investigation performed by a technical practice and supported by erudition.Geschichtlich, the historic, according to Kahler, is identifiable with the enduring effect that a human being has on the subsequent course of history (Kahler 1953:37-41;KahlerlBraaten 1964:63-67).In the case of Jesus it was conveyed in a confession of faith that Paul delivered to the Corinthian Christians in I Cor 15: 3-5; and, as far as Kahler is concerned, nothing more is needed.For him the truth of the "geschichtlich" or the historic depends on the experience of conversion and the eyes of faith that it engenders.He reinforces this with an appeal to Matthew 16: 17 and 2 Corinthians 5:16.
Although there are no explicit references to Kant's writings, Kahler did acknowledge that in his student days, "I swallowed down Spinoza and read Kant, Schelling, and Hegel" (KahlerlBraaten 1964:4).His discrimination against "geschichtliche Tatsachen" (historical facts) and his advocacy of "Glaubenserlebnisse" (faith experiences) are inherently Kantian."For historical facts, which scholarship must first clarify, cannot as such become experiences of faith; and therefore the history of Jesus and Christian faith separate like oil and water" (Kahler 1953:51;KahlerlBraaten 1964:74) Of course, "the history of Jesus" is the Jesus reconstructed by historical criticism under the influence of the Cartesian split and reinforced by Kantian epistemology.That kind of historiography identifies history with nature and therefore imposes causality on its webs of continuity.But history is also the realm of possibility and freedom.As valid as Kahler's rejection of historical criticism was vis a vis its use in establishing of the truth of the Christian faith, his dichotomy of "the historical" and "the historic" continued the Age of Enlightenment's breach between Jesus and Christ as oppositional realities.
The shift away from "the historical Jesus" to "the historic biblical Christ," which Digitised by the University of Pretoria, Library Services history with nature and the subject-object split which that identification presupposed.
Accordingly, in his essay, "The Problem of Henneneutics," he states: If the concept of objective knowledge is taken from natural science (in which, moreover, it may also have become problematical today in the traditional sense), then it is not valid for the understanding of historical phenomena; for these are of a different kind than those of nature.They do not exist as historical phenomena at all, without the historical subject who comprehends them.For facts of the past become historical phenomena only when they become significant for a subject who itself stands in history and participates in it, only when they speak; and that they do only for the subject who comprehends them.(Bultmann 1952,11:229;1955:254) Like his renowned teacher, Wilhelm Hernnann, Bultmann oriented himself toward Christian faith as an event in the life of the believer instead of intellectual assent to the objective event of a historically reconstructed life of Jesus."To believe in the cross of Christ does not mean to concern ourselves ... with an objective event .,. but rather to make the cross of Christ our own, to undergo crucifixion with him" (BultmannlBartsch 1962, 1:36).Faith is a sUbjective experience that leads into freedom and the search for truth.But freedom, like faith, is bound to the domain of subjectivity, to Kant's Critique of Practical Reason; and, in view of their interdependence, they are not realizable in the realm of the cause/effect concatenation of nature.
In spite of Heidegger's influence during the 1920's at the University of Marburg, encounter (Thiselton 1980:205-223).In an ever-threatening world dominated by its powers and principalities, existential security and the certitude of faith can only be experienced in the subjective sphere of encounter.Knowledge produced by human reason, with its formulation of universal principles and laws, belongs to the realm of objectification.As a foundation for faith it is to be negated as unconditionally as justification by works.
It was from the Marburger Neo-Kantians, Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp, Bultmann derived the notion of "objects," not as the initial referent of thought, but "as the stated goal or end of thought" (Thiselton 1980:209).Objects are the formation of consciousness.'To know is to objectify in accordance with the principle of law" (Thiselton 1980:210).Accordingly, for Bultmann knowledge that is established by this process of objectification is characteristic of the domain of "works" and of law (Thiselton 1980:211).His appropriation of this Neo-Kantian position is expressed in the opening sentence of his essay, Welchen Sinn hat es van Gatt zu reden?"If one understands to speak 'of God' to be equivalent to speaking 'about God,' such speech has no sense at all, for in that moment in which it occurs, it has lost its object, God. ... God cannot be spoken about in universal statements, in universal truths which are true without a correlation to the concrete existentialistic situation of the speaker" (Bultmann 1954, 1:26).
Any and every attempt to speak "about God" by the objectification of human reason is sin in its negation of the "} -Thou" relationship with God.In the same vein, faith is not determined by nor based on facts about the historical Jesus.Bultmann, therefore, could undertake a radical form-critical investigation of the Synoptic tradition without any fear of how his faith would be affected by its results.For him the Jesus that could be recovered or reconstructed by historical criticism was identifiable with what the Apostle Paul had designated "Christ according to the flesh".Or, in Bultmann's terminology, it is nothing more than the dass (that), that is, the fact of Jesus' career and therefore, only the presupposition of the Christian faith (Bultmann 1954, 1:204-205;BultmannlGrobel 1951 :3, 33).
