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THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE HISTORICAL JESUS
T&T Clark Studies in Systematic Theology

Edited by

Ian A. McFarland
Ivor Davidson
Philip G. Ziegler
John Webster†

Volume 41
 THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE
HISTORICAL JESUS

Historiography, Theology, and Metaphysics

Austin Stevenson
 T&T CLARK
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Title: The consciousness of the historical Jesus :
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For Katherine and Sophia
vi
 CONTENTS
Prefaceix
Abbreviations, Editions, and Translations of Works of Thomas Aquinas x
Series Abbreviations xii

INTRODUCTION 1

Part I
CONCEPTS OF BEING

Chapter 1
THE HISTORICAL JESUS 19

Chapter 2
THE METAPHYSICS OF PARTICIPATION 41

Chapter 3
THE DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION 59

Part II
CONCEPTS OF KNOWING

Chapter 4
THE INTELLIGIBILITY OF PARTICIPATED BEING 99

Chapter 5
DIVINE KNOWLEDGE: AN EXCURSUS ON MK 13:32 125

Chapter 6
ACQUIRED KNOWLEDGE 143

Chapter 7
PROPHETIC KNOWLEDGE 161
viii Contents

Chapter 8
THE BEATIFIC VISION 185

CONCLUSION: RIVAL TRADITIONS OF HISTORICAL ENQUIRY 207

Bibliography215
Index243
 PREFACE
I am grateful to the many people who made the preparation of this book not only
possible but immensely enjoyable. This project began as a doctoral dissertation at
the University of Cambridge, and my thanks go first and foremost to my doctoral
supervisor Andrew Davison. His attention, encouragement, and wisdom have
been an invaluable gift. I am also grateful to my examiners, David Fergusson and
Simon Francis Gaine, OP, as well as Ian McFarland and Catherine Pickstock, for
their rigorous and insightful engagement with my work. Special thanks go to Hans
Boersma, who suggested in 2015 that Thomas Aquinas might have something
interesting to say with regard to my questions about Christology and historical
Jesus scholarship. I have been blessed by friendships with scholars who provided
generative discussions and perceptive feedback through the course of my research.
In particular, I would like to thank Jesse and Iane Grenz, Alexander Abecina,
Roger Revell, Jonathan Platter, Matthew Fell, Jon Thompson, Brian Dant, Daniel
De Haan, Barnabas and Silvianne Aspray, Malcolm Guite, and Craig Blomberg.
Thanks also to Seth Heringer and Richard Cross for correspondence about the
project. Aaron Weber did an excellent job with the index.
This research benefited from those who offered substantial engagement at
various conferences and seminars at the University of Cambridge, University
of Oxford, University of Warwick, Nicolaus Copernicus University (Poland),
the Angelicum (Rome), and Ave Maria University (Florida) where I originally
presented portions of what follows. Chapters 1, 3, and 5 contain material from
previously published papers. I am grateful to those who gave the appropriate
permissions to make use of them.1
Most of all, my thanks go to my wife Katherine whose tireless work, joyful spirit,
and inquisitive disposition have enriched both my life and scholarship beyond
measure. Far from tolerating my research and academic pursuits, she has always
shared my vision for their intrinsic and extrinsic value, motivating me and serving
as a perceptive dialogue partner along the way. This is dedicated to her and our
daughter Sophia, who was born two days after the completion of the first full draft.

1. “The Self-Understanding of Jesus,” 291–307, by permission of Cambridge University

Press; “The Unity of Christ and the Historical Jesus,” 851–64, by permission of Wiley;
“ ‘Concerning that Day and Hour’,” 234–54, by permission of Penn State University Press.
 ABBREVIATIONS, EDITIONS, AND TRANSLATIONS OF
WORKS OF THOMAS AQUINAS
Latin texts are taken from the following editions: Leonine Edition (Opera Omnia.
Iussu Leonis XIII, Rome: Vatican Polyglot Press, 1882–); Parma Edition (Opera
Omnia, 25 vols, Parma: Fiaccadori, 1852–73); Marietti Edition (Turin: Marietti,
1953). Dating of Aquinas’ works follows that of Gilles Emery in the appendix to
Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1. Translated by Robert Royal
(Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 330–61, 424–38.
Where no reference is given to the part of the article cited, it is to the main body
or response.

Comp. Theol. Compendium Theologiae (c. 1265). Leonine edition, vol. 42, 1979.
English Translation [“ET”]: Compendium of Theology. Translated
by Richard Regan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Contra errores Graec. Contra errores Graecorum ad Urbanum papam (1263). Leonine
edition, vol. 40, 1969.
De malo Quaestiones Disputatae de malo (c. 1269–71). Leonine edition, vol.
23, 1982.
De Pot. Quaestiones Disputatae de potentia (1266). In Quaestiones
Disputatae, vol. 2. Marietti edition, 1949. ET: On the Power of God.
3 vols. Translated by Laurence Shapcote. Eugene, OR: Wipf and
Stock, 2004.
De Prin. Nat. De Principiis Naturae (1252–6). Leonine edition, vol. 43, 1976. ET:
On the Principles of Nature to Brother Sylvester. Translated by R. A.
Kocourek. St Paul: North Central Publishing, 1956.
De rationibus fidei De rationibus fidei ad Cantorem Antiochenum (c. 1266). Leonine
edition, vol. 40, 1969.
De Spir. Quaestiones disputata “De spiritualibus creaturis” (1267–8). Leonine
edition, vol. 24, no. 2, 2000. ET: Saint Thomas Aquinas, On Spiritual
Creatures. Translated by M. C. Fitzpatrick and J. J. Wellmuth.
Milwaukee, 1949.
De sub. Separatis De substantiis separatis (1272–3). Leonine edition, vol. 40, 1968.
ET: Treatise on Separate Substances. Translated by F. J. Lescoe. West
Hartford, CT: St. Joseph’s College, 1959.
De unione verbi Quaestio disputata “De unione Verbi incarnati” (1272). Parma
edition, vol. 8. ET: Thomas Aquinas, De unione Verbi incarnati.
Translated by Roger W. Nutt. Dallas Medieval Texts and
Translations, 21. Leuven: Peeters, 2015.
 Abbreviations xi

De ver. Quaestiones Disputate De Veritate (1256–9). Leonine edition,

vol. 22, nos. 1–3, 1970–6. ET: Saint Thomas, On Truth. 3 vols.
Translated by R. W. Mulligan, J. V. McGlynn, and R. W. Schmidt.
Chicago, 1952–4.
De virt. Quaestiones Disputatae De virtutibus (1272). Marietti edition, 1953.
ET: Thomas Aquinas: Disputed Questions on the Virtues. Edited
and translated by E. M. Atkins and Thomas Williams. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005.
In Boeth. De Trin. Super Boethium De trinitate (1257–9). Leonine edition, vol. 50,
1992. ET: The Trinity and the Unicity of the Intellect. Translated by
Rose E. Brennan. St. Louis: Herder, 1946.
In De anima Sententia super De anima (1268). Leonine edition, vol. 45, 1984.
ET: Commentary on Aristotle’s De anima. Translated by Robert C.
Pasnau. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999.
In De Div. Nom. In librum Beati Dionysii De divinis nominibus exposition (c. 1261–
8). Marietti edition, 1950.
In de hebd. In librum Boethii De hebdomadibus expositio (after 1259). Marietti
edition, 1954. ET: The Exposition of the “On the Hebdomads” of
Boethius. Translated by Janice L. Schultz and Edward A. Synan.
Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2001.
In Epist. ad Hebr. Super Epistolam ad Hebraeos Lectura (c. 1265–73), in Super
Epistolas S. Pauli Lectura, vol. 2, edited by R. Cai, Turin: Marietti,
1953. Translated by F. R. Larcher. Edited by J. Mortensen and E.
Alarcón. Lander, WY: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred
Doctrine, 2012. Lander, WY: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of
Sacred Doctrine, 2012.
In Epist. ad Phil. Super Epistolam ad Philippenses Lectura (c. 1265–73), in Super
Epistolas S. Pauli Lectura, vol. 2, edited by R. Cai, Turin and Rome:
Marietti, 1953. Translated by F. R. Larcher. Edited by J. Mortensen
and E. Alarcón. Lander, WY: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of
Sacred Doctrine, 2012.
In I/II Epist. ad Tim Super Primum/Secundam Epistolam ad Timotheum Lectura (c.
1265–73), in Super Epistolas S. Pauli Lectura vol. 2, edited by R.
Cai, Turin and Rome: Marietti, 1953. Translated by F. R. Larcher.
Edited by J. Mortensen and E. Alarcón. Lander, WY: The Aquinas
Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2012.
In Epist. ad Rom. Super Epistolam ad Romanos Lectura (1272–3), in Super Epistolas
S. Pauli Lectura, vol. 1, edited by R. Cai, Turin and Rome: Marietti,
1953. Translated by F. R. Larcher. Edited by J. Mortensen and E.
Alarcón. Lander, WY: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred
Doctrine, 2012.
In I/II Epist. ad Cor. Super Primum/Secundum Epistolam ad Corinthios Lectura (c.
1265–73), in Super Epistolas S. Pauli Lectura, vol. 1, edited by R.
Cai, Turin and Rome: Marietti, 1953. Translated by F. R. Larcher,
B. Mortensen, and D. Keating. Edited by J. Mortensen and E.
xii Abbreviations

Alarcón. Lander, WY: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred
Doctrine, 2012.
In Ioan. Super Evangelium S. Ioannis Lectura (1272). Marietti edition,
1952. ET: Commentary on the Gospel of John. Translated by Fabian
Larcher and James A. Weisheipl. 3 vols. Washington, DC: Catholic
University of America Press, 2010.
In Iob Expositio super Iob ad litteram (1261–5). Leonine Edition, vol. 26,
1965. Translated by Brian Thomas Becket Mullady and the Aquinas
Institute. Lander, WY (E-text, 2018). Available online at https://
aqui​nas.cc/la/en/~Job
In Matt. Super Evangelium S. Matthaei Lectura (1270). Marietti edition,
1951. ET: Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew. Edited by J.
Mortensen and E. Alarcón. Translated by Jeremy Holmes and Beth
Mortensen. Lander, WY: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of
Sacred Doctrine, 2013.
In Metaph. In duodecim Libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis Expositio (c. 1272).
Marietti edition, 1950. ET: Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics.
Translated by John P. Rowan. Notre Dame, IN: Dumb Ox Books,
1995.
In Sent. Scriptum super libros Sententiarum (1252–6). Parma edition, vols
6–7.
QD De anima Quaestiones Disputate de anima (1266–7). Leonine edition, vol.
24, no. 1, 1996. ET: The Soul: Disputed Questions on De Anima.
Translated by John Patrick Rowan. St. Louis: B. Herder, 1949.
Quodlibet Quaestiones de Quolibet (c. 1252–6 and 1268–72). Leonine edition,
vol. 25, nos. 1–2, 1996.
ScG Summa Contra Gentiles (1260–5). Leonine edition, vols 13–15,
1918–30. Translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province.
London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, 1934.
ST Summa Theologiae (1268–73). Leonine edition, vols 4–12, 1888–
1906. Translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province.
London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, 1924.
Super De causis Super Librum De causis expositio (1272). Parma edition, vol. 21. ET:
Commentary on the Book of Causes. Translated by Charles R. Hess,
Richard C. Taylor, and Vincent A. Guagliardo. Washington, DC:
Catholic University of America Press, 1996.

Series Abbreviations

CCSL Corpus Christianorum Series Latina

NICNT New International Commentary on the New Testament
NPNF Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers
PG Patrologia Graeca
PL Patrologia Latina
 I N T R O DU C T IO N

Modern historical consciousness has transformed academic thinking about

theology and religion, and its significance and value cannot be overstated. And
yet, it has also been a notable factor in the rise of religious fundamentalism.1
When applied to religious traditions, critical history often imposes metaphysical
assumptions that clash with fundamental elements of those traditions. As a result,
many religious communities have rejected critical historiography in an effort to
safeguard their traditions from its skepticism and naturalism. However, this need
not be the case. Developing an approach that ameliorates these tendencies would
both strengthen our grasp of history and better allow religious communities to
engage receptively with critical historiography. Something similar stands behind
the perennial enmity between historical biblical scholarship and theology. The two
disciplines have not only approached Scripture with different aims and methods,
but they have also held fundamentally different assumptions about reality. If, as
I will claim, the antipathy between theology and history is not a clash between
dogmatism and objectivity, but rather a conflict between theistic ontology
and metaphysical naturalism, then this division could be eased through the
development of a critical approach to history that assumes within its foundations a
nonnaturalistic construal of reality. A key element of the conflicts between theology
and historical criticism is ongoing disagreement about how those conflicts are to
be characterized. It is not simply that each advances views that the other rejects,
but that they do not agree on the standards by which a position might be advanced
or refuted. As such, to discuss their ongoing conflict is unavoidably to participate
in it. In doing so, I do not enter as a neutral party, and a key part of my claim in
what follows is that it could not be otherwise.
In this book, I undertake a theological and philosophical exploration of the
historical study of Jesus. I consider the philosophical conditions of the discipline
in a modern academic context, the metaphysical constraints built into the
methods employed, and the ways in which particular ideological aims in the
modern period have impacted what can and cannot be said about Jesus from a
historical perspective. The horizon concern of this study is the question of what
counts as a historical perspective when it comes to Jesus and why. I argue that

1. See, e.g., Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 150.

2 The Consciousness of the Historical Jesus

classical Christology and historical Jesus scholarship should be characterized as

rival traditions of historical enquiry. Establishing this thesis involves two primary
tasks. The first is to show that the methods and conclusions of historical Jesus
scholarship are impacted in nontrivial ways by implicit metaphysical assumptions
that are neither neutral nor adequately defended. Therefore, it should not be
treated as a value-neutral or scientific discipline whose function is to release us
from the ideological strictures of “tradition” and reveal to us what really happened
in the past. Historical Jesus scholarship, despite its great diversity, should instead
be characterized as a tradition, with strict, if implicit, metaphysical and even
doctrinal commitments that have a notable impact on what can and cannot be
said about the past. Here I am using “tradition” in the sense employed by Alasdair
MacIntyre:

A tradition is an argument extended through time in which certain fundamental

agreements are defined and redefined in terms of two kinds of conflict: those
with critics and enemies external to the tradition who reject all or at least key
parts of those fundamental agreements, and those internal, interpretative debates
through which the meaning and rationale of the fundamental agreements come
to be expressed and by whose progress a tradition is constituted.2

MacIntyre notes that “to appeal to tradition is to insist that we cannot

adequately identify either our own commitments or those of others in the
argumentative conflicts of the present except by situating them within those
histories which made them what they have now become.”3 I take it that this is
why narrating the history of historical Jesus scholarship plays such a prominent
role in books on the historical Jesus. To say that historical Jesus scholarship is
a tradition, in this sense, is also to say that the views it advances are not simply
the “results” of a scientific method but are in part constructed by and received
from and within a history of thought and argumentation, and that members of
that tradition are inducted into modes of reasoning that include basic beliefs
about reality that make sense in light of that history. In failing to recognize
their tradition as a tradition, historical Jesus scholars are liable to be blinded
to this fact. That certain kinds of views advanced by historical Jesus scholars
exhibit great diversity is not surprising, given the centrality of internal conflict
to this concept of tradition. To be part of a tradition in this sense is not to be
homogeneous, but to share fundamental agreements about a common task such
that the degree and type of ideological diversity will be constrained in important
ways by the nature of the ongoing argument that constitutes the tradition. In
what follows, I focus especially on one area of agreement that constitutes this
tradition: a particular view about the nature of and limits to human knowledge
and self-understanding.

2. MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, 12.

3. Ibid., 13.
 Introduction 3

The second task is to establish that the classical Christological tradition, here
represented by Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–74), should be considered a legitimate
tradition of historical enquiry. To do this, I show that Aquinas’ Christology
coherently upholds the historical and fully human existence of Jesus in a way that
both vindicates and necessitates critical historical research, and I explore the ways
in which his rival metaphysical claims impact the task of thinking about Jesus as a
historical figure. By showing the theological criticisms of historical Jesus scholarship
to be unjustified, I demonstrate that this Christological tradition need not adopt the
metaphysical or theological views of historical Jesus scholarship in order to adapt
and develop critical historical methods and undertake genuine historical research.
There is much more scope for this tradition to employ critical historical methods
than it has done thus far, and I hope that my argument will encourage and enable it
to do so. This does not undermine its legitimacy as a tradition of historical enquiry,
but rather points to its need to expand and develop the practices that constitute the
ongoing enquiries and conversations of which it is constituted.
The critical perspective represented by this study might be summarized
as follows. I will argue that the discipline of historical Jesus studies has, often
unwittingly, served to establish an Ebionite Christology under the guise of
critical history.4 Of course, I am not the first to raise issues about this field of
study. Criticisms of historical Jesus scholarship have been published regularly for
decades.5 In one way or another, each of these critics is an heir of Martin Kähler,
who maintained that “the Jesus of the ‘Life-of-Jesus movement’ is merely a modern
example of human creativity, and not an iota better than the notorious dogmatic
Christ of Byzantine Christology.”6 He had little patience for either approach and,
eschewing both critical history and conciliar Christology, he focused instead on
the kerygmatic preaching of the risen Christ.7 Despite the shortcomings of his

4. Ebionitism refers to the Christological tendency to reject the divine nature of Christ,
which can issue in a purely human conception of Jesus or some form of adoptionism. In what
follows, I use heresiological terms in a synchronic or ahistorical manner. It is important to
recognize the difficulties surrounding historical appellations of heresy to particular groups
of Christians. The terms Ebionitism, Arianism, adoptionism, docetism, monophysitism,
Eutychianism, monothelitism, and Nestorianism are the widely accepted terms to refer to
theological conceptions of Christ that do not cohere with conciliar orthodoxy, and their use
should not necessarily be taken as a condemnation of the particular Christian individuals
or communities historically associated with them.
5. E.g., Kähler, The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ; Schweitzer,
Von Reimarus Zu Wrede (1906). ET: The Quest of the Historical Jesus; Johnson, The Real
Jesus; Adams, The Reality of God and Historical Method; Heringer, Uniting History and
Theology; Rowlands, “The Metaphysics of Historical Jesus Research.”
6. Kähler, The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ.
7. For Kähler, the value of Jesus’ life “lies in the church that has been going throughout
the centuries, in the confessing word and life of the brothers, in one’s own powerful faith”
(ibid., 25–6).
4 The Consciousness of the Historical Jesus

constructive proposal, Kähler’s critique is evocative, and its full force has yet to be
worked out in sufficient detail. It is still underappreciated just how far the Jesus of
modern historiography is the product of scholarly imagination, rather than simply
an objective or scientific reconstruction of the past.8 In particular, the metaphysical
presuppositions that contemporary historiography has retained from its roots in
nineteenth-century German historicism remain largely uninterrogated, and they
play an outsized role in the conclusions of the discipline.9
Another way of describing historical Jesus scholarship is to say that it is an
attempt to understand and explain Jesus within conceptual frameworks deliberately
at odds with Christian theology: to tell a different story and provide an alternative
interpretation of Jesus’ life, identity, purpose, and significance.10 Scholars have
invested considerable rhetorical effort into connecting these aims with “history,”
which has done much to obscure the fact that Christian theology itself possesses
a powerful set of resources for thinking about Jesus as a historical figure. As a
result, many today are unaware that the Christian tradition is deeply interested
in historical questions relating to Jesus’ life and teaching, and that its theological
frameworks are not, in themselves, antithetical to that task. Just because critical
historians became hostile toward classical Christology (as they understood it), that
does not mean that classical Christology is inimical to the task of critical history.11
The preponderance of what follows is not, however, deflationary. While critiques
of Jesus scholarship abound, there has been considerably less constructive work
done to open an alternative historiographical path forward. Theologians frequently
reject critical historiography altogether, rather than attempting to resituate
historical methodology within a broader theological or metaphysical framework.
Meanwhile, Christian historians have often attempted to build a new theology out
of the “results” of critical history, assuming that the shortcomings of the discipline
arise from a lack of theological will, rather than fundamental methodological

8. I am using “historiography” to refer to the practice of writing about the past and the
discourse it produces. I refer to methodological questions relating to historiography with
the term “historical method” and deeper philosophical questions relating to the nature of
the historical task with the term “philosophy of history.”
9. See esp. Beiser, The German Historicist Tradition; Howard, Religion and the Rise of
Historicism; Howard, Protestant Theology and the Making of the Modern German University;
Zachhuber, Theology as Science in Nineteenth-Century Germany. In what follows I am
not making a genealogical argument about the various direct and indirect philosophical
influences on modern historicism. I am interested in the theological and metaphysical
presuppositions that are reflexively deployed or tacitly assumed by contemporary historians.
Thus, rather than providing a detailed diachronic study of the discipline, I provide a
synchronic engagement with various historians on these issues.
10. See Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 17. Henceforth JVG.
11. Not only does the classical Christological tradition evidence a keen interest in
history, the Christological principles themselves, adopted in a contemporary context, direct
us toward, rather than away from, critical historical investigation.
 Introduction 5

problems. Wanting in all this is sustained reflection on the implications of a

nonnaturalistic construal of reality for the historical task. Within this reflection, a
further subset of questions arises: what are the implications of classical Christology
for thinking about Jesus as a historical figure? What resources do we possess within
the Christian tradition for illuminating the historical figure of Jesus, and what
space does the doctrine of Christ leave—or, rather, open up—for Christians to
engage with history? It is my contention that the classical Christological tradition
contains the conceptual tools to expand the horizon of possibilities available to
historical Jesus scholarship in a way that will augment their access to the historical
figure of Jesus. Chalcedonian Christology should make us more interested in
history, not less. At the same time, adopting historical methodology into a theistic
metaphysical framework will have important implications for the nature and
methods of the discipline.

Theological Interpretation

This project builds upon an ongoing conversation regarding theological

interpretation of Scripture. In his book Reading the Bible Theologically, Darren
Sarisky argues that “theological reading does not exist in contradistinction to a
historically grounded approach to reading, but rather to one that is driven by
metaphysical naturalism.”12 He demonstrates the impact of a theological construal
of reality on the process of biblical interpretation, focusing on the reader, the text,
and the process of interpretation and engaging questions of interpretation from
the vantage of what he calls “theological ontology.” Opposing any dualism between
doctrine and history, he seeks to provide an account of doctrine as a description
of reality that makes a difference for practices of interpretation. Sarisky’s book is
essential reading for anyone interested in theological interpretation of Scripture,
and his hermeneutical arguments are sharp and compelling. One shortcoming
of the work, however, is the way in which the “results” of historical criticism
seem to emerge unscathed from the hermeneutical gauntlet that he constructs. If
theological reading is opposed not to historical reading, but rather to metaphysical
naturalism, then that must mean that a theological construal of reality should be
able to deliver a historical reading driven instead by theological ontology. In what
follows, I extend Sarisky’s argument to consider how a nonnaturalistic construal
of reality will impact not only a theological approach to Scripture that makes
judicious use of historical criticism but also the process of historical criticism itself.
Seth Heringer has pointed out the value of such an approach. In his book,
Uniting History and Theology: A Theological Critique of the Historical Method, he
notes that “theological interpretation is normally done on Scripture, not history.”13

12. Sarisky, Reading the Bible Theologically, 72.

13. This originated as his PhD dissertation from Fuller Theological Seminary in 2016,
titled “Worlds Colliding: A Theological Critique of the Historical Method.” Citations are
from the dissertation. Quotation from “Worlds Colliding,” 188.
6 The Consciousness of the Historical Jesus

He considers this to be a mistake that stems from the acceptance of a problematic

historical method. Heringer outlines the ways in which historicism—stemming
especially from Ernst Troeltsch and Leopold von Ranke—separated history and
theology, and how this division was solidified in historical study of the New
Testament.14 He critiques the attempts of theologians such as Martin Kähler,
Wolfhart Pannenberg, and N. T. Wright to overcome this division, and outlines
how constructivist historical theorists such as Arthur Danto, Roland Barthes,
Hayden White, and Frank Ankersmit have called this tradition of historiography
into question.15 “History,” notes Heringer, “is the combination of events we live
and the stories we tell about them.”16 Modern historical method assumes that both
events and narratives exist outside the mind of the historian and determine how
historiography should be written. Postmodern thinkers, however, insist that only
events exist in the past, though they are significantly shaped by the mind, and that
historical narratives are entirely constructed by historians. These latter thinkers
have made a convincing case that the Rankean tradition of historicism fails in its
foundation (the removal of the self in service of “objectivity”),17 means (to relate
the narrative of history “as it really was”), and end (the “Ideal Chronicle” with no
biases or perspectives added).18 Heringer suggests that, in spite of these damning
criticisms, the Rankean approach remains prevalent in modern biblical studies
“because ignoring these problems is easier than trying to overcome them.”19 He

14. Heringer also shows how the application of this method in biblical studies has
largely followed a misreading of German historicism that “focuses only on its scientific and
naturalistic aspects, to the detriment of its idealism and aesthetic concerns” (ibid., 244).
15.

Arthur C. Danto aids the critique of the historical method by showing that even
the perfect recitation of facts is not enough for a work to be history. Roland
Barthes furthers the critique by unmasking the “reality effect” of the historical
method and undermining its claim to be speaking directly about reality. Hayden
White continues this challenge by looking at the tropes historians use to construct
history. The precognitive understandings we use to figure the world, he argues,
are more important than historical events. Frank Ankersmit changes White’s
discussion of narratives to one of representations. By doing so, he tries to awaken
historians to the importance of experience in historical theory (ibid., 244).

16. Ibid., viii.

17. “Objectivity” is a term used to ameliorate the exercise of power that excludes those
who do not share the beliefs, biases, and practices of those who determine what it is
acceptable to believe in a given community. In an important sense, those seeking objective
history are doing something similar to those seeking theological history, for both are
making epistemological and ontological claims about the world. Each offers a vision that is
incompatible with the other” (ibid., 189).
18. Ibid., 186.
19. Ibid.
 Introduction 7

urges Christian historians to abandon this method and follow theorists like White
and Ankersmit who have revealed the subjective, constructed nature of history in
a way that creates space for a distinctively Christian approach.
Heringer has ably demonstrated the metaphysical determinism of modern
historicism, and the ways in which this historical method dogmatically militates
against historical narratives that do not fit its preconceived notions about reality.
Insofar as this is the case, modern historical method has failed as “a public space
from which all historians can work together.”20 While I agree with Heringer’s
assessment on this score, I remain unconvinced that constructivism is the best path
forward. These reader-response theories may open a promising space for “boldly
Christian history,” but they also remove the possibility that historic Christian texts
can speak for themselves with any real authority.21 Having extricated Christian
historians from the metaphysical entailments of enlightenment historicism, these
proposals trap them anew in the confines of relativism, putting them at odds with
the core epistemic convictions of the Christian tradition. As we will see in Chapter
4, Aquinas’ epistemic claims provide a stronger basis for understanding how
historical reality presses against us from the outside. Furthermore, Thomas insists
on the possibility of rational argumentation between these divergent metaphysical
frameworks, offering hope for constructive dialogue about the philosophical
conceptions that prove decisive for our understanding of the past.
Just before I completed this project, Jonathan Rowlands defended a PhD thesis
at the University of Nottingham titled “The Metaphysics of Historical Jesus
Research: An Argument for Increasing the Plurality of Metaphysical Frameworks
within Historical Jesus Research.”22 Rowlands is sensitive to the impact of what he
calls “secular metaphysics” on contemporary historiography, and he argues that “a
genuine plurality of metaphysical frameworks for undertaking historiographical
work is not only desirable, but encouraged by the ideals of academia itself.”23 I concur
with this assessment in part, though I argue for it on rather different grounds.
I would suggest that a mere plurality of frameworks is not the goal, certainly not at
the level of individual scholars, but rather an expansion of disciplinary boundaries
to make space for diverse traditions of historical enquiry. This is not so much
about the personal preferences and beliefs we each bring with us to the historical
task, but about the history of argumentative conflicts and basic assumptions that
give substance to how the historical task is understood and pursued. The upshot
of Rowlands’ argument is that someone’s historiography is secular if they do not
let belief in the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection explicitly drive their historical
scholarship. Despite the lengthy exercise of definition, it seems that “metaphysics”
quickly comes to mean “doctrine.” Paradoxically, he criticizes the critical realism
of Bernard Lonergan as if it were the source of these problems for historians like

20. Ibid., 18.

21. Ibid., 229.
22. Now published as The Metaphysics of Historical Jesus Research.
23. Rowlands, “Metaphysics of Historical Jesus,” 26.
8 The Consciousness of the Historical Jesus

N. T. Wright, whereas it seems to me that it is in part the failure of Wright and

others to understand Lonergan that leads to methodological shortcomings.24 In
what follows, I argue instead that metaphysical presuppositions should be argued
for rationally, and their claim to influence historical method stands on different
grounds from theology proper. A historian can be faulted for assuming that
metaphysical naturalism is an objective stance from which to do history, but they
cannot be faulted in the same way for refusing to place belief in Jesus’ resurrection
at the foundation of their method.25

Classical Christology

Historical Jesus scholars have frequently assumed that theologians are concerned
with attaching supernatural predicates to the human person of Jesus in an attempt
to paint him as a divine figure, thereby placing him safely out of reach of historical
scholarship and insulating him from his first-century cultural setting. While there
is no doubt that much mischief has been managed in the name of “Christology,”
and that some theologians have effectively dehistoricized Jesus in an attempt to
universalize his significance for humanity,26 the classical Christological tradition,
grounded in the first seven ecumenical councils—Nicaea I (325), Constantinople
I (381), Ephesus (431), Chalcedon (451), Constantinople II (553), Constantinople
III (680–1), and Nicaea II (787)—has very different aims.27 This ancient tradition
was concerned to develop a theological vocabulary that would allow them to speak
of the personal active presence of God within the historical human life of Jesus of
Nazareth. The concern that runs through the center of this tradition is the need to

24. See Losch, “Wright’s Version of Critical Realism,” 101–14; Wilkins, Before Truth.
25. This is not to deny that there is an important complexity here, which different
theologians will understand differently. For instance, I do not think that a historian can
be faulted for letting their belief in the resurrection impact their historical method—as if
a distinctly nonreligious stance is more “historical.” Indeed, when theologians engage in
historical reflection, they should assume this belief within their methods. But they should
also allow for an open and genuine space for the work of historians who do not believe in
the resurrection, without allowing their metaphysical naturalism to control the terms of the
conversation. Kavin Rowe offers an evocative discussion of this issue in One True Life. This
also has important interreligious implications, as nonnaturalistic historiography can be just
as significant for Muslim and Jewish thought.
26. This tendency was widespread during the enlightenment, and we might think of the
Jesus of Kant or Hegel as prominent examples.
27. I use the terms “classical Christology” and “Chalcedonian Christology”
interchangeably to refer to this tradition. I do not intend by the use of these terms to
criticize ancient non-Chalcedonian Christian traditions, but to distinguish this dominant
strand of theological reflection from contemporary streams of thought that seek to depart
anew from historic Christian approaches to Christology.
 Introduction 9

affirm the integrally finite historical human existence of Jesus and to find ways of
speaking about his personal identity that attribute his words and actions wholly to
God. The theological conundrum was to uphold the unity of the person of Christ
in a way that establishes and perfects the integral difference of his humanity.28 This
is no easy task. As Rowan Williams writes:

To speak of God’s action in Jesus is to claim not merely that God brings about
a particular historical result by means of natural agency—as a writer of Hebrew
Scripture might claim is happening when King David defeats the Philistines—
but that some result that is not just another episode in history is brought about
through the historical doings of finite agency … So when—as people who
believe that the world has changed comprehensively because of him—we look
for adequate language to tell the truth about Jesus, we shall need a model for the
union of divine and human action in Christ that sees Christ as the historical and
bodily location of unlimited active freedom, the place where God is active with
an intensity that is nowhere else to be found.29

Williams finds vital resources for this theological task in the thought of Thomas
Aquinas (1224–75), whose Christology he considers “a watershed in the doctrinal
story.”30 While Williams refrains from touting Aquinas’ approach as a perfect and
timeless statement of the doctrine of Christ, he does suggest that it is “the point
at which the broadest range of theoretical questions was brought into view and a
robust and consistent vocabulary developed for integrating these questions. So
often in this area of theology, later puzzles and apparent dead ends in doctrinal
reflection can be transformed by a better understanding of what we discover
that Aquinas has already discussed.”31 The breadth and consistency of Aquinas’
approach make him an ideal interlocutor in this area.

28. Here I follow Riches and Grillmeier in seeing Chalcedon not as a developmental
milestone in the church’s theology or a compromise document seeking to reconcile
conflicting opinions, as it is commonly understood in contemporary scholarship, but as a
radical return to the biblical and Nicene affirmation of the “one Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor.
8:6). It is a reaffirmation, in the face of theological innovation, of the early confessions of
the Christian faith.

The dogma of Chalcedon must always be taken against the background of

scripture and the whole patristic tradition … Few councils have been so rooted
in tradition as the Council of Chalcedon. The dogma of Chalcedon is ancient
tradition in a formula corresponding to the needs of the hour. So we cannot say
that the Chalcedonian Definition marks a great turning point in the Christological
belief of the early church (Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, 550).

See Riches, Ecce Homo, 58–63, esp. 61n21.

