A less radical but very popular model for pursuing history in the life of Jesus involves accepting the Gospels as fairly reliable historical records. While the historicity of many aspects of Jesus’ life may be affirmed in this way, it is at the expense of the miraculous and the theological portions of the material, which are usually either ignored or rejected.
Such an approach is appealing to Michael Grant, who judges that, while much history can be gained by such a method, the miraculous elements in the life of Jesus are not within the purview of the historian, but belong in the realm of faith.^35 Nevertheless, Grant does find a considerable amount of history in the life of Jesus.
In addition to historians, this approach of ascertaining historical facts from the Gospels was made famous by the theological movement known as nineteenth century Liberalism, as we discussed in Chapter 1. Often termed “Old” or “German Liberalism” to distinguish it from other modern alternatives, the chief methodology was to reconstruct Jesus’ life chiefly by using the synoptic Gospels. These sources were generally viewed as quite adequate materials for this endeavor, with the general exceptions of doctrinal portions and miracles. In other words, the Liberals usually accepted the facts presented in the synoptic Gospels, but endeavored to get
31 Carl F.H. Henry, “Cross-Currents in Contemporary Theology,” in Jesus of Nazareth: Saviour and Lord, ed. by Carl F.H. Henry (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1966), p. 15; Clark, “Bultmann’s Universe,” pp. 217–218.
32 Avery Dulles, “Jesus of History and Christ of Faith” in Commonweal, Nov. 24, 1967, pp. 225–232.
33 Schubert Ogden, Christ Without Myth(New York: Harper and Row, 1961).
34 For an excellent treatment of the general trustworthiness of the Gospels, see Craig Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels(Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1987). Part Two specifically addresses the efforts of recent forms of criticism.
35 Grant, Jesus: An Historian’s Review, p. 13.
to the man behind the early theological creeds and to provide naturalistic explanations for the miracles.^36
On the one hand, the doctrinal affirmation of Jesus being both divine and human was viewed by the Liberals as being untenable, so their desire was to “unmask” the historical Jesus from the Christ of faith and doctrine. They attempted to strip the Christ of dogma from the human Jesus.^37
On the other hand, the historicity of miracles was also rejected. The most common way^38 to deal with the subject was to accept as factual the biblical accounts containing them, minus the supernatural portion. This element was explained by normal, naturalistic phenomena. For example, in the early nineteenth century, Heinrich Paulus accepted most of the Gospel reports pertaining to the death and resurrection of Jesus with one major exception: Jesus was said to have been removed from the cross while he was still alive. The resulting view attempted to remove the supernatural element from the resurrection.^39
This approach presents some seemingly compelling ideas, such as viewing the Gospels as generally historical sources, an attitude that takes the supporting evidence and historical data seriously. However, there are several reasons why it falls short, and this led to the rejection of Old Liberalism. We will present four major critiques of this view.