Yet Bultmann did write Jesus and the Word, or in German simply Jesus.It is not, however, a life of Jesus that was typical of the nineteenth century quest of the historical Jesus.It is not oriented toward Historie but Geschichte; it is not interested in facts extracted from the Gospel tradition by a process of objectification.It is his "highly 128 HTS 57(1&2) 2001 Digitised by the University of Pretoria, Library Services personal encounter with history" (Bultmann 1958a:6), based on the oldest layer of the Synoptic tradition.He claims it is "objective, for it refrains from pronouncing value judgments" (Bultmann 1958a:7); but at the same time the teaching of Jesus, which is the focus of the book, is interpreted-existentially. "The words of Jesus ... meet us with the question of how we are to interpret our own existence.That we be ourselves deeply disturbed by the problem of our own life is therefore the indispensable condition of our inquiry" (Bultmann 1958a: 11).
Not only did Bultmann interpret the earliest Jesus tradition in the light of his own "highly personal encounter with history."Above all, he was involved in the hermeneutical problems of interpreting the was (what), that is, the content of the Christian proclamation as it is conveyed by the New Testament writings and their witness to Jesus Christ.Although he utilized the ontology of Heidegger's Dasein for his program of demythologization, as he designated it, in order to reinterpret the mythology of the Gospel, his Neo-Kantian dualism continued to be the epistemological framework within which he worked.H ••• the figure and work of Jesus Christ must be understood in a manner which is beyond the categories by which the objective historian understands world-history, if the figure and the work of Jesus Christ are to be understood as the divine work of redemption" (Bultmann 1958b:80).
In faith I deny the closed connection of the worldly events, the chain of cause and effect as it presents itself to the neutral observer.deny the interconnection of the worldly events not as mythology does, which by breaking the connection places supernatural events into the chain of natural events; I deny the worldly connection as a whole when I speak of God.I deny the worldly connection of events when I speak of myself, for in this connection of worldly events, my self, my personal existence, my own personal life, is no more visible and capable of proof than is God as acting.(Bultmann 1958b:64-65) Bultmann was an heir of the Age of Enlightenment.He lived and labored within the Cartesian split of subject and object as it was reinforced by his radical appropriation of

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Digitised by the University of Pretoria, Library Services The dichotomization o/the Christological paradox Kantian dualism, and, therefore, the sum total of his work may be evaluated as nothing more than an abortive enterprise in apologetics.He affirmed the truth of revelation while the history in which it occurred was ultimately denied.

THE NEW QUEST OR THE SO-CALLED SECOND QUEST OF THE HISTORICAL JESUS
What, then, is the continuity between the earthly Jesus and the proclaimed Christ?Both Reimarus and Schweitzer, the beginning and end of the first quest, had denied continuity.
The Christ that had been formulated by Jesus' disciples and the subsequent Christian movement was pure fabrication.Martin Kahler, on the other hand, had rejected the entire enterprise of the quest, contending that the biblical picture of the historic Christ is the personal unity of the supra-historical revelation of God and historical reality of Jesus.In contrast, Bultmann acknowledged a minimal continuity.Jesus must be regarded as the precondition of the Christian movement.But it is the mythology of the Christ that the Easter faith generated which is the bearer of the truth of the Gospel!And it is that mythology of the Christ that Bultmann attempted to re-interpret for the modem world.
Is such a minimal continuity between the earthly Jesus and the proclaimed Christ adequate for the establishment of the historical character of God's revelation in the life and work of Jesus of Nazareth?To use Bultmann's language, is Jesus only the "dass," the historical proclaimer of the imminent reality of God's rule, who became the proclaimed as a result of his post-Easter identification with the Messiah and "the Son of Man"?Must the Jesus, whose life and teaching are reconstructed by historical-critical scholarship, be dismissed as "the Christ according to the flesh"?Surprisingly, it was from within the Bultmann School that a new quest, or what is now being designated as the second quest, originated.It was not, however, simply a reopening of the earlier quest.The "either/or" character of that quest, that is, the opposition between the historical Jesus and the Christ that necessitated a historical and/or theological choice between the two, was considered to be invalid.Out of a realization that "the historical reality of revelation itself  (Kasemann 1960, 1:213;1964:46;Perrin 1967:226).
"To state the paradox as sharply as possible: the community takes so much trouble to maintain historical continuity with him who once trod this earth that it allows the historical events of this earthly life to pass for the most part into oblivion and replaces them by its own message" (Kasemann 1960, I: 192;1964:20.)In spite of the skepticism that form criticism had evoked, Kasemann believed that the small fund of knowledge about the historical Jesus that had been constituted could be enlarged by employing the same "radical criticism".By utilizing Jesus' parables as formal criteria, more authentic Jesus material could be identified on the basis of the principle of dissimilarity."In only one case do we have more or less safe ground under our feet; when there are no grounds either for deriving a tradition from Judaism or for ascribing it to primitive Christianity, and especially when Jewish Christianity has mitigated or modified the received tradition, as having found it too bold for its taste" (Kasemann 1960:205;1964:37.)Presupposed in this enterprise of enlarging the fund of knowledge about the historical Jesus in order to establish continuity between Jesus and Christ is his differentiation between "mere history" (brutafaeta) and interpreted history.
