JESUS CHRIST: GOD-MAN - Vital Christianity

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Although at first it may seem that this theological approach is conducive only to
conservative theology, a closer look will show that this is not necessarily so. The limitation of
this theological approach is that its emphasis on the narrative form does not necessarily mean
that it is the only legitimate, authoritative story. It does not, by and in itself, exclude other stories
(such as those of Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam) from being as valid.
Narrative theology also tends to so focus on the form—narration as a literary structure of
Scripture—that it tends to ignore the all important question of truth. How is fiction and history
distinguished since they both contain narrative structures? The very structure that is most loyal to
the form and shape the biblical record takes is also the structure that easily lends itself to other
religious stories as equally valid.
LEGITIMATE DEMYTHOLOGIZING
The demythologized (stripped of myth) Jesus of Rudolf Bultmann and liberalism is a
pathetic figure in that He is a mild, gentle human being who would offend no one. Or He is a
revolutionary who, instead of being sent by His Father, came on His own to set things straight.
Such a Jesus fostered a vaguely humanistic ethic as liberals have approached Jesus cafeteria
style—they picked and chose what they liked and left the rest. Dorothy Sayers rightly reminds
us:
"We cannot blink the fact that gentle Jesus meek and mild was so stiff in His
opinions and so inflammatory in His language that he was thrown out of church,
stoned, hunted from place to place, and finally gibbeted as a firebrand and a
public danger. Whatever His peace was, it was not the peace of an amiable
indifference; and He said in so many words that what He brought with Him
was fire and sword."8
A Jesus demythologized of His divine nature is no Jesus at all! He certainly is not the
Jesus we are confronted by in the pages of Holy Scripture. Such a Jesus is an empty suit.
Bultmann is right in the need for demythologizing Jesus. But what Jesus needs to be
demythologized of is the liberal picture of the delicate and unmanly, but well meaning human
being who couldn't hurt a fly, or as in a few cases, the revolutionary human being out on His own
mission.
FUNDAMENTALISM
The Jesus of fundamentalism is also a distorted figure. A. W. Tozer perceptively wrote:
That while the liberals lost Jesus in the wonder of the world, fundamentalists lost Jesus in the
wonder of the Word.9