Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

But if historical criticism does not accept that God can act radically as present in the world it will regard the irritating claim of Jesus as historically improbable and explain the corresponding texts from the early church as later “community constructions” or as myths arising in the minds of early Christian teachers. Or it will describe Jesus as the true image of the human and humanity that God wanted to put before our eyes. And so on. There are countless possibilities for accommodating the image of Jesus painted by the gospels to one’s own desires and imaginings.

The hermeneutics of the Enlightenment, which became dominant in eighteenth-century Europe, is still deeply rooted in many people’s heads, including those of Christians. The Enlightenment posited that what does not correspond to reality as it is always and everywhere to be found cannot be historical. There are sages, there are prophets, there are great teachers, and therefore Jesus can have been all those things. But he cannot have been what the Christian creed says about him, because that is not found anywhere else in history. Thus the texts of the gospels that furnish material for an examination of the question of the real Jesus must be subjected to a process of reduction.

Those who work with this Enlightenment premise are faced with a dilemma: what is historical determines our primary category of decision, which tells us from the beginning what can be historical. Only what has existed always and everywhere in the world can be historical. Everything that does not match this self-created preliminary conception is not historical.

An adequate theology does not bow to such prior conceptions because it posits that God acts in the world, indeed, that God can be present in the world in a way that is irritatingly unique and therefore can surpass all previous experience. Jesus was confronted even in his own lifetime with the prior conceptions of many of his contemporaries who knew for certain how God would act and how God had to act if God did act. Because they knew all that for certain, they rejected Jesus. But Jesus found others who saw what was happening through him and who he was. He could say to them:

Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it. (Luke 10:23-24 // Matt 13:16-17)

Chapter 21

The Reign of God: Utopia?

I spoke of Jesus’ proclamation of the reign of God at the beginning of this book (chap. 2). But that subject then continued like a scarlet thread through every chapter. It was for the reign of God that Jesus lived. For its sake he gave his all. He spoke of nothing else. It was for that end that he began to gather Israel. Nevertheless, his own person was inextricably linked to the reign of God. He spoke as one who stands in the place of God. The mystery of his person is precisely the interweaving of “God alone” and “but I say to you.” Anyone who dissolves that tension abandons the opportunity even to approach an understanding of Jesus.

But if we try to maintain the tension, at some point the question inevitably arises: what became of Jesus’ preaching of the reign of God? It is true that an imponderable multitude of Christians throughout the world believe him to be the eternal Word of God, the Son of God, true God. But the reign of God he announced: did it come? Has the world changed for the better? Has the beatitude pronounced over the poor been fulfilled? Have the hungry been filled? Have the demons been banished from society? Can the lame walk and the blind see? Have his disciples received their hundred brothers and hundred sisters already in this world? Or was what Jesus announced nothing but a utopia? What he wanted was undoubtedly revolutionary. It was also shockingly beautiful and profoundly moving—but was it not just a utopia? And doesn’t that mean that his sovereign claim is also dead?

The Notion of Utopia

But what is a utopia? The word, as we have seen, was coined by Thomas More, who also gave the genre of “utopias” their classic form. With his work Utopia in 1516 he began the unending series of utopias written since then. The word “utopia” represents the Greek ou topos = “non-place,” or simply “nowhere.” That is, what is dreamed of as a utopia does not exist anywhere in the real world. Therefore Thomas More’s country of Utopia is far, far away, on an unknown island scarcely accessible to traffic. Distant islands are favorites for utopian literature, and since the nineteenth century these have been replaced by planets and since the twentieth by virtual worlds.