Mere history is petrified history whose historical significance cannot be brought to light simply by verifying the facts and handing them on. ... In theological terms, this means that only in the decision between faith and unbelief can petrified history even of the life of Jesus become once again living history.This is why we only make contact with this life history of Jesus through the kerygma of the community.(Kasemann 1960: 194-195;1964:24) In other words, early Christianity rendered the brute facts of Jesus' life meaningful to faith by a process of interpretation that Kasemann called "an 'historification' of mythical material" (Kasemann 1960: 197;1964:26).Evidently Kasemann, like his Age of Enlightenment predecessors, was operating within the framework of the Cartesian The dichotomization of the Christological paradox subject/object split and therefore assumed that historical events are essentially brute facts which require interpretation in order to achieve understanding.But, as Heidegger demonstrated, understanding is necessarily prior to interpretation and is projected into experience, whether of texts or the events of daily life in order to complete the hermeneutical circle of understanding.There is no such thing as mere history.There are no brute facts except perhaps those that are isolated from a historical sequence or structured whole; and even then they are theory laden.Interpretation without prior understanding is impossible.The projection of the pre-understanding continues consciously and unconsciously throughout life; and in that process both disclosure and concealment occur.
The structure of consciousness will open as well as close the possibilities of truth that are latent in the actualities of experience.But that process is conditioned by the social construction of rellity.What is disclosed and what remains concealed will be predetermined by the paradigm of reality that has structured the preunderstanding.
Accordingly, it is invalid to assess the memories of Jesus' ministry that his disciples carried into the future and re-evaluated in the light of the Easter event as "brute facts".What his activity and teaching disclosed to them will never be known, unless perhaps particular contemporaneous ideological trajectories can be identified which Jesus embraced and which he rejected.If there is any continuity between "the Jesus of history" and "the Christ of faith," it should manifest itself in the relationship between the ideological trajectory with which Jesus identified himself and the subsequent eschatological and christological formulations of early Christianity.
All too quickly the second quest of the historical Jesus faded into oblivion (Fuchs 1964;Robinson 1959;McArthur 1969).Its virtue consisted in its efforts to establish continuity between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith.This is also implicit in Gilnther Bomkamm's monograph of 1960, Jesus of Nazareth.the first endeavor of the second quest to produce "a life of Jesus" or more correctly a critical reconstruction of Jesus' preaching and teaching.Like Kasemann he recognized that Jesus l:annot be understood apart from the reality of Easter and the early Church's theologizing of Jesus and his own eschatological interpretation of his ministry.But like Kasemann he also presupposed that facts are prior to interpretation and therefore differentiated between the "undistorted, primary facts" of the life of Jesus and the subsequent "pious interpretation" 33-37 and the claim to authority, which they express, distinguish him as more than a rabbi or even a prophet.That same authority was manifested in the immediacy of the sovereign power he exercised in his works of healing and exorcism.
In each case a world has come to its end, be it for salvation or jUdgment.Its past is called into question.Its future is no longer secure -that future towards which it has been moving, according to all those traditions and laws which had been valid until then.In this sense its "time" has ended.
( Bomkamm 1960:63) Here it is also obvious that he followed Bultmann in maintaining a paradoxical relationship between the future and the present in Jesus' teaching and in interpreting the terms "world" and "the kingdom of God" existentially.For Bomkamm the continuity between Jesus and the Christ was established by the Easter event which validated him and his eschatological interpretation of his ministry as the eschatological event and in turn inaugurated the process of eschatological-christological confession and proclamation in and by the early Church.

THE SO-CALLED THIRD QUEST OF THE HISTORICAL JESUS
Lives of Jesus continued to be published during the 1960's and '70's even into the early '80's, but without the ideological perspective of the so-called second quest (Nolan 1976;Perrin 1967;Vermes 1973;Harvey 1982;Sanders 1985;Boers 1989).Establishing continuity between the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith was not a critical objective.

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133 Digitised by the University of Pretoria, Library Services The dicllOtomization o/the Christological paradox Nor has it been a critical objective of the so-called third quest of the historical Jesus.
New methodology and newly discovered sources characterize this latest quest.This is especially true of John Dominic Crossan's 507-page monograph, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant.
Crossan begins with thirteen pages of "a reconstructed inventory" of Jesus' sayings drawn from the four Gospels and the recently discovered Gospel of Thomas.
They are metaphorically characterized as "a score to be played," "a program to be enacted;" and the book he is writing is professed to be "an account of their inaugural orchestration and initial performance" by the historical Jesus (Crossan 1991 :xxvi).The book itself, Crossan's account of Jesus' performance, is a very impressive piece of work.
In many ways it justifies the opening of a still another quest.Unlike the participants in the first quest, Crossan does not presuppose that the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith (encountered in the Gospels) are mutually exclusive polarities.Although he does not appear to be motivated by the objective of the second quest, he concludes toward the end of his investigation: "I find, therefore, no contradiction between the historical Jesus and the defined Christ, no betrayal whatsoever in the move from Jesus to Christ" (Crossan 1991 :424).
Crossan proceeds to analyze his inventory of authentic Jesus tradition by utilizing theories of social anthropology, specifically those of Gerhard E Lenski (1966), Ted Robert Gurr (1970), and Bryan R Wilson (1973), as well as Greco-Roman history and "the literature of specific sayings and doings, stories and anecdotes, confessions and interpretations concerning Jesus" (Crossan 1991 :421).It is this critical investigation of "the score," the thirteen pages of Jesus traditions viewed through the macro, meso, and micro lenses of theory, that differentiates this pioneering reconstruction of the historical Jesus from the previous quests.
