Of course that does not mean that no scholar who works purely in the history of religions may study Jesus. Nor does it mean that such a scholar could not say a great deal about Jesus that is illuminating. But if a scholar in the field of the history of religion uses her or his methods cleanly, it will be clear at some point that she or he has reached a limit. That limit, that boundary, runs precisely where the interpretation of Jesus in faith begins. Why?
Faith always includes knowledge; it includes recognition. Certainly this is not the kind of knowledge or recognition that can make the thing it considers an “object,” standing over against it in distanced fashion and analyzing it impartially. In the natural sciences that kind of knowledge is fundamental and indeed indispensable. But there is another kind of human knowledge that occurs only in personal encounter. It responds to the other, surrenders itself to the other, and adopts the other’s view of reality. In theology this kind of knowledge is called “faith.”
Faith is true knowledge, true recognition, but a recognition of a different kind from that which analyzes, that is, literally, “dissolves.” Encountering another as a person definitely does not mean “dissolving” that person, taking him or her apart psychologically and thus seizing power over the other, but seeing the other in her or his difference, even strangeness. Whoever wants to truly recognize another as a person must expect to encounter the unexpected and be led into a new world of which one previously had no idea—a world whose strangeness fascinates but also frightens.
The student of religions who uses refined methods and so approaches Jesus “critically” will at some time arrive at a point at which she or he recognizes “critically” that one must abandon the usual standards of criticism and surrender to the different nature of this so very different person in order to do him justice.
Precisely here lies the point, or the boundary, where historical criticism also arrives by itself, where it must surrender its normal standards. It is only a very limited sector within the possibilities of human knowledge. The most important things in human life, such as affection, love, fidelity, and devotion, are based on a different kind of knowledge. As soon as historical criticism arrives at this boundary and honestly admits it, it points beyond itself. And that is, in fact, its greatest and loveliest possibility. It is precisely at this point that it is most appropriate.
So a purely historical approach to Jesus, or one undertaken entirely in terms of the study of religions, is possible. But it has its limitations. This book gratefully makes use of the primarily historical studies of many biblical scholars. Beyond that, it has not the least hesitation in critically reconstructing the original meaning of Jesus’ words and parables. A good deal of this book will be reconstruction. But I am convinced that in doing so I have no need to proceed against the knowledge of Jesus that belonged to the first witnesses or against the faith in Christ of the early communities.
Tensions within the Jesus Tradition
I am certainly aware that the theologians of the early church brought the Jesus tradition up to date and interpreted it in terms of their own historical situation. I am also aware, of course, that the gospels (like the traditions that preceded them) spoke of Jesus from very different perspectives. But in doing so they were not falsifying Jesus; they were formulating the unfathomable mystery of his life in deeper and deeper ways. It is, in fact, just this fruitful tension between the oldest layers of interpretation in the gospel tradition and newer layers that were added later that makes it possible for us really to understand Jesus.
To mention another example besides the interpretation of the “day in Capernaum,” we find in John’s gospel, clearly the latest of the four, a passage in which Jesus says to Philip, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?” (John 14:9-10). Jesus certainly never talked like that. This is meditative reflection on a claim that is present in Jesus constantly and wherever anything is said about him, though in other rhetorical genres and forms of discourse, but much more reservedly. And yet the language of the Johannine Jesus touches precisely what Jesus was. The two levels of tradition, the Synoptic and the Johannine, must not be set off against one another. We must not make the oldest interpretation a monopoly, because it is only the whole body of layers of interpretation that, in their unity, bring out the picture of the real Jesus.
In this book the weight will certainly lie on the oldest texts, that is, the oldest layers of meaning available to us. I will not explicate the Christology of the Gospel of John, but I will attempt to extract Jesus’ claim and (to a degree) his self-understanding from the earliest possible texts. But this is not done against later Christologies; it is done with them and under their guidance. I am writing not as a student of religions but as a theologian. Nor am I putting up an “iron curtain” with watchtowers and barbed wire between words of Jesus that are certainly authentic and others whose authenticity cannot be demonstrated with the same assurance. Such drawing of boundaries, which is carried out among biblical scholars with an immense expenditure of intelligence and acuity, have a little whiff of silliness. Anyone who has thought about the oscillation between “fact and interpretation” can understand why in this book I will not constantly ask, to the point of exhaustion, whether Jesus really uttered a particular saying in precisely this form.
Pope Benedict XVI once summarized my concerns in this first chapter as follows: The Jesus of the gospels is “the only real historical Jesus.”12
Chapter 2
The Proclamation of the Reign of God
If we want to talk about Jesus—what he wanted, and who he was—we must speak first and above all about the reign of God. The expression “reign of God” is less familiar than “kingdom of God,” the phrase used most commonly in biblical translations, including the New Revised Standard Version. Martin Luther, in his epochal translation of the Bible into German in 1545, rendered the corresponding Greek expression as “kingdom of God [Gottesreich],” and that has remained the usual reading.
But, without making a rigid principle of it, we should prefer the translation “reign of God,” or “rule of God,” not only because the Nazis talked about a “Reich/kingdom” whenever occasion offered, so that in German-speaking countries the word still arouses a certain disgust in many people, but above all because “reign” or “rule” better reflects the underlying biblical concept.
A Little Bit of Philology
Where we speak of “kingdom” or “reign” (German translations use “Reich” and French ones “royaume”), the Greek has basileia. This refers primarily to the status of a king, the king’s power, the king’s rule, and, by derivation then, the spatial realm within which the king reigns. In Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke every day, the Greek basileia reflects the word malkuta. And malkuta is first of all the “king’s rule or reign,” and only secondarily the extent of the king’s rule or a particular territory.
With Jesus the concept of “reign of God” has something utterly dynamic about it. The reign of God has an event-character. It is something that happens. It “comes” or “is coming.” For that reason also we should prefer the concept of the “reign of God.” But obviously the notion “kingdom of God” also reflects a certain aspect of the event, namely the realm within which God is establishing his rule. One can “go into” the basileia or “enter into” it (cf., e.g., Mark 9:47; 10:15).