This Is the Christ We Preach

“Christ is a stranger to our world and to our times, one whom we love but do not love well.…”

Two general approaches to the formulation of theological truth reflect a basic polarity of method. On the one hand, theology may proceed from human experience to the revelatory claims of Scripture, and on the other, it may proceed from Scripture toward experience and the sense of life. The former approach is that of philosophical theology and its allied disciplines. What remains uncertain in this technique is the role, if any, that the Bible plays in theological formulation. At times this approach may adhere closely to Scripture and assign to it a critical function; but the discipline itself does not require this, and consequently the Bible often appears to serve only as a handmaid to theology, not as its source and norm. It is therefore no accident that theology constructed from the polarity of human experience and reason sometimes exhibits no organic relationship to revelation, with the result that the representations of God, Christ, and salvation bear little resemblance to what is found concerning these matters in Scripture.

Theology that proceeds from experience and reason to Scripture tends to judge the data of revelation by strictly human canons of judgment. This reveals a basic assumption about the quality and authority of revelation, for only what accords with experience is admitted to consideration. One New Testament scholar states repeatedly in his book on Christology that “a sane person, not to say a good person, just could not think of himself in such a way,” that is, as Son of Man, Messiah, and so on. Again, the author refers to the “difficulty of seeing how Jesus could have been … aware of himself as ‘the Son of Man who would one day come on the clouds of heaven’ to establish ‘a kingdom which is not of this world.’ … What kind of mentality are we attributing to Jesus when we make him subject to this kind of conflict and division?” (John Knox, The Death of Christ, pp. 65–67). Regardless of what other judgments may be made of such a theological method, it clearly has not come to terms with the New Testament claims for the Incarnation. It assumes that since there are no parallels or analogies in general human experience, Jesus must have been about like any other man.

The contrary methodology in theology and preaching holds that theology is a function of revelation, and that revelation becomes credible to the Church in the Holy Scriptures. To proceed from revelation to human experience is to assume that theological work stands within the tradition of the entire Church, a tradition that begins with the New Testament itself. This is to say that the closest possible connection exists between exegesis and preaching, and between exegesis and the theological enterprise. If Karl Barth is correct in saying that theology is “the scientific test to which the Christian church puts herself regarding the language about God which is peculiar to her” (Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, I/1, p. 1), then that language about God that is peculiar to her is found in the Bible. Without a conscious reference to Scripture as the objective canon of theology and preaching, the base of operation and authority suffers loss. Philosophical theology has a legitimate function in the spectrum of human thought and may well serve as a handmaid to the theological task; but when it displaces the Scripture as the norm, then it has become a tyrant and not a servant.

One of the classic questions of theology is whether a particular era and culture judges the Bible, or whether the Bible judges the era and culture. The theological method that operates from revelation to human experience affirms that, despite the difficulties of understanding the sense of Scripture, we stand under its judgment, and not vice versa. It confesses that the Word of God brings our thoughts, our morals, our philosophy, our civilization, and our sense of values under divine scrutiny, and also establishes the norm of theology and proclamation.

The New Testament makes some astonishing claims about its central figure, Jesus of Nazareth, for he is portrayed as the God-man. John 1:1 speaks of him as the Word, and Hebrews 1:1 says he “bears the very stamp” of God’s nature. But in the New Testament picture, Jesus also exhibits all the essential features of true human nature, for Philippians 2:7 says he assumed the “form of a servant.” A question parallel to that above is asked concerning the humanity of Christ: Do we judge his humanity in terms of our own fallen and distorted humanity, or do we judge our humanity in terms of the image of God made visible to us in Christ? To initiate theology with the assertions about the Incarnation is to formulate the proper question, so that we no longer ask, “Is Jesus as human as I am?,” but rather, “Am I as human as he is?”

Since the very first days of the Christian faith, the Christ we preach has been the object of inquiry. Jesus himself at about the mid-point of his ministry asked his followers the question: “Who do men say that I am?” It might be said that the balance of the New Testament is given over to answering that question in a colorful variety of forms and affirmations. The New Testament is the compendium of the several confessions of the entire primitive Church concerning the identity of Jesus Christ and the meaning of his life and Passion. It is not primarily a devotional book or a sourcebook of dogma. It is the dynamic witness of the first generation of Christians to their Lord.

