What do we mean by history? Does Christology rest on a real Jesus who walked Palestine between 4BC and 29AD, who was crucified by Pontius Pilate and was raised on the third day? The answer to this must be 'yes'. Does Christology rest on the results of the type of historical-critical study in developing use since the enlightenment? No, it neither does nor cannot.
What is Christology? The root word of Christology is Christ, that the Greek translation of the Hebrew word Messiah. This reminds us that Christianity has its roots in First Century Judaism and its eschatological hope for a Messiah linked to a coming day of judgment for the nations and apostate and vindication for Israel. We have to assume that if we are to apply Christological titles to Jesus, he must fulfill them in reality. A Christology divorced from this context loses the its right to be associated with the name of Jesus. It risks being unable to speak radically into our situation if it has no source other than that derived from our current, changing, intellectual and cultural climate.
We must deal firstly with the rationalistic complaint of Lessing and Spinoza which demanded that all truths be accessible to the reason of an autonomous individual. With such filter for truth in place, the Historical Jesus Christ could never play a unique and determinative role. 'Salvation', however conceived, could never be dependent on such contingent and particular events. Subtle attempts may be made to state that Christ's work was soteriologically significant but that knowledge of it is not necessary. However, generally the most significant role Christ would play in this scheme is as a great teacher. Someone who it is beneficial, but not necessary, to learn from. Everything he taught, if truth, must be accessible to human reason independent of the knowledge of historical events.
Rationalism, therefore, necessarily denies Creedal Christology. It denies that any essential truth might be dependent on a particular historical figure. But, as we have already argued, any Christology not derived from the raw source of Jesus Christ's life, death and resurrection will always be open to criticism as to its authority. Creedal Christology demands that rationalism be denied.
It was Martin Kähler (1835-1912) who definitively summed up the effect of enlightenment epistemologies on Christology. His book, 'The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ' (1892) argued the results of historical-critical study could never form the basis of faith. Irrespective of any methodology which is unable to accept testimony to the extraordinary, all results of such study are provisional. They are open for revision. This does not provide the certainty which faith proclaims. Any faith based on such results would always be open to the charge of being as provisional as its basis.
Further, Kähler argued, the historical-critical method, at least as commonly defined, can only ever lead to an Arian or Ebionite Christology. The Principle of Analogy demands that the difference between Jesus and Us could only ever be of degree and not of kind. Kähler's solution is for a supra-historical Jesus as the basis for faith. That is, one based on the Biblical picture of Christ. The historical Jesus, or perhaps better "the historian's Jesus" lacks soteriological significance and the certainty required by faith.
The effect of enlightenment epistemology on theologians can hardly be underestimated. Its critique of Christianity was to question what could truly be known of its founder and to impose the sole criteria by which knowledge could be gained. Two responses might have been made. Firstly, Christianity could have held on to its historic beliefs and an apologetic critique of enlightenment epistemologies made. The second option was to accept that the basis of belief had been undermined, that Christianity had to be based on knowledge, and that therefore different sources of knowledge had to be sought. As we have argued above, the second option actually risks changing not only the method of access to Christian theological truth, but the content of the truth itself.
We can see how Schleiermacher's theology reacts to these two enlightenment obstacles to Christology. Schleiermacher agrees with Kant that history cannot be the basis of the knowledge of God. God lies outside of our experience and we can only know that in our experience. The results of historical-critical study can hardly bring the knowledge of God. Kant himself relegates the knowledge of God to a second category of knowledge, that of practical reason related to ethics and morality. Schleiermacher disagrees with Kant on this point but does something similar. He relegates the knowledge of God to the category of 'feeling', that is self-consciousness of one's limitations and therefore dependence on God. Our own self-consciousness is dependent on and modeled on Christ's and mediated to us through the Church and the Bible read in its midst. Historical method is therefore irrelevant. We receive the revelation that we need via the Church. The enlightenment epistemology which demands all truth to be accessible to the autonomous individual is partially accepted but then side-stepped. Religious knowledge is not to be derived from historical inquiry, but nor is it to be derived through pure human reason. A new category of experience is added, that of 'feeling'.
