Jesus: A New Vision

Jesus: A New Vision: Spirit, Culture, and the Life of Discipleship

"This book attempts in a scholarly and nondogmatic way to say, “This is what the historical Jesus was like, this is what he taught, and this is what his mission was about.” It seeks, in short, to sketch a portrait of what Jesus was like as a figure of history before his death. My purpose is twofold. First, I want to present a synthesis of modern Jesus scholarship that is accessible to the general reader, whether Christian or among the interested inquirers. At the same time, I wish to make a serious scholarly case for a particular image of the historical Jesus that is considerably at variance with the dominant scholarly image. This twofold purpose accounts for the book’s character. On the one hand, I presuppose no familiarity with the academic discipline of New Testament studies or with theological
language. On the other hand, I seek to provide enough support for
the positions taken so that they can be considered seriously by other
scholars. I have a third purpose as well. The two focal points of the book, Spirit and culture, enable us to see some of Jesus’ significance for our time. For us, whether in the church or not, his life is a vivid
testimony to the reality of Spirit, a reality affirmed and known in virtually every society prior to the modern period. But this reality is poorly understood and often discounted in the modern world, not only in the academy but even in much of the church. For the church and Christians in particular, among whom I number myself, knowledge of what the historical Jesus was like can be a potent source of renewal. Not only is he a witness to the reality of Spirit as an element of experience, but his passionate involvement in the culture of his own time his “social world” connects two realities which Christians have frequently separated. Throughout the centuries as well as in our own time, Christians have tended to view culture as having little or no religious significance, or as largely negative in its significance. But it was not so for Jesus. He sought the transformation of his social world."