| Part 1 The Theory of Faith | Hirohumi Hoshika |
The remarkable behavior of Jesus as depicted in the Gospels has always aroused attempts to compile a biography of his life. This is because, unlike ordinary biographical narratives, the Gospels focus mostly on the end of Jesus' life and there are many differences between the four Gospels that tell of him.
Hence, in Jesus studies up until the 18th century, the four Gospels were viewed as complementary sources, and the image of Jesus was explored in harmony with the central Christian doctrine that "Jesus is the Christ". In the 18th century, studies of Jesus Christ became motivated by the Enlightenment's skepticism of church authority, and began to question doctrine and faith.
In the late 18th century, H.S. Reimars drew attention to the differences between the Gospels that describe Jesus and the Epistles that record the teachings of the Apostles. While Reimars used the four Gospels as sources for Jesus, he believed that the teachings of the doctrinal epistles influenced the portrayal of Jesus in the Gospels formed at a later period.
However, generally speaking, until the 19th century, a period known as "The first quest of the historical Jesus",
The influence of Kant's critique of reason, which could be considered anti-Enlightenment in some sense, first became evident in studies of Jesus in the work of W. Vrede at the end of the 19th century.
In his book The Messiah secret in the Gospels, he expressed a view that Reimars had not publicly stated during his lifetime, namely, the "discrepancy between the Jesus of the Gospels and the Jesus of history", that is, the view that the Gospels are not historical documents about Jesus but the theological works of the Evangelists. In his work, he concluded that the "quest of the historical Jesus" was not merely methodologically difficult but fundamentally impossible.
His argument is that the "Messianic secret" in the Gospel of Mark, which Ritschl had previously noted, is not based on historical fact but is a creation of Mark's.
The "Messianic secret" refers to the frequent depictions of Jesus commanding people to keep quiet about his messianic (savior) work, such as a miracle of healing, immediately after it was performed.
The traditional interpretation is that Jesus himself commanded silence to prevent the people from expecting him to be a political messiah who would rival the Roman emperor, who ruled Judea at the time.
However, according to Vrede, the "Silence Command" cannot be considered historical fact because the article is not in the tradition section of the Gospels, but in the editorial section that connects the traditional scenes.
These findings provide a basic understanding that the "Messianic secret" was a creation by Mark. Based on this, it will be considered why it had to be written in that way.
According to Bultmann, Wrede's view is as follows: Since Bultmann's explanation is unclear, the following is an easy-to-understand, simplified explanation.
――In the sources on Jesus that Mark possessed, Jesus was only described as a figure like an Old Testament prophet. On the other hand, when Mark was writing his Gospel, several decades after Jesus' death, "faith to Christ", which holds that Jesus is God, was already widespread among people. Given the stark differences between the two, Mark felt it necessary to avoid suspicions from those who knew Jesus' time that the "divine Jesus" he portrayed in his Gospel was a fabrication. Thus, Mark added Jesus' "Silence Command", thereby rationalizing the discrepancy between the two. Namely, in Jesus' time, "belief that Jesus is the Christ" was publicly sealed by Jesus' own command. This is why the original Gospel sources that Mark has in his hands do not contain any "belief that Jesus is the Christ". However, in reality, Jesus' messianic nature was revealed to his apostles and a very small number of people who received his healings while he was still alive, and this "belief that Jesus is the Christ", which was revealed in secret, spread over time. ――
Bultmann himself has already stated that there is room for disagreement regarding the interpretation of the "Messianic secret". However, what is important here is that Jesus' "Silence Command" in the Gospel of Mark is difficult to understand unless one assumes that there is a discrepancy between the actual historical facts and the accounts in the Gospels, in other words, that the accounts in the Gospels are not an exact representation of historical facts.
From this point on, the claim that the Gospel writers could have creatively edited the text became common as a way to resolve a certain "difficulty to understand" in the Gospels.
For example, scenes such as "Jesus' sudden transition from words of despair to praise" in Matthew 11:24-25 and "the question directed toward Jesus about the Messiah and his incoherent answers" in Matthew 11:3-4 require interpretation, but in both parallel passages in Luke's Gospel, passages are inserted that clarify the confusion. Such passages were deemed to be Luke's inventions, or, where this term is offensive, "edits."
Until now, the differences between the Gospels had been attributed to passive factors such as insufficient or missing materials, but they must now be viewed positively as the result of the intentions of each author. This meant that what was achieved by collating and comparing the Gospels was not to get closer to historical facts, but to get closer to the thoughts of the Gospel authors.
"Does the New Testament give a true testimony to the history of Jesus, his person and message, or is it falsified?"
"Source critics saw the problem from the perspective of finding material (about Jesus) in (the Gospel) Mark, while redaction historians saw the problem from the perspective of finding (the author) Mark."
"Liberal theology only acknowledged the influence of the Evangelists in passages it considered unacceptable, but in Vrede the entire passage was influenced by the Evangelists."
The recognition of the discrepancy between historical facts and the Gospels reflects Kant's belief that the "thing in itself," the true nature of matter, cannot be known. This is due to the intervention of our cognitive abilities.
Our cognitive abilities, which allow us to know the world, prevent us from perceiving the world as it is because of the nature of time, space, and causality. In the same way, the author, who exists to communicate Jesus, obstructs knowledge of Jesus because of his own intentions.
In his book "Escape from Reason," F. Schaeffer, a well-known evangelical apologist, called the boundary between what can be known and what cannot be known in "phenomena and things in themselves" the "boundary of despair". He then goes on to state that "modern person" accept this dualistic world divided by boundaries as inevitable, and that the door to this "modern person" was opened by Kant.
According to this view, theology involved in the quest of the historical Jesus opened the door to Kantian despair in Wrede, pushing modern theology, which had sought to reconcile the historical Jesus with the faith to Christ, towards a contemporary theology that accepts the division between history and faith. Matsuki Jisaburo described this as a "fatal event" in Christianity.