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Docetism, Käsemann, and Christology: Why Historical Criticism Can't Protect Christological Orthodoxy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

A. K. M. Adam
A. K. M. Adam
Affiliation:
Princeton Theological Seminary, P.O. Box 821, Princeton, NJ 08542-0803
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Extract

The market for historical Jesuses has never been hotter. A mob of Jesus books have hit the bookstore shelves recently, whose authors star on videotapes, chat on radio talk shows, and appear on transcontinental live video programs. While interest in Jesus flourishes, however, there is no consensus about what Jesus was really like. The scholars who have landed mass-market publishers are not necessarily the most widely-respected representatives of their fields of inquiry; indeed, there is considerable scholarly resistance to the recent spate of Jesuses.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 49 , Issue 4 , November 1996 , pp. 391 - 410
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1996

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References

page 391 note 1 For one example, cf. Theology Today's recent historical-Jesus issue (52 [1995]), with critical essays from Howard Clark Kee (17–28) and Paula Fredrikson (75–97).

page 391 note 2 Meier, John alludes to this rationale in A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus vol. 1 (New York:Doubleday, 1991) 199Google Scholar, as does Borg, Marcus in Jesus in Contemporary Scholarship (Valley Forge: Trinity Press International, 1994) 196Google Scholar. Meyer, Paul, in ‘Faith and History Revisited’, Princeton Seminary Bulletin 10 (1989) 75–83Google Scholar, has backed up his argument for the necessity of historical-critical analysis of the New Testament by contrasting his project with the ‘whiff of docetic unreality’ he discerns in his rivals (82). My colleague Ulrich Mauser has, in personal communication, presented the ‘docetism’ objection to my ‘Biblical Theology and the Problem of Modernity’, Horizons in Biblical Theology 12 (1990):l–19.Google Scholar

page 392 note 3 ‘Vom theologischen Recht historisch-kritischer Exegese’, Zeitschrift Jür Theobgie und Kirche 64/3 (1967), p. 281.Google Scholar

page 392 note 4 F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone, eds. 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press) 413; my emphasis.

page 392 note 5 ‘“Doketismus” — eine Problemanzeige’, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 95 (1984):301–314.Google Scholar

page 393 note 6 ‘Docetism: a Historical Definition’, The Second Century 1 (1981):163–172, p. 169.Google Scholar

page 393 note 7 Translation in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. Roberts, Alexander and Donaldson, James (rep. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), I 348.Google Scholar

page 393 note 8 ANF I 427.

page 394 note 9 The relevant passages of the Stromateis are prudishly given in Latin in ANF; they are included in Oulton, J. E. L. and Chadwick, H., Alexandrian Christianity (Library of Christian Classics, vol. II; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1954), 40–92.Google Scholar

page 394 note 10 Stromateis III 102. This is the principal evidence that any patristic writer viewed Marcion as docetic, and even this testimony does not turn on questions of whether Jesus was fully human, but rather on whether he participated in the evil of birth. The former may be a reasonable implication from the latter, but it is not evidently in view at this point.

page 394 note 11 Jerry McCant argues at considerable length that the extant fragment of the Gospel of Peter does not suffice to confirm Serapion's judgment that it tended toward docetism (‘The Gospel of Peter: Docetism Reconsidered’, New Testament Studies 30 (1984):258–273)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McCant's article does not devote detailed consideration to what constitutes ‘docetism’, however, and it addresses the paucity of evidence on this point only by suggesting in a note that ‘much can be learned about docetism by reading an tidocetic literature’ (271 n. 12) and that such texts as the Acts of Andrew, Acts of john, and Acts of Peterare ‘obviously’ docetic. Such assumptions are hard to accept in light of the more precise historical treatment of docetism in Brox, Slusser, and Weigandt (whose 1961 Heidelberg dissertation, Der Doketismus im Urchristentum und in der theologischen Entwicklung des zweiten Jahrhunderts, grounds both Slusser's and Brox's efforts).

Brox points out that Serapion suggests that it was the orthodox church which designated certain heretics as docetists, whereas Hippolytus's discussion presupposes that docetists adopted the name themselves (‘Problemanzeige’, 304).

page 395 note 12 The Testament of Jesus, trans. Krodel, Gerhard (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1968), 9Google Scholar. Raymond Brown acutely points out that ‘docetism’ must be an anachronistic description of the Fourth Gospel in The Community of the Beloved Disciple (Ramsey, NJ: Paulist, 1979), 116.Google Scholar

page 395 note 13 “Whatever import we ascribe to these characteristics of Jesus' advent, they seem clearly to point to a genuine, fleshly Jesus — especially in this context.

page 396 note 14 ‘Docetism: A Historical Definition’, 162.

page 396 note 15 ‘Problemanzeige’, 309. This definition summarizes Brox's more detailed point that [Classical docetism] is not the christology that is called “docetism” today, unless one wants to see the connection of the savior and his particular body in this very difficult text as quite ephemeral, superficial, only apparent and purely functional (shielding other beings from the sight of him, which they would not be able to withstand). Yet it seems that great emphasis is laid on the reality and solidity of his corporeality; and it seems that his connection or ‘clothing” with a body is thought a real, actual quality, which is not what the contemporary concept of “docetism” means' (305).