Jesus and his followers are identified as "hippies in a world of Augustan yuppies" (Crossan 19991:421).After examining Jesus' teaching within Bryan Wilson's sevenfold typology of religious "responses to the world", Crossan identifies Jesus with the categories of "the thaumaturgical" and "the revolutionist."He was a "magician" who united the magic of healing with the common meal in order to "force individuals into unmediated 134 HTS 57(1&1) 100/ Digitised by the University of Pretoria, Library Services physical and spiritual contact with God ... and with one another" (Crossan 1991 :422).
Crossan's scholarship, unlike that of the first questers, does not appear to be governed by a Kantian epistemology which, because of its orientatiun to the immortality of the soul, is predetermined to repudiate the resurrection.In contrast to many earlier and later quests, he includes an analysis of the Easter narratives.Like the gospels, the program he enacts in his book culminates in Jesus' death and resurrection.Nevertheless, in contrast to his absolute certainty that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate, there is no pronouncement about the reality of his resurrection.Crossan prefers to follow "a single stream of tradition for the passion-resurrection traditions from the "Cross Gospel" into Mark., from both of them into Matthew and Luke, and from all of them into John" (Crossan 1991 :395-396;1985: 121-181).Evidently the passion-resurrection narrative of the "Cross Gospel" is considered to be the original version, and if it was constructed on the basis of an intense search of the Hebrew Scriptures from which "verses and images" were drawn, as he claims for the passion tradition (Crossan 1991:375), what is the reality of the Easter event?Historically, of course, the passion preceded the Easter event.But the death of Jesus would have had no significance apart from Easter.Therefore, theologically-historically it was the Easter event and its interpretations that preceded and determined the theological reflection on the death of Jesus.
As creative and comprehensive as Crossan's investigation of the historical Jesus is, it is flawed on each of the three archeological levels on which he operates.His selection of authentic Jesus tradition is broad, but the hermeneutical circle in which he operates between his "reconstructed inventory" of Jesus tradition and Wilson's overlapping typology of "responses to the world" is too limited.Jesus was not only engaged in healing and promoting an egalitarian meal; he also called for repentance.
Wilson's category of "conversionist response" must also be added to Crossan's program of investigation.Finally, his determination of Traditionsgeschichte, specifically the historical development of the passion-resurrection tradition originating in the "Cross Gospel, is not only grossly speculative.It is governed by a redaction criticism that does not appear to appreciate and discern the integrity of the narrative worlds of the individual Gospels of the New Testament.
fiction.The evangelist wove together "two distinctively different strands of narrative material: "(1) that of movements in Palestine and southern Syria that cultivated the memory of Jesus as a founder-teacher; and (2) that of congregations in northern Syria, Asia Minor and Greece wherein the death and resurrection of the Christ were regarded as the founding events" (Mack 1988: 11).On what basis Mack has derived this distinction from his textual sources is not clear.
His reconstruction of "Jesus in Galilee" is based on the earliest layer of the Q traditions, which he believes preserves an authentic glimpse of the historical Jesus as a teacher of wisdom, possibly even a Cynic-like sage (Mack 1988:60-69;Mack:1993:114-121).But not as a prophet or an eschatological figure!Jesus' style, as Q conveys it, was like that of the Cynics, "close and confrontational."His speech was "softly spoken but extremely engaging," "an invitation to share critical insight or perspective," but specifically addressed to individuals in the social setting of a meal.If Jesus spoke about "the kingdom of God," it was a non-eschatological way of life involving Jewish ideals that would infuse confidence in a confused and chaotic world.What he set in motion, Mack insists, was "a social experiment" (Mack 1988:76;1993: 105-188).
The Christian gospel, as it is conveyed by the Gospel according to Mark, as well as the other New Testament writings, is the product of the movements that were For Mack the Gospel according to Mark is the genesis of the fraudulent myth of the Christ event that has deceived those who have embraced it and consequently identified themselves as Christians throughout the past nineteen hundred years.Even if the myth was meaningful to those who once committed themselves to it, its significance for today is hollow, even preposterous.Mack judges that there is little difference between the myths of Mark's Jesus with the power to cast our demons coming into a world to solve its problems and the Lone Ranger with his silver bullet coming into a town to solve its problems (Mack 1988:304).Ultimately, the tragic chain of causality that Mack traces from Mark's Christ myth into the present invalidates its truth and therefore also its legitimacy.as "a secular Jesus scholar" and his self-understanding as a Christian.In writing this book, however, he has combined both self-understandings in order "to speak directly and unabashedly about some of the implications that ... this material has for the Christian life" (Borg 1994a:viii;Borg I 994b: 143).
In his personal witness Borg explains why he engages in the quest of the historical Jesus.His seminary education introduced him to a historical criticism that reduced the four Gospels to a history of tradition in which "the early Christian movement increasingly spoke of Jesus as divine and as having the qualities of God, a development that within a few centuries was to result in the doctrine of the Trinity" (Borg 1994a:9).
Like others, Borg is oriented to the age-old differentiation between "the Jesus of history" and "the Christ of faith."Like others, that distinction leads him to postulate a trajectory that begins with the Gospels and culminates in the creeds of the fourth and fifth centuries.The Jesus of that trajectory, he claims, "is spoken of as divine, indeed, coequal with God, of one substance with God, begotten before all worlds, the second person of the Trinity" (Borg I 994a: 10).
