If ideological factors have encouraged some to doubt or deny that Jesus thought too highly of himself, such factors have also prodded others to do just the opposite, to attribute to him as high a Christology as possible. The orthodox church fathers, in their ardent crusades against the Arians, again and again construed and misconstrued texts so as to make Jesus champion their own orthodoxy; and “it has always been a vital question in Christology to discover how far the impact made by the earthly life of Jesus and his own understanding of his person can sustain the weight of the Christological construction put upon them by the early church.”
The theologies of Christendom, including modern evangelical theologies, have struggled to make sense of the apocalyptic Jesus—apocalyptic not only in that he predicts future events of an apocalyptic nature but also in that his identity and status are bound up with these apocalyptic scenarios. Allison thinks that Jesus basically got the future wrong—at least the timing of the end. I disagree. I think Jesus got the timing spot on, only we have got the “end” wrong. But Allison is correct here (the paragraph really needs to be read in context) to highlight the difficulty of reconciling the thoroughly apocalyptic self-understanding of Jesus with later theological constructs. The quote in the quote is from I. Howard Marshall’s The Origins of New Testament Christology.
Comments
Jürgen Moltmann provocatively divides church history into three ages. The first, which might equally apply to the high Christology of the church fathers, being the ‘age of the Father’, which was characterised by hierarchy, authoritarianism, structure. The second age, ‘the age of the Son, from the Reformation onwards, was characterised by the recognition of Jesus as our elder brother, the priesthood of all believers, the ‘democratisation’ of the church. The third age, ‘the age of the Spirit’, is characterised by the dynamism and energy of the Spirit as the source of the church’s life and growth. There are many different paradigms for viewing church history.
As regards the apocalyptic Jesus versus the orthodox Jesus, it may be simplistic, but I’ve always argued that you can have both. Maybe I should read what Dale Allison’s arguments precisely are, but within a narrative construct, the key question is in which story Jesus is located, and in which story he locates himself. Is it mainly the 1st century (small) story of post-exilic Israel, or is it the (large) story of Israel as a whole, couched within the story summed up in their scriptures by the covenants? These were: Noah (creation), Abraham (land, seed, and worldwide regeneration), Moses (Egyptian exodus, corporate covenant, future new heart), David (king, everlasting throne/kingdom, temple, Father/Son relationship with God), and Jesus (apocalyptic prophet, king of David’s line, priest of the ‘new’ temple, Father/Son relationship with God, second exodus and new creation inaugurator, messianic seed, bearer of the new covenant, Israel/Adam’s representative fulfilling their story, and Lord, who was also Kyrios/YHWH).
All the motifs mentioned can be found in gospels as well as letters, and define the complex, yet somehow supremely simple and harmoniously integrated figure of Jesus, who remains unsurpassed by anyone in history. Matthew, Mark and Luke presciently record the same question that is being asked today as Jesus asked of his disciples: “Who do men say that I am?” and then “Who do you say that I am?” I guess each of us will have our own answer.