29. Williams, Christ the Heart of Creation, 5.
30. Ibid., 7.
31. Ibid.
10 The Consciousness of the Historical Jesus

Beyond this, there are three elements in particular that make Aquinas well
suited for this study. First, Aquinas is widely recognized as one of the most
adept and nuanced philosophers in the Christian tradition, and his synthesis of
metaphysics and theology remains a high point of Christian reflection on God
and all things as they relate to God.32 Because of the centrality of metaphysics in
this study, Aquinas was a clear choice of dialogue partner. In addition, Aquinas’
Aristotelian philosophical anthropology and cognitive psychology have gained
significant scholarly attention in recent years, and they provide a robust alternative
to contemporary approaches that, as we will see, cause significant problems for
both Christology and historiography. Second, I consider Aquinas’ Christology
to represent the final flowering of the patristic Christological tradition.33 He is
rigorously faithful to the concerns and logic of the Christological councils, and,
as the first Western scholastic theologian known to have quoted directly from the
conciliar documents of Ephesus, Chalcedon, and Constantinople II and III, he was
uniquely versed in the history of the patristic debates and the relevant texts that
stand in the background of those conciliar decisions.34 Unlike many theologians
soon after his time and into our own, Aquinas did not abandon the patristic
approach in an attempt to forge an alternative Christological paradigm. As a
result, he provides us with an opportunity to engage critically with a fully formed
Chalcedonian Christology and ask detailed questions about the implications of
such an approach for thinking about Jesus as a historical figure. Finally, Aquinas
offers what is arguably the most detailed and compelling treatment of the doctrine
of Jesus’ knowledge in the Christian tradition. In doing so, he provides important
resources for connecting Christology directly to historiographical issues such as
intention, motivation, and self-understanding.
I am not concerned to establish Aquinas’ approach as the only possible
nonnaturalistic alternative or to argue that a Thomistic metaphysic is necessary in
principle to uphold orthodox Christology. It is my hope to encourage historians
and theologians from a variety of confessional and philosophical backgrounds
to engage critically with metaphysical questions in relation to history, and one
need not agree with Aquinas in detail to acknowledge the significance of the
philosophical and theological questions raised herein. Nonetheless, it is my
conviction that projects like this one are best done in conversation with specific
traditions of theological reflection. I hope to show the value of Aquinas’ thought in
relation to these issues to commend him to those engaged in this discussion. I am
under no illusion that by outlining what I see to be the reasons for the ongoing
conflict between different traditions of reasoning about the historical Jesus, and

32. ST I.1.7.
33. As Andrew Louth puts it, “it makes a good deal of sense to see the original unity of
the Patristic vision not collapsing with the rise of scholasticism, but finding there its final
flowering. St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure, in different ways, can be seen to bear
witness to this. Such is the view of Henri de Lubac” (Louth, Discerning the Mystery, 6).
34. Riches, Ecce Homo, 16. See Barnes, Christ’s Two Wills in Scholastic Thought, 113–17.
 Introduction 11

by contending for one point of view among them, I will be able to secure general
agreement. My intention is rather to transform our disagreements into something
more constructive.
As the title of this book implies, the primary focus is on the mental life of Christ.
For many historical Jesus scholars, especially those of the so-called “third quest,”
questions of identity, intention, and motivation stand at the core of their project.
The central aim is to reconstruct who Jesus thought he was, what he intended
to accomplish through his actions, and what motivated him to undertake them.
Therefore, knowledge is not one of various relevant issues that could equally have
been chosen as the focus of this study, but the central guiding issue that determines
the shape of the discipline more than any other. It is here, in particular, that the
charge of naturalism is most focused. Darren Sarisky takes Benedict de Spinoza
(1632–77) as an important example of a historically grounded approach to biblical
interpretation that is driven by metaphysical naturalism. He writes that:

Naturalism refers to an ontology in which what exists is a single substance.

As Jonathan Israel explains, this entails “conflating body and mind into one,
reducing God and nature to the same thing, excluding all miracles and spirits
separate from bodies, and invoking reason as the sole guide in human life,
jettisoning tradition.”35

Spinoza was aware of the close connection between metaphysics and biblical
interpretation, and he explicitly advanced a naturalistic metaphysic for the
purpose of transforming biblical scholarship into an empirical undertaking that
serves political ends.36 Spinoza’s achievement laid the foundations for higher
biblical criticism which, as we will see, has retained many of the same naturalistic
assumptions. And yet, as Sarisky argues, “naturalism is one way to underline the
value of historical consciousness, but it is by no means the only way.”37 My primary
concern is to show that when it comes to issues of interiority and knowledge,
naturalistic assumptions have been retained by historical Jesus scholars of
otherwise diverse theological and philosophical persuasion. In arguing this, I am
not suggesting that the personal beliefs of these scholars are naturalistic, nor am
I claiming that they hold to a coherent or explicit naturalistic metaphysic that can

35. Sarisky, Reading the Bible Theologically, 163. Quoting Israel, A Revolution of the
Mind, 242, 245.
36. For further discussion, see also Boersma, Scripture as Real Presence, 7–9. Richard
H. Popkin maintains that this is Spinoza’s main contribution to history (“Spinoza and Bible
Scholarship,” 404).
37. Sarisky, Reading the Bible Theologically, 171. In what follows, I am not concerned to
defeat naturalism, but to show that it is not necessary to do genuine history, and that it is
not neutral, which means that historians are not justified in simply assuming it as part of
their method.
12 The Consciousness of the Historical Jesus

be reconstructed in detail.38 For this reason, naturalism is an intentionally broad

concept in this book, just as it is in contemporary philosophy more broadly.39 It
does not look the same for every historian, and it is not necessarily to be found
intact as a comprehensive framework. Rather, it shows up as an assortment of
assumptions in various places with more or less consistency.40
It is no surprise that the mind of Christ is a similarly prominent topic within
the discipline of theology. However, in the twentieth century, many theologians
abandoned the doctrine of two natures to focus on Jesus’ consciousness instead
of ontology.41 Often, they were driven to do so as a result of the supposed
results of historical Jesus scholarship.42 I am critical of this approach, and much
of what follows is an argument for the reordering of these emphases into an
integrated doctrinal whole. This is for two reasons. First, as Thomas Joseph
White comments, “in the very structure of personal being, ontology is more
fundamental than consciousness. Self-awareness is only one dimension of human
being, and ultimately needs to be explained in terms of the latter.”43 As we will see
in Chapter 3, the filial consciousness of Jesus must be grounded in the ontology

38. Philosophers frequently distinguish between metaphysical naturalism—the denial

of the existence of supernatural entities—and methodological naturalism—the refusal
to appeal to supernatural entities to explain the phenomena in question. This is useful
insofar as it illustrates the possibility of employing naturalistic methods without holding
naturalistic beliefs, and it is the latter (“methodological naturalism”) that is in view in what
follows. It is potentially misleading, however, given that methodological naturalism is still a
metaphysical issue. See, e.g., Draper, “God, Science, and Naturalism,” 272–303.
39. “The term “naturalism” has no very precise meaning in contemporary philosophy.
Its current usage derives from debates in America in the first half of the last century. These
philosophers aimed to ally philosophy more closely with science. They urged that reality
is exhausted by nature, containing nothing “supernatural,” and that the scientific method
should be used to investigate all areas of reality, including the “human spirit” (Papineau,
“Naturalism”). See also Kim, “The American Origins of Philosophical Naturalism,” 83–98.
40. Unearthing the implicit metaphysics of historical Jesus scholarship is a complex
task, and it would be a mistake to pin it down with undue precision. I am interested in
the fact that, despite endless differences, these scholars share the same basic naturalistic
assumptions when it comes to knowledge and intentionality, and that this significantly
impacts the historical task. In what follows, I also show how various nonnaturalistic
metaphysical assumptions nonetheless undermine these historians’ understanding
of classical Christology. Constructively, I show how explicit, coherent reflection on
metaphysics matters for the discipline of history, particularly when Jesus is in view.
41. This is due in part to Karl Rahner’s essay “Dogmatic Reflections on the Knowledge
and Self-Consciousness of Christ,” 193–215. For a historical overview see Moloney, The
Knowledge of Christ.
42. See, e.g., Gutwenger, “The Problem of Christ’s Knowledge,” 91–105; Hanson, “Two
Consciousnesses,” 471–83.
43. White, The Incarnate Lord, 237.
 Introduction 13

of the hypostatic union because of the relationship between consciousness and

substantial being. Second, Christological approaches grounded in consciousness
create myriad problems for historical reconstruction, and I will argue that they
are to blame for some of the antagonism between theology and history in the
contemporary academy. An ontological approach to Christology protects both
the unity of Christ’s personhood and the integrity of his humanity in a way that
provides the requisite grounds for historical inquiry. When ordered rightly, the
consciousness and ontology of Christ are “mutually self-interpreting”—Christ’s
transcendent identity is manifest in his consciousness, which is grounded in
his ontological being.44 In this way, Aquinas’ approach to Jesus’ knowledge is
shown to be a powerful outworking of the principles of Jesus’ identity, brought
into the sphere of knowledge and intentionality, rather than vice versa.45 This, in
turn, further highlights the relevance of metaphysics for historical questions of
interiority.
From a theological perspective, it is my contention that theology needs historical
research, but it needs a method of historiography not beholden to metaphysical
naturalism. The incarnational claims at the heart of the Christian faith are an
affirmation of history as much as physicality. God took on flesh not only in space
but also in time, and Christian theology should reflect this. Indeed, as I will argue,
historical research into the life of Jesus plays a vital role in Christology, broadly
speaking. Understanding Jesus requires a nuanced understanding of first-century
(Hellenistic) Judaism, alongside the social, political, religious, and economic
realities of the broader Greco-Roman world of the time. Without attempting
to be exhaustive, we might note that this research unearths points of reference
for understanding Jesus’ teachings, or for how he and his followers might have
been perceived by the political and religious leaders of the time. It has already
contributed greatly to overcoming the latent anti-Judaism within various forms
of Christian thought.46 Paying close historical attention to the first century,
to the gospels and other relevant historical texts, and to the early development
of Christianity, as well as the continuity and discontinuity between these, is a
central task for Christian theology. However, that is not the same thing as giving
the metaphysical presuppositions of modern historicism free rein to redefine
Christian doctrine.
At the same time, academic historical study of Jesus should make space for
rival traditions of historical enquiry to reflect a genuine diversity of metaphysical
perspectives. As an academic discipline, it is not surprising or inherently
problematic that historical Jesus studies often stands in tension with Christian

44. Ibid., 236–7.

45. I have avoided rehashing debates with a variety of alternative theological approaches
to Jesus’ knowledge, which have already been engaged in detail by scholars such as Simon
Gaine and Thomas Joseph White.
46. As an example of a Thomist theologian engaging this task, see Levering, Engaging
the Doctrine of Israel.
14 The Consciousness of the Historical Jesus

theology, but this relationship need not be entirely antagonistic. By recognizing that
historical research stemming from a theistic metaphysic is no less “objective” than
one stemming from naturalism, the discipline can become more rigorously critical
by accounting for its own perspective to a greater degree. As MacIntyre writes,
“Generally only when traditions either fail and disintegrate or are challenged do
their adherents become aware of them as traditions and begin to theorize about
them.”47 By characterizing historical Jesus scholarship as a tradition of historical
enquiry, my hope is that historical Jesus scholars will take up the task of exploring,
developing, and critiquing the metaphysical foundations of their own tradition
so that they can better contend for its perspective against rival traditions, or else
recognize it to be incoherent and abandon it for some alternative.

Argument in Outline

To unpack these claims, I will advance arguments on two levels: metaphysics

and theology. On the level of metaphysics, I am concerned with (a) the range of
possibilities when it comes to the nature of human thought and intention, and this
has to do with philosophical anthropology, cognitive theory, and philosophical
realism; (b) the frameworks for making sense of human motivation, focusing on
ethical concepts of desire and the good, as well as the role of vices like avarice
in shaping modern understandings of universal human motivations; and (c) the
way that metaphysical presuppositions (such as competitive accounts of the finite/
infinite or psychological accounts of personhood) undermine historical Jesus
scholars’ understanding of theology. On a metaphysical level, Aquinas’ participatory
metaphysic and philosophical anthropology expand the range of possibilities open
to the historian and provide a basis for a more accurate interpretation of classical
Christology. The main work of these arguments happens in Chapters 2 and 4.
On the level of theology, I make four interrelated arguments: (a) historical
Jesus scholars frequently misunderstand (or else caricature) Christology and one
of the most effective ways of responding to their criticisms is by correcting their
misapprehensions and misrepresentations; (b) non-Chalcedonian Christologies
“from below” are often assumed to be better for historical study, but are actually
worse; (c) Chalcedon, often assumed to make historiography impossible, is
actually fully compatible with historical study of Jesus; and (d) a metaphysically
informed Christology possesses the tools to provide a more nuanced and faithful
conception of Christ’s knowledge, which would illuminate, rather than obscure,
the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth. The main work of these arguments
happens in Chapters 3, 6, 7, and 8.
The argument unfolds as follows. In Part I, I argue that the quests for the
historical Jesus have largely operated with an understanding of history hindered
by a severely constricted range of divine and human possibilities. By outlining

47. MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, 8.

 Introduction 15

human “self-understanding” as a historiographical question, I emphasize the

determinative role played by the historian’s assumptions about the range of
possibility available to the processes of human thought. Delineating three concerns
that historians tend to connect to “docetism,” I explicate the implicit metaphysical
assumptions that underlie their grasp of what is at stake theologically, comparing
these with trends in modern theological reflection.
Having outlined certain metaphysical presuppositions operative in historical
Jesus scholarship, I then turn to explore the participatory metaphysics of Thomas
Aquinas and the doctrine of the Incarnation. In Chapter 2, I emphasize the
centrality of noncompetition to participatory accounts of being and unpack the
ontological and semantic connection between participation and analogy. For
Thomas, God is being itself, utterly simple and transcendent in a way that does
not jeopardize his active presence within creation.48 Creatures are qualitatively
different from God, existing by participation in him, which means they cannot
relate to God in a competitive or mutually exclusive fashion. In Chapter 3,
I consider how a Chalcedonian Christology, understood in light of participatory
metaphysics, maintains the unity of Christ’s personhood and the properly finite
reality of his human nature such that Jesus can be considered the subject of
historical investigation, and I argue that Aquinas’ Christology in particular offers
resources to augment our access to the historical figure of Jesus. This includes
a critical discussion of philosophical concepts of personhood and their bearing
on the oneness of Christ, a consideration of accidental forms of union as they
are employed in various Christologies “from below,” and a Thomistic approach
to “Spirit Christology” that holds together ontological and narrative depictions of
Jesus’ identity.
In Part II, the focus of our attention turns to concepts of knowledge and their
role in historical and theological understandings of Jesus. In Chapter 4 I outline
Aquinas’ understanding of the powers and ways of knowing proper to God, angels,
and humans. In Chapter 5 I consider the patristic background of the doctrine
of Jesus’ knowledge and the Fathers’ interpretations of Mk 13:32. In Chapter 6
I outline Aquinas’ unique argument for Jesus’ acquired or empiric knowledge and
how this connects with Jesus’ priestly office. In Chapter 7, I discuss the nature of
prophetic knowledge, its role in Jesus’ prophetic office, and some of the reasons
why it might not be sufficient to account for some of the things Jesus is presented
as knowing in the gospels. Finally, in Chapter 8, I discuss Aquinas’ argument that
Jesus possessed the beatific vision, emphasizing the role of this vision in upholding
the unity of his personhood. I also suggest a connection between the genre/
worldview of “Apocalyptic” and the theological concept of the beatific vision,
noting how Aquinas’ argument on this score helps to fill out our understanding of
Jesus’ messianic office as presented in the Gospels.