Unfortunately this is probably the view of most Christians today who tend to read the New Testament, especially its Gospels, uncritically in terms of the Nicene and Chalcedonian Creeds.But is it legitimate to ascribe the christology of these creeds to Jesus as he is presented in the four Gospels?Are the Gospels and the creeds identical in their christological attributions to Jesus?And does the simplistic trajectory that Borg postulates justify the pursuit of the historical Jesus?Of course, it is precisely because of these creeds that the humanity of Jesus has been reduced and even lost.But can a critical scholarship operating from within the Cartesian dualism of subject/object recover his humanity and at the same time also sanction the deification, whatever kind that may be, that is attributed to Jesus in the Gospels' formulations of the christological paradox?
Generally throughout the quest of the historical Jesus critical scholarship has tended to pursue its investigation within the framework of a binary opposition that attributes superiority to one side of the two terms, namely Jesus over against the Christ.
112HTS 57(1&2) 2001Digitised by the University of Pretoria, Library Services Herman C Waetjen ... the Son of God, begotten of the Father, only begotten, that is, from the being of the Father (ek tes ousias tou patros), God of God, Light of Light, true HTS 57(1&2) 2001 113 Digitised by the University of Pretoria, Library Services The dichotomization of the Christological paradox Jesus before the union or by contending for only one after the union (Harnack 1961, IV:220).Ironically, however, the Chalcedonian Creed did not express the christological views of the majority of the bishops of the church.It was a formula imposed on them by the Emperor Marcian and Pope Leo in order to end the turbulence and disorder of the eastern church.While maintaining the adequacy of the earlier Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creeds, the Chalcedonian confession acknowledged: ... one and the same Christ in two natures unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; nowhere is the difference of the natures annulled because of the union, but on the contrary the propertY of each of the two natures is preserved; each nature (Physis) coming together into one person (prosopos) and one actual being (hypostasis), not divided or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and only-begotten, God-Logos.(Hamack 1961, IV:220)In spite of its efforts to achieve an ecclesiastical compromise and political stability, the Chalcedonian formulation succeeded in resolving nothing.It was stigmatized by its own inadequacies and contradictions(Pelikan 1971, 1:266-277).Each of the two natures, the divine and the human, remain separate in the union of the one person, Jesus Christ.No interpenetration occurs between them.The deity has not been absorbed into the humanity, and the humanity has not been drawn into the deity.Accordingly, the divine nature of the Christ could not be communicated to the humanity of Jesus; and, consequently, the christology of the Chalcedonian Creed lacked a soteriological orientation.As Harnack concluded, "The real mystery was thus shoved aside by a pseudo-mystery which in truth no longer permitted theology to advance to the thought of the actual and perfect union" (Harnack 1961, IV:223).It was an empty confession, unable to unify the church by uniting the earthly Jesus to the heavenly Christ in an incarnation that took into account the kenosis of Phlippians 2:7 and yet at the same time postulated a doctrine of redemption.114 HTS 57(1&2) 2001 Digitised by the University of Pretoria, Library Services Herman C Waetjen 5. LUTHER AND CAL VIN More than a thousand years later Martin Luther, in his 1539 treatise, "On the Councils and the Churches," discussed what ecclesiastical councils can and cannot do by examining the first four ecumenical councils of Nicea (325), Constantinople (381), Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451).His review concludes with the judgment that" ... they did not thereby establish any new article of faith" (Luther 1931, V :241)."They set up nothing new, either in faith or good works, but rather as the highest judges, and greatest bishops under Christ, they defend the ancient faith and the ancient good works ... " (Luther 1931, V:242).Apparently Luther was unaware of the intrigue and manipulation involved in the creedal formulations of these councils.More significantly, however, he seems convinced that there is no discrepancy between the creeds of these councils and the christological witness of the New Testament."For these four articles are established far more abundantly and powerfully in St. John's Gospel alone, even though the other evangelists and St. Paul and St. Peter had written nothing about them, though all these,together with the prophets, teach them and testify mightily to them" (Luther 1931, V:241).Luther's own christology, it would appear, was identical to these creedal codifications."We Christians must ascribe all the idiomata of the two natures to His Person.Christ is God and man in one Person.Therefore what is said of Him as man must also be said of Him as God, viz., Christ died, and Christ is God, therefore God died; not God apart from humanity, but God united with humanity" (Luther 1931, V:222).While this assertion seems to correspond to the Chalcedonian separation of the two natures within one person, Luther elsewhere acknowledged that the "idiomata of the two natures should also be unitedand mingled" (Luther 1931, V:221).In that respect he moved beyond Chalcedon.Nevertheless, in view of his conviction that the first four ecumenical councils "established nothing new," it is clear that he was convinced the creeds coincide with the christological witness of the New Testament.For Luther, then, the Nicene Creed's identification of Jesus Christ with the second person of the Trinity and attendantly its Neo-Platonically oriented attribution of homoousios to him in relation to God the Father are taught in the New Testament.Integrated into this christology was his "pleasant vision ... of a blessed strife and victory and salvation and redemption:" HTS 57(1&2) 2001 115 Digitised by the University of Pretoria, Library Services The dichotomi7.ation of the Christ%gica/ paradoxFor Christ is God and man in one person, Who has neither sinned nor died, and is not condemned, and Who cannot sin, die or be condemned; His righteousness, life and salvation are unconquerable, eternal, omnipotent; and He by the wedding ring of faith shares in the sins, death and 'pains of hell which are His bride's, nay, makes them his own, and acts as if they were His own, and as if He Himself had sinned; He suffered, died and descended into hell that he might overcome them all.Now since it was such a one who did all this, and death and hell could not swallow Him up, they were of necessity swallowed up of Him in a mighty duel.