The first Christians responded to the question of the identity and meaning of Jesus of Nazareth not with one answer but rather with a variety of answers; Vincent Taylor has collected fifty or more ways in which the Church spoke to this basic question. But Oscar Cullmann has discerned some ten specific titles of Christ in the New Testament that in a profound and critical manner identify Jesus Christ. Believing that Jesus Christ was no ordinary mortal, the writers of the New Testament spoke of him with several titles that suggest his pre-existence with God the Father, which is to say that he is a divine figure; so it is that John calls him the “Logos,” or the eternal Word of God who became incarnate in human form. As such he is not only the bearer of revelation of God; he is the revelation of God, a theme met again in the Fourth Gospel when Jesus’ words are recorded this way: “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” Jesus is also spoken of as the Son of God, a designation upon which the balance of his messianic ministry rests. At his baptism the voice from above speaks of him as “my beloved Son.” At the temptation experience the words are hurled at Jesus, “if you are the Son of God …,” an effort to probe into the fundamental element of Jesus’ self-awareness. And a few of the writers of the New Testament do not hesitate to speak of Jesus simply as “God.” It is in the Fourth Gospel that this answer appears most boldly, when Thomas, viewing Jesus’ wounds after the resurrection, confesses, “My Lord and my God!”

Books About Jesus

Ralph Waldo Emerson has said, “The name of Jesus is not so much written as plowed into the history of the world.” And men never tire of reading about Him.

No person in history has been the subject of so many books as has Jesus Christ. Each year this number increases as devoted minds and hearts seek to extol His greatness and His redeeming love and work. The Apostle John says that His works were so many that, should they all be written down, “even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written” (John 21:25). And this might also be said of the books which seek to interpret His Person, teachings and work.—HERSCHEL HOBBS, The Life and Times of Jesus (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Publishing House, 1966), p. 7.

Jesus’ identity in terms of his Incarnation is seen in a number of answers, the first of which is “prophet.” When the woman at Sychar called Jesus a prophet (John 4:19), she was reflecting what was probably the earliest popular assessment made of Jesus. And he was indeed a prophet. It was Jesus who boldly overturned centuries of Jewish tradition by saying, “You have heard that it is said.… But I say to you.…” Moreover, as a prophet, speaking for God, he met a typical prophetic end of death, and that in Jerusalem, the place of destiny for so many of God’s spokesmen. Jesus’ earthly ministry was marked by his assumption of the role and ministry of the Servant of the Lord, that mysterious figure foreseen in the prophecy of Isaiah eight centuries before Christ. The burden of much of the preaching in the first chapters of Acts is the conviction that Jesus of Nazareth was indeed the Suffering Servant by whose death saving benefit is conferred upon all who embrace him. The entire doctrine of the Atonement rests upon Jesus’ fulfillment of this ministry in a unique way.

The author of Hebrews furthers this theme by representing Jesus as the High Priest who was like the high priests of ancient Israel in that he made an offering for the sins of all the people but who differed from them in that he himself was the offering for the sins of the whole world. His earthly mission was also the fulfillment of Israel’s hopes for the coming of the Messiah, God’s anointed King over Israel. At his trial Jesus was asked if he was the Messiah (Mark 14:62), and he admitted that he was. This confession on Jesus’ lips is the direct reason we today call ourselves “Christians,” for by this we confess him to be our King. When we consider the title “Son of Man,” we stand in a special place, for this name or designation of Jesus is his own form of self-identification. It is far more than what it has been traditionally thought to be, simply an indication of Jesus’ humanity. In fact, it speaks far more to his deity than to his humanity, for he is that person prefigured in the prophecy of Daniel who resides with the “Ancient of Days” and is his vice-regent upon earth.

The last group of titles that are answers to the question “Who is Jesus Christ?” refer to his work to be done, his work that is yet future for us. So it is that Jesus is spoken of as “Saviour” in the New Testament, although not as often as is commonly supposed. This may appear strange, in view of the general consideration that Jesus’ saving work is past rather than future; but Titus 2:13 suggests that Jesus’ office as Saviour relates not only to the redemptive work of the past but also to the future, for the text speaks of the “appearing of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ.” But the most majestic and the most reverent title of veneration and worship ascribed to Jesus Christ by the early Church was “Lord,” by which they meant to say that the worship and adoration once reserved for Yahweh were now also given to Jesus Christ. No more convincing and powerful title pointing to the deity and majesty of Jesus Christ could have been chosen, and it has become in the total life of the Church the predominant title of praise given to him.