48. In following the tradition of using masculine pronouns of God, I do not mean to
imply that God is male. For an insightful discussion of the gendered imagery used to speak
of God, see Soskice, The Kindness of God.
16 The Consciousness of the Historical Jesus

In this way, I argue that conceptions of the nature of and limits to human thought
and intention are inevitably determinative of historical judgments regarding Jesus’
self-understanding, which are themselves central to historical reconstruction. If
history is about the events we live and the stories we tell about them, then we
embed within our reconstruction of the past our fundamental beliefs about the
nature of human thought and intention: about what is possible in a human life,
and what is plausible about the lives of those in question. The simple assertion that
Jesus was fully human does nothing to establish that his knowledge must have been
limited to those ways of knowing assumed within post-enlightenment naturalistic
historiography. There is nothing “docetic” or ahistorical about attributing to
Jesus prophetic knowledge or an apocalyptic vision of God. Rather, these forms
of knowing clash with the assumptions of metaphysical naturalism. Normative
philosophical and theological assumptions create a rigid hermeneutical horizon for
Jesus scholars’ engagement with the past. By interrogating and challenging these
assumptions, the scope of the discipline can be expanded to include approaches to
Jesus that are genuinely historical, but not naturalistic.
 Part I

CONCEPTS OF BEING

Traditional, orthodox christologies have assumed that Jesus was fully aware of
his own godhead and spoke accordingly, whereas modern criticism has, in the
judgment of many of us, exterminated this possibility.
—Dale Allison Jr.1

1. Allison Jr., The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus, 89.
18
 Chapter 1

T H E H I ST O R IC A L J E SU S

The “quests” for the historical Jesus have largely operated with an understanding of
history hindered by a severely constricted range of divine and human possibilities.
While this assessment will no doubt prove controversial to some, there are many—
including members of the quests themselves—who will recognize it to be true.1
This evaluation is not limited to those historians of the so-called “old quest” whom
Schweitzer so convincingly showed to have remade Jesus in their own image.2 Rather,
it is my contention that this restricted sphere of possibilities remains intact among
much Jesus scholarship today, and that it is detrimental to the historical task. One
of the areas where this scotoma is most acutely manifest is the question of Jesus’
self-understanding.
Among the hallmarks of historical criticism is the methodological necessity
to inquire after intention and motivation in order to illuminate the self-
understanding of a historical individual. This is what the philosopher of history
R. G. Collingwood (1889–1943) called the “inside” of history, and it is a vital piece
of the historical task.3 If history is to be more than a list of dates or “external”
facts about the past, then we must inquire into the meaning of the actions of
historical subjects, which requires the investigation of both the outside and the
inside of events. History is not a simple chain of cause and effect, nor is the study
of history about determining general formulas or natural laws that govern the flow
of events through time. This is because, as Collingwood says, historical processes
“are not processes of mere events but processes of actions, which have an inner

1. See arguments to this effect in, e.g., Meyer, The Aims of Jesus, 58; Evans, “Methodological
Naturalism in Historical Biblical Scholarship,” 180–205; Schillebeeckx, Jesus, 64–76; Kähler,
So-Called Historical Jesus; Hays, “Knowing Jesus,” 41–61; Wright, JVG, 18; Adams, The
Reality of God and Historical Method; Anderson, The Fourth Gospel and the Quest for Jesus,
177–9; Zahrnt, The Historical Jesus, 48.
2. Schweitzer, Quest, 4.
3. Collingwood, The Idea of History, 213. This only plays a notable role in historical Jesus
studies for those scholars who believe the sources are such that a significant amount can be
known about Jesus, such as R. A. Horsley, M. Borg, H. Boers, J. Charlesworth, M. de Jonge,
R. Leivestad, B. Meyer, B. Witherington, N. T. Wright, and B. Pitre.
20 The Consciousness of the Historical Jesus

side, consisting of processes of thought.”4 If, therefore, “all history is the history of
thought,” then the range of potential historical interpretations will be determined
in part by what the historian considers to be the horizon of possibility with regard
to processes of human thought.5
When this question is applied to Jesus, it provides a particularly clear lens into
the range of divine and human possibilities presupposed by the historian. Herman
Samuel Reimarus (1694–1786) began his inquiry by asking this question of Jesus—
“What sort of purpose did Jesus himself see in his teaching and deeds?”—and
over the course of two centuries many historical Jesus scholars have followed suit.
My purpose in this chapter is to illuminate the background and methodological
context of the question of Jesus’ self-understanding and show the prevalence of
this issue in contemporary historical Jesus scholarship that calls for philosophical
and dogmatic analysis. This discussion will lead us into theological territory in the
final section, considering how the concept of “Docetism” is understood and used
by historical Jesus scholars, along with the question of what it means to affirm
Jesus as fully human.

A Brief History of Historical Jesus Scholarship

Given the immense scope of the discipline of historical Jesus studies, it is

necessary at the outset to place our conversation within the history of the
“quests.” Standard histories of modern Jesus studies typically divide the
discipline into four distinct periods. The “old quest” is said to have begun
in 1778 with the posthumous publication of H. S. Reimarus’ notorious
“Wolfenbüttel Fragments,” and it included notable works by D. F. Strauss,
E. Renan, H. J. Holtzmann, and J. Weiss.6 The “old quest” ended in 1901
with the simultaneous appearance of William Wrede’s (1859–1907) Das
Messiasgeheimnis in den Evangelein and Albert Schweitzer’s Das Messianitäts-
und Leidensgeheimnis.7 Wrede and Schweitzer offered two alternative
approaches to Jesus scholarship: Wrede proposed thoroughgoing skepticism,
which assumes the essential unreliability of the gospels and emphasizes literary
criticism, while Schweitzer opted for thoroughgoing eschatology, wherein

4. Ibid., 215.
5. Ibid. Collingwood has long been a key resource on the philosophy of history for
historical Jesus scholars and his insights can be seen at work both implicitly and explicitly
in the work of numerous members of both the new quest and the third quest. See Merkley,
“New Quests for Old: One Historian’s Observations on a Bad Bargain,” 203–18; Meyer,
Critical Realism and the New Testament, 148.
6. Reimarus, Von Dem Zwecke Jesu Und Seiner Jünger. ET: Reimarus: Fragments.
7. Wrede, Das Messiasgeheimnis in den Evangelein (1901). ET: The Messianic Secret;
Schweitzer, The Mystery of the Kingdom of God.
 1. The Historical Jesus 21

Jesus is conceived along apocalyptic lines in an attempt to understand him as

he is presented in the gospels.8
Despite the arrival of two proposals for renewed inquiry at the outset of the
twentieth century, the subsequent fifty years are generally considered a period
of “no quest.” The reasons for this, it is often said, are threefold: Martin Kähler’s
insightful critique of the historisch enterprise (1896),9 Albert Schweitzer’s
demolition of the portraits of the “old quest” in Von Reimarus zu Wrede,10 and
the theological criticisms of Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann.11 Despite being an
obvious misnomer,12 the term “no quest” highlights the temporary attenuation of
German interest and the fact that the enduring relevance of the work of this period
is not widely endorsed.13 One of the hallmarks of the “no quest” era is the number
of books questioning whether Jesus had even existed.14 In 1953, the “new quest”
was inaugurated with Ernst Käsemann’s programmatic address to a gathering
of Bultmann’s students.15 The “new quest” was conceived in part as a necessary
corrective to modern Docetism, and it tended to follow in Wrede’s footsteps
methodologically.16 Notable members of the “new quest” include G. Bornkamm,
J. Jeremias, E. Schillebeeckx, and the so-called “Jesus Seminar.” A little over a

8. The terms “thoroughgoing skepticism” and “thoroughgoing eschatology” are the ones
Schweitzer used to characterize his and Wrede’s alternative approaches (Quest, 328).
9. “I regard the entire Life-of-Jesus movement as a blind alley” (Kähler, So-Called
Historical Jesus, 46). In 1953 Käsemann noted the enduring need to reckon with Kähler’s
critique, “which still, after sixty years, is hardly dated and, in spite of many attacks and
many possible reservations, has never really been refuted” (Käsemann, “The Problem of the
Historical Jesus,” 15–47, at 16).
10. “But it was not only each epoch that found its reflection in Jesus; each individual
created Him in accordance with his own character” (Schweitzer, Quest, 4).
11. Bultmann, Jesus and the Word, 14.
12. Walter Weaver has devoted nearly four hundred pages to outlining serious
contributions to historical Jesus studies during this period (The Historical Jesus in the
Twentieth Century). See bibliography for this period in Evans, Life of Jesus Research, 19–26.
13. See Wright, JVG, 22–3. Dale Allison maintains that there was sufficient work done
between 1906 and 1953 for us to view historical Jesus studies as a continuous venture since
its inception (“The Secularizing of the Historical Jesus,” 135–51).
14. See Weaver, Historical Jesus, 49–62. Maurice Casey rejects the term “no quest” and
highlights the anti-Semitic cast of much work in this period. See his section titled “The
Nazi Period” in Jesus of Nazareth: An Independent Historian’s Account of His Life and
Teaching, 4–8.
15. “It is one of the marks of the upheaval in German work on the New Testament in this
last generation that the old question about the Jesus of history has receded rather noticeably
into the background” (Käsemann, “Problem of the Historical Jesus,” 15).
16. “We also cannot do away with the identity between the exalted and the earthly Lord
without falling into docetism and depriving ourselves of the possibility of drawing a line
between the Easter faith of the community and myth” (ibid., 34).
22 The Consciousness of the Historical Jesus

decade later the “third quest” emerged as a movement distinct from the “new
quest”—partially due to its likeness to Schweitzer—and was given its name by
N. T. Wright in the 1980s.17
Histories of the “quests” abound.18 Despite the heuristic value of the “old
quest, no quest, new quest, third quest” narrative, many have noted that it
often proves simplistic or misleading. Those who champion the enduring
relevance and complexity of nineteenth-century Jesus scholarship object to
the chronological snobbery and homogeneity implied by the term “old quest.”
Further, although scholars like Wright conceive of the difference between
the “new quest” and the “third quest” along primarily methodological lines,
the nomenclature inaccurately implies a succession or even supersession.19 It
also fails to account for a significant number of scholars who do not fit neatly
into either group.20 The overall impression of linear progress is possibly the
most misleading element, for so much of the research has proven repetitive
and cyclical.21 Despite these shortcomings, these designations have become

17. Neill and Wright, The Interpretation of the New Testament 1861–1986, 379. Cf.
Wright, “Doing Justice to Jesus: A Response to J. D. Crossan,” 345. Note that the “third
quest” is thus the fourth stage of the quests. According to some, members of the “third
quest” include, e.g., B. F. Meyer, A. E. Harvey, E. P. Sanders, N. T. Wright, B. Chilton,
R. Horsley, and R. Theissen. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza is typically considered part of
the “third quest” though she offers significant criticisms of its dominant methodological
approaches. See esp. Jesus and the Politics of Interpretation and discussion of her work in
Walters, “Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza and the Quest for the Historical Jesus,” 468–74.
18. In addition to those noted above, see, e.g., Borg, Jesus in Contemporary Scholarship;
Brown, “Historical Jesus, Quest Of,” 337; Bond, The Historical Jesus: A Guide for the
Perplexed, 7–36; Hagner, “An Analysis of Recent ‘Historical Jesus’ Studies”; Luke Timothy
Johnson offers a survey that is highly critical of the entire enterprise in The Real Jesus; Clive
Marsh offers a ninefold division of the quests in “Quests of the Historical Jesus in New
Historicist Perspective”; Paget, “Quests for the Historical Jesus”; Powell, Jesus as a Figure in
History. The classic history of the “old quest” is that of Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical
Jesus. Simpson, Recent Research on the Historical Jesus; Tatum, In Quest of Jesus; Telford,
“Major Trends and Interpretive Issues in the Study of Jesus”; Theissen and Merz offer a
thorough treatment of the relevant issues in The Historical Jesus; Witherington III, The Jesus
Quest; Wright, JVG, 3–125; Wright, “Jesus, Quest for the Historical,” 796–802. For detailed
bibliography see Evans, Life of Jesus Research.
19. See Crossan, “Straining Gnats, Swallowing Camels: A Review of Who Was Jesus? By
N.T. Wright.” For this reason, there are many who simply refer to all contemporary Jesus
scholarship as the “third quest.” E.g., Witherington, The Jesus Quest, passim.
20. Wright, for example, notes that Géza Vermes, Marcus Borg, J. D. Crossan, and
Richard Horsley all defy this categorization (JVG, 83). Even the so-called “Jesus Seminar”
is put in different groups by different scholars. Compare Wright, JVG, 30, with Meier, “The
Present State of the ‘Third Quest’ for the Historical Jesus: Loss and Gain,” 459.
21. See Paget, “Quests,” 149.
 1. The Historical Jesus 23

somewhat standard and remain the simplest terminology for discussing

historical Jesus studies in broad terms.
Despite vigorous methodological debates among contemporary scholars,
deeper discussions of hermeneutics and the philosophy of history are markedly
rare in the literature.22 Historical Jesus scholars tend to conceive of their differences
according to issues such as form-critical criteria of authenticity or divergent
conceptions of Second-Temple Jewish apocalypticism.23 And yet, it is evident that
one of the most fruitful methods of delineating the quests would be according
to their diverse philosophical and hermeneutical positions, which inevitably
influence the historiographical outcome.24 It was something like this recognition
that made Schweitzer’s book, Von Reimarus zu Wrede, so formidable and, despite
being explored fruitfully by a few others, it has not always been a primary category
for the historiography of the quests.

Jesus’ Intentions and Motivations

If philosophy of history and hermeneutics have been underdiscussed in the

literature, one area that has tended to receive priority, both in histories of the
“quests” and in the historiographical methods of the historical Jesus scholars,
is the question of Jesus’ own understanding of his identity and purpose.25 G. E.
Lessing’s (1729–81) publication of the Fragmente eines Ungenannten may not have
been quite the epoch-making act that Schweitzer made it out to be, but in the
seventh fragment, entitled Von dem Zwecke Jesu und seiner Jünger, Reimarus

22. For books that include this level of discussion see: Adams, The Reality of God and
Historical Method; Childs, The Myth of the Historical Jesus and the Evolution of Consciousness;
Denton Jr., Historiography and Hermeneutics in Jesus Studies; Meyer, Critical Realism and
the New Testament; Stewart, The Quest of the Hermeneutical Jesus. Wright notes that “the
same cultural presuppositions which have shaped Enlightenment thought as a whole have
also shaped the practice of history itself, and with it the historical study of Jesus” (History
and Eschatology, 55). His Gifford Lectures helpfully discuss, largely at a cultural level, some
of the issues under discussion in this thesis. And yet, he still refrains from dealing in detail
with the actual metaphysical questions that I argue are relevant to the task at hand.
23. See bibliography for “criteria of authenticity” in Evans, Jesus Research, 127–47. For
discussions of “Apocalyptic” see esp. Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination; Wright, The New
Testament and the People of God, 280–99 [henceforth NTPG]; Crossan, “What Victory?
What God? A Review Debate with N. T. Wright on Jesus and the Victory of God,” 352–3.
24. “It can make a difference that Reimarus wrote with certain Enlightenment
presuppositions; that Strauss was a Hegelian; that Harnack was a liberal Protestant; that
Schweitzer had read Nietzsche …; and that members of the Jesus Seminar operate in a
country where Christian fundamentalism of an apocalyptic colour is so influential” (Paget,
“Quests,” 149).
25. See NTPG, 110–11.
24 The Consciousness of the Historical Jesus

managed to raise certain questions so forcefully that they remain alive and well
today.26 Assuming the essential reliability of the accounts of Jesus’ teaching in the
four gospels (“the integrity of their reports is not to be doubted”), but skeptical
of everything else, Reimarus set out to reconstruct Jesus’ true intentions.27 For
Reimarus, Jesus was a political revolutionary intent on building up “a worldly
kingdom” who became increasingly radicalized and reckoned too confidently on
the approval of the crowds who then abandoned him to his death.28 Jesus’ final
words on the cross expressed his disillusionment with the God who had failed
him. After his death, Jesus’ disciples (with motives “aimed at worldly wealth and
power”) engineered the narratives of his resurrection and promise to return to
establish the Messianic kingdom.29 In so doing, they infused Jesus’ death with
salvific and religious significance.30
Reimarus exhibited a preference for sayings material that, however uncritical,
bears some similarity to Wrede’s skepticism and to the form-critical approaches of
the “new quest.”31 The rejection of Jesus’ divine self-understanding is an a priori in
Reimarus’ project. He began with the assumption that Jesus did not possess a divine
identity and designed his investigation to generate an alternative explanation. Both
forms of skepticism would spawn parallel, though often overlapping, approaches: on
the one hand, skepticism with regard to the authenticity of the gospel materials
would continue to grow, leading first to a rejection of John,32 and eventually to a
mistrust of all four gospels following Strauss’ concept of mythologization33 and
Wrede’s critique of Mark.34 This trajectory, often associated most with Bultmann,
redirected a significant portion of historical Jesus studies away from the study of
Jesus himself to focus on the literary forms of the Gospels and the history of the

26. Schweitzer hailed it as “one of the greatest events in the history of criticism”
(Schweitzer, Quest, 15). However, see discussion highlighting Reimarus’ indebtedness to
Spinoza and English Deism in Brown, Jesus in European Protestant Thought, 1–55, esp. 50–5.
27. Reimarus, Fragments, §I.3, p. 65.
28. Ibid., §II.8, pp. 148, 150.
29. Ibid., §II.53; pp. 242–3.
30. “In a few days they alter their entire doctrine and make of Jesus a suffering savior for
all mankind; then they change their facts accordingly” (ibid., §I.33, p. 134).
31. “Uncritical” because, although Reimarus shows a preference for certain material, his
judgments are not based on any explicit criteria of authenticity. See him wrestling with a
version of the criterion of dissimilarity at the beginning of Part II (§II.1, p. 135).
32. This process began in earnest with D. F. Strauss and became an essentially unassailable
position through the work of F. C. Baur. See Schweitzer, Quest, 87.
33. Strauss understood the gospels to be the result of a (partly unconscious) process
of mythologization through which genuine religious convictions became clothed with
historical narratives. See Strauss, Das Leben Jesu, kritisch bearbeitet; ET: The Life of Jesus
Critically Examined.
34. Wrede, Messianic Secret.
 1. The Historical Jesus 25

traditions that had supposedly fabricated the gospel narratives.35 On the other
hand, some continued to assume certain elements of historicity in the gospels and,
following Reimarus’ a priori rejection of Jesus’ divine self-understanding, sought
to develop alternative explanations for how Jesus understood his identity and
purpose.
What Collingwood calls the “inside” of history played a substantial role in
historiography long before he elucidated its explicit methodological function.
In historical Jesus studies it was framed primarily in terms of the origin of the
Christological beliefs of the early church and focused on the “titles” that Jesus is
reported to have used of himself: especially “Messiah,” “Son of God,” and “Son
of Man.”36 Although many in the “old quest” insisted that Jesus saw himself as
the Messiah (in a purely “political” sense), much historical Jesus scholarship now
assumes there is no reliable evidence to confirm that Jesus possessed a messianic
self-understanding.37 Closely related to this is the sense that Jesus did not attribute
any redemptive significance to his own death.38 The same goes for “Son of
God”: Reimarus maintained that for Jesus this simply meant “beloved of God,” but
many now reject the possibility that Jesus referred to himself in this way.39 Of the
three, the title “Son of Man” has fared the best in terms of its assumed historicity,
while eliciting the least agreement as to its origin and meaning.40 In the end, even