(Luther 1931, II:321; Dillenberger 1961:134-139) This interpretation of Jesus' saving work, however, required Luther to accentuate the deity of Jesu!O Christ.In contrast, his humanity is reduced to an "as if' historical reality: "[He] acts as if they [the sins, death and pains of hell] were his own, and as if He Himself had sinned."The historical Jesus, as in the creeds of Nicea and ChaIcedon, is "swallowed up" by the Christ of God.John Calvin, in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, expresses essentially the same perspective: 116 His [Jesus] task was so to restore us to God's grace as to make the children of men, children of God; of the heirs of Gehenna, heirs of the Heavenly Kingdom.Who could have done this had not the self-same Son of God become the Son of man, and had not so taken what is ours as to impart what was his to us, and to make what was his by nature ours by grace?Therefore, relying on this pledge, we trust that we are sons of God, for God's natural Son fashioned for himself a body from our body, flesh from our flesh, bones from our bones, that he might be one with us.Ungrudgingly he took our nature upon himself to impart to us what was his, and to become both Son of God and Son of man in common with us.(McNeill 1960,1:465-4(6) /ITS 57(1&1) l(J(Jf Digitised by the University of Pretoria, Library Services HTS 57(1&2) 2001 117 Digitised by the University of Pretoria, Library Services The dichotomization of the Christ%gica/ paradox that each retains its distinctive nature unimpaired, and yet these two natures constitute one Christ.(McNeill 1960, 1:482) How that separation in union is possible, Calvin does not attempt to explain.The proof texts he cites to confirm Jesus' deity indicate that he interprets the Jesus of the New Testament according to the christology of the Nicene and ChaIcedonian Creeds.In the Gospels, therefore, Jesus speaks as the second person of the Trinity: "What Christ said about himself -'Before Abraham was I am' [John 8:58] -was far removed from his humanity'" (McNeill 1960, 1:483).6. CARTESIAN DUALISM AND THE RISE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM Eventually a conjunction of influences radiating from the Reformation, the Renaissance and Cartesian philosophy produced a new hermeneutical approach to the Bible that distinguished between Jesus and the Christ on an entirely different basis.The Reformation contribu'i.:dthree fundamental insights: (I) Sola Scriptura or Scripture as the only source of revelation, (2) Scripture is to be interpreted out of itself and (3) the plain, simple sense of Scripture as the only basis of interpretation.The Renaissance promoted the importance of the original languages, provided the lexical aids of dictionaries and grammars, and initiated both textual criticism and the development of a critical text of both testaments.Cartesian philosophy laid down new principles for the establishment of reliable knowledge.Mind and matter are two discrete substances.Mind is the essence of the human being, but it is only by thinking critically that it can know the truth of the material world.Through a process of doubting everything, prejudices and traditions as well as the deceivable senses are annulled; and, by the substitution of method united with critical thinking, theoretical knowledge approaching mathematical certainty is possible.
7. THE FIRST QUEST OF THE HISTORICAL JESUS Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768) followed Spinoza into this new paradigm and became the first to attempt a historical reconstruction of the life of Jesus in the context of contemporaneous Judaism.Among the fragments of his 4000 page Apology or Defense for the Rational Worshippers of God are two treatises which were published posthumously by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, "On the Resurrection Narrative" in 1777 and "On the Intentions of Jesus and His Disciples" in 1778.In them Reimarus distinguished HTS 57(1&2) 2001 119 Digitised by the University of Pretoria, Library Services The dichotomization of the Christological paradoxbetween what he designated as the "system of Jesus" and the "system of Jesus' disciples"(Talbert 1970; Chadwick 1956: 12-29; Harrisville & Sundberg 1995:56-62).Placing Jesus into the context of contemporary Judaism, Reimarus identified him with the eschatological trajectory of political messianism, which, according to its Old Testament typology, anticipated the appearance of a descendent of King David who would defeat Israel's enemies and reconstitute the conditions of the Garden of Eden (Is 9:6, 11:1-10; Jr 22:30,23:5-6; Ezk 34:23-24; Hg 2:23; Zch 3-4; Ps of Solomon 17).Jesus adopted this Son of David identity and was led by his vision of "the kingdom of God" to initiate a popular uprising that would result in his enthronement as the king of Israel.Reimarus divided Jesus' career into two time frames: the waiting period and the working period.The first is intimated by Mt 10:23: "You shall by no means have completed the cities ofIsrael before the Son of Man comes."By sending out his disciples to proclaim the good news of God's rule, Jesus expected the people to acknowledge his messiahship, join him in revolt and elevate him to kingship.When this did not materialize, he attempted to rally the people behind him by riding into Jerusalem on a donkey in fulfillment of Zch 9:9 and by enacting a temple reformation in defiance of the sacerdotal authorities.Instead he was arrested, tried, and handed over to the Romans for executiun.His efforts to actualize God's rule by fulfilling the Son of David typology failed.His death marked the end of the "system of Jesus."There is no evidence that he intended to establish a new religion or a new confession of faith.Baptism was an innovation of his disciples, and the Lord's Supper should be identified as a Passover meal that celebrated the anticipated "kingdom" Jesus hoped to inaugurate.
