Would the 'Real' Jesus Please Step Forward?

Whilst working in the Diocese of Ripon and Leeds, there were two images of Jesus which I deliberately kept next to each other on the windowsill of my office. One image was an iconic representation of Jesus in the arms of his mother Mary, a gift from Russian friends in St Petersburg. Jesus, with adult face, looks adoringly at the rather doleful Madonna. Such depictions of Jesus in the world's art galleries must number millions. Madonna and child, nativity, crucifixion and resurrection portrayals understandably dominate the Christian art world. But the second image of Jesus on my window ledge was a postcard replica of a painting by Max Ernst. I saw the original whilst holidaying with a German friend in Cologne and just had to buy the postcard. In 1926 Ernst created 'The Blessed Virgin Chastises the Infant Jesus Before Three Witnesses: A.B., P.E., and the Artist', to give the painting its full title. A muscular Mary is spanking the infant Jesus whilst the artists Breton, Eluard and Ernst look on. In stature, Jesus looks more like a seven-year-old; his halo is on the ground. The archbishop of Cologne at the time denounced this icon of surrealism as a 'blasphemous narrative'. For how could a sinless Christ be spanked?

These two very different images of Jesus remind me of that search for the 'real' Jesus, which, in a way, began from the time when Jesus called his disciples to join with him in his mission. In the earliest of the canonical gospels, Mark has Jesus putting this question before his disciples, 'Who do people say I am?' (Mark 8.27) It's a question which the New Testament writers and others sought to answer in those early decades after the death of Jesus.

But what do I mean by the 'real Jesus' and how might this differ from the historical Jesus? Most Christians today would claim that Jesus is 'alive' for them, that the 'ascended and glorified Christ' is a real living presence in their lives. In proclaiming the resurrection of Jesus, the Church sings that Jesus Christ is alive for evermore. A popular song opens with the line, 'Jesus stand among us at the meeting of our lives.' I have sung it many times. Nevertheless such statements of faith have not dulled the search for the Jesus of Nazareth who lived and died in Lower Galilee at a certain time in history. That search has been and is undertaken by scholars and theologians, many of whom profess no Christian faith and who would regard Jesus as an important and yet very dead man of history, certainly not one to stand among us except in the loosest of metaphorical senses.

Since the Church has always invited its followers to affirm the humanity of Jesus, it would seem obvious that the search for this historical Jesus would always be a part of Christian theology. So who is this Jesus? Is he the sinless Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary, risen from the dead and declared to be the world's Saviour and Redeemer by the councils and creeds of the early Church? Or was he a human being, like you and me, whose halo could slip, a remarkable prophetic man of his time and for his time but whose bones lie somewhere in the dust of Palestine? Or could he indeed have been both human and divine? Or is Jesus whatever we want him to be – a dying saviour, an exemplar of justice and compassion, a God presence in our lives, a name to swear by?

Whatever we think, the world will not let go of this Jesus. Not only in art but in film and literature this Jesus captivates and intrigues generation after generation of people across the planet. When the world's athletes descend on Rio de Janeiro for the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the 30 metre tall statue of Christ the Redeemer will be there, overlooking the city. There's no getting away from Jesus!

I doubt that the name of Jesus will ever be unknown to human civilization. Have you ever wondered how much music has been written in the world in connection with Jesus and the gospel stories? From early plainsong, through to music of Bach and Handel, from hymns and gospel songs, from musicals such as Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar, through to the exciting compositions of Karl Jenkins, musicians have been inspired by the New Testament accounts of the birth, life and death of Jesus of Nazareth. Film-makers and film audiences are still captivated by the Jesus story. We look back to the American blockbuster 1965 film 'The Greatest Story Ever Told', or Piero Pasolini's 'The Gospel according to Matthew', also produced in the 1960s with a cast of ordinary Italians including Pasolini's mother playing the part of Mary. More recently, Mel Gibson's 'The Passion of the Christ' first screened in 2004 gave rise to criticism by some reviewers who claimed that its extreme portrayal of the violence and torture inflicted upon Jesus obscured the message of the film.

Across continents and cultures the person of Jesus continues to intrigue Christians and people of other and no religious faith. In the 1990s the Anglican mission societies, CMS and USPG (now Us) produced a resource entitled 'The Christ We Share'. This contained 32 images of Jesus, drawn, painted, sculptured from across the world. Like many colleagues, I have often used these images to stimulate discussion. One picture, for example, is of 'The Angry Christ', an image from the Philippines, which places the historical reality of the Marcos regime in the biblical context of the Overturning of the Tables in the Temple (Mark 11.15-19). In contrast is an image entitled 'Lesser Brethren', which pictures a Jesus in a clean white robe, surrounded by animals and birds set in the English countryside! The resource also has 'Christa', a sculpture made in 1974 by Edwina Sandys, the granddaughter of Sir Winston Churchill, for the United Nations Decade for Women. This depiction of a female Christ on the cross was created to represent 'the oppressed and devoured women of our jails and prisons, any woman forgotten, hidden, abused or thrown away, the suffering woman in all of us' commented the artist.

So in part one of this book I am attempting to summarise, albeit inadequately but in all honesty, how the Church and Christian Faith has come to understand Jesus, this Jesus of history who became after his death the Christ of faith, a distinction first made by Martin Kahler in 1964 in his book, The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic, Biblical Christ. Many scholars and indeed the teachings of the universal Church implicitly argue that such a distinction cannot be made since it is impossible to know the Jesus of history without the lens of the Christ of faith. Yet for most of Christian history, from the Gnostics of...