Who Is Jesus Christ.docx

THEO8307 Theology of Jesus Christ 2018 Andrew James Herpich 9503771 [email protected] Assignment #2 - Essay Assignment due 5/10/2018 Submitted 15/10/2018 A. J. Herpich Extension Granted

So who is Jesus Christ? The temptation here is to redefine this as an historical question: Who was Jesus Christ? Such has been a commonplace of theological scholarship since at least the publication of the so-called Wolfenbüttel Fragmente in the late eighteenth century.1 In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the ‘quest’ for the historical Jesus has become something of a pop-culture obsession, evident in books (scholarly, fictional, and in-between), films, and musicals.2 And yet, as John P. Meier remarks in A Marginal Jew, “no one’s Jesus—and no one Jesus—suits everyone.”3 For ‘the’ historical Jesus cannot stay merely historical. As soon as there is an attempt to infer Jesus’s intentions, summarise the ‘meaning’ of his life, or explore its reception history, there is a concurrent slip—explicitly or implicitly—into Christology. And Christology is the theological answer to the question, Who is Jesus Christ? It is already evident in the earliest Christian documents. 4 And what of the Jesus Christ that contemporary believers meet in their own lives? The living Jesus. Or Jesuses. For as in all relationships, the Jesus you meet is shaped by the person you are. For someone schooled in the traditions of orthodox Christianities, there may very well be a close correspondence between the personal, theological, and historical Jesuses. But “[w]hat happens”, as John Wilcken asks, “when people whose religious traditions developed in the context of a hunter-gatherer way of

1 John

P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus: Volume 1: The Roots of the Problem and the Person, The Anchor Bible Reference Library (New York et al: Doubleday, 1991), 25. 2 E.g. Marcus J. Borg, Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Surprising Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 3-4. 3 Meier, A Marginal Jew, 3. 4 Gerald O’Collins S. J., Christology: A Biblical, Historical, and Systematic Study of Jesus, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009), 24.

1

life … seek to formulate their faith in accordance with their own cultural and religious heritage?”5 This essay examines the Jesus encountered by Aboriginal Australian Christians, after briefly outlining the historical and theological (or doctrinal) Jesuses. The four canonical gospels—plus, just perhaps, the so-called Gospel of Thomas—are the primary sources for the reconstruction of the historical Jesus.6 All other supporting evidence—the rest of the New Testament, the non-canonical gospels, Josephus, Tacitus, the Talmud, et al—is dubious, ambiguous, merely corroboratory, or useless.7 However, the gospels themselves are not biographies of Jesus; rather, they are written with Christological intent.8 As Marcus J. Borg explains, the writers of the gospels “proclaimed the significance Jesus had come to have in [Christian] communities as the first century wound to its end.”9 So what can be construed with certainty about the historical Jesus?10 Yeshua was an Aramaic-speaking Jew who lived in the area of Galilee between c.6 B.C.E. and c.36 C.E. He was baptised by John ‘the Baptist’ around the age of thirty. From this time, he preached and healed around his local region, and a few times in Jerusalem, and gathered followers. The exact content of his preaching is contested. Whatever the case, it upset the Jewish and Roman authorities, and Yeshua was crucified at the order of the Roman Prefect, Pontius Pilatus. His followers believed him to be the prophesied Messiah (Christos in Greek)—the ‘anointed’ saviourking of Israel—referred to him as ‘the Son of God’, and claimed that he rose from the dead following his crucifixion. The theological Jesus develops from such claims by these first Christians. Nevertheless, a close connection subsists between the historical and the theological Jesus because these claims grew

John Wilcken, ‘Christology and Aboriginal Religious Traditions’, The Australiasian Catholic Record, 75.2 (1998), 185. Meier, A Marginal Jew, 26. For The Gospel of Thomas, see e.g. Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels: What Did Jesus Really Say? The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (New York: HarperCollins, 1997). 7 This is my assessment based on Meier, A Marginal Jew, 41-201. 8 Borg, Jesus, 31; Meier, A Marginal Jew, 41. 9 Borg, Jesus, 29 (my emphasis). 10 What follows is dependent on Meier, A Marginal Jew and Borg, Jesus. 5 6

2

out out oral and written traditions about Jesus’s life and teachings. The connection is evident even in the foundational creedal statements of orthodox Christology:

I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven, he is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he will come to judge the living and the dead.11