35. N. T. Wright maintains that “much of the impetus for form-critical and redaction-
critical study came from the presupposition that this or that piece of synoptic material
about Jesus could not be historical; in other words, that an historical hypothesis about Jesus
could already be presupposed which demanded a further tradition-historical hypothesis to
explain the evidence” (JVG, 87).
36. In other words, did the early Christians’ belief in the divinity of Christ derive from
Jesus’ own words and actions, or was it something that they developed after his death?
The question of self-understanding is a way of examining the continuity between Jesus and
Second-Temple Judaism on the one hand, and between Jesus and the rise of the early church
on the other. Meyer maintains that “thematic Christology either did or did not originate
earlier than Easter. Between these contradictory alternatives there can be no middle ground
or third position” (Meyer, Critical Realism, 159).
37. In response to this state of scholarship Martin Hengel argued that “the unmessianic
Jesus has almost become a dogma among many New Testament scholars” (Hengel, Studies
in Early Christology, 16). See discussion in Pitre, Jesus and the Last Supper, 9–14. Some
recent exceptions to this include Allison Jr., Constructing Jesus, 221ff; Bauer, “Son of David,”
166–9; Bird, Are You the One Who Is to Come?; Meyer, The Aims of Jesus, 178–80.
38. See discussion in McKnight, Jesus and His Death, 47–75; Balla, “What Did Jesus
Think about His Approaching Death?,” 239–58; Howard, “Did Jesus Speak about His Own
Death?,” 515–27.
39. Reimarus, Fragments, §I.10–13, pp. 76–88.
40. Boring describes research in this area as “a veritable mine field” (Boring, Sayings of
the Risen Jesus, 239). Evans lists over forty books and articles published in the past fifty years
written specifically about Jesus’ usage of, and the meaning of, “son of man” (Life of Jesus
Research, 195–210). See discussion in Burkett, The Son of Man Debate.
26 The Consciousness of the Historical Jesus

among those who find in favor of Jesus using these titles of himself, many agree
with Sanders’ sense that they tell us little about what Jesus thought of his identity
and mission because “there were no hard definitions of ‘Messiah,’ ‘Son of God,’ or
‘Son of Man’ in the Judaism of Jesus’ day.”41
Although there is a diversity of opinion regarding Jesus’ self-understanding as
Messiah, Son of God, or Son of Man, there has long remained a broad consensus
in this scholarship that Jesus did not “know he was God.”42 Consider, for example,
the following quotations:

Did [Jesus] call himself the messiah? … And did he call himself God? Here
I want to stake out a clear position: messiah, yes; God, no … What we can know
with relative certainty about Jesus is that his public ministry and proclamation
… were not about his divinity at all.43 (Bart Ehrman)
Often theologians prefer to study the problem of Jesus’ knowledge of his
divinity in terms of the question: “Did Jesus know he was God?” From a biblical
viewpoint this question is so badly phrased that it cannot be answered and
should not be posed.44 (Raymond Brown)
But if we are to submit our speculations to the text and build our theology
only with the bricks provided by careful exegesis we cannot say with any
confidence that Jesus knew himself to be divine, the pre-existent Son of God.45
(James Dunn)
Jesus did not, in other words, “know that he was God” in the same way that
one knows one is male or female, hungry or thirsty, or that one ate an orange
an hour ago. His “knowledge” was of a more risky, but perhaps more significant,
sort: like knowing one is loved. One cannot “prove” it except by living it.46 (N.
T. Wright)

41. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus, 248. See Allison Jr., Constructing Jesus, 221–3.
42. There are a couple of scholars who stand out from this consensus, including J. C.
O’Neill who concludes that “Jesus did in fact hold that he was the eternal Son of God”
(O’Neill, Who Did Jesus Think He Was?, 189). Similarly, François Dreyfus concludes that the
real Jesus of Nazareth was “Son of Man and Son of God, God himself, knowing that he was
and saying it” (Dreyfus, Did Jesus Know He Was God?, 128).
43. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God.
44. Brown, Jesus God and Man, 86. Brown goes on in a later article to say: “Yet, if
I judge unsatisfactorily obscure the question, ‘Did Jesus know he was God?’, I am more
disconcerted when Christians give the answer ‘No.’ Some who give that answer think they
are being alert to the historical problem; in my judgment their denial is more false to the
historical evidence of Jesus’ self-awareness than the response ‘Yes’ ” (Brown, “Did Jesus
Know He Was God?,” 78).
45. Dunn, Christology in the Making, 33.
46. Wright, JVG, 653. Elsewhere Wright unpacks this further, suggesting that Jesus did
not sit back and say “Well I never! I’m the second person of the Trinity!,” but that “as a
part of his human vocation, grasped in faith, sustained in prayer, tested in confrontation,
agonized over in further prayer and doubt, and implemented in action, he believed that he
 1. The Historical Jesus 27

It would interfere with all human treatment of the subject and Christ would
be a completely ghostly figure if we were to ascribe to him either the recollection
of a consciousness of a prehuman state of being … or a parallel awareness of his
divinity and his humanity.47 (Friedrich Schleiermacher)
I, for one, simply cannot imagine a sane human being, of any historical
period or culture, entertaining the thoughts about himself which the Gospels, as
they stand, often attribute to [Jesus].48 (John Knox)
We can, strictly speaking, know nothing of the personality of Jesus.49 (Rudolf
Bultmann)
[First], in all likelihood, the pre-Easter Jesus did not think of himself as the
Messiah or in any exalted terms in which he is spoken of. Second, we can say
with almost complete certainty that he did not see his own mission or purpose
as dying for the sins of the world. Third and finally, again with almost complete
certainty, we can say that his message was not about himself or the importance
of believing in him.50 (Marcus Borg)

As these quotations show, there are, broadly speaking, four approaches. For some,
the question is out of bounds altogether, as is seen most clearly in Bultmann.51
Others want to affirm the possibility of divine self-understanding in some sense,
but not in a straightforward way, and certainly not in the theological terms of the
Christian tradition (e.g., Brown and Witherington). Others, such as N. T. Wright,
answer in the negative and argue that we know Jesus did not think of himself
as God.52 The final group (e.g., Marcus Borg) provides an even stronger negative
answer: we know that Jesus knew he was not God.

had to do and be, for Israel and the world, that which according to Scripture only YHWH
himself could do and be” (“Jesus and the Identity of God,” 54). For Wright, Jesus possessed
this awareness of his vocation “with the knowledge that he could be making a terrible,
lunatic mistake” (“Jesus’ Self-Understanding,” 59).
47. Schleiermacher, The Life of Jesus, 269.
48. Knox, The Death of Christ, 58.
49. Bultmann, Jesus and the Word, 8.
50. Borg, “Portraits of Jesus,” 87. Emphasis added. Sanders writes, “Jesus seems to have
been quite reluctant to adopt a title for himself. I think that even ‘king’ is not precisely
correct, since Jesus regarded God as king. My own favorite term for his conception of
himself is ‘viceroy.’ God was king, but Jesus represented him” (Historical Figure, 248).
Robert Funk claims, “[Jesus] had nothing to say about himself, other than that he had no
permanent address, no bed to sleep in, no respect on his home turf ” (Honest to Jesus, 320).
See similar comments in Robinson, “Theological Autobiography,” 144–5.
51. That is not to say they find the question uninteresting or irrelevant, just that they
believe the nature of the sources are such that they provide us no data from which to
determine an answer. See discussion in Robinson, “The Last Tabu? The Self-Consciousness
of Jesus,” 553–66.
52. See also Wright, “Jesus and the Identity of God,” 42–56.
28 The Consciousness of the Historical Jesus

Closely related to the questions of intention and self-understanding is that of

motivation. When we look at the actions of individuals, we want to know what
drove them to do the things they did, and we want to know what they expected to
achieve or gain thereby. Again, since Reimarus, much historical Jesus research has
centered on the question of what motivated Jesus to undertake the characteristic
actions attributed to him in the gospels. For those scholars who believe the
gospels largely reflect the intentions of the later communities that constructed
the narratives therein, the question has little to do with Jesus and focuses instead
on the motivations of the various authors of the gospels. Reimarus attempted to
answer both questions: Jesus himself was motivated by revolutionary political
aspirations, his followers were after worldly wealth and power.
While the complexity of this reconstructive task on a historical level is widely
acknowledged, I have yet to come across a discussion in the literature of the
relevant philosophical questions regarding human motivation.53 In contemporary
philosophy, there is by no means any broad agreement regarding ethical concepts
of rationality, desire, and the good, or those virtues and vices that variously
drive our motivations.54 Indeed, Hume continues to loom large in contemporary
approaches, having maintained that “Avarice, or the desire of gain, is an universal
passion, which operates at all times, in all places, and upon all persons.”55 Hume
argued that reason is and must be the slave of the passions and concluded that
all people at all times cannot but rationally pursue the increase of power and
riches.56 His particular view of the relationship between practical reasoning and
desire led him to transform what had hitherto been considered a vice and make
it the controlling virtue of human action. By cutting off ethics from teleology
and metaphysical questions of “the good,” Hume took a description of the typical
desires of the eighteenth-century European elite and inscribed it as universal to
human nature.57 As Alasdair MacIntyre notes, “The difference between Aristotle
and Hume is that while, on Aristotle’s view, desires for objects that attract only
because they are pleasing to the agent who desires them are to be distinguished
from desires for objects taken to be good, on Hume’s there can … be no such
distinction.”58 Thus, Aristotle’s emphasis on the shared recognition of standards of
practical reasoning is replaced by a notion of universal sentiments—avarice being

53. Wright defines motivation as “the specific sense, on one specific occasion, that a
certain action or set of actions is appropriate and desirable” and he briefly mentions
Aristotle’s treatment of the problem that arises when motivations clash with aims and
intentions (JVG, 110).
54. See esp. MacIntyre, Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity.
55. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ii, 2, 5.
56. Gregory, The Unintended Reformation, 284–7. Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang
discusses this in 23 Things They Don’t Tell You about Capitalism, 41–50. “Thing 5: Assume
the worst about people and you get the worst.”
57. MacIntyre, Conflicts of Modernity, 92; Gregory, Unintended Reformation, 87.
58. MacIntyre, Conflicts of Modernity, 80.
 1. The Historical Jesus 29

chief among them. Here we no longer have an account of the virtues contextualized
within a vision of human flourishing that directs social relationships toward
individual and common goods. Instead, we are left with an atomized individualism
that considers only which activities and relationships will be agreeable or useful to
the agent in question.59
Without drawing a clear line of influence from Hume to specific historians,
this contrast between Aristotle and Hume illustrates how metaphysical questions,
which in part determine debates about ethics, also influence historiography. This
can be seen most clearly in the way that the arguments of historical figures and the
discussions they undertake with their peers about the good and those standards of
practical reasoning necessary to achieve human flourishing are taken into account
by historians seeking to reconstruct those figures’ motivations. In other words,
one reason we might have for discounting certain source material as ahistorical is
because it attributes motivations to a character that does not match our vision of
how human motivation works. We might, for example, discount the arguments we
encounter in a speech or a sermon, maintaining instead that some set of universal
passions will be likely to motivate a person more than the beliefs they hold about
the good and goods.60 My point is not that history should indulge in long-distance
psychology.61 Rather, I am suggesting that the broader philosophical discussion
that seeks to describe how motivation relates to virtue, vice, passion, and reason
is relevant to the question at hand. In fact, it provides the fundamental framework
within which questions of motivation are formulated, and it determines the range
of possibilities brought to bear in answering them.
This issue also relates directly to the theological question of Jesus’ impeccability.
The attribution of vice to Jesus on the assumption that such passions drive all
human action drives a wedge between historical reconstruction and theology.62
Similarly, to insist that Jesus’ disciples were driven primarily by avarice is
entirely to discount their claims about the sanctifying work of the Spirit among
them after Pentecost.63 This is not to say that historians must always assume the

59. Ibid., 82–4. MacIntyre argues “not only that some of Hume’s claims were mistaken,
but also that one effect of his advancing them in the way that he did was to conceal and
disguise from his readers the importance of certain facts about the condition of their social
and economic order” (ibid., 84).
60. “A more fruitful scholarly suggestion is that Jesus’ treatment of his opponents shows
that he did not really love his enemies” (Maurice Casey, Jesus of Nazareth, 311).
61. See Wright, JVG, 111. Cf. Miller, Jesus at Thirty; Capps, Jesus. Cf., van Os, Psychological
Analyses and the Historical Jesus.
62. One of the most common vices attributed to Jesus is his apocalyptic fervor—a set
of misguided beliefs that led him to inordinate agitation against the ruling powers, with
disastrous results.
63. “When the early Christians spoke of their motivation, they regularly did so in terms
of the divine spirit” (Wright, NTPG, 446). The ways of being witnessed to by ascetics and
saints expand the horizon of possibilities for those historians who take these traditions
seriously.
30 The Consciousness of the Historical Jesus

best of historical figures, or that they must always believe those figures’ claims
to virtue and integrity. Rather, it is to note that metaphysical and theological
presuppositions will drive historians to discount certain evidence that does not
fit with their perception of what typically motivates people to act in certain ways.
When the historians are intent on disproving the historical claims of the Christian
tradition, as Reimarus was, they will sometimes go so far as to attribute malicious
motivations to those historical figures whom they wish to malign.

The Problem of “Docetism”

N. T. Wright has argued that “the ‘Quest’ began as an explicitly anti-theological,

anti-Christian, anti-dogmatic movement. Its initial agenda was not to find a Jesus
upon whom Christian faith might be based, but to show that the faith of the
church (as it was then conceived) could not in fact be based on the real Jesus of
Nazareth.”64 This is as true of some contemporary scholars as it was of Reimarus,
Paulus, and Strauss. However, it is not universally the case, and there are a number
of scholars who understand the “quest” to be a vital task for theology, aimed at
connecting the Christian faith to its historical roots. For these historians, the task
is frequently perceived as an antidote to Docetism.
In the lecture that inaugurated the “new quest,” Käsemann argued that losing
the link between the faith of the kerygma and the historical Jesus (what he calls
“the identity between the exalted and the humiliated Lord”) would result in
Docetism.65 Wright interprets Käsemann’s warning as the insistence that “if Jesus
was not earthed in history then he might be pulled in any direction, might be
made the hero of any theological or political programme.”66 Wright, therefore,
uses the term Docetism to refer to any Christology insufficiently grounded in
the historical Jesus.67 Witherington concurs—“a faith that does not ground the
Christ of personal experience in the Jesus of history is a form of docetic or gnostic
heresy”—and numerous others, including Meier, Borg, Crossan, and Dunn, have
advanced similar arguments.68

64. Wright, JVG, 17.

65. Käsemann, “Problem of the Historical Jesus,” 34. This is an argument on at least two
fronts: against Bultmann, it is a belief that Jesus as he actually was is theologically relevant
(not just the faith of the kerygma). It is also an assertion that Jesus as he can be reconstructed
by historians is necessary for theology.
66. Wright, JVG, 23. He notes the un-Jewish Jesus of the Nazis as a pertinent example.
67. See for example, JVG, 653, 661; Wright, “A Biblical Portrait of God,” 27–8; Wright,
The Challenge of Jesus, 121.
68. Witherington, The Jesus Quest, 11; Meier, A Marginal Jew, 199; Meyer, Critical Realism,
148; Borg, Jesus in Contemporary Scholarship, 196; Meyer, “Faith and History Revisited,” 82;
Crossan, “Jesus at 2000 Debate”; Dunn, Jesus Remembered, Christianity in the Making, 102;
Schweizer, “Die Frage Nach Dem Historischen Jesus,” 403–19; Schillebeeckx, Jesus in Our
Western Culture, 13; Allison Jr., The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus, 84–5. Cf.
 1. The Historical Jesus 31

As various scholars have noted, “Docetism” in this context is evidently not

being used in quite the same way as in classical Christological discourse.69 In the
Patristic era, “Docetism” (the idea that Christ only appeared [dokein] to live in
the flesh) emerged as a sense that Christ was not what he seemed to be.70 This
problem was typically understood on an ontological level, and docetic heresies
met opposition for the way they undermined or cheapened the suffering and full
human consubstantiality of Christ. In other words, Docetism characteristically
stemmed from a gnostic denial or deprecation of the physical (i.e., “matter”). On
this ontological register, it is doubtful that historical criticism has much to offer as
a dogmatic corrective. As A. K. M. Adam has argued:

