Christology from Below: An Individualistic Review

What child sitting in church hasn't at one time thought, "Wow! It must have been great to be one of the disciples! To be right there when Jesus was performing those miracles and be able to hear exactly what he was saying." I often wonder the same thing - "What would it have been like to travel with Jesus?" Eileen Flynn notes that those who walked alongside Jesus knew a lot more about him. I was struck by her line, "They witnessed his moods, his relaxed laugher..."1

We just don't think about Jesus laughing. Yet in our home is an image that depicts just that aspect of Jesus.2 A priest friend gave us a print of this "Laughing Jesus", and my wife and I treasure it for two reasons. Obviously for the gift itself, but also for the image it conjures up: a Jesus who found humor in life! That's a Jesus I can relate to; a Jesus that relates to my humanity.

In recent years, I've been draw to the concept of "Christology from below."3 Scholars such as John Dominic Crossan present historical and archeological evidence of who Jesus might have been, by outlining the type of life an itinerant preacher of the Mediterranean in those days. But searching for the historic Jesus, we have little beyond the Gospel texts themselves. There are mentions of Jesus by historians such as Josephus, but they tell us little of who he was. We have no physical description, and Biblical scholars disagree about exactly how much of what the Gospel writers quote Jesus as saying really came from his lips. Flynn presents a biography of Jesus based on the Gospel texts, but rightly cautions that the stories "should not be approached from a perspective of nave literalism."4

Perhaps we can best discover who Jesus is in the same way we discover who a person is today: through their daily work, their belief system and any outstanding accomplishments. We introduce someone as an accountant, teacher, or lawyer because that's what they do. We identify someone as a Democrat, Republican, Catholic or Methodist based on their belief system. When describing someone, we may speak of some deed out of the ordinary, like "he fought in Desert Storm" or "she gave a million dollars to the building fund." The Gospels describe what Jesus did (as preacher and healer), outlined his belief system (teachings) and described his extraordinary deeds (miracles).

While the disciples knew Jesus firsthand, we must use our examination of the historic Jesus in order to know Christ. As Crossan puts it," Christianity must repeatedly, generation after generation, make its best historical judgement about who Jesus was then and, on that basis, decide what that reconstruction means as Christ now."5 For my own faith, I ponder what Jesus did in his human form that so revolutionized society back then that he continues to have an impact in our lives today. There had to be something powerful about that human being and his message that drew so many people to follow. It must mean there was more to Jesus than what we experience as humanity.

My desire to know and explain who Jesus is got me to thinking about those we mark as "heretics". Could it be they were just struggling like the rest of us to understand Jesus, using the terms of their day and age? Were they searching for the identity of the God/Man who came from true being with God to dwell in true being with humanity? Since we've not had any new official Church teaching on Christology since 681, do we risk the title of heretic if we explore any new understanding based on recent discoveries in Biblical scholarship, history and archeology? Are we not still learning more about the historical Jesus, which can lead us to a better understanding of the Deity?

Those questions come to my mind as I ponder Jesus' own question, "Who do you say that I am?"