Gerald O’Collins demonstrates that Christological commonplaces—in particular, the doctrine of Jesus Christ’s two natures (human and divine)—arose naturally from early Christians’ attempts to comprehend and articulate their experience of being saved.12 Yet by the fourth century, the relationship of Christianity to the mainstream culture had changed and the kind of commitment required of believers shifted. “Where the philosopher Justin [mid-2nd century] had spoken out for Christians threatened with martyrdom,” O’Collins remarks, “Athanasius dedicated his episcopal energies to resolutely combating the Arian heresy and reconciling dissidents to the faith of Nicaea.”13 As O’Collins’s example shows, faith becomes “believing a set of claims” (such as in the Apostles’ Creed quoted above) rather than “believing in” the transformative power of a relationship with God through Jesus Christ.14 The connection to the historical Jesus fades into the background as “a doctrinal understanding of Jesus” as ‘God-the-Son’ assumes centrality.15 Christians, as Borg observes, are always asking: “How does what we can discern about Jesus then matter for now?”16 In many ways, contemporary contesting reconstructions of the historical Jesus as “the violent revolutionary … the gay magician … the apocalyptic fanatic … the wisdom teacher

The Apostles’ Creed, cited on ‘The Apostles’ Creed’, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostles%27_Creed viewed Friday 12 October 2018. 12 O’Collins, Christology, 159. What follows draws on O’Collins, Christology, chap. 7. 13 O’Collins, Christology, 168. 14 Borg, Jesus, 20-1. 15 Borg, Jesus, 16. 16 Borg, Jesus, 5. 11

3

or Cynic philosopher” transpose into a different key the patristic debates over the nature and functions of ‘God-the-Son’.17 When someone answers the question, Who is Jesus Christ?, the answer invariably inculcates an idea about Christianity’s relationship to the sources of power in the mainstream culture. As Borg puts it:“Our culture wars are to a considerable extent Jesus wars.”18 In Following Jesus in Invaded Space, Chris Budden cautions that “the church and its theologians have largely located themselves with those who possess power and influence and live within a world constructed to explain and justify that sense of power.”19 When Christian missionaries came to the First Peoples of the land that came to be called ‘Australia’, as Cecil W. Grant notes, “instead of Christianising they were Westernising.”20 Or in the stronger words of Kevin Gilbert: “Mainstream— the Whitefella way.”21 By contrast, Jesus (in Grant’s words) “was the most radical and revolutionary man to set foot on this planet.”22 Gilbert, too, sees a marked contrast between “the fella who wiped the feet” and the colonial Christianity of the missionaries and their successors, “[who] have never been able to face what that Christ fella was saying”.23 These Aboriginal theologians concur in the understanding that “[Christ’s mission] focuses on the unfree, upon the poor, the captive, the oppressed and those who are hurt deeply.”24 This is a Jesus that maintains a close connection with the one revealed in the gospels but also has deep resonance for a colonised and brutalised culture.

Meier, A Marginal Jew, 3, cf. O’Collins, Christology, chaps. 5, 7-8. Borg, Jesus, 2. 19 Chris Budden, Following Jesus in Invaded Space: Doing Theology on Aboriginal Land (Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2009), 76. 20 Cecil W. Grant, ‘The Gospel and Culture: An Aboriginal Perspective’, in Anne Pattel-Gray (ed.), Martung Upah: Black and White Australians Seeking Partnership (Melbourne: HarperCollins, 1996), 164. 21 Kevin Gilbert, ‘God at the Campfire and that Christ Fella’, in Anne Pattel-Gray (ed.), Aboriginal Spirituality (Melbourne: HarperCollins, 1996), 63, 59. 22 Grant, ‘The Gospel and Culture’, 168. 23 Gilbert, ‘God at the Campfire’, 55. 24 Henry Walker, ‘Goorie Jesus’, in Anne Pattel-Gray (ed.), Aboriginal Spirituality (Melbourne: HarperCollins, 1996), 109; cf. Gilbert, ‘God at the Campfire’, 57-59; 62-63, Grant, ‘The Gospel and Culture’, 168. 17 18

4

Aboriginal theologians agree that God—and for some, Jesus as Word and Son—was already present in country and in the lives and ceremonies of the First Peoples.25 Gilbert, again, is forceful: “We weren’t heathen”.26 This leads to a syncretistic Indigenous theology that may be at odds with orthodox doctrinal understandings of Jesus. Gilbert, for instance, abjures “Whitefella’s Bible from the land of Israel.”27 Henry Walker explains that Aboriginal Christians “are called to plant Christ in this Goorie [i.e. Aboriginal] Australian soil, rather than transplant Western forms of Christianity.” 28 One radical claim that appears frequently is that “Christ is an Aboriginal Australian” or “God is Black”.29 As Walker explains:

