Excerpt from Honest to Jesus , pp. 300–303.

In this book we have made a giant U-turn in the history of the Jesus tradition—from Nicea to Nazareth (in Part One) and back to Nicea (in Part Three)— tracking on the outward journey how scholars get back to Nazareth and Jesus and, on the return trip, how the transition was made from Jesus to the Christ, how the iconoclast became the icon. In the middle (Part Two), we endeavored to map a profile of the historical Jesus using his authentic words and deeds. This journey has permitted us to catch sight, now and again, of the Galilean sage even as he was being transformed into the martyred righteous one or the dying/rising lord of gentile Christianity. As we draw to the close of the journey, it is appropriate to peer into our future from that past and ask what we have learned that modifies the future of the tradition inaugurated by Jesus of Nazareth. What real knowledge—knowledge of consequence for us and our time—has this thirst to know the flesh-and-blood Jesus produced? What difference could it possibly make? I propose to elaborate my answer to this question in a series of theses, twenty-one in number.

1. The aim of the quest is to set Jesus free. Its purpose is to liberate Jesus from the scriptural and creedal and experiential prisons in which we have incarcerated him. What would happen if "the dangerous and subversive memories" of that solitary figure were really stripped of their interpretive overlay? Were that to happen, the gospel of Jesus would be liberated from the Jesus of the gospels and allowed to speak for itself. The creedal formulations of the second, third, and fourth centuries would be de-dogmatized and Jesus would be permitted to emerge as a robust, real, larger-than-life figure in his own right. Moreover, current images of Jesus would be torn up by their long affective roots and their attachment to pet causes severed. The pale, anemic, iconic Jesus would suffer by comparison with the stark realism of the genuine article.

This forecast, I am acutely aware, stands in strong contrast to what many scholars of the gospels take the quest to be all about. Many scholars perceive the quest as primarily a historical puzzle without any real significance for other questions, especially theological issues. A quest without consequences is a legacy of older posturing born of painful struggles to come clean within the confines of the church.

This is also the legacy of neo-orthodoxy, which attempted to cordon off a small but inviolable sacred precinct safe for believers. Neo-orthodox theologians like Rudolf Bultmann and Karl Barth linked that "no trespassing" zone to a large dose of skepticism about what can be learned from the gospels. They advised us that not only should we not attempt to recover Jesus, we couldn't even if we tried.

A sterile quest was also sired by other fine niceties, qualifications, and political posturing suitable for academic pretend. That legacy will survive in an increasingly diminished form as traditional Christianity shrivels and becomes paranoid, while learning to compete in a world market. But the equivocation masking an apologetic intent has already lost much of its allure.

For other scholars the rediscovery of the Galilean sage as a historical figure forces us to confront fundamental issues. Isolating a single face in a Galilean crowd is more than a challenging puzzle. It has far-reaching implications for the Christian faith. Those implications fall into three categories, at the head of each of which are my second, third, and fourth theses.

2. The renewed quest prompts us to revamp our understanding of the origins of the Christian faith itself . Was that faith launched by Jesus, directly or indirectly? Does Jesus—who he was, what he said, what he did—provide the Christian faith with its essential content? If the answer to that question is positive, the initial statement of Chapter Two ("Christianity as we know it did not originate with Jesus of Nazareth") will have to be revised to read, Christianity originated with Jesus of Nazareth. In that case, Christianity needs to be re-anchored in his imagination, in his vision.

Then there is the further issue: Were the decisions taken in the second to the fourth centuries, during which orthodoxy achieved its ascendancy, the only correct decisions? Must the decisions of Constantine and the voting that took place at Nicea and other councils be accepted as final?

These questions and others of a similar nature entail a huge and sweeping historical and theological agenda. They invite—indeed require—a review of the practices and beliefs of the primitive Christian communities to determine whether they are consonant with the intentions of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus rather than the Bible or the creeds becomes the norm by which other views and practices are to be measured.

We will want to revisit Nicea and the early creeds, the Nicene Creed and the Apostles' Creed. We will find it necessary to re-examine trends that led to the identification of certain documents as orthodox and authoritative and eventually to the formation of the canonical New Testament. In addition to determining which of the stories about Jesus are based on historical reminiscences and which not, we will want to develop a criticism of the myth or plot of the foundational stories. And we will need to continue our work in evaluating the sayings tradition, sorting out the authentic from the secondary elements. This agenda takes us back to the beginnings of Christianity, to a time well before it assumed its classical form at Nicea. Just as the first believers did, we will have to start all over again with a clean theological slate, with only the parables, aphorisms, parabolic acts, and deeds of Jesus as the basis on which to formulate a new version of the faith. That is a breathtaking agenda, to say the very least.

3. The renewed quest also has serious ramifications for how we understand the Christian life . I am in complete agreement with Marcus Borg on this point. Borg contrasts "fideistic" and "moralistic" modes of understanding; I prefer the contrast between "creedal" and "ethical." When we speak of correct belief, the customary connotation of "orthodoxy," we have to speak of formulations of some kind, and that means, for the broad sweep of the Christian tradition, creeds or confessions or their surrogates, as well as the heresies those formulations fenced off. The non-creedal branches of Christianity, such as the Baptist, Disciple, and Congregational traditions, are not exempt; in some cases, they are far more rigid in the unwritten creeds they adopt and utilize as tests of fellowship than are the creedal traditions. Moreover, Borg's term moralistic has gained a belittling reputation in modern usage: it carries the suggestion that one is doctrinaire about the rules of behavior, that some privileged human beings are in a position to dictate to others how to live. Christianity at its heart is not moralistic. In its finest hours it is ethical. At its worst it is creedal—creeds are designed to exclude and expunge rather than include and nourish.

 4. The renewed quest points to a secular sage who may have more relevance to the spiritual dimensions of society at large than to institutionalized religion. As a subversive sage, Jesus is also a secular sage. His parables and aphorisms all but obliterate the boundaries separating the sacred from the secular. He can teach us something that has nothing directly to do with what we know as Christianity or, indeed, with organized religion as such. Stated as a question: Is Jesus relevant to our society, to our time, to the world we know, apart from the role he has played in the Christian religion? Or is his story merely an interesting anecdote from a bygone age?

In the minds of many, especially those who claim Christianity or Judaism as their heritage, Jesus is inseparably connected with the topic of institutionalized religion. When the name Jesus is mentioned, "religion" is assumed to be the subject. But, in fact, the Jesus of whom we catch glimpses in the gospels may be said to have been irreligious, irreverent, and impious. The first word he said, as Paul Tillich once remarked, was a word against religion in its habituated form; because he was indifferent to the formal practice of religion, he is said to have profaned the temple, the sabbath, and breached the purity regulations of his own legacy; most important of all, he spoke of the kingdom of God in profane terms—that is, non-religiously. For these reasons alone, his significance deserves to be detached from any exclusive religious context and considered in a broader cultural frame of reference.

Jesus is one of the great sages of history, and his insights should be taken seriously but tested by reference to other seers, ancient and modern, who have had glimpses of the eternal, and by reference to everything we can learn from the sciences, the poets, and the artists. Real knowledge, divine knowledge, is indiscriminate in the vessels it elects to fill. That is another way of saying that the glimpse comes to those who are open to it and does so without reference to social station, education, or political prowess. The glimpse is no respecter of theologies, theological schools, or evangelists. The glimpse blows where it will—every which way.

Copyright © 1996 by Robert W. Funk. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the copyright holder.

Top of page