Re: Why the historical Jesus matters

Peter disagrees with Andrew’s seeking of "a core narrative that is different from that found in all Christian traditions," but I’m not too convinced that we do not need to continuously be seeking to renew our reading of the narrative - without feeling the need to discard all that is past. Historical theology has great value and does us a much service without perhaps providing the specific set of understandings that we do have to actively seek out for ourselves if we are to be the followers of a living faith.

I therefore do not think that we need to be beholden to a tradition such as ‘evangelicalism’ for example, even though many of my friends claim that it is possible (though difficult?) to believe in an evangelical way and yet not be insensitive to the fruits of postmodern insights and a narrative approach to theology.

Though we don’t perhaps state our premises often enough, still I believe that we are conscious that with the NT documents we are dealing with the fruits of the new believers’ faith that in turn had been based upon that ‘historical’ that we find so fascinating. While in itself this does not negate the historical in the NT, it does place us within a horizon that while inspired by a particular history is not itself that same history, but is now the history of the believers. But then the history of these believers really is what narrative theology has to deal with if there is to be any chance of our stepping into that horizon and interacting with it in any meaningful way!

Specifically for me, I do not argue that: "the early church drifted away from the narrative framework of the Jesus story" (Andrew’s point 5 above) at all, and I’m sorry that I gave that impression. What I did want to emphasize was that for Paul ( as for Peter, John etc.) the ‘history’ that made him a believer is a given. It is that very ‘history’ that he in turn bears witness to and that he calls "the gospel". It is this history that is now Paul’s gospel.

Paul himself considers that he is in the fulfilment period of what Jesus had prophesied, and that Jesus had himself set in motion - a denouement in history that with the rejection of Jesus own alternative way, leads inexorably towards fulfilling the very real apocalyptic warnings in Jesus’ teachings. I don’t think that there is much here to disagree on (I could be wrong!).

Where we seem to be parting company, given that we are still trying to base our understanding on the narrative itself, is whether for Paul and for the majority of the young crop of believers, the focus is more on the denouement than on the exciting business of living with a living faith that has surprisingly burst its way into mundane lives and forced a turning away from the mundane worldliness even in all its variety that had been its predecessor in these transformed, newly created lives/communities.

Certainly, while our understanding of worship in the early church does lead us towards the hope of the future, yet the majority of the emphasis is on understanding Jesus, if you wish ‘historically’, especially in the significance of his death and resurrection but also with equal emphasis on the life that Jesus led that took him so inexorably to his face-off with ‘the world itself and which in turn defines at its core what discipleship and what God’s new work are all about.

For Paul (at least) there is good evidence that he felt that the ‘new creation’ was already under way in his own transformation as well as in that of those that he was daily leading into faith and discipleship. There is also evidence that he believed that ‘the end’ or the even bigger "new beginning", would come surprisingly soon, but in this I don’t think that we are wrong to simply find his assumption to be a mistaken one, without having to seek its fulfilment within a history that clearly does not point to any such fantastic happening having yet taken place.

Live to serve : Serve to live