The Jesus Quest

Modern biblical scholarship has been taken by many people, including many Orthodox Christians, as both a blessing and a bane.

On the one hand, it has provided us with extraordinary insight into the culture, language, and religious diversity of Jesus’ day. It has underscored the significance of His Jewish roots and placed the “Jesus movement” in a social and historical framework that offers readers of the Bible virtual participation in the stone of Jesus and the early Church.

On the other hand, it has focused so exclusively on the “historical Jesus” that the ultimate meaning of His person, life, and work has largely disappeared in a fog of “facts.” And facts by definition are limited to what is historically verifiable, at least in principle.

If some occurrence of the past—a person or event for example— could have been tape-recorded, filmed, or otherwise media-covered, then we consider it to be factual. It actually happened, and we can take it seriously. If not, then that occurrence is hardly worth talking about. From this point of view, genuine knowledge is provided not by theology or metaphysics, but by the empirical sciences. This is a thumbnail description of what is known in philosophical circles as “positivism.”

To a great many readers of the Bible, modern scholarship appears to be captive to a certain positivism in its approach to scriptural interpretation. By restricting their inquiry to historical questions, including the process by which the Gospel narratives took shape, biblical critics generally seem unable to deal with events or realities that transcend history: the question of Christ’s preexistence, for example, or the significance of His miracles, or the experience of the Holy Spirit within the Church and in Christian life.

This diagnosis of a positivist approach to Scripture seems generally accurate. More to the point, though, is the fact that the Church has always known another means, in addition to historical inquiry, for acquiring knowledge of God. This way doesn’t at all deny the importance of historical study of the biblical period and personalities. Yet it does recognize that any quest for the “historical Jesus” is ultimately hound to fail if it does not lead to a living and life-giving communion with Him.

If Jesus truly rose from the dead, then any quest for the “Jesus of history” is useful only insofar as it serves to unite the believer to the resurrected Christ, who is alive and active within the Church and world of our day. It is the failure of so much modern biblical scholarship to achieve this lofty goal that leads many faithful to reject that scholarship as irrelevant, if not subversive, even demonic.

This is an unfair judgment, since the preaching and teaching of Scripture necessarily draw their insights from what biblical scholars—beginning with the ancient patristic authors—tell us about such things as the meaning of Jesus’ parables and the significance of His crucifixion. The point is that responsible exegesis cannot and should not limit itself to what can be determined by empirical investigation. When it does, Jesus is inevitably reduced to little more than an itinerant wonder-worker or political revolutionary; and accounts of the Empty Tomb and His resurrection appearances are taken as pure metaphor or the product of a naive, primitive worldview. To believers whose faith is grounded in an Orthodox Catholic tradition, responsible biblical interpretation takes seriously not only Jesus’ person and activity during His earthly ministry. It also takes seriously His presence in the world and in human experience as the risen and glorified Lord.

We need to remember that the biblical authors themselves interpreted and transmitted the received tradition concerning events in Jesus’ life, including His crucifixion and death, in the light of the Resurrection. That event shaped their interpretation of every other aspect of Jesus’ life and teaching, from His conception and birth, through His public ministry, on to His glorification and the sending of the Spirit at Pentecost.

It is not only bad scholarship to dismiss the Resurrection a priori as myth, symbol or fantasy, as many do, and to focus only on what is empirically verifiable; it is disingenuous and self-deceptive. It assumes that scholars today, removed by two thousand years, are better able to discern “what actually happened,” and the significance of those happenings, than were the disciples and others who lived with Jesus and formed the oral tradition that underlies the canonical writings. It is easy to conclude that we are scientifically and historically more sophisticated than they were; but again, that is an opinion that remains to be proved. And since we are dealing with matters that transcend empirical verification, such proof is unattainable. A positivist approach to discovering the reality of Jesus, therefore, is doomed to failure. It’s like trying to investigate atomic particles with a magnifying glass, or to explain love by analyzing brain chemistry.

Equally disingenuous are entire “biblical” theologies built by isolating certain preferred scriptural themes and excluding others that seem incompatible with them. This results in the selection of a “canon within the canon,” which attributes authority⁷ only, or at least principally, to particular teachings that conform to the interpreter’s own theological preconceptions. An example is the way certain Lutherans expound the doctrine of “justification by faith (alone).” They tend to regard it as the sum total of the Gospel, whereas in fact it is based largely on a few passages from Paul’s letters to the Romans and Galatians (a point well made by the influential Lutheran theologian, Krister Stendahl).

Protestants, however, are not alone in this practice. We need only recall former Roman Catholic attempts to ground teachings on purgatory and indulgences in biblical passages such as 1 Peter 3:19; or Orthodox tendencies to find a full-blown doctrine of theôsis (“deification” of the human person) in 2 Peter 1:4. Some of these teachings surely have more merit than others and can legitimately claim to be based on the witness of Scripture as a whole. Tb the degree that any teachings are derived and shaped only by reference to a narrow selection of biblical sources, however, they represent examples of mere “proof-texting.” By ignoring or interpreting to oblivion other elements of the biblical witness with which they are incompatible, such teachings risk forfeiting any and all claim to authority in the realm of Christian life and faith.

Orthodox Christians especially are often accused of creating just such a divorce between Scripture and Holy Tradition, of placing more emphasis on doctrine and liturgy than on the Bible. This is not—and certainly should not be—the case, since Orthodoxy grounds its belief and its worship solidly in the biblical writings. It recognizes that the Bible is in the fullest sense “canon”: the uniquely authoritative standard for belief, worship, and conduct. If creeds, hymns, and sacraments play such a major role in Orthodox worship, it is because they interpret for us and give expression to the essence of the biblical message. This is what gives them such a remarkable and vital capacity to create and nourish a living communion between Christ and His Body, the Church.

When Scripture is interpreted through good preaching, it becomes the source of a deep and intimate knowledge of God. The same is true when it is interpreted through liturgical hymns and confessions of faith, or when it is celebrated in the form of sacraments (all of which are grounded in the biblical witness). To someone who has never “lived the liturgy” or drawn grace from the sacraments, a statement like this will seem meaningless. To those who insist uncompromisingly on sola scriptura—the Reformed teaching which holds that the Bible alone is the final authority in matters of faith and morals—it will be dismissed as heresy.

But to those of all Christian traditions who have “tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the Word of God and the powers of the age to come” (Heb 6:4-5), the truth is very different. They know, on the basis of personal experience, that God has placed within the depths of our inner being an insatiable longing for Himself. That longing—far more than intellectual curiosity, exegetical talent, or even a serious “religious concern”—is what drives their quest for knowledge of Christ and communion with Him.

In Orthodox worship, perhaps the best expression of that longing and its place in any true “Jesus Quest” is found in a prayer of thanksgiving which follows the taking of Holy Communion. It is a prayer that speaks of the awe and wonder we can feel in the presence of the living Lord, once the words of Scripture have been sacramentally transformed into a Word of Life:

“You are the true desire and the ineffable joy of those who love you, O Christ our God, and all creation sings your praise forever!”