What would constitute historical evidence regarding whether Christ was divine
on Chalcedonian terms or simply a divine being inhabiting a human appearance?
Or whether Christ had a physical or spiritual body? Here historical critics lack
the sorts of evidence and arguments that permit them to draw the conclusions
that would, presumably, help confound Docetism.71

While historical Jesus scholars may indeed be concerned by the classical problem
of Docetism, they most often use the term to refer instead to high Christologies
that they deem incompatible with historical methodology. There are three issues
in particular that Käsemann et al. appear to connect with “Docetism” in this way.
The first issue arises from a sense that an insistence on Jesus’ “divinity”
undermines historians’ access to the “inside” of history. If history is not only about
events and data but about intentionality, perspective, and meaning, then part
of the historical task is to discern the thoughts to which historical actions give
expression. For Collingwood, there is only one way for the historian to discover
these thoughts and that is “by re-thinking them in his own mind.”72 To do so,
historians rely on concepts of similarity and analogy.73 We must assume that any
historical character thinks in a way that is, in principle, intelligible to us. This is
the reason that historians and judicial systems alike have supreme difficulty with
people who suffer from insanity: it removes the possibility of establishing intention
or motive. Furthermore, we can only reconstruct a plausible hypothesis regarding

discussion in Johnson, “The Humanity of Jesus,” 15–16; Jüngel, “The Dogmatic Significance
of the Question of the Historical Jesus,” 82–119; Adam, “Why Historical Criticism Can’t
Protect Christological Orthodoxy,” 37–56; Pannenberg, Jesus, God and Man, 307–64.
69. See Adam, “Historical Criticism,” 37–56; Johnson, “Humanity of Jesus,” 3–28.
70. See Slusser, “Docetism: A Historical Definition,” 163–72; Brox, “ ‘Doketismus’—Eine
Problemanzeige,” 301–14.
71. Adam, “Historical Criticism,” 43.
72. Collingwood, The Idea of History, 215.
73. This is the second of Ernst Troeltsch’s (1865–1923) three “principles of critical
history.” See Troeltsch, Gesammelte Schriften, II, 729–53. Because of Jesus’ sinlessness,
Kähler maintains that such analogy is impossible (So-Called Historical Jesus, 53–4).
32 The Consciousness of the Historical Jesus

a historical figure’s aims and intentions by comparing them with other related
scenarios and by drawing on a predetermined range of possible explanations.
If Jesus did not possess human intentions and motivations like we do—as
many historians appear to believe would be the case were he “divine”—then the
possibility of historical analogy is undermined, and Jesus is excluded from the
purview of historical reconstruction.
The second closely related issue comes from a recognition that some
conceptions of Jesus undercut the historical emphasis on context. Historians insist
that the consciousness and human experience of a historical figure must stand in
significant continuity with their cultural and historical setting. Therefore, Jesus
must be contextualized with reference to the language and concepts of Second-
Temple Judaism. Wright gives this particularly detailed expression, arguing that
Jesus must have possessed a “mindset” that was a basic variation on the broader
first-century Jewish “worldview,” which, like all mindsets, was confined to the
limitations of a critical realist epistemology.74 This focus on historical particularity
opposes the presumed universalizing tendency of Christology, insisting that Jesus
must have experienced the same limited, historical perspective as all other humans
if we are to understand him as a first-century Jew.
Another facet of this second issue can be understood in terms of what historians
typically see as the cardinal sin against their discipline: anachronism.75 Raymond
Brown refuses to approach the issue of Jesus’ self-understanding in terms of
the question “Did Jesus know he was God?” because he believes that without a
developed Trinitarian framework the idea is nonsensical. “When we ask whether
during his ministry Jesus, a Palestinian Jew, knew that he was God, we are asking
whether he identified himself and the Father—and, of course, he did not” (see
Mk 10:18).76 The question of self-understanding is complicated by the fact that
we are attempting to locate a judgment in the mind of a historical figure, even
though we understand that judgment in conceptual terms that are foreign to that
figure’s historical milieu.77 It would be anachronistic to suggest that the content
of Jesus’ self-understanding would have been structured in terms of our own
Nicene expressions of Trinitarian theology. In this sense, a “docetic” insistence
that Jesus knew he was the second person of the triune God undermines the prime
imperative of historiography.
The third issue has to do with the veracity of certain historical sources that,
by presenting Jesus as somehow “divine,” subvert the accepted forms of narrative
discourse. In his seminal book The Testament of Jesus, Käsemann characterized the

74. See Wright, JVG, 137–44; Wright, NTPG, 31–77.

75. See Fasolt, The Limits of History, esp. 3–45.
76. Brown, Jesus God and Man, 87. See similar arguments in e.g., Harvey, Jesus and the
Constraints of History, 154–73; Vermes, Jesus the Jew; Vermes, The Religion of Jesus the Jew;
Bird, How God Became Jesus, 52.
77. See discussion of concepts and judgments in Yeago, “The New Testament and the
Nicene Dogma,” 152–64. Cf. Sarisky, “Judgments in Scripture and the Creed.”
 1. The Historical Jesus 33

Christology of the Gospel of John as “naïve Docetism,” and argued that the church
had misjudged it by declaring it to be orthodox.78 Kasper Larsen has suggested
that what Käsemann took issue with was the “touch of ‘irreality’ ” that John’s
depiction of Jesus throws onto the narrative world of the Fourth Gospel.79 Relying
on Greimas’ theory of narrative discourse,80 Larsen highlights what happens when
omniscience is applied to one of the participating actors in a narrative. Jesus’
extraordinary knowledge of himself and others results in him being “elevated into
a sphere of his own,” which makes him a kind of stranger in the narrative world.81
Elevated thus, Jesus is never really in danger from his antagonists: even their
treachery serves Jesus’ purposes (see Jn 10:17-18, 13:27, 18:4-9). Narrative tension
is typically dependent on the limited knowledge and perspective of the characters.
By including a character with neither limitation, John reaches beyond the
perimeters of narrative convention in unexpected ways.82 In this sense, “narrative
Docetism” is understood as a literary phenomenon in which the significance of
pragmatic narrative functions is subordinated when cognitive processes are in
focus. “Narrative Docetism” causes unique problems for historians for whom
pragmatic narrative functions are a priority.83
In response to Käsemann’s critique of John’s gospel, Marianne Meye Thompson
rightly argues that not only in docetic Christologies but in any Christology
with roots in orthodoxy, Jesus transcends the limits of typical humanity so that
in addition to his likeness to us, his unlikeness is fundamental to his identity as
Christ.84 Although these issues may pose a threat to contemporary historical
methodology, it remains to be seen if they are a “docetic” threat to theology. At the
same time, they invite a similar question in the opposite direction: Is the historical
Jesus scholars’ alternative to Docetism simply a form of Ebionitism? For Jesus to
be fully human, must he be merely or typically human? Wright describes Docetism
as a sense that Jesus was “so ‘divine’ that he only seemed to be human but wasn’t
really so,”85 and Meier maintains that a non-docetic Jesus must be understood to

78. Käsemann, The Testament of Jesus, 26, 76.

79. Larsen, “Narrative Docetism,” 354.
80. See Greimas and Courtés, “The Cognitive Dimension of Narrative Discourse.”
81. Larsen, “Narrative Docetism,” 352.
82. See Ashley, “Jesus’ Human Knowledge According to the Fourth Gospel,” 241–53.
83. T. E. Pollard picks up on this tension between a preference for external details and a
methodological focus on internal motivations. He maintains that “the Synoptists see Jesus
and his words and actions from the outside through the eyes of the disciples: John ‘enters
sympathetically into the mind’ of Jesus, or ‘puts himself into the shoes’ of Jesus. [Therefore,]
on Collingwood’s definition of the real task of the historian, it could well be argued that
John is a better historian than the Synoptists” (From his inaugural lecture given at Knox
Theological Hall, Dunedin, in 1964, quoted in Robinson, “The Last Tabu?” 560).
84. Thompson, The Incarnate Word, 7–8, 117–28. See related discussion in Voorwinde,
Jesus’ Emotions in the Fourth Gospel.
85. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus, 3.
34 The Consciousness of the Historical Jesus

be “as truly and fully human—with all the galling limitations that involves—as
any other human being.”86 One gets the impression from such statements that a
dichotomy is being assumed wherein two mutually exclusive natures (human and
divine) are in competition. Analyzed in terms of Christological doctrine, Jesus is
located squarely on the side of humanity (resulting in Ebionitism) or on the side
of divinity (resulting in Docetism), or he is judiciously placed along a spectrum
between the two (resulting in Eutychianism). This differs quite radically from the
Christian tradition, which confesses that Jesus is fully divine and fully human. In
that context, Docetism is understood to result not from Jesus being too divine
(one cannot be more than fully divine) but from a gnostic denial of his humanity.
Historical Jesus studies, as with historical biblical scholarship more broadly,
tends to operate with Kantian or post-Kantian anti-metaphysical assumptions and,
for the most part, these scholars intentionally limit their investigation to the realm
of the “phenomenal.” The result, however, is not that metaphysical suppositions
are removed from the inquiry. They continue to play a role but avoid critical
investigation or justification. Wright argues that “rigorous history … and rigorous
theology … belong together, and never more so than in discussion of Jesus. If this
means that we end up needing a new metaphysic, so be it.”87 The problem is that
this “new metaphysic” is never worked out in detail, it is simply assumed, and
although it is difficult to pin down with much precision, it appears to include a
commitment to the mutual exclusivity (or a quantitative delineation) of the finite
and the infinite, along with a restricted understanding of divine transcendence.88
Only if we posit a competitive relationship between humanity and divinity or
suppose a truncated view of the human capacity for union with God do we end
up with the Christological polarities noted above. Fortunately, we have good
philosophical and theological reasons to question these assumptions, and by
doing so we can help to free the historians from the metaphysical restrictions that
so often hamper their investigations.
As we have seen, philosophical and theological assumptions about what it
means for Jesus to be fully human play a seminal role from the outset of historical
investigation. This is made especially clear when Dale Allison Jr., Marcus Borg,
and others argue explicitly that a fully human Jesus could not possess a divine
self-understanding.89 There is no doubt that this metaphysical (even theological)
judgment impacts the historiographical outcome. At the same time, it is no

86. Meier, Marginal Jew, vol. 1, 199.

87. JVG, 8.
88. An explicit example of a quantitative delineation of divinity and humanity can
be found in Bart Ehrman’s work. He argues that the Gospels should be read against a
background in which humanity and divinity were not thought of as qualitatively distinct,
but as existing along a continuum (Ehrman, How Jesus Became God). Cf. Bauckham, God
of Israel.
89. Allison Jr., The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus, 89; Borg, Jesus a New
Vision, 4–8; Wright, “A Biblical Portrait of God,” 27; Wright, The Challenge of Jesus, 3.
 1. The Historical Jesus 35

wonder that, when restricted to these terms, those who want to affirm that Jesus
possessed some sort of divine identity find themselves grasping for conceptual
tools and coming up empty.90 The influence of these scholars’ understandings of
philosophical anthropology, Christology (e.g., “Docetism”), and the nature of
divine and human knowledge and consciousness is significant enough to warrant
explicit theological appraisal.

Theological Parallels

Christology is arguably the area of theological reflection where metaphysical

ideas of the relationship between the finite and the infinite, transcendence and
immanence, nature and grace, and a host of other questions come most fully to
the fore. At the same time, it is the doctrinal locus where Christians often look
for the fullest revelation of each of these realities. This means there is a dialectical
relationship between Christology and metaphysics, neither of them wholly prior
to nor independent from the other.91 This complex relationship has led a number
of theologians into the same dead ends as the historical Jesus scholars that we
outlined above, and it is worth discussing some of the theological parallels to the
ideas we have been discussing.
There exists a widespread misconception that, even if Jesus was “divine” in
some sense, he could have been truly human only if his divinity was evacuated
of its divine properties in the manner of so-called kenotic Christology.92 There
are various kenotic approaches, but one of the most influential is that associated
with P. T. Forsyth and H. R. Mackintosh.93 Building upon a particular reading of

90. Witherington concludes his book-length study on Jesus’ self-understanding

somewhat vaguely, writing that “I think [Jesus] implied that he should be seen not merely as
a greater king than David but in a higher and more transcendent category” (The Christology
of Jesus, 276). This reveals quite clearly the need for richer language and terminology around
this issue. Cf. Wright, JVG, 121.
91. As Rowan Williams writes,

Chicken and egg, you may rightly say: the pressures that shape the language of
traditional doctrine push forward an exploration of the metaphysical structure
that alone will make sense of it … Christology is not just one example of a
theological theme or topic that is illuminated by a general metaphysical axiom
about finite and infinite; it is, I shall argue, the major theological enterprise that
itself shapes and clarifies that axiom. (Williams, Christ the Heart, 6)

92. For an example of this assumption at work among biblical scholars, see O’Neill, Who
Did Jesus Think He Was?, 189–90.
93. Forsyth, The Person and Place of Jesus Christ; Mackintosh, The Doctrine of the Person
of Christ. See discussion in McCormack, “Kenoticism in Modern Christology,” 444–57.
Nineteenth-Century “kenoticists” on the Continent included Thomasius, Hofmann,
36 The Consciousness of the Historical Jesus

the words ἑαυτὸν ἐκένωσεν in the so-called “Christ hymn” of Phil. 2:6-11, they
conceive of God divesting himself of his divine properties in order to live and
act humanly: God literally becomes the subject of a human life, his divine nature
becoming subject to all of the “galling” limitations of typical human existence.94
This is often worked out in terms of a version of the communicatio idiomatum—
referred to as the genus tapeinoticum or genus majestaticum—in which, rather than
ascribing the attributes of each nature to the one person of Christ, the properties
of each nature are cross-attributed to each other.95 By ascribing the attributes of
Christ’s humanity to his divinity, the “divinity” of the Word essentially becomes
a human nature through the Incarnation.96 Viewing divine transcendence as
incompatible with the Incarnation, these theologians insist that God must give
up elements of his divinity in order to become human.97 This view is often used as
theological justification for the idea that Jesus could have been “divine” in some
sense without necessarily possessing extraordinary knowledge, or even a divine
self-understanding.
Most Reformed and Roman Catholic theologians reject kenotic Christology.98
That is not to say that they ignore Philippians 2, which has always been a central
Christological text. Rather, kenosis has typically been understood as “taking
[λαβών] the form [μορφήν] of a slave, being born in human likeness [ὁμοιώματι]”

Liebner, Frank, Ebrard, Martensen, and Gess (see Welch, Protestant Thought in the
Nineteenth Century, 233–40). In Britain it included Gore, Fairbairn, Weston, and Gifford,
in addition to Forsyth and Mackintosh (see Ramsey, From Gore to Temple, 30–43). Cf.
Thompson, “Nineteenth-Century Kenotic Christology,” 74–111.
94. Stephen Sykes argues that this abandons a two-natures approach altogether (“The
Strange Persistence of Kenotic Christology,” 349–75).
95. The former involves ascribing attributes of the human nature to the divine nature,
the latter ascribes attributes of his divinity to his humanity.
96. Stephen Sykes, “Strange Persistence,” 349–75; Evans (ed.), Exploring Kenotic
Christology, 354–6. Sykes calls the ideas behind the nineteenth-century development of
kenosis “grotesquely anthropomorphic.” He continues, “It is surely odd that they were
not perceived as such at the time, and that they have not been consistently, and by every
thoughtful theologian similarly perceived” (“Strange Persistence,” 357).
97. For exegetical discussions see Gorman, Inhabiting the Cruciform God, 21–2;
Witherington, Friendship and Finances in Philippi, 66–7.
98. See, e.g., Barth, Erklärung Des Philipperbriefes. ET: The Epistle to the Philippians,
60–4; Barth, CD IV/1, 180–4; Pope Pius XII, “Sempiternus Rex Christus” (September 8,
1951): §29, accessed May 1, 2018, http://w2.vati​can.va/cont​ent/pius-xii/en/ency​clic​als/
docume​nts/hf_p-xii_e​nc_0​8091​951_​semp​iter​nus-rex-chris​tus.html. While Barth rejects
kenotic Christology, he later employs a version of the genus tapeinoticum in Church
Dogmatics IV/1 and IV/2 as he works out his understanding of the meaning of Deus pro
nobis (see, e.g., Church Dogmatics IV/1, 215). See discussion in White, “The Crucified
Lord,” 157–92.
 1. The Historical Jesus 37

(Phil. 2:7),99 which is how Paul explains it in context.100 The kenosis of the divine
Son involves the addition of a human nature—he “emptied” himself by taking up
(λαβών) the form of a slave—not the diminution of his divinity. As Aquinas notes,
“[The Son of God] is called ‘emptied’ … not because anything was subtracted from
his fullness or the greatness of his divinity, but because he took up our exile and our
smallness.”101 Aquinas picks up on Paul’s use of the word “form” (Greek: μορφή;
Latin: formae),102 noting that “it is necessary to say that in Christ there are two
forms (formae), even after the union … But it cannot be said that the form of God

99. Quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), copyright
1989, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by
permission. All rights reserved. Greek text from GNT28-T.
100. Thus, Sykes notes that “kenosis” refers to the quality of God’s love in becoming
human. “In this sense the word has no technical [ontological] Christological connotation”
(“Strange Persistence,” 356).
101. In Rom. c. 9, lect. 5, §805. See ScG IV, c. 8. “But since he was filled with divinity, did he
empty himself of divinity? No, because he remained what he was, and he assumed what he was
not … For as he descended from heaven (not that he ceased to be in heaven, but that he began
to be in a new mode on earth), so also he emptied himself (not by laying down his divine
nature but by assuming a human nature)” (In Epist. ad Phil. c. 2, lect. 2, §57). Here, in the first
parenthetical aside, Aquinas affirms Augustine’s position that the Word of God did not cease
to govern the universe in taking on human flesh in the Incarnation, thereby advocating what
the Lutheran tradition refers to as the extra Calvinisticum: a position Calvin shared with the
Patristic (esp. Athanasius, Augustine, and Gregory Nazianzus), and medieval tradition, which
Luther rejected. See ST III, a. 10, q. 1 ad 2; In Heb. I, lect. 2, 30–6; In Epist. ad Phil. ch. 2, lect. 2,
§57; Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, II, c. 13, n. 4. See recent discussion in Gordon,
The Holy One in Our Midst; McGinnis, The Son of God Beyond the Flesh.
102. Gordon Fee notes that, contrasted with σχημα (“fashion”: emphasizing external
features), μορφή is identified more closely with the essence of a thing, denoting “those
characteristics and qualities that are essential to it” (Fee, Paul’s Letter to the Philippians,
204). The word for Christ’s transfiguration on the mountain is μετεμορφὠθη (Mt. 17:2), and
after the resurrection he is said to have appeared to the disciples “in another form (μορφή)”
(Mk 16:12). Compare this with Rom. 12:2 (“be not conformed [συσχηματίζεσθε] to this
world”) or 2 Cor. 11:13 (“deceitful workmen, disguising [μετασχηματιζόμενοι] themselves
as apostles of Christ”). In the Vulgate, these words are translated as effigie and formae,
which demarcate a similar distinction: both can be translated as “form” but the former has
the sense of imitation and appearance, while the latter is more essential. See Deferrari, s.v.
“effigies” (p. 353); Deferrari, s.v. “forma” (p. 433). Markus Bockmuehl takes μορφή to refer
to something visible or perceptible about an object, but still more essential than σχημα. He
therefore associates the “form of God” with the visible glory of God from LXX texts such
as Job 4:16, Isa. 44:13, and Dan. 3:1 (“ ‘The Form of God’ [Phil. 2.6],” 1–23). Obviously, the
contrast between these terms cannot be overstated, and μορφή is not fully synonymous
with φυσις either way. This is a highly metaphorical passage and grammatical nuances are
unlikely to yield sufficient theological fruit. Nonetheless, Aquinas’ interpretation in terms of
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 Fig. 466.—Wolf-fish, Anarhichas lupus (L.). Georges Bank.

Fig. 467.—Skull of Anarrhichthys ocellatus Ayres.

In the wolf-eel (Anarrhichthys ocellatus) of the coast of California,

the head is formed as in Anarhichas but the body is band-shaped,
being drawn out into a very long and tapering tail. This species,
which is often supposed to be a "sea-serpent," sometimes reaches a
length of eight feet. It is used for food. It feeds on sea-urchins and
sand-dollars (Echinarachinius) which it readily crushes with its
tremendous teeth.
The skull of a fossil genus, Laparus (alticeps), with a resemblance to
Anarhichas, is recorded from the Eocene of England.
The Eel-pouts: Zoarcidæ.—The remaining blenny-like forms lack
fin spines, agreeing in this respect with the codfishes and their allies.
In all of the latter, however, the hypercoracoid is imperforate, the
pseudobranchiæ are obsolete, and the tail isocercal. The forms allied
to Zoarces and Ophidion, and which we may regard as degraded
blennies, have homocercal (rarely leptocercal) tails, generally but not
always well-developed pseudobranchiæ and the usual foramen in
the hypercoracoid.

Fig. 463.—Eel-pout, Zoarces anguillaris Peck. Eastport, Me.

The Zoarcidæ, or eel-pouts, have the body elongate, naked, or

covered with small scales, the dorsal and anal of many soft rays and
the gill-openings confined to the side. Most of the species live in
rather deep water in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. Zoarces
viviparus, the "mother of eels," is a common fish of the coasts of
northern Europe. In the genus Zoarces, the last rays of the dorsal
are short and stiff, like spines. The species are viviparous; the young
being eel-like in form, the name "mother of eels" has naturally arisen
in popular language. The American eel-pout, sometimes called
mutton-fish, Zoarces anguillaris, is rather common north of Cape
Cod, and a similar species, Zoarces elongatus, is found in northern
Japan. Lycodopsis pacifica, without spines in the dorsal, replaces
Zoarces in California. The species of Lycodes, without spines in the
dorsal, and with teeth on the vomer and palatines, are very
abundant in the northern seas, extending into deep waters farther
south. Lycodes reticulatus is the most abundant of these fishes,
which are valued chiefly by the Esquimaux and other Arctic races of
people. Numerous related genera are recorded from deep-sea
explorations, and several others occur about Tierra del Fuego.
Gymnelis, small, naked species brightly colored, is represented by
Gymnelis viridis in the Arctic and by Gymnelis pictus about Cape
Horn.

Fig. 469.—Eel-pout, Lycodes reticulatus Reinhardt. Banquereau.

Fig. 470.—Lycenchelys verrilli (Goode & Bean). Chebucto, Nova

Scotia.

Fig. 471.—Scytalina cerdale Jordan & Gilbert. Straits of Fuca.

The family of Scytalinidæ contains a single species, Scytalina
cerdale, a small snake-shaped fish which lives in wet gravel between
tide-marks, on Waada Island near Cape Flattery in Washington, not
having yet been found elsewhere. It dives among the wet stones
with great celerity, and can only be taken by active digging.
To the family of Congrogadidæ belong several species of eel-shaped
blennies with soft rays only, found on the coasts of Asia. Another
small family, Derepodichthyidæ, is represented by one species, a
scaleless little fish from the shores of British Columbia.
The Xenocephalidæ consist of a single peculiar species,
Xenocephalus armatus, from the island of New Ireland. The head is
very large, helmeted with bony plates and armed with spines. The
body is short and slender, the ventrals with five rays, the dorsal and
anal short.
The Cusk-eels: Ophidiidæ.—The more important family of
Ophidiidæ, or cusk-eels, is characterized by the extremely anterior
position of the ventral fins, which are inserted at the throat, each
one appearing as a long forked barbel. The tail is leptocercal,
attenuate, the dorsal and anal confluent around it. Ophidion
barbatum and Rissola rochei are common in southern Europe.
Rissola marginata is the commonest species on our Atlantic coast,
and Chilara taylori in California. Other species are found farther
south, and still others in deep water. Genypterus contains numerous
species of the south Pacific, some of which reach the length of five
feet, forming a commercial substitute for cod. Genypterus capensis
is the klipvisch of the Cape of Good Hope, and Genypterus australis
the "Cloudy Bay cod" or "rock ling" of New England. Another large
species, Genypterus maculatus, occurs in Chile. A few fragments
doubtfully referred to Ophidion and Fierasfer occur in the Eocene
and later rocks. The Lycodapodidæ contain a few small, scaleless
fishes (Lycodapus) dredged in the north Pacific.
 Fig. 472.—Cusk-eel, Rissola marginata (De Kay). Virginia.

Fig. 473.—Lycodapus dermatinus Gilbert. Lower California.

Sand-lances: Ammodytidæ.—Near the Ophidiidæ are placed the

small family of sand-lances (Ammodytidæ). This family comprises
small, slender, silvery fishes, of both Arctic and tropical seas, living
along shore and having the habit of burying themselves in the sand
under the surf in shallow water. The jaws are toothless, the body
scarcely scaly and crossed by many cross-folds of skin, the many-
rayed dorsal fin is without spines, and the ventral fins when present
are jugular. The species of the family are very much alike. From their
great abundance they have sometimes much value as food, more
perhaps as bait, still more as food for salmon and other fishes, from
which they escape by plunging into the sand. Sometimes a falling
tide leaves a sandy beach fairly covered with living "lants" looking
like a moving foam of silver. Ammodytes tobianus is the sand-lance
or lant of northern Europe. Ammodytes americanus, scarcely
distinguishable, replaces it in America; and Ammodytes personatus
in California, Alaska, and Japan. This is a most excellent pan fish,
and the Japanese, who regard little things, value it highly.
 Fig. 474.—Sand-lance, Ammodytes americanus De Kay. Nantucket.

Fig. 475.—Embolichthys mitsukurii (Jordan & Evermann). Formosa.

In the genus Hyperoplus there is a large tooth on the vomer. In the

tropical genera there is a much smaller number of vertebræ and the
body is covered with ordinary scales instead of delicate, oblique
cross-folds of skin. These tropical species must probably be
detached from the Ammodytidæ to form a distinct family,
Bleekeriidæ. Bleekeria kallolepis is found in India, Bleekeria gilli is
from an unknown locality, and the most primitive species of sand-
lance, Embolichthys mitsukurii, occurs in Formosa. In this species,
alone of the sand-lances, the ventral fins are retained. These are
jugular in position, as in the Zoarcidæ, and the rays are I, 3. The
discovery of this species makes it necessary to separate the
Ammodytidæ and Bleekeriidæ widely from the Percesoces, and
especially from the extinct families of Crossognathidæ and
Cobitopsidæ with which its structure in other regards has led
Woodward, Boulenger, and the present writer to associate it.
Although an alleged sand-lance, Rhynchias septipinnis, with ventral
fins abdominal, was described a century ago by Pallas, no one has
since seen it, and it may not exist, or, if it exists, it may belong
among the Percesoces. The relation of Ammodytes to Embolichthys
is too close to doubt their close relationship. According to Dr. Gill the
Ammodytidæ belong near the Hemerocœtidæ.

Fig. 476.—Pearlfish, Fierasfer dubius Putnam, embedded in a layer

of mother-of-pearl. La Paz, Lower California. (Photograph by Capt.
M. Castro.)

The Pearlfishes: Fierasferidæ.—In the little group of pearlfishes,

called Fierasferidæ or Carapidæ, the body is eel-shaped with a
rather large head, and the vent is at the throat. Numerous species of
Fierasfer (Carapus) are found in the warm seas. These little fishes
enter the cavities of sea-cucumbers (Holothurians) and other
animals which offer shelter, being frequently taken from the pearl-
oyster. In the Museum of Comparative Zoology, according to
Professor Putnam, is "one valve of a pearl-oyster in which a
specimen of Fierasfer dubius is beautifully inclosed in a pearly
covering deposited on it by the oyster." A photograph of a similar
specimen is given above. The species found in Holothurians are
transparent in texture, with a bright pearly luster. Species living
among lava rocks, as Jordanicus umbratilis of the south seas, are
mottled black. Since this was written a specimen of this black
species has been obtained from a Holothurian in Hilo, Hawaii, by Mr.
H. W. Henshaw.

Fig. 477.—Pearlfish, Fierasfer acus (Linnæus), issuing from a

Holothurian. Coast of Italy. (After Emery.)

The Brotulidæ.—The Brotulidæ constitute a large family of fishes,

resembling codfishes, but differing in the character of the
hypercoracoid, as well as in the form of the tail. The resemblance
between the two groups is largely superficial. We may look upon the
Brotulidæ as degraded blennies, but the Gadidæ have an earlier and
different origin which has not yet been clearly made out. Most of the
Brotulidæ live in deep water and are without common name or
economic relations. Two species have been landlocked in cave
streams in Cuba, where they have, like other cavefishes, lost their
sight, a phenomenon which richly deserves careful study, and which
has been recently investigated by Dr. C. H. Eigenmann. These blind
Brotulids, called Pez Ciego in Cuba, are found in different caves in
the county of San Antonio, where they reach a length of about five
inches. As in other blindfishes, the body is translucent and colorless.
These species are known as Lucifuga subterranea and Stygicola
dentata. They are descended from allies of the genera called Brotula
and Dinematichthys. Brotula barbata is a cusk-like fish, occasionally
found in the markets of Havana. Similar species, Brotula
multibarbata and Sirembo inermis, are common in Japan, and
Brosmophycis marginatus, beautifully red in color, is occasionally
seen on the coast of California. Many other genera and species
abound in the depths of the sea and in crevices of coral reefs,
showing much variety in form and structure.

Fig. 478.—Brotula barbata Schneider. Cuba.

 Fig. 479.—Blind Brotula. Lucifuga subterranea (Poey), showing
viviparous habit. Joignan Cave, Pinar del Rio, Cuba. (Photograph by
Dr. Eigenmann.)

The Bregmacerotidæ are small fishes, closely related to the

Brotulids, having the hypercoracoid perforate, but with several minor
peculiarities, the first ray of the dorsal being free and much
elongate. They live near the surface in the open sea. Bregmaceros
macclellandi is widely diffused in the Pacific.
Ateleopodidæ.—The small family of Ateleopodidæ includes long-
bodied, deep-water fishes of the Pacific, resembling Macrourus, but
with smooth scales. The group has the coracoids as in Brotulidæ,
and the actinosts are united in an undivided plate. Ateleopus
japonicus is the species taken in Japan.
Suborder Haplodoci.—We may here place the peculiar family of
Batrachoididæ, or toadfishes. It constitutes the suborder of
Haplodoci (ἁπλόος, simple; δόκος, shaft) from the simple form of the
post-temporal. This order is characterized by the undivided post-
temporal bone and by the reduction of the gill-arches to three. A
second bone behind the post-temporal connects the shoulder-girdle
above to the vertebral column. The coracoid bones are more or less
elongate, suggesting the arm seen in pediculate fishes.
The single family has the general form of the Cottidæ, the body
robust, with large head, large mouth, strong teeth, and short
spinous dorsal fin. The shoulder-girdle and its structures differ little
from the blennioid type. There are no pseudobranchiæ and the tail is
homocercal. The species are relatively few, chiefly confined to the
warm seas and mostly American, none being found in Europe or
Asia. Some of them ascend rivers, and all are carnivorous and
voracious. None are valued as food, being coarse-grained in flesh.
The group is probably nearest allied to the Trachinidæ or
Uranoscopidæ.

Fig. 480.—Leopard Toadfish, Opsanus pardus (Goode & Bean).

Pensacola.

Opsanus tau, the common toadfish, or oyster-fish, of our Atlantic

coast, is very common in rocky places, the young clinging to stones
by a sucking-disk on the belly, a structure which is early lost. It
reaches a length of about fifteen inches. Opsanus pardus, the
leopard toadfish, or sapo, of the Gulf coast, lives in deeper water
and is prettily marked with dark-brown spots on a light yellowish
ground.
In Opsanus the body is naked and there is a large foramen, or
mucous pore, in the axil of the pectoral. In the Marcgravia
cryptocentra, a large Brazilian toadfish, this foramen is absent. In
Batrachoides, a South American genus, the body is covered with
cycloid scales. Batrachoides surinamensis is a common species of the
West Indies. Batrachoides pacifici occurs at Panama. The genus
Porichthys is remarkable for the development of series of mucous
pores and luminous spots in several different lateral lines which
cover the body. These luminous spots are quite unlike those found in
the lantern-fishes (Myctophidæ) and other Iniomi. Their structure
has been worked out in detail by Dr. Charles Wilson Greene, a
summary of whose conclusions are given on page 191, Vol. I.
The common midshipman, or singing fish, of the coast of California
is Porichthys notatus. This species, named midshipman from its rows
of shining spots like brass buttons, is found among rocks and kelp
and makes a peculiar quivering or humming noise with its large air-
bladder.
Porichthys porosissimus, the bagre sapo, is common on all coasts of
the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. Porichthys margaritatus is
found about Panama and Porichthys porosus in Chile.

Fig. 481.—Singing Fish or Bagre Sapo, Porichthys porosissimus

(Cuv. & Val.). Galveston.