A tradition of New Testament criticism found principally in Germany and including such scholars as Wrede, Reitzenstein, and Bousset in a past generation, and those of the Bultmann school in modern times, has insisted that no historical confidence may be placed in these New Testament titles and ascriptions of deity to Jesus. Behind this position lies the assumption that Jesus cannot have been in any significant way different from any other man of his age, and consequently that those elements of the gospel narrative that imply or explicitly state that Jesus felt himself to be the eternal Son are nothing more than the concocted and editorialized reflections of the Evangelists, who rewrote the history of Jesus to make him a divine figure in the pattern of the Greek mystery-religion deities. In this case we do not have access to Jesus’ mind, these critics say; the Gospels present us with nothing other than the inventory of the religious and psychological states of mind of the writers of the New Testament. Jesus disappears into the inaccessible reaches of murky history, and we cannot know what he thought of himself.

Is such a skepticism justified in terms of historical reconstruction of the gospel narratives? In general, not only many Continental scholars but also nearly all English-speaking New Testament students find this an unworkable scheme, whether considered from the standpoint of history or of theology. Too many questions remain unanswered in this hypothesis, and we are asked to accept a program that requires more credulity than does the simple gospel record. In the end of the matter, Jesus Christ must be recognized as the author of the entire Christian tradition, and we acknowledge and worship him as Lord for the simple reason that he knew himself to have secured the right to this worship by his Passion and his exaltation to the right hand of God.

As a confessional document of the Church, the New Testament proposes a colorful and provocative variety of ways of answering the ancient query, “Who is Jesus Christ?” These answers were suitable, even persuasive, for that generation of Christian witnesses, preachers, missionaries, and teachers, people confronted by a hostile society that tended to regard them at best as foolish and at worst idolators. Today the same question persists, “Who is Jesus Christ?” But the context in which the Church lives is dynamic and always under change, and thus the Church must restate and reaffirm its faith in language and forms of expression that strike a response of faith today. So the New Testament not only offers a number of answers to this question but also shows the method for answering it.

The modern problem can be seen in regard to the title “Lord.” This title originated in the landed nobility of an England that no longer exists. Today, in a democratic society like America, we do not easily tolerate “lords,” and apart from religion the word has a poor connotation. Therefore the real issue lies not in the word itself but in the inner and deeper problem of modern allegiances. In First Corinthians 12:3, Paul writes that no one can call Jesus “Lord” except by the Holy Spirit; by this he means that in the political context of that day, when Caesar claimed to be Lord and even God, the Christian was sometimes called upon to declare his final allegiance to Christ alone, and not to Caesar. Today we have no Caesars demanding our final loyalties, but perhaps the problem re-emerges in the subtler form of a strident nationalism or an economic imperialism that challenges the, rightful and exclusive place of Christ in our lives. Thus we will have to express the Lordship of Christ so as to acknowledge him to be superior to all forms of statism and twentieth-century Caesarism. The Christian Church in Nazi Germany learned this lesson at the cost of blood in our generation.

Who is the Christ we preach? He is the Jesus of the Gospels, the Jesus Christ who was Paul’s Lord, the Jesus Christ who was crucified in Jerusalem and who was raised for our justification on the third day. He is the center of the life of the entire Church of all ages; he is its head, its norm, faithfully disclosed to the believing community in the pages of Holy Writ. He was and is a stranger to our world and to our times. He is one whom we confess as Lord but do not fully comprehend, whom we love but do not love well, whom we serve but as unfaithful servants, whom we seek but from whose presence we flee. He is both Jesus of Nazareth and Lord of all, the same yesterday, today, forever.

The Word Of God

This book, God’s Word, is an exceedingly dangerous book for me, and it is a domineering book.… But there is a … way of defending oneself against God’s Word.… For take the Holy Scriptures—shut thy door; but also ten dictionaries, twenty commentaries, and then thou canst read it just as tranquilly and unembarrassed as thou dost read a newspaper column.… All this interpretation and interpretation and science and newer science which is introducted with the solemn and serious claim that this is the way rightly to understand God’s Word—look more closely and thou wilt perceive that this is with the intent of defending oneself against God’s Word.… I insert layer upon layer, interpretation and science and more science (pretty much as a boy inserts a napkin, or several of them, under his pants when he is about to get a thrashing).… I insert all this between the Word and myself, and then bestow upon this commentating and scientific method the name of seriousness and zeal for the truth, and then let this busy occupation swell to such proportions that I never come to the point of getting an impression of God’s Word, never come to the point of beholding myself in the mirror.—SOREN KIERKEGAARD, For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourselves and Three Discourses 1851, tr. by Walter Lowrie (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1944), pp. 56,59,60.

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