The question which Jesus asked Peter, and others, namely, ‘Who do you say that I am?’ (Mark 8:29), must be answered directly by Aboriginal People or Aboriginal Christians. This question is directed to our Aboriginal context and cannot be answered by the Western society for us.30

The gospel message must be made “culturally relevant”.31 This cannot be a mere tokenistic gesture. Djiniyini Gondarra urges: “We must promote Christ as a living and acceptable part of our own ceremony and culture.”32 The Jesus Christ that will emerge from this ‘Rainbow Spirit Theology’ cannot be the same Christ preached by the missionaries—who taught the First Peoples that “the Aboriginal way … was not [good].”33 Gilbert declares: “we have to grow the Whitefella up … This is Blackfella country. Blackfella country takes everyone in.”34 So this Indigenous theology is not for

Grant, ‘The Gospel and Culture’, 165-168; Denise Champion, Yarta Wandatha (Salibury, South Australia: UAICC, 2014), 27-30. Even the Catholic Church now believes this: see Wilcken, ‘Christology’, 186. 26 Gilbert, ‘God at the Campfire’, 56. 27 Gilbert, ‘God at the Campfire’, 63. 28 Walker, ‘Goorie Jesus’, 108. See also Wilcken, ‘Christology and Aboriginal Religious Traditions’. 29 Norman Habel (ed.), Rainbow Spirit Theology: Towards an Australian Aboriginal Theology, by the Rainbow Spirit Elders (Melbourne: HarperCollins, 1997), 61; Walker, ‘Goorie Jesus’, 107. 30 Walker, ‘Goorie Jesus’, 109. 31 Grant, ‘The Gospel and Culture’, 162. 32 Djiniyini Gondarra, cited in Habel, Rainbow Spirit Theology, 63 (my emphasis). 33 Champion, Yarta Wandatha, 30. 34 Gilbert, ‘God at the Campfire’, 61. 25

5

Aboriginal people only. The Jesus Christ revealed to and through these Aboriginal Christians is for all Australians. He preaches a message of repentance, care for country, and care for community. In this way, he is not so different to the Jesus Christ we encounter in the gospels.

6

Bibliography ‘The Apostles’ Creed’,

Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostles%27_Creed viewed Friday 12

October 2018. BORG, Marcus J. 2007. Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Surprising Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary. New York, HarperCollins. BUDDEN, Chris. 2009. Following Jesus in Invaded Space: Doing Theology on Aboriginal Land. Eugene, Pickwick Publications. CHAMPION, Denise. 2014. Yarta Wandatha. Salisbury, South Australia, UAICC. FUNK, Robert W.; HOOVER, Roy W.; THE JESUS SEMINAR. 1997. The Five Gospels: What Did Jesus Really Say? The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus. New York, HarperCollins. GRANT, Cecil W. 1996. ‘The Gospel and Culture: An Aboriginal Perspective’, 162-170, in Anne Pattel-Gray (ed.), Martung Upah: Black and White Australians Seeking Partnership. Melbourne, HarperCollins Religious. GILBERT, Kevin. 1996. ‘God at the Campfire and that Christ Fella’, 54-65, In Anne Pattel-Gray (ed.), Aboriginal Spirituality. Melbourne, HarperCollins. HABEL, Norman (ed.). 1997. Rainbow Spirit Theology: Towards an Australian Aboriginal Theology, by the Rainbow Spirit Elders. Melbourne, HarperCollins. MEIER, John P. 1991. A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus: Volume 1: The Roots of the Problem and the Person. The Anchor Bible Reference Library. New York [et al], Doubleday. O’COLLINS S. J., Gerald. 2009. Christology: A Biblical, Historical, and Systematic Study of Jesus. 2nd ed. Oxford, Oxford University Press. PATTEL-GRAY, Anne (ed.). 1996. Aboriginal Spirituality. Melbourne, HarperCollins. SCHILLEBEECKX, Edward. 1991. Jesus: An Experiment in Christology. New York, Crossroad Publishing Company. TENNENT, Timothy. 2007. Theology in the Context of World Christianity. Grand Rapids, Zondervan. WALKER, Henry. 1996. ‘Goorie Jesus’, 107-112, in Anne Pattel-Gray (ed.), Aboriginal Spirituality. Melbourne, HarperCollins. WILCKEN, John. 1998. ‘Christology and Aboriginal Religious Traditions’, 184-194, in The Australiasian Catholic Record 75.2.

7