Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

FAITH AND THE HISTORICAL JESUS §2
mighty, Ruler of the Universe) so characteristic of Byzantine iconography. 2 This
tension continues to the present day, often as a positive tension, but frequently
experienced and perceived as a negative or even destructive tension. This too
should become clear as we proceed.
The ongoing discussion has had three important dimensions. Since these
provide the interweaving warp and woof of the following discussion, it is well to be
clear on them, at least in broad terms, before proceeding further. The three can be
summed up most simply in the three terms, 'faith, history and hermeneutics'.
(1) By 'faith' I mean that dimension of the discussion formed by Christian
belief in Jesus. The traditional terms of that belief have already been indicated in
the formal language (and rather daunting conceptuality) of the classic creeds
cited in the previous paragraph (n. 1). But the term itself (faith) embraces any
conviction that Jesus has provided 'a window into the divine' (almost a definition
of an icon), 3 and/or that in some sense his death achieved salvation from sin, and/
or that he was raised by God from death to a life beyond death. 4 The point is that
such faith inevitably influences and shapes any attempt on the part of one who
stands within the Christian tradition (as I do) to make an evaluation of the historical
figure. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing, whether such a faith perspective
should or can be bracketed out, or whether such faith can be sufficiently
open to critique from without (and from within) are all questions which have
bounced back and forth during the last few centuries and will form much of the
grist for what follows.
use in eucharistic liturgy, affirms: 'We believe ... in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten
Son of God, begotten from the Father before all ages, light from light, true God from true God,
begotten not made, of one substance with the Father, through whom all things came into existence,
who because of us men and because of our salvation came down from heaven, and was
incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became man . . .'. The same council
which endorsed this creed (Chalcedon, 451) also asserted against the teaching of Eutyches that
Christ had 'two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation'
(ODCC 336-37, 1145-46; text of the creed in J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds [London:
Longmans, 2 1960] 297-98).
2. The icon seeks to express the invisible God become visible in Christ, so that what is
depicted is 'a humanity suffused with the presence of divinity', 'the "deified" body of Christ',
'the dogma of the two natures of Christ, the divine and the human' (J. Pelikan, Jesus through
the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture [New Haven: Yale University, 1985] 92-93).
3. A very early conviction, variously expressed in such passages as Matt. 11.27; John
1.18; and Col. 1.15. The conviction is nicely caught in the teasing title used by J. A. T. Robinson,
The Human Face of God (London: SCM, 1973).
4. The earliest Christian creeds or confessional formulae (that is, within the first twenty
years of Jesus' crucifixion) focus on the significance of Jesus' death and resurrection (data and
bibliography in my Theology of Paul the Apostle [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans/Edinburgh: Clark,
1998] 174-75).
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