Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

FAITH AND THE HISTORICAL JESUS §4.6
tality had a shattering effect on the confident Liberal optimism in humankind's
moral evolution. Not surprisingly the post-war theological response came in
quite different terms, the proclamatory word of Barth's neo-orthodoxy and the
stoical 'decisionism' of Bultmann's existentialism, neither of which was very
much interested in the 'historical Jesus' or in further questing for him. 122
4.6. Jesus in Sociological Perspective
The forty years from the outbreak of the First World War mark something of a hiatus
or diversion in 'life of Jesus' research, dominated as the period was by the
reassertion of a dogmatic christological perspective (Barth) and an (in effect)
equally dogmatic kerygmatic perspective (Bultmann). Consequently, it will
make better sense to delay till the next section (see §§5.3 and 4 below) consideration
of both the contribution of Bultmann and the wrestlings of the immediate
post-Bultmannian generation with Bultmann's heritage in terms of the tension
between history and faith. That the Bultmann epoch does indeed constitute
something of an interruption both in the flight from dogma and in the quest itself,
however, is also confirmed by the fact that from the mid-1970s onwards the concerns
which had dominated the old Liberal quest reasserted themselves — in two
forms.
For all its defects and failures, the Liberal quest had attempted to see Jesus
within his historical context, and it was motivated by a genuine ethical concern.
The former objective found a close ally in the emergence of the history-ofreligions
school at the beginning of the twentieth century. This latter was an extension
of the Liberal reaction against dogma in that it turned away from the traditional
preoccupation of Christianity as primarily a doctrinal system and sought
to understand the emergence of Christianity as one among the many religious
movements of the first-century Greco-Roman world. 123 In the event, inquiry focused
mostly on the 'Hellenization' of Christianity (to use Harnack's term),
122. Perrin points out, however, that we can only really speak of the collapse of the Liberal
quest in reference to Germany; the Liberal position on the question of our knowledge of the
historical Jesus and on the relationship of that knowledge to Christian faith was maintained in
Britain and America for another fifty years (Rediscovering 214-15). See further Weaver, Historical
Jesus xi-xii and chs. 4-6 passim.
123. W. Wrede's programmatic essay caught the mood — 'The Task and Method of
"New Testament Theology'" (1897), ET in R. Morgan, The Nature of New Testament Theology
(London: SCM, 1973) 68-116. It should be noted that the motivation in the emerging sociological
perspective was not so much hostility to dogma as concern that the older dogmatic perspective
was too narrow and for that reason distorted twentieth-century perception of the historical
reality. This section fits least comfortably within the overarching theme of the present chapter.
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