On the ontological status of Jesus
Written by Douglas Anele
Sunday, 12 April 2009


Source: http://www.vanguardngr.com/content/view/33347/71/

IN my view, given the level of moral, intellectual, and spiritual achievements humankind has attained at this time, it is very important that adherents of the various religions in the world should periodically examine the fundamentals of the faiths which they accept.

Put differently, a truly religious person at this time must be willing to look into history to ascertain how the religion originated, the historical circumstances of its most prominent personalities (especially its founder), and the diverse influences that shaped its distinctive doctrines as they had evolved over time.

In a knowledge-driven world in which we now live, unlike the myth-dominated world of bygone years, it is extremely important, in order to avoid religious bigotry and life-destroying fanaticism based on uncritical acceptance of religious dogma, for the faithful to examine what they believe in the light of the best scientific theories of the time.

In this connection, I wish to discuss briefly some issues that cluster around Easter celebrations, which are based on the Christian belief in the passion and ascension of Jesus. I do this in full awareness of the unease which many Christians feel whenever the key doctrines of their faith are subjected to the microscope of logical cum historical analysis.

One of the opinions people entertain is that religion is a matter of faith and that, as a result, should not be subjected to rational discussion in the light of well-established knowledge.

The unstated reason behind this deliberate obscurantism and nescience is the conscious fear that such an exercise would explode the various myths upon which religion is based, and probably weaken the hold of its doctrines and creeds on the faithful. However, although for some people ignorance might be blissful, the desire to find out is one of the greatest psychological motivations of progress in all fields of human endeavour.

Since Easter is a celebration of the fundamental raison d’etre of Christian faith as it has developed for about two millennia, some unorthodox comments on Jesus and the significance of his life and death can help thinking open-minded Christians to reappraise the epistemic status of the doctrines they believe.

One striking point about investigations into Christianity devoid of theological bias is the fact that little is known about Jesus, who is generally regarded by believers as the founder of Christianity. In his book,

The Religions of Man, Huston Smiths commented that: “when we try to pin down the biographical details of Jesus’ life we are immediately struck - and disappointed - by how little definite information is available.” Alfred Reynolds, in Jesus versus Christianity, frankly admits that if we rely on historical sources, we know nothing about Jesus.

The world-renowned scholar in Christological research and critic of Western capitalism, Albert Schweitzer, argued in his work, Quest of the Historical Jesus, that: “The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly as the messiah, who preached the ethic of the kingdom of God, who founded the kingdom of heaven upon earth, and died to give his work its final consecration, never had any existence.”


Bertrand Russell, in Why I am Not a Christian, avers that: “Historically, it is quite doubtful whether Christ existed at all… if he did, we do not know anything about him…” The noted British historian, Arnold Tynbee, accepts that Jesus existed, but stated that: “Jesus was an orthodox Jew, and his geographical and ethnic horizon was limited to Palestinian Jewry”.

Rudolf Bultmann, the foremost exponent of “demythologizing” theology, did not deny the historical reality of Jesus, but, in Jesus Christ and Mythology, insisted that “the hermeneutical method of demythologization should be used to recover from the mythological contents of the Jesus’narratives the deeper meaning behind the mythological conceptions.”

Our short review of selected literature reveals that the question of whether Jesus the son of Joseph and Mary actually existed is a contentious issue among scholars. But assuming that such a person really existed, what were his attributes? Was he just a Jewish rabbi, albeit a very charismatic religious teacher, or was he the son of God, in the literal sense of the word 'son’? What precisely is the ontological status of Jesus?

Toynbee affirms that from Christian scriptures, Jesus, on some occasions, rejected the idea that he was divine in any sense: he was careful to suggest that he was not identical with God. As a pious Jew, if he had lived to be hailed as God, he certainly would have disclaimed such a status. Reading through the literature, it appears that Toynbee is correct, because there are several direct statements of Jesus which clearly state that he is different from God, who he sometimes referred to as “father”, in conformity with the practice among Jewish rabbis of old.

There are some passages in the New Testament which, if misinterpreted out of context or divorced from their metaphorical meanings, seem to support the apotheosis of Jesus. For example, in John 10:30, Jesus was reported to have said: “I and my father are one.” Reynolds has shown that the correct interpretation of the Greek text in which the claim occurs is:

“I and the father interpenetrate”, which is another way of stating the content of John 10:38 to the effect that: “The father is in me and I in him.” Some Christian apologists claim that Jesus is God, on the strength of what was written in John 14:6: “No one cometh to the father but by me.”

Nothing in this statement suggests that Jesus saw himself as co-equal with God. Like many religious teachers, Jesus might just be asserting that he is the only mouthpiece through which God has chosen to speak to man. After all, Moses told the Israelites that Yahweh spoke to him and gave him the Law on their behalf.

Even Simon Peter’s assertion in Caesarea Philippi that Jesus “art the Christ, the son of the living God,” does not say that Jesus was God, or part of a triune God. The word “Christ means the ‘Anointed’. Most probably Peter was simply affirming that Jesus was “the man approved of, or chosen by, God, perhaps even the son of God, but not really God.

In concluding this brief analysis, it must be remarked that Jesus was a Jew, not a Christian. He was circumcised, read the Torah, observed Passover and generally observed the basic tenets of Judaism, although he introduced other elements which stem from his understanding of the Jewish religion. Jesus was part of the messianic movements of 1st century Palestine.

The movement he founded was immensely apocalyptic and appealed to a broad section of the Jews. Like many of his fellow Jews, Jesus firmly believed that Yahweh, the God of Israel would intervene to fulfill those messianic predictions of old Hebrew prophets. James D. Tabor maintains, in The Jesus Dynasty, that two thousand years of unrelenting hostile separation and alienation between Judaism and Christianity had tended to obscure the fact that Jesus grew up in a religious and cultural world which is almost unacknowledged and obscured in the subsequent development of Christianity.

Placed squarely within the context of his time and place, Jesus was a Jew whose overwhelming belief in his messianic vision was aroused by the declaration of a simple and devout fisherman, his disciple Simon Peter, that he was the Christ.