In the man they knew, they met the living God
Who was – who is – the “real” Jesus? These are questions that continue to be widely debated, with an equally wide range of conclusions on offer.
In Recovering Jesus: The Witness of the New Testament, Thomas R. Yoder Neufeld, associate professor at Conrad Grebel University College in Waterloo, Ont., closely examines our primary sources for Jesus – the testimony of Jesus’ first-century followers. Writing for students, and as both “a believer and scholar,” Yoder Neufeld describes the emphases of the four Gospels, Jesus’ Jewish context, and then considers the witness the New Testament writers give to Jesus’ birth, actions, teachings, death, and resurrection. He is convinced that by “listening to” and “wrestling with” this testimony, we too can “see” the Jesus of whom they spoke.
The Christian claim that Jesus is also divine is “typically bracketed out when getting at the historical Jesus,” Yoder Neufeld says, with the result that Christology – “the study of the theological meaning and identity of Jesus as the Christ” – has become a separate area of study. Yoder Neufeld ends his book, however, with Christological “beginnings.” The following excerpts are from that chapter.
What got the ball rolling?
What got the Christological ball rolling? What precipitated the belief in Jesus as more than a teacher from Galilee, a Jewish healer and exorcist, and as more than a prophet of the kingdom of God?
The first impetus, if not in chronological order then perhaps in order of importance, was Easter… Easter combines two intersecting story lines: the first story line is that God looks after the righteous even if they die in the practice of faithfulness. Resurrection was understood by eschatologically oriented Jews to be part of how God looks after the righteous, how the just are vindicated. The second story line is related: the resurrection of the dead is not only the vindication of the just, but is a part of the larger story of God’s addressing the brokenness of the whole cosmos. In short, the resurrection of the dead is a part of the great world-transforming event of the full and complete arrival of the kingdom of God.
Applied to Jesus, these two intersecting story lines signified for early followers of Jesus that in raising him from the dead God vindicated this just man. Easter represents a dramatic and decisive affirmation that the one who was accused of lawlessness, of contaminating himself with sinners, of identifying himself illegitimately with God’s will – he spoke truth, acted justly, and did God’s will without qualification. To say that God vindicated Jesus is to say that God exalted him, raised him up, and enthroned him…
A further impetus for Christological development was Jesus himself. Through his words and actions, especially as focused on the kingdom of God, Jesus prepared his followers for the Christological explosion that Easter precipitated. With (1) his authoritative and daring announcement in word and deed that God’s reign was appearing, (2) his very intimate and strong bond with God as his father, and (3) his own sense of mission that informed the anticipation of his own death, he left his followers with basic building blocks for their Christological constructions. In other words, Jesus prepared the ground even if at the time, as the evangelists insist, his disciples understood too little of what he was saying or doing. Easter confirmed that Jesus had been right, and thus it precipitated the process of remembering in earnest.
Such a claim is today controversial. Many scholars are not so sure that Jesus believed himself to be as special as later Christology would suggest… [However], the gospels, the only relevant records we have, indicated that Jesus was very much aware of his calling and his mission. At the same time, the evangelists to varying degrees also depict Jesus as rather nervous about being identified in such lofty terms as Messiah and Son of God. That said, the gospels are clear that the issue lay not with whether Jesus thought himself to be God’s Messiah; his nervousness arose out of the difference in his understanding of how that was to be done and the expectations of the people. [from pages 295-6]
Fully human, fully divine
The term Christology, the technical term for making sense of the significance and identity of Jesus, highlights especially the title Christ or Messiah. It is used, however, for the study of the whole field of how Jesus is perceived and venerated, and thus it covers the study of all titles or designations for Jesus [including Righteous One, Servant of God, Son of God, Messiah/Christ, Lord, Son of Man, Wisdom]….
The apostles and evangelists express their convictions about Jesus in a way that does not seek philosophical or even theo-logical precision. For them poetry and faithful living are fully adequate. For them it is enough to claim that in the man Jesus, the one whom they knew and followed in Palestine, ate with, suffered with, and whose death they witnessed, they encountered none other than the living God. Of enormous importance is that as much as their narratives are shaped by the excitement of that encounter, the writers of the New Testament never let their conviction that God has met them in Jesus – and continues to be present with believers through his Spirit – stop them from telling the story of a man who lived, spoke, acted, and died among them. As much as they are awed by the power of the creator God to raise that man from the dead, they never downplay the terrible human vulnerability of that life. As much as they describe that life in all its vulnerability, it never keeps them from seeing in it the will of God for all who want to be faithful. And as excited as they get about who Jesus turned out to be, their excitement always serves to buttress their resolve to be like Jesus in the way they themselves live and act. So they call each other sons and daughters of God, sisters and brothers, imitators of a lord who showed his authority by washing their feet.
This is a great mystery and the genius of early Christology: at the very moment early believers in Jesus celebrate God’s drawing near to them in Jesus they also celebrate humanity drawing near to God in Jesus. Jesus becomes a bridge, a meeting ground between God and humanity….
This fusion of human and divine has turned out historically to be extremely difficult to maintain, not only conceptually but, more importantly, in terms of veneration and imitation. Many Christians came to view Jesus as a divine human being and therefore as only seemingly human. Others insisted on his humanity and thus felt compelled to downplay his divinity. The creeds of the church were intended to tackle both of these tendencies as inadequate ways of coming to a full appreciation of Jesus. They did so with the doctrine of the Trinity, namely, that there is one God in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The longevity of the solution the bishops found at Nicea and Chalcedon in the fourth and fifth centuries speaks volumes regarding its profundity, if for no other reason than that it has never allowed the Christian community to solve the mystery of Jesus. [from pages 297, 325-327]
Excerpts from Recovering Jesus by Thomas Yoder Neufeld, Brazos Press (a division of Baker
Publishing Group), 2007. Used by permission.
Thomas R. Yoder Neufeld, author of Recovering Jesus and the commentary, Ephesians, will speak in three plenary sessions at the Oct. 15-17 MB study conference in Saskatoon. 
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