Jesus preached the imminent presence of God’s kingdom—in some texts as future consummation, in others as already present. The words and acts of Jesus were believed to be the inauguration of a process that was to culminate in a final triumph of God. His disciples recognized him as the Messiah, the Anointed One, though there is no record of him using the word (except indirectly) in reference to himself. The titles prophet and rabbi also were applied to him. His own enigmatic self-designation was “Son of Man,” sometimes in allusion to his suffering, sometimes to his future role as judge. This title is derived from the version of the Book of Daniel (7:13), where “one like a son of man,” contrasted with beast figures, represents the humiliated people of God, ascending to be vindicated by the Divine Judge. In the developed Gospel tradition, the theme of the transcendent judge seems to be most prominent.
Apocalyptic hope could easily merge into messianic zealotry. Moreover, Jesus’ teaching was critical of the established order and encouraged the poor and oppressed, even though it contained an implicit rejection of revolution. Violence was viewed as incompatible with the ethic of the kingdom of God. Whatever contacts there may have been with the Zealot movement (as the narrative of feeding 5,000 people in the desert may hint), the Gospels assume the widest distance between Jesus’ understanding of his role and the Zealot revolution.
With this distance from revolutionary idealism goes a sombre estimate of human perfectibility. The gospel of repentance presupposes deep defilement in individuals and in society. The sufferings and pains of humanity under the power of evil spirits calls out for compassion and an urgent mission. All the acts of a disciple must express love and forgiveness, even to enemies, and also detachment from property and worldly wealth. To Jesus, the outcasts of society (prostitutes, the hated and oppressive tax agents, and others) were objects of special care, and censoriousness was no virtue. Though the state is regarded as a distant entity in certain respects, it yet has the right to require taxes and civic obligations: Caesar has rights that must be respected and are not incompatible with the fulfillment of God’s demands.
Some of the futurist sayings, if taken by themselves, raise the question of whether Jesus intended to found a church. A negative answer emerges only if the historical Jesus is assumed to have expected an immediate catastrophic intervention by God. There is no doubt that he gathered and intended to gather around him a community of followers. This community continued after his time, regarding itself as the specially called congregation of God’s people, possessing as covenant signs the rites of baptism and the Eucharist (Lord’s Supper) with which Jesus was particularly associated—baptism because of his example, the Eucharist because the Last Supper, on the night before the Crucifixion, was marked as an anticipation of the messianic feast of the coming age.
A closely related question is whether Jesus intended his gospel to be addressed to Jews only or if the Gentiles were also to be included. In the Gospels the Gentiles appear as isolated exceptions, and the choice of 12 Apostles has an evident symbolic relation to the 12 tribes of Israel. The fact that the extension of Christian preaching to the Gentiles caused intense debate in the 40s of the 1st century is decisive proof that Jesus had given no unambiguous directive on the matter. Gospel sayings that make the Jews’ refusal to recognize Jesus’ authority as the ground for extending the kingdom of God to the Gentiles must, therefore, have been cast by the early community. The Gentile mission and St. Paul
Saul, or St. Paul (as he was later called), was a Pharisee who persecuted the primitive church. Born at Tarsus (Asia Minor), he had come to Jerusalem as a student of the famous rabbi Gamaliel and had harried a Christian group called by Luke the “Hellenists,” who were led by Stephen" class="md-crosslink">St. Stephen (the first Christian martyr) and who regarded Jesus as a spiritual reformer sent to purge the corrupt worship of Jerusalem. While on a mission to Damascus to persecute the followers of Jesus, Paul was suddenly converted to faith in Christ and, simultaneously, to a conviction that the Gospel must pass to the non-Jewish world under conditions that dispensed with exclusively and distinctively Jewish ceremonies. Paul was disapproved by Christian Jews and remained throughout his career a controversial figure. He gained recognition for the converts of the Gentile mission by the Christian community in Jerusalem, but his work was considered an affront to Jewish traditionalism. He saw clearly that the universal mission of the church to all humanity, implicit in the coming of the Messiah, Christ, meant a radical break with rabbinical traditions.
Because of the preservation of 13 weighty letters (seven of which are accepted by a majority of scholars as authentic), Paul is the only vivid figure of the apostolic age (1st century ce). Like his elder contemporary Philo of Alexandria, also a Hellenized Jew of the dispersion, he interpreted the Old Testament allegorically and affirmed the primacy of spirit over letter in a manner that was in line with Jesus’ freedom with regard to the Sabbath. The crucifixion of Jesus he viewed as the supreme redemptive act and also as the means of expiation for the sin of humankind. Salvation is, in Paul’s thought, therefore, not found by a conscientious moralism but rather is a gift of grace, a doctrine in which Paul was anticipated by Philo. But Paul linked this doctrine with his theme that the Gospel represents liberation from the Mosaic Law. The latter thesis created difficulties at Jerusalem, where the Christian community was led by James" class="md-crosslink">St. James, the brother of Jesus, and the circle of the intimate disciples of Jesus. James, martyred at Jerusalem in 62, was the primary authority for the Christian Jews, especially those made anxious by Paul; the canonical letter ascribed to James opposes the antinomian (anti-law) interpretations of the doctrine of justification by faith. A middle position seems to have been occupied by Peter" class="md-crosslink">St. Peter. All the Gospels record a special commission of Jesus to Peter as the leader among the Twelve Apostles. But Peter’s biography can only be dimly constructed; he died in Rome (according to early tradition) in Nero’s persecution (64) about the same time as Paul.
The supremacy of the Gentile mission within the church was ensured by the effects on Jewish Christianity of the fall of Jerusalem (70) and Hadrian’s exclusion of all Jews from the city (135). Jewish Christianity declined and became the faith of a very small group without links to either synagogue or Gentile church. Some bore the title Ebionites, “the Poor” (compare Matthew 5:3), and did not accept the tradition that Jesus was born of a virgin.
In Paul’s theology, the human achievement of Jesus was important because his obedient fidelity to his vocation gave moral and redemptive value to his self-sacrifice. A different emphasis appears in the Gospel According to John, written (according to 2nd-century tradition) at Ephesus. John’s Gospel partly reflects local disputes, not only between the church and the Hellenized synagogue but also between various Christian groups, including gnostic communities in Asia Minor. John’s special individuality lies in his view of the relation between the historical events of the tradition and the Christian community’s present experience of redemption. The history is treated symbolically to provide a vehicle for faith. Because it is less attached to the contingent events of a particular man’s life, John’s conception of the preexistent Logos becoming incarnate (made flesh) in Jesus made intelligible to the Hellenistic world the universal significance of Jesus. In antiquity, divine presence had to be understood as either inspiration or incarnation. If the Synoptic Gospels suggest inspiration, the Gospel According to John chooses incarnation. The tension between these two types of Christology (doctrines of Christ) first became acute in the debate between the schools of Antioch and Alexandria in the late 4th century. The contemporary social, religious, and intellectual world