1F - Two views of Jesus Flashcards
NT Wright - texts as ‘articulations of worldviews’
A worldview is a set of assumptions that uses story and symbols to answer fundamental questions about who we are as humans. A lens through which an entire culture looks at the world.
Wright believes that we have all been affected by an enlightenment worldview – according to this story only sense perceptions can give us knowledge about the word. In this context history and faith are separate – history is part of a public discussion about facts, faith is part of a private realm of beliefs.
In the NT we see a different worldview at work – we see a belief in a God who cares about the world and people, who establishes a covenant with his people and calls them to live out their faith in public. Jesus was born into this worldview and speaks from it – when we turn him into a private figure – we distort his message.
NT Wright - Critical Realism
Wright believes that worldview precedes everything – the lens through which we interpret facts or sense perception.
Our modern worldview constitutes:
Positivism / Naïve Realism – the view that you can have positive knowledge of the world if is verified by sense experience.
Phenomenalism – the idea that anything we experience is only knowledge of our sense data and therefore can be coloured by our experiences and bias – which can lead to postmodernism, a scepticism of whether we can know anything at all for certain.
Wright develops critical realism:
Realism – we can know things that our distinct from ourselves (rather than just as objects of our experience).
Critical – recognises that we can only know something from our own point of view and should be aware of our potential bias.
If we recognise that worldview comes before fact we can be more open to engage in the idea that truth can be found in the perspectives of others. This may involve us adapting or even abandoning our previous ideas. We should be open minded when we engage with the life and teachings of Jesus.
Wright’s Ideas about Jesus
Jesus was a Jewish prophet announcing the Kingdom of God, not a ‘wandering preacher’ or ‘philosopher offering maxims’ but as someone initiating a movement.
Eschatological Expectation - Jesus believed that kingdom of God was breaking into history, his agenda was not just social change, instead he had a belief that the Kingdom of God was about to come.
Jesus and acted in ways that showed he believed he was the Messiah, the chosen one through whom God would achieve his decisive purpose.
Whereas the Jewish popular picture of a Messiah was a victorious figure however Jesus rejects violent revolutionary behaviour but instead seems to think of his purposeful death as a part of his task as Messiah, giving his life for others and drawing upon Jewish traditions of God using the suffering of his people leading to their redemption.
For Wright, the fact that the Jesus movement did not die out like other Messiah movements is compelling evidence – the writers of the Gospels were convinced that these events were historical and that God was acting in history through the life, death and Resurrection of Jesus. The compelling nature of these claims merit out serious consideration
The Gospels are what they are … because their authors though the events they were recording … actually happened.
Crossan - the pursuit of the Historical Jesus
Crossan pursues three areas
1) Cross-cultural anthropology – looking at ancient culture and society to gain insights into what live was like at the time of Jesus.
2) Greco-Roman history – sources can help us to understand what Jewish life under Roman rule would have been like. We need to be are however that these sources are biased towards powerful males. We need to think critically to consider what live would have been like for lower classes or peasants.
Literary and textual study of the NT and books outside of the NT.
Leads Crossan to describe Jesus as Jewish (through literary study), Mediterranean (through study of culture) Peasant (study of anthropology).
Crossan emphasises early sources for Jesus life and sources that have multiple attestations – i.e. feature in more than one source as being a statement of Jesus. As the Gospels were finalised after 60 CE we need to discern between earlier and later layers in them.
Crossan - using apocryphal Gospels
This is the term given to non-canonical Gospels rejected by the early Church because they were either considered heretical or of secondary importance.
Many of these are also called pseudepigrapha because they are written by an another author who then gave it the name of an Apostle.
Many criticise these texts and say that they don’t give us reliable information on the life of Jesus or independent sayings from his life.
Crossan disagrees and argues that they may contain independent, genuine early layers of tradition that predate the four Gospels and merit our consideration. We should particularly consider:
The Q Source – a collection of sayings from Jesus which predates the Gospels, doesn’t contain birth or resurrection narratives or material Crossan argues are later additions.
The Gospel of Thomas – similarly a collection of sayings – Crossan argues that this predates the Gospels, a list of sayings may well what be initial attempts to remember Jesus would take the form of. Likewise some fragments of the Gospel of Thomas have been discovered which would support the idea of it being an early source.
Crossan’s Ideas about Jesus
A social revolutionary – known for disrupting social expectations of culture, shown through his choices of who he shares meals with. ‘Look at him, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners’.
An advocate for a ‘Kingdom’ lifestyle, ‘equally accessible to all under God’. Rather than pursuing an apocalyptic vision he instead focussed on developing an open and just community without distinctions of class or gender Jesus had a dream of a just and equal world and called his followers to live this out.
Rejected the complex set of rules regarding food that maintained and reinforced social boundaries – Jesus rejects this and instead serves at an open table open to all. This is preserved for example in his parable of the feast which involves inviting those on the street to the table.
Performed miracles of social healing – the people Jesus healed were viewed as impure and were excluded from society – Jesus healed illnesses without curing the disease by welcoming outcasts back into society.
Practised an itinerant travelling lifestyle rather than stopping and instituting a healing cult based in just one location.
Shows parallels to the movement of the Cynics – a Greek movement who rejected materialism and the norms of society. However cynics often operated in urban centres and were largely individualistic – instead Jesus was active in rural areas and was dedicated to growing a like minded community.
Here is the heart of the Jesus movement, a shared egalitarianism of spiritual (healing) and material (eating) resources.
