Bockmuehl on Jesus Seminar, Christology, and Parables

I've (finally) finished Bockmuehl's Seeing the Word and found many stimulating ideas about historical Jesus scholarship, how to construct Jesus' identity vis-a-vis Judaism, and the task of New Testament scholarship. A few highlights include:

1. On Jesus’ relation to the Father:

"His self-constancy and perserverance of character, in other words, are consistently construed in relational terms as between the Son and the Father. “God was in Christ” (2 Cor. 5:19); but also: Jesus is the identity of God. What you see is what you get: indeed, what you see here is all you could possibly get. For the fourth Evangelist and others this is crystal clear. To see Jesus is to see the Father of Jesus (John 14:9), Abraham’s and Isaiah’s thrice-holy Lord made flesh (John 8:56058; 12:41), the unique son who alone bears the ineffable name (Phil. 2:9; Eph. 1:21; John 17:11-12): “the Messiah who is over all, God blessed forever” (Rom 9:5) who sits on the heavenly throne, at God’s right hand (Mark 14:62; Rom. 8:34; Eph. 1:20-23; Heb. 12:2; Rev. 7:17) and to whom is due the worship of all creation (Phil. 2:10-11; Heb. 1:6; Rev. 5:12-14; 22:3). In keeping with that conviction, several authors go so far as to claim that only here can God be seen: no one comes to the Father except through Jesus (John 14:6; Acts 4:12).’ (Bockmuehl, Seeing the Word, 192). This is a good a summary as you'll find of the NT's teachings on Jesus' relationship to the God.

2. On the Jesus Seminar:

"Although these writers never explicitly deny Jesus’ Jewishness (and generally take vociferous exception to the charge that they do), they do in fact develop a Jesus largely neutered and declared as to Jewish religious specifics’. The resulting metamorphosis has proved astonishingly popular among a generation of ageing flower children: here is a less judgmental, more inclusive peasant philosopher of timeless universal wisdom and countercultural charisma." (Bockmuehl, Seeing the Word, 196). I've argued much the same in an EQ article and I'm glad that I'm not alone on that one given Bill Arnal and John Kloppenborg's apologies for the construction of the non-Jewish Jesus.

"What is perhaps most striking bout this 'new vision,' as Borg 1987 calls it, is less its newness than the family resemblance it bears to its critical predecessors. Here, the nineteenth-century ethical-liberal idealism of Albrecht Ritschl, Adolf von Harnack, and others seems to have echoed and transformed into the Jesus Seminar’s ahistorical spirituality and mellifluously bland (or, on the other hand, neo-Marxian) moralism". (Bockmuehl, Seeing the Word, 197). Amen! Amen!

3. On the "Referent" in Theology

"Contra certain postliberal views sometimes (rightly or wrongly) associated with Hans Frei …, for the early Christian church the identity of Jesus is not accessible simply in “stories” about him that may or may not have a bearing on history. It is the referential truth of that apostolic testimony that undergirds that the very possibility of faith (John 19:35; 21:35); indeed, “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile ad you are still in your sins” (1 Cor. 15:17 NRSV). And what is “doubting” (apistos, “faithless”) about the Fourth Gospel’s Thomas is not his desire for facts but his emphatic refusal to trust the apostolic testimony: unless he personally sees and touches the evidence, he “will not believe” (John 20:25, 27, 29). Unless at some basic level we are prepared to receive, trust and inhabit a given communal embodiment of memory and witness, we can know nothing at all. The solipsis of cogito ergo sum is logically compelling only in the madhouse." (Bockmuehl, Seeing the Word, 206).

4. On Parables:

On the parables: "Parables are centred on God, God’s people, and God’s word". (Bockmuehl, Seeing the Word, 216). This is simple but it is still one of the best descriptions of the parables I've heard and it is far better than "earthly stories with heavenly meanings".