Leibniz and Spinoza history was being undermined as a source of truth.Lessing, who promoted the publication of various fragments of Reimarus' Apology, voiced this denigrating perspective: "Accidental truths of history can never become the proof of necessary truths of reason"(Chadwick 1956:53).For ImmanuelKant (1724Kant ( -1804) )  history as an investigation of past events can never attain to objective validity, for it is dependent Cm testimony and not on immediate experience conceptualized by the categories of understanding.The resulting dichotomy between "event" and "truth," combined with the Enlightenment's view that the Bible simply illustrates the truths of natural religion already accessible to reason, emancipated biblical scholars and theologians to continue the quest without epistemological or religious restrictions.Accordingly, the opposition between Jesus and the Christ, promoted in earlier times by Neo-Platonism, now received its legitimation by Cartesian dualism and its reinforcement by Kantian epistemology.David Friedrich Strauss (1808-1874), however, moved the quest in another direction by radicalizing the historical problem in order to determine the historical foundation of the Christian faith.Compelled by Hegel's philosophical speculation to do what religion alone could not achieve, the reconciliation of the absolute opposites of the temporal and the eternal, he attempted to determine the extent to which universal truths were actualized in the history of Jesus.Is the particular person of Jesus of Nazareth necessary for the actual ization of the idea of the unity between God and human beings in order to establish Christianity as the absolute religion?Since philosophy alone cannot deduce facts from history, empirical historical science must undertake that work by differentiating between myth and history (Hartlich & Sachs 1952: 131-134).Strauss' program to write a life of Jesus included the hermeneutics of the socalled "Mythical School" (Hartlich & Sachs 1952:121-147), Hegel's distinction between Vorsle//ung (representation) and Begrif.{(concept),and Hegel's dialectics.In contrast to HTS 57(1&2) 200] 121 Digitised by the University of Pretoria, Library Services The dichotomhation o/the Christological paradoxHegel, however, he identified Vorste//ung with the mythical material in the Gospels andBegrifJ with the truths that the mythical material communicates, but divorced from all historical content(Hartlich & Sachs 1952: 122-134; Harrisville & Sundberg 1995: 103-  108).Every event in the Gospels' account of Jesus is scrutinized dialectically with the aid of historical criticism.The supernaturalistic view is played off against rationalism, and the rationalist view against supernatural ism, with the result that they invalidate each other.Out of this mutual cancellation the predominance of the mythical in the life of Jesus emerges(Schweitzer 1959:80).The gospel tradition, however, is not entirely reduced to myth.Many bits and pieces remain with which a sketch of the life of Jesus may be composed.Strauss himself, set free from dogmatism by philosophy, was untroubled by his negative results.Because he identified the mythical as the form or representation of the concepts and the concepts, apart from their historical character, as the truths, which the mythical conveys, he was able to retain an inner core of the Christian faith.It included: Christ's supernatural birth, his resurrection and his ascension, all of which he had distinguished as mythical.These are and remain eternal truths, in spite of the fact that their reality as historical facts are negated.Supernaturalism embraced a literalistic history of Jesus' ministry in the Gospels.Naturalism and rationalism threw out religious truth with historical fact.Strauss retained religious truth by It refuses to turn, and He throws Himself upon it.Then it does turn; and crushes Him.Instead of bringing in the eschatological conditions, He has destroyed them.The wheel rolls onward, and the mangled body of the one immeasurably great Man, who was strong enough to think of H imsel f as the spiritual ruler of mankind and to bend history to His purpose, is hanging upon it still.That is His victory and His reign.(Schweitzer 1959:370-371) Kantian epistemology prevented Schweitzer from acknowledging the authenticity of Jesus' resurrection from the dead, although that is the culminating reality of the eschatological-christological orientation that he attributed to Jesus.At the same time, it HTS 57(1&2) 2001 123 Digitised by the University of Pretoria, Library Services The dichotomiUltion of the Christological paradox was the dualism of Kantian epistemology, specifically the shelter provided by the ahistorical realm of The Critique of Practical Reason that enabled Schweitzer to continue

Schweitzer's verdict
on the Quest had already been pre-empted by a German biblical theologian, Martin Kahler.In an 1892 lecture entitled, Der sogenannte historische Jesus und der geschichtliche.biblische Christus, he called the entire enterprise of the quest into question on the basis of the decisive question, "To what extent does historical investigation secure a foundation for religious faith?"If the Word became flesh in Jesus of Nazareth, Kahler asks, what is the source of the revelation he brings?Is it his flesh-andblood personhood or is it the Word that has become incarnate in him?