REDEMPTIVE REGAL REVELATION REQUIRES REVERENTIAL RESPECT, RELATIONAL RECEPTIVITY REVISION ( PART 1 ) One of the greatest theological minds of the 20th century, Carl C. F. Henry, toward the end of his long life, brilliant career, and the century itself, gave an amazing, wide-ranging assessment of the most notable speculative assertions offered by other thinkers over the preceding 2 millenia, with an expert focus on the immediate period of his own academic development: REVIEWING CENTURIES OF REVISIONARY SPECULATIONS REGARDING THE IDENTITY OF JESUS OF NAZARETH* CARL F. H. HENRY * This essay represents the two lectures read at the Criswell Lecture Series, Criswell College, January 1991. Nowhere is the tension between historically repeatable acts and a once-for-all event focused more dramatically than in the conflict over the identity of Jesus of Nazareth. Shall we explain him as the ideal model of mankind and expound divine incarnation by philosophical analysis of what is humanly possible, or shall we depict him rather in terms of the christologically unparalleled? The Gospels provide our only significant information about Jesus life and work. Skeptical critics thrust upon these sources tests of reliability that they do not impose upon other historical writing. If universally applied, those same criteria would in principle invalidate ancient Greek and Roman accounts that secular historians routinely accept as factual. Efforts to destroy the credibility of gospels often betray a bias against the supernatural. Gerald G. OCollins recalls the official Soviet thesis (which appears recently to have been abandoned) that Jesus never existed and was a purely mythological figure.” Consistent Marxists would need to reject the theology-of-revolution view that the historical figure of Jesus nurtures its liberationist challenge to an alienated world. The assumptions of evolutionary naturalism likewise lead to a rejection of Jesus as in any way normative and decisive for human destiny. Jewish Understandings The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia escapes the larger question of the significance of Jesus by a generalized comment that certain sections [of the Gospels] seem to reflect ideas and situations in the developing Christian church rather than those of Jesus own day. Were the editors to apply this complaint consistently to all the biblical data, they would need to devalue also the Old Testament whose reliability they assume. Curiously, whenever these same editors charge the evangelists with anti-Jewish sentiment they accept at face value the Gospel representations they so interpret. The controversy over the identity and importance of Jesus arose initially in the context of Hebrew history and religion. This spiritual community devoutly expected a messianic deliverer, an expectation grounded in Yahwehs special prophetic revelation. The Jewish community divided in Jesus day over Jesus messianic role. The Gospels detail the conflict among Jesus religious contemporaries over whether to receive or to repudiate the Nazarene as the promised messiah and divine Son of God. The Christian church was at its beginning overwhelmingly Jewish in composition. Jews were faced by a choice that the New Testament still thrusts upon its readers, whether to affirm Jesus divinity or to repudiate him as a blasphemer and messianic pretender. Simply to tribute him as humanity at its best was not an option. But modern critical thought sought to eviscerate the messianic eschatology of Jesus, even his Jewishness, and to obscure his life, resurrection and ascension, and turned him instead, as Stanley Hauerwas says, into a teacher of noble ideals, the pinnacle of the highest and best in humanity. . . civilizations very best. “It was a short step, Hauerwas, adds, from the biblical Christ--the highest in humanity-- to the Nazi Superman. First-century antagonists dismissed Jesus as either a deceiver or a megalomaniac. Toledot Yeshu and other early Talmudic stories cast aspersions on Jesus origin and character. Presuming to speak for most present-day Jews, Rabbi Yachiel Eckstein contends that Jesus was merely another martyred Jew, one of the many false prophets and pseudo-messiahs. In striking contrast, some recent modern Jewish leaders unhesitatingly applaud the man Jesus. Even the Jewish rebel Spinoza, while disavowing the divinity of Christ, nonetheless considered Jesus the greatest and noblest of all prophets (Epistle 21). C. G. Montefiore (1858-1925) and Joseph Klausner (1874-1960) paid him notable tribute. Montefiore significantly commends Jesus over the whole talmudic inheritance: We certainly do not get in the Hebrew Bible any teacher speaking of God as Father, my Father, your Father, and our Father like the Jesus of Matthew, he writes. We do not get so habitual and concentrated a use from any Rabbi in the Talmud. Many writers not victimized by a skeptical view of history now readily concede that Jesus towers above the stream of mankind as an individual of rare spiritual sensitivity, devotion, and compassion. In the book The Jewish Reclamation of Jesus Donald A Hagner acknowledges that most contemporary Jewish scholarship and Jewish- Christian dialogue still reflects long-standing differences from the evangelical view of Jesus. But he considers remarkable and significant the current extensive Jewish research and the evidence it gives of a drastic change in the Jewish appreciation of Jesus. To be sure, the Jewish theological stance remains hostile to the Christian doctrines of incarnation, atonement, and the Trinity, and it refuses to connect Jesus with any significant transformation of the world-order and any new and decisive historical in-breaking of the Kingdom of God. Yet careful reading of the Gospels increasingly overcomes the ready complaint that Christianity is anti-Semitic, and it more and more elicits a sporadic acknowledgement of their claims to historical trustworthiness, as does Pinchas Lapides admission of the resurrection of Jesus. Alongside this may be noted the clusters of secret believers in the state of Israel, and the remarkable conversion to Christ of many Jews in other lands. It is safe to say that tens of thousands of modern Jews affirm that Jesus fulfills the Old Testament prophecies and is the Christ, the Son of the living God. Ironically, as David Novak observes, some Jewish thinkers have judged Islam more favorably than Christianity because of Islams supposedly stricter monotheism and absolute prohibition of images, in contrast with Christian trinitarianism and the use of images in worship by some major branches of Christianity. In the later Middle Ages, however, Jews took a more positive view, one that judged Christianity not idolatrous and which acknowledged trinitarianism to be not necessarily as a commitment to a different God than Yahweh.
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 18:09:45 +0000
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