Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

From this point of view I would never say that Jesus and the earliest church were misled or disappointed in their imminent expectation. Jesus was profoundly certain that God was acting now, and acting with finality and in unsurpassable fashion. He was certain that in that action God was expressing God’s very self in the world, totally and without reservation. This “totality” and “finality” are, however, faced with the fact that human beings normally reject such a “totality” insofar as it applies to themselves and their own response. They do not want to commit themselves definitively but prefer to delay their own decisions and leave everything open for the time being. So there arises a deep discrepancy between God’s “already” and the human “not yet.” But because God has expressed God’s self wholly and absolutely in Jesus there is no time left for “delaying the decision.” Jesus’ hearers and the apostles had to decide now, in this hour. And they had to decide not only for God’s sake but also because of Israel’s need and the immeasurable suffering of the world.

I wonder whether, within the eschatological thinking of his world, in which he himself was deeply rooted, Jesus could have formulated and expressed this urgent “now” for decision in any other language than that of imminent expectation.²¹ We ourselves stand within an imaginative horizon of endlessly extended time in which there is no genuine kairos, but only events. Are we really closer to the truth of our existence and of human history than Jesus, with his eschatological emphasis? I doubt it very much indeed. Obviously we have to translate the eschatological language of Jesus and the early church. When we do, we see that it was not Jesus who was mistaken; it is we who constantly deceive ourselves, not only about the fragility and exposure of our lives, but also about the nearness of God.

Chapter 19

Jesus’ Sovereign Claim

This chapter was originally to be titled “Jesus’ Self-Awareness,” but I erased that. “Self-awareness” is too close to “self-assurance” or “self-importance,” and if we scarcely dare to say anything about the innermost thoughts of people around us we most certainly can say nothing about Jesus’ self-awareness and “inner life.” All that is open to a historical view is what emerges in Jesus’ speech and action as his “claim.”

Obviously we have spoken repeatedly about this claim in previous chapters; after all, it expresses itself in every one of Jesus’ deeds and words. But now it needs to be addressed again as a single topic. Why only now? Why only after an attempt to reconstruct the sequence of the Easter events? Simply because for Jesus’ disciples the appearances of the Risen One put everything in motion again. Only now did they begin to really understand. Only now could they see Jesus with complete clarity. That is by no means to say that in the time before his death he was a blank page that was only written on after and through Easter. No, everything was there before Easter. What Jesus wanted and what he was—all that was there to be heard and seen. But the disciples had not yet really grasped it.

The dialogues Jesus conducts with his disciples in John’s gospel, as he approaches death, reflect this “already” and “not yet” with the finest theological precision. The Holy Spirit whom the Father will send will indeed “teach everything” to the disciples, but that teaching consists precisely¹ in “reminding” them of all Jesus had said (John 14:26). Thus after Easter nothing new is taught the disciples about the mystery of Jesus’ person. They do not receive any new revelations, as the later Gnostic gospels would say they did. It was simply that the full profundity of who Jesus was became clear to them.

So this chapter (together with chaps. 20 and 21) belongs at the end of the book, in the time after Easter, we might say. But the method remains the same. My principal questions will be historical: what claims to sovereignty are evident in Jesus’ words and actions?

Was Jesus a Prophet?

“Who do people say that I am?” Jesus, according to Mark 8:27, posed this question to his disciples one day: “Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked them, ‘Who do people say that I am?’ And they answered him, ‘John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets’” (Mark 8:27-28). The disciples’ answer is as unclear as are the identifications of Jesus circulating among the people: apparently many suppose Jesus is John the Baptizer. Do they merely think Jesus has appeared in the power and spirit of the Baptizer, or do they believe he has returned in Jesus as Johannes redivivus (cf. Mark 6:14)?