(Kahler 1953:32; 124 HTS 57(1&2) 2001 Digitised by the University of Pretoria, Library Services Kahler inaugurated, was taken up by Rudolf Bultmann.Like Kahler he differentiated between Historie or objective history reconstructed by historians and Geschichte or history that is existentially significant for the present, but unlike Kahler he confronted the problem of the historical Jesus.Through the influence of Wilhelm Dilthey and to some extent Martin Heidegger (Thiselton 1980:227-251), he repudiated the identification of 126 HTS 57(1&2) 2001 Bultmann remained deeply committed to a Kantian or Neo-Kantian perspective.Its epistemological orientation was compatible with his Lutheran faith, especially its doctrinal differentiation between justification by works and justification by faith.These tenets are oppositional realities, like nature and grace, or Historie and Geschichte, or like the title of his Gifford Lectures, History and Eschatology.To these dualities Bultmann added the contrast between the indicative, the realm of facts, and the imperative, the realm of the will.The forn1er is the province of objectification; the latter is the sphere of HTS 57(1&2) 2001 127 Digitised by the University of Pretoria, Library Services The dichotomization o/the Christological paradox [was] endangered because "the Christ of faith" had virtually lost his historical rootedness, Emst Kasemann, was motivated to pioneer a new quest."The heart of our problem lies here: the exalted Lord has almost entirely 130 HTS 57(1&2) 2001 Digitised by the University of Pretoria, Library Services Herman C Waetjen swallowed up the image of the earthly Lord and yet the community maintains the identity of the exalted Lord with the earthly" HTS 57(1&2) 2001 131Digitised by the University of Pretoria, Library Services

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HTS 57(1&2) 2001Digitised by the University of Pretoria, Library Services Herman C Waetjen of the early Church.Significantly, however, he substituted the earlier eschatological difference between the futuristic orientation of John the Baptizer and the imminent presence of God's rule that Jesus had manifested in his deeds and words in place of Bultmann's attribution of the eschatological shift of the ages to the theologizing of the Apostle Paul.Yet, like Bultrnann, he acknowledged Jesus to be the proclaimer who becomes the proclaimed.But he recognized that such traditions as Matthew 5:21-22, 28, established by Jesus' followers.Mack differentiates five groups of Jesus people: (1) the Community of Q, (2) the Jesus School that produced the pre-Marcan pronouncement stories, (3) the True Disciples who composed the Gospel of Thomas, (4) the Congregation of Israel who formed the pre-Marcan sets of miracle stories, and (5) the Jerusalem Pillars of Galasians 2:9 (Mack 1995:44-45).One or more of them underwent a sudden and remarkable transformation in the city of Antioch that turned the Jesus movement into a cult of a god called Jesus Christ.Paul's letters bear witness to this reconstitution and its development of "the logic of the Christ myth," particularly the Corinthian correspondence and Romans.But it was the Gospel according to Mark that gave this myth its substance by placing the life of Jesus into the framework of the highly mythologized stories of his birth, baptism, transfiguration, crucifixion, and resurrection.Unfortunately Mack never inquires into their function and meaning within the narrative world of Mark's Gospel or in their earlier stages of transmission.The miracle stories, on the other hand, HTS 57(1&1) 2001 139 Digitised by the University of Pretoria, Library Services The dichotomization of the Christological paradox although they too are pre-Marcan and mythologized, are treated more congenially as memory traditions of boundary crossing which bear witness to the transformation Jesus effected in the lives of his contemporaneous Galileans.Mack's scholarship, which is essentially descriptive, is dominated by the methods of form criticism and tradition history.He endeavors to disentangle and distinguish the traditions that constitute the Gospel and to link them to the movements the Jesus people inaugurated.Meaning is limited to differentiation, separation and classification; and the chains of causality that are postulated for the evolutionary development of the traditions are all too often simply speculative.The semantic potential that might be derived from an exploration of the unity and coherence of Mark's gospel as an aesthetic literary creation, or, for that matter, from any other New Testament text, is never contemplated.

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This sorry plot lies at the very foundations of the long, ugly history of Christian attitudes and actions toward Jews and Judaism.The destruction of their city was only a sign.They did not vanish as was their due and thus were there to reap repeatedly the wrath of God in anticipation of the final, apocalyptic resolution ....The Nazi enactment of the final solution forty years ago may have been tainted by pagan desires.But the rationale was Christian.The holocaust was also a gospel event.(Mack1988:375)    HTS 57(1&2) 2001Digitised by the University of Pretoria, Library Services Herman C Waetjen Marcus J Borg, according to the Preface of his book, Meeting Jesus Again Jor the First Time, characterizes his published work by differentiating between his self-understanding EIKWV (image) and cXrrouyooj..lO (radiance) of the Father.He served as the demiurge by which the subsequent creation was engendered and in the fullness of time became enfleshed as a human being in Jesus of Nazareth.The salvation that this incarnate Son achieved for human beings is the divine grace of deification identical to that which the Descartes' Principles of Philosophy, laid the foundation for the study of the Bible under a general hermeneutics(Harrisville & Sundberg 1995:38-39).While he acknowledged the Reformation principles of Sola Scriptura and the literal sense of the biblical text, he contended that Scripture must be read and interpreted like any other 118HTS 57(1&1) 100/ Digitised by the University of Pretoria, Library ServicesHerman C WaetjenIt~ as Luther had contended, Scripture is to be interpreted out of itself, and its literal sense is the basis for that interpretation, what is the truth of its individual writings?book,thatis, by means of rational criticism.For Spinoza that involved the pursuit of historioal understanding which required the interpretation of its individual books in terms of their original historical circumstances(Harrisville & Sundberg 1995:42, 44).Like Descartes, he promoted doubt in .order to eliminate dogmatic prejudices and to achieve theoretical knowledge.In this critical enterprise truth and meaning are to be differentiated, for the Bible, like any other book, conveys both necessary truths of reason that are universal and contingent meanings that are hermeneutically relative to time and place.