In making his new stand Schleiermacher has removed Christianity from the public arena. The truth claims of Christianity cannot be criticized by those on the outside of faith. Since all doctrine is derived from the experience of faith, those who do not have it cannot argue about it. He believes he has access to the real person of Christ in his experience of salvation but this is not a public truth which can be argued with. For Schleiermacher, a new epistemology to replace that of the enlightenment is the first act of theology. This epistemology claims to gain hold of historical knowledge and claims to be based on it, but it is a claim to an objective knowledge which can only be laid hold of and discussed via the subjective medium of salvation. His Christology does not then firstly rest in historical knowledge, it rests first on the subjective experience of salvation. As a result of this Schleiermacher's Christology is based on an extrapolation of human self-consciousness and God-consciousness. Christ then is divine only so far as he is has uniquely perfect God-consciousness. The effect of this is to undermine Christ's humanity. Jesus never felt despair or alienation from God, even on the cross, as this would not be consistent with his perfect God-consciousness.
It does not seem to me necessarily the case that a denial of the necessity for historical knowledge and a replacement epistemology leads to the undermining of Christology. My point is simply that it risks doing so, and in Schleiermacher's case did.
D. F. Strauss accepted the enlightenment ban on the possibility of knowing the miraculous. He was concerned to explain the origin of faith without recourse to any corresponding miraculous fact. He resorted to the idea of myth. He saw this as a means of affirming the truth of traditional Christianity without needing to affirm its literal historical fact. The resurrection, for him, becomes the product of the faith of the disciples, not its basis. Christ is a living presence in the mind.
As with Schleiermacher, Strauss has responded to the historical problem by accepting the enlightenment epistemology with regard to historical issues. Where Schleiermacher argues for an additional epistemology which leads to him to change the content of Christology, Strauss simply changes the content. In both cases there is a retreat from making claims about the miraculous and the divine on the public stage.
Bultmann is another example. He accepts the enlightenment epistemology too talks of how the mythic understanding of the first century believers has to be reinterpreted for our current generation. We cannot believe in a physical resurrection and we could not know it anyway. Christ is raised into the kerygma. He is present in preaching. Faith here is dependent not on the risen Christ but on preaching. Once again, we have moved from the objective to the subjective. In the face of criticism of public truth claims, theologians have moved into their truth claims into unverifiable categories.
Barth takes a critical view of Bultmann because of the loss of an objective historical foundation to faith. The empty tomb will remain for him an 'indispensable sign' but he refused to subject the empty tomb to critical historical scrutiny. We can see here the lingering reluctance to 'subject' Christ to vagaries of human criteria for determining what can be allowed as history. Barth himself comes from a reformed epistemological tradition still being advocated by Plantinga which asserts that knowledge of the divine is imparted via the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit: a tradition forever in danger of being accused of being ahistorical.
Christology does rest on historical knowledge then. Christ's life, death and resurrection establish his divinity and our salvation. A historical fall demands a historical Christ. It has been a failure of major creative theologians since the enlightenment that they have all run away from the historical challenge. Kähler's and Barth's insistence that Christology does not rely on the results of historical-critical research remains true. What is required then, if the New Testament documents are sufficient for faith, is an apologetic exercise. The purpose of this would be to explain why it is likely that the New Testament documents do not deceive us. Or, if possible to use the most stringent historical filter available and still to arrive at a Christ who resembles the New Testament picture. Once this has been arrived at, the principle of coherence will allow us to bring in other evidence initially denied by the filter. Such an attempt was made by Käsemann.
An alternative approach, continuing to show a critical spirit when viewing the New Testament, and yet addressing the historical question head on is Pannenberg. He insists history is essential and interprets the Resurrection as prolepsis of the eschatological end of history. The Resurrection must be viewed in the context of God's revelation to Israel through time, else it risks becoming myth and myth tells us more about ourselves than God. God will be fully revealed at the end of time when all his deeds are known. The revelation of God must either be partial and multiple or complete and single, because a complete revelation cannot be repeated. In Jesus we are given an insight into the end of history when God will be fully known. The person of Jesus must be God else his human life would mask the revelation of God at work through his life and revealed in the Resurrection.
Pannenberg shows a bold historical bent, although one might question whether his work contains a deep enough understanding of the Holy Spirit. His insistence on a the necessity of a historical Jesus because of God's actions though Israel's history throws the gauntlet down to Old Testament Study. His critical approach cannot be avoided in some sense but his approach is always going to be open to the criticism that he has simply introduced a new historical methodology which risks once again denying the faithful a solid basis for faith. Should his approach be viewed as primary theology or defensive apologetic. I am sure he would claim the first.
