The God of Jesus: The Historical Jesus and the Search for Meaning

Rating:
Summary: I Had Professor Patterson as a Teacher
Review: I had professor Patterson as an instructor at Eden Seminary in St. Louis, MO. I was very impressed with this book from the first time I picked it up. The God of Jesus does a superb job of relating the most recent quest for the Historical Jesus done primarily by the Fellows of the Jesus Seminar, to a living breathing theology for church and life. If you enjoyed his book, you should try a semester in class with him. It is a very enjoyable and challenging experience. I especially appreciated that in the book he was consistent in presenting the work of the seminar with full integrity, yet not as absolute. My expereince in modern New Testament Scholarship is that one either author's from the perspective of the Seminar, or they simply offer a traditional critique of its work. This is a must read for people who struggle with classical ideas about who Jesus is and what we know about God from this ancient peasant.

Rating:
Summary: I Had Professor Patterson as a Teacher
Review: I had professor Patterson as an instructor at Eden Seminary in St. Louis, MO. I was very impressed with this book from the first time I picked it up. The God of Jesus does a superb job of relating the most recent quest for the Historical Jesus done primarily by the Fellows of the Jesus Seminar, to a living breathing theology for church and life. If you enjoyed his book, you should try a semester in class with him. It is a very enjoyable and challenging experience. I especially appreciated that in the book he was consistent in presenting the work of the seminar with full integrity, yet not as absolute. My expereince in modern New Testament Scholarship is that one either author's from the perspective of the Seminar, or they simply offer a traditional critique of its work. This is a must read for people who struggle with classical ideas about who Jesus is and what we know about God from this ancient peasant.

Rating:
Summary: Quite good, despite its bias
Review: I have read many books on the historical Jesus, but none that impacted me more profoundly. Dr. Patterson writes with sensitivity and conscience. He explains how his own search for God compels him to pursue the historical Jesus. His chapter entitled, "Is It a Sin to be Liberal," reveals the prejudice and anger one encounters when they engage the search for Jesus of Nazareth. Stephen Patterson emerges from this book as a committed Christian. His exploration of the historical Jesus shows the social conscience of our Jesus and challenges the thoughtful reader to ask, "what am I doing to bring Jesus' dream alive in our world today." I am very thankful that Dr. Patterson took the time to share his personal quest for God.

Rating:
Summary: Deserves a wide readership
Review: Once when attending a local revival as a guest of a friend, I was confronted by the fiery preacher with the question: "Do you know the Lord?" I, somewhat taken back by his zeal, lamely offered the typical liberal response: "Well, yes and no, depends on what you mean by 'the Lord.'" I was immediately "cast into the outer darkness," where "people will weep and gnash their teeth."
After reading this book, I replay that scene. This time I boldly reply, "Yes, if this is what you mean by 'the Lord,'" thrusting a copy into his hands. However, I still think that I would end up weeping and gnashing my teeth.
As a Christian, I have a serious major flaw. I have difficulty confessing that "Jesus is Lord." In my mind that's like saying that my big bother is Lord, something that sibling rivalry prevents me from doing. You see, I don't want to be enthralled by Jesus; rather, I want to be enthralled by what enthralled Jesus. And close to heresy, I don't want to see Jesus as God; but rather, I want to see the God of Jesus. This excellent book goes a long, long way in that direction. I can't recommend it too highly. And as an added bonus, there were parts of it that actually made me laugh out loud! Read it and see. Deserves wide circulation.

Rating:
Summary: From History to Practical Theology
Review: This book enriches and expands my appreciation for the work of the Jesus Seminar. The Seminar has now completed its 15-year historical research project and published their findings-a current scholarly consensus on the "more likely" authentic words and deeds of Jesus. From this "database" individual scholars continue to reconstruct a variety of creative and compelling sketches of their glimpses of the "historical" Jesus. But what does all of this have to do with the way we understand ourselves, God, and the meaning of human existence? History is not theology. And what do either have to do with our actual lives here and now? Stephen Patterson, a member of the Seminar and Associate Professor of New Testament at Eden Theological Seminary, explores the implications of historical Jesus research both for theology and for our life and faith. In the process, and in one of the book's major contributions, he also proposes a method for how history and theology can be related without one masquerading as the other. Patterson describes the 200-year history of the quest for the historical Jesus and shows how it has always been related to the search for God. With John Dominic Crossan, Robert Funk, and Marcus Borg, he explores what Jesus meant in the 1st Century and what he means today, but his consistent focus is always on how Jesus experienced and understood God. "What sort of God would one believe in if this God were to be seen in the words and deeds of Jesus?" To this question he develops both a "theology of Jesus" and an "existential Christology." The Gospel of Jesus is the unbrokered Empire of God (an Empire as God would run it, a political metaphor which the Romans would have heard as seditious) which offers the means of life freely to all and welcomes marginalized people fully into the human community. What makes it "of God?" There is no "objective" answer to this question. As a Jew, Jesus believed in God as a basic reality running through all of life whose character is love, and his parables imaginatively expressed that way of seeing things and invited others into it. Some who knew Jesus were moved to say that in his company and at his tables they had come to know this God in a deeper and more authentic way. They then took the risk of faith to live according to this new vision. Thus, Patterson presents an "existential Christology," the decision to see in Jesus the deepest of all truths about human existence, the truth that is God, and accept the challenge that follows: what am I do in the service of Jesus? Now, as then, Christian faith involves risk, decision, and the test of action. It is "trust in the God we have come to know in the life of Jesus of Nazareth." This existential understanding of the structure of the Christian faith is paralleled in Patterson's discernment of the limits of historical work. Historical scholarship can be a reality check against speculative fantasy, but it cannot be an objective starting point for faith. History always involves imaginative reconstruction. Patterson develops a "subjective," pragmatic, communal, and interactive approach to historical theological method that will not please either fundamentalists who seek essentialist, objective, Divine "truth" in biblical texts or traditionalists who would anchor faith in the christology of the early church and/or in church tradition. His method for doing theological reflection based on historical research involves two steps: 1) "establish as much as possible the significant experiences people had of Jesus;" and 2) "examine the words and deeds of Jesus for their theological content." For Patterson, "the words and deeds of Jesus do not necessarily mean anything in themselves." Their meaning must be ventured in the imagination and tested in living. The historian speaks of rules of evidence and probable facts, and the believer uses imagination to "see and experience more than is purely self evident, beyond the rim of facts that encircles one." In Patterson, historian and believer become one; imagination is a means of doing history and of knowing God. Both history and theology remain delicately related as human acts of creative, imaginative construction.

Reviewed by Mark Rutledge United Church of Christ/Presbyterian Campus Minister at Duke University and Associate Member of the Jesus Seminar

Rating:
Summary: A fantastic Read!
Review: This highly readable work by Dr. Patterson takes one on a journey back in time to the First Century, a place in some ways so alien to our modern world that visiting it would be like landing on another planet. Dr. Patterson covers a wide range of topics: an overview of the quest for the historical Jesus, the concepts of shame and honor in first century Palestine, the radical wisdom of Jesus, a fresh look at the parables of Jesus, an analysis of the apocalyptic controversy (was Jesus preaching the end of the world?), and the meaning of the resurrection. This text is a good overview and analysis of many of the topics looked at by the Jesus Seminar and provides wonderful insights into the teachings of Jesus.