This was a one page paper for the class Jesus and Hermeneutics at Boston College with Dr. Daniel Harrington S.J. Along with answering the above question, interaction was required with selections from Schubert M. Ogden's The Point of Christology, and John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew.
Thesis: Insofar as we have appropriately defined it, the quest for the historical Jesus is both historically possible and theologically necessary.
“If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins” (1 Cor. 15:17). This statement by Paul shows the theological necessity of grounding Christology in history. The need for a historical resurrection goes beyond the existential gleanings from vague “Christian-kerygma.”[1] As Ebeling put it, “if faith in him were shown to be a misunderstanding…the ground would be taken out from under Christian faith" (In Ogden, 50). Defining “historically possible” is important. Meier rightly highlights the distinction between the “real” Jesus, which, as with any historical figure, cannot be fully realized, and the “reasonably complete” Jesus, which is historically achievable.[2] The issue of sources, methodology, and historiography are thus to the fore. Contrary to Ogden’s position (Ogden, 54), the sources, primarily the four canonical gospels, do present an accurate depiction of Jesus, albeit laconic and with various theological emphases. Of course the intent of all of the gospel narratives was theological rather than purely historical, however, theologizing within a gospel account does not categorically discredit its historicity. In regard to the methodology of criteria: because of the extreme diversity of opinion among scholars regarding the use, primacy, and limits of the various criteria, it is safe to conclude that they cannot guarantee a pericope as either authentic or inauthentic; they can serve merely as helpful pointers that increase likelihood of authenticity. When they are used too stringently, however, they are limiting and exclusive. The use of criteria must be “more of an art than a science” (Meier, 184).
The philosophy of our collective historiography needs to be examined. Ogden rightly distinguishes between minimalist/maximalist (Ogden, 115), and a healthy middle ground seems to do a scholar well. However, Bultmann’s wholesale minimalist skepticism is most unhelpful, “we can know almost nothing concerning…Jesus” (In Meier, 28). At some point, there needs to be some level of trust in our documents that while theological are also historical. If this trust does not exist, we should not even bother with history, but the greater loss would be a futile faith.
