Who was the real historical Jesus?

Jesus of Nazareth is a historical Personage, no one doubts His existence, but how are we to account for Him, if the testimony of Scripture is not correct?

All that we know about Jesus has come to us through the testimony of the apostles. Profane history tells us nothing, except that such a person lived and died. His body was taken down from the cross by those who loved Him, and the world set a watch over His sepulchre; but never has He been seen again by any soul of man, save by those who were His disciples. We possess no autobiography of His words and works, for He left none behind Him, except that which He inscribed upon the fleshy tables of the hearts and minds of those who followed Him; but there much was indelibly engraven, to be afterwards declared as glad tidings to the world, and to be entrusted to those who would believe the gospel: at least so we read.

His Name is "Jesus Christ" or as His contemporaries called Him – "Jesus of Nazareth". We are in possession of the records of portions of the Life He lived on earth, and these records, the four Gospels, are historically fully trustworthy. Infidels of every description have tried to discredit them. They stand firm and unshaken. They reveal Him as the outstanding figure of history. He towers above the rest of humanity. No one like Him before and none after.

He was a wonderful Teacher. One of His followers, who listened to Him, said: "Thou hast the Words of eternal life." Great philosophers and religious leaders who lived before He was on earth also taught. They gave ethical precepts; they tried to explain the enigma of human existence and destiny, and uttered their speculations as to a higher being and the unseen. But none ever spoke words as He spoke; words of Life and Words of Wisdom, words which reveal God, His character, His love, His grace, His Fatherhood.

Two thousand years ago our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ lived on the earth, and Acts 2:22 shows us two great facts about this life. Firstly, He is "Jesus of Nazareth", this means that He became truly man, but also that He was despised of men. The second fact of His life is that He was "approved of God among you". He was approved of God as being pure and holy. Yet living as a humble man on earth He was at the same time the eternal God - omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent. These are the two great truths of His life. Peter summarised this saying, He was rejected of men but chosen and precious with God.

Had our author access to some other document more reliable than the Gospels that enabled him to recast the story? He had not. There is no other authentic history. Either he was unable to read the sober objective facts of the Gospels without importing into them ideas from his own subjective consciousness, or he so questioned their veracity that he felt at liberty thus fundamentally to alter the story. He fashioned a "Jesus" after his own ideas, and not once in his pamphlet did he speak of Him as his LORD.

As a start, however, it is rightly emphasised that the great thing to get hold of is what conception of Himself, and of His relation to God, was left by Christ on the minds of His followers, His disciples, the apostles. Did He appear to them, to use two separate confessions of the same individual, "Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God," merely such? or, "the Christ, the Son of the living God"? Following in the wake of a recent writer on the subject, a sketch of New Testament Christology is here given. The theme is pursued along three lines of evidence the Epistles of Paul, the Synoptical Gospels, and the Gospel of John — the question being what impression the writers of each had retained of the nature and personality of Christ Jesus. In what respect do they severally manifest His admitted uniqueness to consist? On this head what is advanced is all very well, and, if left at that, might be a fair, though certainly far from a full, presentation of New Testament teaching, showing at least that the "historical valuation of Jesus" assigned in the Creed was not out of keeping with that entertained by His disciples.

This matter forms an essential part of the larger question as to the distinction which is made between the "historical Jesus" and "the Christ of the Creeds." Thus Pfieiderer: "Primitive Christianity has transferred the Jesus of history into the Christ of faith … has identified the 'self-existing Christ' with the heavenly Son of Man of the Apocalypse and the Son of God and Logos … has finally brought this eternal heavenly Being down to earth to become man, to die, to return to Heaven, there to share the throne and sovereignty of God until His future coming to judge the world" ("Early Christian Conception," p. 160 f.). Again Schmidt: "He (i.e., JESUS) would have been utterly bewildered by the Nicene creed" (p. 383); and Gardner: "There is no demonstrable connection between the 'Jesus of history' and the Christ of Christian experience." These are typical expressions of what goes under the name of the "New (Modern) Theology" from three countries of "modern civilization." But listen to one who, advanced critic as he is, is careful in his statements — Wellhausen — who writes, "The historical Jesus, like a leading card, has been played against Christianity… To divorce Him from the effect of His history is to be unjust to Him. Whence came faith in Him as religious Ideal save from Christianity? … We cannot go back even if we would." ("Introduction to the First Three Gospels." p. 114.)

Luke was not himself a witness. "Scientific" critics hold, further, that none of the writers of the other Gospels were; that their records are founded on testimonies no longer available. The effect of this is that the historical JESUS is beyond our apprehension (Reinach, p. 332), i.e., in any merely human way. His very death belongs to the same category as all else. Divine testimony, and faith in that, are needed throughout. Cf. note 6 above, and notes 450 and 589 below.

Besides, we have a very limited portion indeed of the facts of the history, which enormously increases the difficulty of putting it together; because the links which connect the facts historically are often wholly wanting. There may be six months between two facts mentioned in one verse, in the same sentence, if these two facts refer to one subject; and these two facts may be dispersed amongst a number of others in quite different connection elsewhere, and if one be morally important on a particular subject, it may be put after one chronologically subsequent, without a note of time. This is actually the case; because the object of the Holy Ghost is to give us certain moral pictures of Christ as Son of David, Son of man, and as Son of God, a divine Person, and of God's ways with men in Him — not to make out a full biography. Such alone, I am bold to say, could have been God's way of dealing.

Associated, strangely enough, with misrepresentation by the Evangelists of the Lord's teaching is the alluring cry of "back to Christ" (the new, Ritschlian, theology). Wellhausen tells you that such a thing is impossible; that the "historical Christ" (cf. note 3 at end) is so much overlaid by "historical Christianity" as to be "played out." Amidst all this wreck, let writer and reader hold fast 1 John 4:6. What can we know of Christ save as instructed by His commissioned first followers?