The UnChristianity of ‘Jesus Studies’: He Constructs Us We Don’t Construct Him

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Jesus Studies attempts to think the Christ in ways that are necessarily non-Christian; they attempt to think Christ as a profane artifact of human history, and only after the fact ascribe to him his divine qualities (viz. that is if the practitioners are so inclined by way of religious disposition). How in any way is this a Christian exercise?! As Christians our very existence is determined by theΒ confession that Jesus is Lord; the confession itself determined by the subject of God’s life for us in Christ breathed afresh into us by the spiration of the Holy Spirit. In other words, as Christians our existence is not an abstract existence, instead it is either grounded in the life of Jesus Christ’s vicarious humanity, and thus determined thereby, or it isn’t. And if it isn’t then we are not Christians, and thus might engage in the work that Jesus Studies engages in as a career of profane historiography.

Karl Barth rejects Jesus Studies, and as such is one more reason why my spirit continues to resonate with his in so many ways. Paul Molnar, in another context emphasizes these points in poignant ways.

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I think the Feuerbach link is very telling and important. Jesus Studies is a mostly Feuerbachian endeavor wherein the studier imposes his or her religious affection upon the Christ only after they have established by reconstructing him who he might have been. This is inane and absurd. We don’t prove God; we don’t prove Jesus Christ; he proves us. Without him we are nothing and this world dissolves in upon itself in an implosion of the sort that takes place in gardens, and in Adams and Eves.

[1] Paul D. Molnar,Β Faith, Freedom and the Spirit: The Economic Trinity in Barth, Torrance and Contemporary TheologyΒ (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic, 2015), 368-70.

*Please excuse the formatting of these quotes recently. I have found it to be much easier, when I have electronic copies of certain books, to simply use my snipping tool and place them into my posts this way; at least when I want to post long sections like these.