From Jericho Brisance. HT Hemant Mehta. Brisance gives an account of how his views have changed on various subjects, including the following observation:
I consider that I may never have actually believed in Jesus. Perhaps no one for 19 centuries has. There is something in the way: he did not leave us any writings of his own. To be clear, we first believe the New Testament writers and the traditions of the church. Through that filter and conduit, we believe in Jesus. Before we can believe in Jesus, we have to believe the authors of the gospels. And very oddly, even they did not tell us who they were. So as bad as it is, the whole belief filter actually moves yet another step back: we believe the followers of an even later generation; who tell us who they think wrote the gospels; who then tell us what Jesus said and did. We routinely short circuit this rather mangled trail by simply saying that we “believe in Jesus”.
But to be entirely thorough, there is yet another layer. I recognize now that what I actually believed in was the Jesus of church tradition. This Jesus is more robust than any of the four Gospel descriptions, amalgamated as the church portrait is from the sum, and enhanced by centuries of Christological debate. The Nicene portrait is more robust than the portraits of the synoptics, and it includes points from the synoptics missing from the later-written John. Development was occurring. And I now fully appreciate the complexities facing the Quest for the Historical Jesus…
Of related interest, see Matthew Ferguson’s review of Kris Komarnitsky’s book on the resurrection, and Jeff Carter’s post about the inaccessibility of the resurrection.
Also note that April DeConick’s blog has a new address.