Christ Is the Question is a direct challenge to look beyond the limited horizons of both conservative and liberal interpretations of the New Testament. New Testament scholar Wayne Meeks has never been known to shy away from the complexity and ambiguity of the accounts of early Christian writings. In this book, he responds to the challenges of people like Luke Timothy Johnson, to whom he dedicates this work, and presents his argument for embarking on a radical new quest in the search for Jesus' identity.
Midway through my first reading, a bizarre image came to me. Picture Regis Philbin, former host of the American game show Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? --gazing toward an endless canopy of stars and asking God: "Is that your final answer?" The image may be humorous and flippant, but the question is not. Particularly when documents like Dominus Iesus form its backdrop. Meeks (who is Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at Yale University) successfully casts more than a shadow of doubt on all contemporary western images of Jesus, whether those images are as pious and conventional as Mel Gibson's, or as shockingly adventurous and romantic as Dan Brown's.
Today's questions about Jesus reflect what we have come to know about the development of human identity. Meeks argues that the quest for the historical Jesus has only made us more aware of the obscurity and contradiction that mark that quest. In a tone that is urgent at times, he asks us to become conscious of new possibilities for understanding the social evolution of Christ's identity from the time of St. Paul's writing to our own. He concludes by reflecting on the "surpassability of Jesus' reign," calling upon a surprise witness: The apostle Paul. The whole argument is intended to open up new horizons in the imaginations of Christians. Statements that seek to prove conclusive "facts" about Jesus' identity tend to foster questionable moral practices, locking images into place that support agendas of imperialism of which we may not even be aware.
I had the sense that Meeks embarked on a full-fledged quest in order to write this book. He offers a thorough historical background and some sobering conclusions. For example: We suffer from major distortions that negatively impact our ability to interpret the Christian story in liberating ways, and we fail to understand the role that each generation's experience plays in constructing Jesus' identity. Curiously, Meeks remains almost silent on the topic of patriarchy, a reasonably obvious candidate on his list of distortions. Aside from this oversight, Meeks' intriguing questions, skillful writing, daring scholarship, and long years of experience in New Testament studies present us with difficult questions that promise to stimulate lively religious discussion.
Meeks admits he is offended by Christian claims that the Jesus of scripture is God's definitive and final answer to humanity. Slogans like "Jesus is the answer!" reveal a barely hidden agenda to market specifically chosen and powerfully influential images. He says Jesus has become another "brand" to be sold as an answer to any question or desire we might have --a deceptively shallow gloss over the real complexity of authentic Christian faith. The logos of the cross --a central metaphor for Meeks-- offers a hermeneutical key. He describes it as the touchstone that serves to ground our authentic search for Christ's identity. He insists this metaphor generates an endless stream of questions about how to live a new life of faith and joy in an unjust world.
According to Meeks, shallow and deceptive images of Jesus are supported by misplaced faith in the methods of scientific historical investigation, even though those investigations have been illuminating. Claims to "certain" truth about Jesus' identity as the Christ of God lose credibility as the hope of certainty, rooted in the distant past, is ever undone by new findings.
So how does a faith community come to know more clearly the identity of Jesus? Meeks says Christians need to appeal instead to the master narrative of scripture as its "plain sense." We must learn to live with the obscurity of the Bible. Active interpretation is an eschatological activity that brings the Christian community to discovery of its authentic identity. It is in this activity that we come to "know" Jesus. He refers numerous times to the work of Hans Frei, who insisted that any literal "sense" of scripture comes about only because it becomes "part of the self-description of the Christian community."
Meeks stresses that any doctrine that teaches that Jesus' identity and God's will are "clearly taught" in unambiguous terms in scripture is childish and "not for grown-ups." According to Meeks, we cannot hope to escape the struggle to discern the authority of the Gospel in our midst. This authority, he says, is not given once and for all at some distant point in the past, but is a reality waiting to be actively discovered in our present circumstances.
Regarding Jesus as "the question" is a needed reorienting task for our times. Meeks insists that ingenuity and creative interpretation have always fueled authentic Gospel witness. It should not be possible to hide from public discourse about religion due to misplaced confidence that we are in possession of God's last word. We must "talk to strangers" in public, dialoguing about both agreements and differences. This means coming to the dialogue expecting to learn something. We cannot claim to know what God has yet to reveal fully, and we should not underestimate the stifling influence that certain images of Christ introduce into such dialogue.
Meeks advocates an "eschatological hermeneutic," involving us in the ongoing plot development of the Jesus story. This is not passive reception of some historical "fact." The final act has yet to be staged, and there is time for further learning to take place. He leaves the reader with the reassurance that the genuine tradition of the Gospel reveals how "God always points beyond the fragile and distorting mirrors in which we see its truth enigmatically reflected."
This book is full of twists, turns, and surprises and is a breath of fresh air that should usher in a new excitement in christological reflection.
Kathy Perry is a Master of Divinity student at Regis College in Toronto. She is married with two children. Her review "A New Reading of An Ancient Text" appeared in the May 2006 issue of The Social Edge.
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