Margaret Barker's Understanding
of Jesus Christ
By Kevin Christensen
Editor’s note:
This is seventh in a series of articles on the Methodist minister
Margaret Barker — and why she matters to LDS scholarship.
Read the previous article here.
Margaret Barker’s book Temple
Theology: An Introduction was one of six books published between
2004 and 2006 that was short-listed for the Michael Ramsey Prize
for Theological Writing. The prize went to another author, but
since the prize is administered by the Archbishop of Canterbury,
the recognition at this level remains significant. The occasion
provides a good opportunity to comment on what non-LDS scholars
have found notable in her work.
Much of the fashionable scholarship
about Christianity has claimed that what Jesus claimed about himself
is different than what the church later claimed about him. This
is expressed in terms of early Christology being “low” and later
Christology being “high.”
The idea is that there was somewhere
a historical Jesus, and stories about this figure grew and due
to influences from Hellenistic cultures. And eventually the man
Jesus was replaced by a new Divine Christ composed for the faith.
Implied Difference
The problem for people of faith,
of course, is in the implied difference between the Jesus of history
and the Christ of faith. Although the scholars who present such
arguments claim these conclusions as having been forced upon them
by the evidence, it turns out that “There is then a radical dependence
between the reconstructed Jesus and the reconstructed context/model:
how the context and social model are understood determines how
Jesus is understood.”
As impressive as any one of these
approaches may seem on its own, other equally learned approaches
end up with a different picture. Morton Smith offers Jesus as
an ancient magician, whereas Vermes offers, a Jewish charismatic
healer and exorcist. Scholars such as Borg, offer an itinerant
subversive sage. Sanders and Charlesworth offer an eschatological
prophet.
Where the background for Jesus is
the later Rabbinic tradition, Jesus emerges as an inspired rabbi.
Where the Hellenistic influences are emphasized, he is presented
as a cynic teacher. While the picture of Jesus changes,
rather like devotional paintings from different eras in art history,
they tend to create a distance between the Jesus of History and
the Christ of Faith.
The effect that such presentations
have had on the vitality of Christian belief does not have to
be imagined. Not all believers have succumbed certainly,[3] but the general effect of such arguments and
the authoritative tone that accompanied them has been corrosive
in Christian communities.
Barker's Contrasting Vision
The interest in Barker’s work among
Christian scholars from a range of denominations follows due to
her persuasive argument that Jesus “is the author and finisher
of the faith.” That is, her Jesus of Nazareth knew who he was,
and what he was doing. Her Jesus of history was the Christ of
faith.
Those Christian scholars and teachers
who have been drawn to Barker’s work. In the introduction to her
Temple Theology,
John Dade, the Principal of Heythrop College in London,
Temple Theology draws attention to the power of Barker’s arguments on
this very point. And she makes her arguments based on the concepts
available in the Palestinian background.
Margaret Barker has observed that
“a major obstacle in any attempt to understand Christian origins”
is that “it is a very big step indeed away from goats and lambs
in the temple to the human sacrifice of one declared to be the
LORD, the Son of God.” Further she also observes that “This
step is unacknowledged in any account I have read of atonement
in the New Testament.”[4]
She explains that “What was assumed
by the New Testament writers was a traditional understanding of
the temple rituals and myths of the atonement. When the rituals
ceases and the myths were no longer recognized for what they really
were, the key to understanding the imagery of atonement was lost.”
Kevin Christensen
will be speaking on the subject "Margaret Barker, the Old
Testament, the New Testament, the Messiah and the Latter-day Saints
on Friday, May 18, and Saturday, May 19, as part of the Miller
Eccles Study Group in Southern California.
On Friday he will speak in Villa Park, California
(call 714/974-1878
for details); on Saturday he will speak in Flintridge, California (call
818/790-5491 for details). Both meetings will be at 7:30 p.m.