page 397 note 16 This is all the more true since historical criticism is never as ‘neutral’ as it would like to be (or as I have allowed herein); historical inquiry always participates in one or another agenda, which agenda is usually hidden behind a facade of objectivity.

page 399 note 17 ‘Vom theologischen Recht’, 281.

page 400 note 18 See New Testament Questions of Today, p. 9: ‘…the total of all the individual testimonies is not the Gospel. Otherwise, the Bible would be the book which fell from heaven and docetism would determine our concept of revelation.’ Also p. 278, in a context in which he invokes docetism within a few sentences: ‘A canon in which there were not some unevangelical doctrine could only be a book fallen directly from heaven.’

page 400 note 19 NTQT 277.

page 401 note 20 Cf. ‘Vom theologischen Recht’: ‘the naïveté of a docetic enthusiasm’ (270).

page 401 note 21 Essays on New Testament Themes, 32.

page 401 note 22 ‘Vom theologischen Recht’, 270.

page 401 note 23 ‘Vom theologischen Recht’, 280.

page 401 note 24 ‘Problemanzeige’ esp. 300–303.

page 402 note 25 NTQT, 277. Käsemann uses the Jacob/Esau metaphor in quite a number of his essays; it seems to have been a rhetorical reference point for his methodological and theological reflections.

page 402 note 26 ENTT, 45–6.

page 402 note 27 “Vom theologischen Recht”, 270–271. This interest also motivates arguments in (for example) Christopher Bryan's ‘The Preachers and the Critics’, ATR 74 (1992) 37–53; Bryan upholds the believer's responsibility honestly to pursue any critical question about the Bible (41), and accuses conservative interpreters of intellectual dishonesty and of ‘running away from perfectly evident questions’ (43).

page 403 note 28 There is a certain irony in Käsemann – the defender of the faith of historical criticism — eliding the (historical) differences between ancient docetists and his own contemporary opponents.

page 405 note 29 The discussion of whether theology is wissenschaftlicheseems to have been joined on every side recently; cf. Hans Frei's ‘Theology in the University: The Case of Berlin, 1810’, in Types of Christian Theology, ed. Hunsinger, George and Placher, William C. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 95–116Google Scholar; Kelsey, David, Between Athens and Berlin (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993)Google Scholar. One interesting and overlooked artifact of biblical criticism's place in this discussion is Wrede's, William ‘Biblische Kritik und theologisches Studium’ in his Vorträge und Studien (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1907, 40–63).Google Scholar

page 405 note 30 Since the literature which exposes the limitations of conventional historical criticism is gradually expanding, I will not undertake a comprehensive critique here; for more detail, cf. among others, Adam, A. K. M., What Is Postmodern Biblical Criticism? (Fortress Press, 1995)Google Scholar, ‘The Sign of Jonah: A Fish-Eye View’, Semeia 51 (1991): 177–191Google Scholar, and ‘Biblical Theology and the Problem of Modemity’;James Dawsey, ‘The Lost Front Door Into Scripture: Carlos Mesters, Latin American Liberation Theology, and the Church Fathers’, Anglican Theological Review 72 (1990):292–305Google Scholar; Hauerwas, Stanley and Long, D. Stephen, ‘Interpreting the Bible as a Political Act’, Religion & Intellectual Life6:3/4(1989):134–142Google Scholar; Louth, Andrew, Discerning the Mystery (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983)Google Scholar; The Postmodern Bible, The Bible and Culture Collective (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1995)Google Scholar; and, of course, Wink, Walter, The Biblein Human Transformation (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1973).Google Scholar

page 405 note 31 See the testimony in Kasemann, 's moving, ‘What I Have Unlearned in Fifty Years as a German Theologian’, Currents in Theology and Mission 15 (1988) 325–335Google Scholar. This is perhaps the suitable place for me to express my deep appreciation for much that Käsemann stands for; his frankness and courage are powerful models for biblical scholars to emulate. My dispute here is with Kkäemann's argument, not with the numerous commendable dimensions of his scholarship.

page 407 note 32 Need one stress the work of the Jesus Seminar as an example of ill-founded confidence in historians’ capacity to tell the world the truth about Jesus?

page 409 note 33 Grant, Robert M and Tracy, David, A Short History of the Interpretation of the Bible (2nd rev. ed., Fortress Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Rogerson, John, Rowland, Christopher, and Lindars, Barnabas, The Study and Use of the Bible (The History of Christian Theology, vol. 2; Grand Rapids: Marshall Pickering/Eerdmans, 1988)Google Scholar; Morgan, Robert and Barton, john, Biblical Interpretation (corrected edition; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989)Google Scholar. Morgan & Barton, it should be noted, do not fit into the ‘triumphal procession of hisiorical criticism’ pattern; they insightfully allow that the tradition of academic historical criticism has not discovered the one theologically and intellectually correct mode of interpretation. They do, however, anchor legitimate interpretation in a ‘rational’ defense of historical-critical reconstruction of the original meaning of a text.