JESUS CHRIST: GOD-MAN - Vital Christianity

67
"I have been reading poems, romances, vision literature, legends, myths all my life.
I know what they are like. I know that none of them is like this [the New Testament
record]. Of this text there are only two possible views. Either this is reportage—
though it may no doubt contain errors--pretty close to the facts; nearly as close as
Boswell. Or else, some unknown writer in the second century, without known
predecessors or successors, suddenly anticipated the whole technique of modern,
novelistic, realistic narrative. If it is untrue, it must be narrative of that kind. The
reader who doesn't see this simply has not learned to read."23
The idea that the New Testament picture of Jesus is a late "mythological" distortion of
the "real Jesus" (who was in all probability simply a moral teacher) hardly squares with the
evidence. The historical data points us to the Jesus presented in the Bible in rather
straightforward narrative language.
Wolfhart Pannenberg has argued convincingly that a historian can find the factuality and
truthfulness of the Christian message as long as he is not guided by his own prejudices:
"As long as historiography does not begin dogmatically with a narrow concept of
reality according to which 'dead men do not rise' [or any other supernatural event],
it is clear why historiography should not in principle be able to speak about Jesus'
resurrection as the explanation that is best established of such events the disciples'
experience of the appearances and the discovery of the empty tomb."24
The supernatural features in the story of Jesus can be validated by the historian. The
factuality of the resurrection can be attested to by the historian while its spiritual significance
must be left to the theologian and the person in the street who has the witness of the biblical
record available to him.
The historical method must be open to the principle that every effect must have a
sufficient cause. By so doing it is only logical that it allows for transcendent causes when
immanent causes are insufficient. Since redemptive history (history of Jesus' redemptive life and
work) is inextricably interwoven with ordinary history, and since Jesus Christ is the culmination
of revelation as He became part of history by becoming flesh (man—Jn 1:14; 1 Jn 4:2), then the
historical method is a valid method for validating Scripture and in some cases even interpreting
Scripture.
This, of course, does not mean that there are not limitations to the historical method.
There are. In the main it only answers "what," usually not "how," and certainly not "why." The
theologian and philosopher are the ones who deal with the issues of "how" and "why"—issues of
the meaning and significance of what took place.