More on Jesusanity

I did add a comment on the Jesusanity post below, but decided the issues raised in the other comments were worth a fuller treatment.

The observation about the lack of uniformity in the NT is well made – Acts and Hebrews don’t have exactly the same pattern as Paul or Peter in their use of the name Jesus. There’s no reason why we should expect uniformity by different writers or in different genres and our own practice might well reflect this. I’m not endeavouring to be prescriptive here, just wondering out loud if I should modify a little my practice of 40 years on this one and work through the implications of what I still observe as a marked reticence within the NT to use the name Jesus of the ascended Lord and of our present relationship with him, unless in close combination with some way of reinforcing a perception of his exaltation.

The NT practice might not be quite so diverse as at first appears. Take the book of Acts for example. There are 73 references to Jesus in Acts (besides 75 occurrences of Lord alone — some of which have God as their referent). In 38 of the occurrences of Jesus, the name occurs without either Lord or Christ in the same verse (isn’t Accordance wonderful?). However, on closer inspection, this does not support an even-handed analysis. Some are historic references to his pre-glorified presence on earth, and thus follow the practice of the gospels. Others are in reported speech of pagans or unbelieving Jews, who of course would not be expected to attribute Lordship or Messiahship to him. Others are in constructions where Messiahship is predicated of Jesus in the verse (5:42), so we would not expect to find “Christ” used in apposition as well. Others identify him as the Saviour (13:23) or Son of God (9:20). In 7:55 Jesus is depicted as standing at the right hand of God and sharing his glory, which would make any further title redundant.

Of the remaining nine or ten instances, some have a discernible literary reason for not using a title with Jesus. Take 28:23 which describes Paul testifying to Jews about Jesus from the law and prophets. A title here would have been tautologous – it was the Messiahship of Jesus that was the point of the testimony.

As to Jesus’ self-reference in Acts 9:5, Saul has already addressed him as Lord, so we would not expect Jesus to repeat it. The point is to identify who the Lord is (the converse of the situation we are more likely to face when we may need to identify who the Jesus is we are calling upon people to trust). Unless we doubt that Jesus’ use of the “Son of Man” title in the gospels was self-referential, as do some scholars, this use suggests there is no incompatibility between the friendship he espouses and the use of honorific titles.
The question is (as John and Dave hint with their references to contextualisation in the comments on the earlier post), what is the question behind the question? In one way it matters little what label I use to refer to Jesus, except insofar as this label reinforces in me and in my hearers/readers a particular understanding of who he is. Might my language lead to an over-emphasis on Jesus as he was in his earthly ministry, to the neglect of his present position as Lord of the universe — and it is with the risen and ascended Lord that I have a personal relationship (not having been born in the first century)? The converse question should also be asked, for we could slip back into a de-personalised and de-historicised understanding of a Christ figure. I want to hold to the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith and I want to make clear that he is the “one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist” (1 Cor. 8:6).