I try to remind my audience that the entire quest for the historical Jesus is a massive deflection of Christian awareness from its proper focus: learning the living Jesus—the resurrected and exalted Lord present to believers through the power of the Holy Spirit—in the common life and common practices of the church. To concentrate on “the historical Jesus,” as though the ministry of Jesus as reconstructed by scholarship were of ultimate importance for the life of discipleship, is to forget the most important truth about Jesus—namely, that he lives now as Lord in the full presence and power of God and presses upon us at every moment not as a memory of the past but as a presence that defines our present. If Jesus is simply a dead man of the past, then knowing him through historical reconstruction is necessary and inevitable. But if he lives in the present as powerful and commanding Lord, then he must be learned through the obedience of faith.
Jesus is best learned not as a result of an individual’s scholarly quest that is published in a book, but as a continuing process of personal transformation within a community of disciples. Jesus is learned through the faithful reading of the Scriptures, true, but he is learned as well through the sacraments (above all the Eucharist), the lives of saints (dead and living) and the strangers with whom the exalted Lord especially associates himself. Next to such a difficult and complex form of learning Jesus as he truly is—the life-giving Spirit who enlivens above all the assembly called the body of Christ—the investigations of historians, even at their best, seem but a drab and impoverished distraction.
Luke Timothy Johnson
Luke Timothy Johnson has been on my mental to-be-read list for years now, and I still haven’t got to him. Sigh. And in case anyone is tempted to mention N.T. Wright, he’s also on there somewhere.
A vow of conversation 
August 4, 2010 at 3:28 am
Giving in to temptation 😉
I started reading Wright in 2001. His Jesus work far and away had the most influence on me entering Orthodoxy. Astounding amount of overlap.
And wondering if you have heard of this place?
http://monastere-saint-silouane.eu/Saint_Silouane/Accueil.html
Dana
August 4, 2010 at 12:04 pm
Dana, Yes, I suspected you might 🙂
And, yes, I have. I tried to visit them last year but it didn’t work out. I hope to visit them at some point, but I need a bit of stablility before I can engage in much monastery crawling. But I have read odd bits and pieces by their abbot and been quite impressed.
August 4, 2010 at 6:50 pm
His Grace N T Wright is awesome. Luke Timothy Johnson is also quite good – especially his book on the “historical Jesus.” He does a great job pointing out that the “Jesus Seminar” and such are not all that. In my own findings historical critical analysis – as much as it abhors allegory – nevertheless often substitutes its own meaning in a narrative which can obviously not mean what it says …. (pun intended).
Fr. Gregory +
August 5, 2010 at 5:25 pm
Father Gregory,
Ah, yes, I should have realised that you’d also be a fan of his…
I’ve been meaning to email you – will do so soon…
August 10, 2010 at 9:52 am
Dear Sister Macrina,
That would be good. I am wondering how things have gone for you.
As for me and my family, I have found a permanent contract in Leixlip, Ireland. The previous arrangement of becoming “Efemerios” has been terminated (also permenantly). We embark for Ireland sometime next week.
As far as “fandom” is concerned. I am a fan of His Grace Wright insofar as his use of “critical realism” and Scripture seem to avoid the pitfalls of both other extremes. Not sure I am too big on some of his liturgical and exegetical suggestions/conclusions.
Fr. Gregory +