The species of Thalassophryne and Thalassothia, the poison

toadfishes, are found along the coasts of South America, where they
sometimes ascend the rivers. In these species there is an elaborate
series of venom glands connected with the hollow spines of the
opercle and the dorsal spines. Dr. Günther gives the following
account of this structure as shown in Thalassophryne reticulata, a
species from Panama:
"In this species I first observed and closely examined the poison
organ with which the fishes of this genus are provided. Its structure
is as follows: (1) The opercular part: The operculum is very narrow,
vertically styliform and very mobile; it is armed behind with a spine,
eight lines long in a specimen of 10½ inches, and of the same form
as the venom fang of a snake; it is, however, somewhat less curved,
being only slightly bent upward. It has a longish slit at the outer side
of its extremity which leads into a canal perfectly closed and running
along the whole length of its interior; a bristle introduced into the
canal reappears through another opening at the base of the spine,
entering into a sac situated on the opercle and along the basal half
of the spine; the sac is of an oblong-ovate shape and about double
the size of an oat grain. Though the specimen had been preserved in
spirits for about nine months it still contained a whitish substance of
the consistency of thick cream, which on the slightest pressure freely
flowed from the opening in the extremity of the spine. On the other
hand, the sac could be easily filled with air or fluid from the foramen
of the spine. No gland could be discovered in the immediate
neighborhood of the sac; but on a more careful inspection I found a
minute tube floating free in the sac, whilst on the left-hand side
there is only a small opening instead of the tube. The attempts to
introduce a bristle into this opening for any distance failed, as it
appears to lead into the interior of the basal portion of the
operculum, to which the sac firmly adheres at this spot. (2) The
dorsal part is composed of the two dorsal spines, each of which is
ten lines long. The whole arrangement is the same as in the
opercular spines; their slit is at the front side of the point; each has
a separate sac, which occupies the front of the basal portion; the
contents were the same as in the opercular sacs, but in somewhat
greater quantity. A strong branch of the lateral line ascends to the
immediate neighborhood of their base. Thus we have four poison
spines, each with a sac at its base; the walls of the sacs are thin,
composed of a fibrous membrane, the interior of which is coated
over with mucus. There are no secretory glands embedded between
these membranes, and these sacs are probably merely the reservoirs
in which the fluid secreted accumulates. The absence of a secretory
organ in the immediate neighborhood of the reservoirs (an organ the
size of which would be in accordance with the quantity of fluid
secreted), the diversity of the osseous spines which have been
modified into poison organs, and the actual communication indicated
by the foramen in the sac lead me to the opinion that the organ of
secretion is either that system of muciferous channels which is found
in nearly the whole class of fishes, and the secretion of which has
poisonous qualities in a few of them, or at least an independent
portion of it. This description was made from the first example;
through the kindness of Captain Dow I received two other
specimens, and in the hope of proving the connection of the poison
bags with the lateral-line system, I asked Dr. Pettigrew, of the Royal
College of Surgeons, a gentleman whose great skill has enriched
that collection with a series of the most admirable anatomical
preparations, to lend me his assistance in injecting the canals. The
injection of the bags through the opening of the spine was easily
accomplished; but we failed to drive the fluid beyond the bag or to
fill with it any other part of the system of muciferous channels. This,
however, does not disprove the connection of the poison bags with
that system, inasmuch as it became apparent that if there be minute
openings they are so contracted by the action of the spirit in which
the specimens were preserved as to be impassable to the fluid of
injection. A great part of the lateral-line system consists of open
canals; however, on some parts of the body, these canals are
entirely covered by the skin; thus, for instance, the open lateral line
ceases apparently in the suprascapular region, being continued in
the parietal region. We could not discover any trace of an opening
by which the open canal leads to below the skin; yet we could
distinctly trace the existence of the continuation of the canal by a
depressed line, so that it is quite evident that such openings do
exist, although they may be passable only in fresh specimens. Thus
likewise the existence of openings in the bags, as I believed to have
found in the first specimen dissected, may be proved by examination
of fresh examples. The sacs are without an external muscular layer
and situated immediately below the loose thick skin which envelops
their spines to their extremity. The injection of the poison into a
living animal, therefore, can only be effected by the pressure to
which the sac is subjected the moment the spine enters another
body. Nobody will suppose that a complicated apparatus like the one
described can be intended for conveying an innocuous substance,
and therefore I have not hesitated to designate it as poisonous; and,
Captain Dow informs me in a letter lately received, 'the natives of
Panama seemed quite familiar with the existence of the spines and
of the emission from them of a poison which, when introduced into a
wound, caused fever, an effect somewhat similar to that produced by
the sting of a scorpion; but in no case was a wound caused by one
of them known to result seriously. The slightest pressure of the
finger at the base of the spine caused the poison to jet a foot or
more from the opening of the spine.' The greatest importance must
be attached to this fact, inasmuch as it assists us in our inquiries into
the nature of the functions of the muciferous system, the idea of its
being a secretory organ having lately been superseded by the notion
that it serves merely as a stratum for the distribution of peripheric
nerves. Also the objection that the sting-rays and many Siluroid
fishes are not poisonous because they have no poison organ cannot
be maintained, although the organs conveying their poison are
neither so well adapted for this purpose nor in such a perfect
connection with the secretory mucous system as in Thalassophryne.
The poison organ serves merely as a weapon of defense. All the
Batrachoids with obtuse teeth on the palate and in the lower jaw
feed on Mollusca and Crustaceans."
No fossil Batrachoididæ are known.
Suborder Xenopterygii.—The clingfishes, forming the suborder
Xenopterygii (ξενός, strange; πτερύξ, fin), are, perhaps, allied to the
toadfishes. The ventral fins are jugular, the rays I, 4 or I, 5, and
between them is developed an elaborate sucking-disk, not derived
from modified fins, but from folds of the skin and underlying
muscles.
The structure of this disk in Gobiesox sanguineus is thus described
by Dr. Günther:
"The whole disk is exceedingly large, subcircular, longer than broad,
its length being (often) one-third of the whole length of the fish. The
central portion is formed merely by skin, which is separated from the
pelvic or pubic bones by several layers of muscles. The peripheric
portion is divided into an anterior and posterior part by a deep notch
behind the ventrals. The anterior peripheric portion is formed by the
ventral rays, the membrane between them and a broad fringe which
extends anteriorly from one ventral to the other. This fringe is a fold
of the skin, containing on one side the rudimentary ventral spine,
but no cartilage. The posterior peripheric portion is suspended on
each side on the coracoid, the upper bone of which is exceedingly
broad, becoming a free, movable plate behind the pectoral. The
lower bone of the coracoid is of a triangular form, and supports a
very broad fold of the skin, extending from one side to the other,
and containing a cartilage which runs through the whole of that fold.
Fine processes of the cartilage are continued into the soft striated
margin, in which the disk terminates posteriorly. The face of the disk
is coated with a thick epidermis, like the sole of the foot in higher
animals. The epidermis is divided into many polygonal plates. There
are no such plates between the roots of the ventral fins."

Fig. 482.—Aspasma ciconiæ Jordan & Snyder. Wakanoura, Japan.

The body is formed much as in the toadfishes. The skin is naked and
there is no spinous dorsal fin. The skeleton shows several
peculiarities; there is no suborbital ring, the palatine arcade is
reduced, as are the gill-arches, the opercle is reduced to a spine-like
projection, and the vertebræ are numerous. The species are found
in tide-pools in the warm seas, where they cling tightly to the rocks
with their large ventral disks.
Several species of Lepadogaster and Mirbelia are found in the
Mediterranean. Lepadogaster gouani is the best-known European
species. Aspasma ciconiæ and minima occur about the rocks in the
bays of Japan.

Fig. 483.—Clingfish, Caularchus mæandricus (Girard). Monterey,

Cal.

Most of the West Indian species belong to Gobiesox, with entire

teeth, and to Arbaciosa, with serrated teeth. Some of these species
are deep crimson in color, but most of them are dull olive. Gobiesox
virgatulus is common on the Gulf Coast. Caularchus mæandricus, a
very large species, reaching a length of six inches, abounds along
the coast of California. Other genera are found at the Cape of Good
Hope, especially about New Zealand. Chorisochismus dentex, from
the Cape of Good Hope, reaches the length of a foot.
 CHAPTER XXX
OPISTHOMI AND ANACANTHINI

rder Opisthomi.—The order Opisthomi (ὄπισθη, behind;

ὤμος, shoulder) is characterized by the general traits of
the blennies and other elongate, spiny-rayed fishes, but
the shoulder-girdle, as in the Apodes and the Heteromi,
is inserted on the vertebral column well behind the skull.
The single family, Mastacembelidæ, is composed of eel-shaped
fishes with a large mouth and projecting lower jaw, inhabiting the
waters of India, Africa, and the East Indies. They are small in size
and of no economic importance. The dorsal is long, with free spines
in front and there are no ventral fins. Were these fins developed,
they should in theory be jugular in position. There is no air-duct in
Mastacembelus and it seems to be a true spiny-rayed fish, having no
special relation to either Notacanthus or to the eels. Except for the
separation of the shoulder-girdle from the skull, there seems to be
no reason for separating them far from the Blennioid forms, and the
resemblance to Notacanthus seems wholly fallacious.

Fig. 484.—Mastacembelus ellipsifer Boulenger. Congo River. (After

Boulenger.)
Mastacembelus armatus is a common species of India and China. In
Rhynchobdella the nasal appendage or proboscis, conspicuous in
Mastacembelus, is still more developed. Rhynchobdella aculeata is
common in India.
Order Anacanthini.—We may separate from the other jugular
fishes the great group of codfishes and their allies, retaining the
name Anacanthini (ἄνακανθος, without spine) suggested by
Johannes Müller. In this group the hypercoracoid is without foramen,
the fenestra lying between this bone and the hypocoracoid below it.
The tail is isocercal, the vertebræ in a right line and progressively
smaller backward, sometimes degenerate or whip-like (leptocercal)
at tip. Other characters are shown in the structure of the skull. There
are no spines in any of the fins; the ventrals are jugular, the scales
generally small, and the coloration dull or brownish. The numerous
species live chiefly in the northern seas, some of them descending to
great depths. The resemblance of these fishes to some of the
Blennioid group is very strongly marked, but these likenesses seem
analogical only and not indicative of true affinity. The codfishes
probably represent an early offshoot from the ancestors of the spiny-
rayed fishes, and their line of evolution is unknown, possibly from
Ganoid types. Among recent fishes there is nothing structurally
nearer than the Nototheniidæ and Brotulidæ, but the line of descent
must branch off much farther back than either of these. For the
present, therefore, we may regard the codfishes and their allies
(Anacanthini) as a distinct order.
 Fig. 485.—Codfish, Gadus callarias L. Eastport, Me.

The Codfishes: Gadidæ.—The chief family is that of the Gadidæ,

or codfishes. These are characterized by a general resemblance to
the common codfish, Gadus callarias. This is one of the best known
of fishes, found everywhere on the shores of the North Atlantic, and
the subject of economic fisheries of the greatest importance. Its
flesh is white, flaky, rather tasteless, but takes salt readily, and is
peculiarly well adapted for drying. The average size of the codfish is
about ten pounds, but Captain Nathaniel Atwood of Provincetown
records one with the weight of 160 pounds.
According to Dr. Goode:
"In the western Atlantic the species occurs in the winter in
considerable abundance as far south as the mouth of the
Chesapeake Bay, latitude 37°, and stragglers have been observed
about Ocracoke Inlet. The southern limits of the species may be
safely considered to be Cape Hatteras, in latitude 35° 10´. Along the
coast of New England, the Middle States, and British North America,
and upon all the off-shore banks of this region, cod are found usually
in great abundance, during part of the year at least. They have been
observed also in the Gulf of Bothnia, latitude 70° to 75°, and in the
southeastern part of Baffin's Land to the northward of Cumberland
Sound, and it is more than probable that they occur in the waters of
the Arctic Sea to the north of the American continent, or away
around to Bering Strait."
Dr. Gill says:
"The ocean banks of moderate depths are the favorite resorts of the
cod, but it is by no means confined to those localities. The fish,
indeed, occasionally enters into fresh, or at least brackish, water.
According to Canadian authorities, it is found 'well up the estuary of
the St. Lawrence, though how far up is not definitely stated,
probably not beyond the limits of brackish water.' Even as far south
as the Delaware River it has been known to enter the streams. Dr. C.
C. Abbott records that in January, 1876, 'a healthy, strong, active
codfish, weighing nearly four pounds, was taken in a draw-net in the
Delaware River near Trenton, New Jersey; the stomach of the fish
showed that it had been in river-water several days. Many of them
had been taken about Philadelphia between 1856 and 1869.'
"The cod ranks among the most voracious of ordinary fishes, and
almost everything that is eatable, and some that is not, may find its
way into its capacious maw. Years ago, before naturalists had the
facilities that the dredge now affords, cods' stomachs were the
favorite resort for rare shells, and some species had never been
obtained otherwise than through such a medium, while many filled
the cabinet that would not otherwise have been represented. In the
words of Mr. Goode, 'codfish swallow bivalve fish of the largest size,
like the great sea-clams, which are a favorite article of food on
certain portions of the coast'; further, 'these shells are nested, the
smaller inside of the larger, sometimes six or seven in a set, having
been packed together in this compact manner in the stomachs of the
codfish after the soft parts have been digested out. Some of them
had shreds of the muscles remaining in them and were quite fresh,
having evidently been but recently ejected by the fish.' Even banks
of dead shells have been found in various regions, which are
supposed to be the remains of mollusks taken by the cod. Shell-
fishes, however, form probably but the smaller portion of its diet,
and fishes of its own class contribute materially to its food,—such as
the herring family, the capelin, etc.
"The codfish in its mode of reproduction exhibits some interesting
peculiarities. It does not come on the coast to spawn, as was once
supposed, but its eggs are deposited in mid-sea and float to the
surface, although it does really, in many cases, approach the land to
do so. Prof. C. O. Sars, who has discovered its peculiarities, 'found
cod at a distance of twenty to thirty Norwegian miles from the shore
and at a depth of from one hundred to one hundred and fifty
fathoms.' The eggs thus confided to the mercy of the waves are very
numerous; as many as 9,100,000 have been calculated in a seventy-
five-pound fish. 'When the eggs are first seen in the fish they are so
small as to be hardly distinguishable; but they continue to increase
in size until maturity, and after impregnation have a diameter
depending upon the size of the parent, varying from one-nineteenth
to one-seventeenth of an inch. A five- to eight-pound fish has eggs
of the smaller size, while a twenty-five-pound one has them between
an eighteenth and a seventeenth.' There are about 190,000 eggs of
the smaller size to a pound avoirdupois. They are matured and
ejected from September to November."
Unlike most fishes, the cod spawns in cooling water, a trait also
found in the salmon family.
The liver of the cod yields an easily digested oil of great value in the
medical treatment of diseases causing emaciation.
The Alaska cod, Gadus macrocephalus, is equally abundant with the
Atlantic species, from which it differs very slightly, the air-bladder or
sounds being smaller, according to the fishermen, and the head
being somewhat larger. This species is found from Cape Flattery to
Hakodate in Japan, and is very abundant about the Aleutian Islands
and especially in the Okhotsk Sea. With equal markets it would be as
important commercially as the Atlantic cod. In the codfish (Gadus)
and related genera there are three dorsal and two anal fins. In the
codfish the lateral line is pale and the lower jaw shorter than the
upper.
 Fig. 486.—Skull of Haddock, Melanogrammus æglifinus.

Fig. 487.—Haddock, Melanogrammus æglifinus (L.). Eastport, Me.

The haddock (Melanogrammus æglifinus) closely resembles the cod

and is of similar quality as food. It is known at sight by the black
lateral line. It is found on both shores of the Atlantic and when
smoked is the "finnan haddie" of commerce.
The pollack, coalfish, or green cod (Pollachius carbonarius) is also
common on both shores of the north Atlantic. It is darker than the
cod and more lustrous, and the lower jaw is longer, with a smaller
barbel at tip. It is especially excellent when fresh.

Fig. 488.—Pollock, Theragra chalcogramma (Pallas). Shumagin I.,

Alaska.

The whiting (Merlangus merlangus) is a pollack-like fish common on

the British coasts, but not reaching the American shores. It is found
in large schools in sandy bays. The Alaska pollack (Theragra
chalcogramma) is a large fish with projecting lower jaw, widely
diffused in the north Pacific and useful as a food-fish to the Aleutian
peoples. It furnishes a large part of the food of the fur-seal
(Callorhinus alascanus and C. ursinus) during its migrations. The fur-
seal rarely catches the true codfish, which swims near the bottom.
The wall-eyed pollack (Theragra fucensis) is found about Puget
Sound. Smaller codfishes of this type are the wachna cod (Eleginus
navaga) of Siberia and the Arctic codling (Boreogadus saida), both
common about Kamchatka, the latter crossing to Greenland.
Several dwarf codfishes having, like the true cod, three dorsal fins
and a barbel at the chin are also recorded. Among these are the
tomcod, or frostfish, of the Atlantic (Microgadus tomcod), the
California tomcod (Microgadus proximus), and Micromesistius
poutassou of the Mediterranean. These little cods are valued as pan
fishes, but the flesh is soft and without much flavor.

Fig. 489.—Tomcod, Microgadus tomcod (Walbaum). Wood's Hole,

Mass.

Other cod-like fishes have but two dorsals and one anal fin. Many of
these occur in deep water. Among those living near shore, and
therefore having economic value, we may mention a few of the more
prominent. The codlings (Urophycis) are represented by numerous
species on both shores of the Atlantic. Urophycis blennoides is
common in the Mediterranean. Urophycis regius, on our South
Atlantic coast, is said to exhibit electric powers in life, a statement
that needs verification. In the Gulf of Mexico Urophycis floridanus is
common. Farther north are the more important species Urophycis
tenuis, called the white hake, and Urophycis chuss, the squirrel-
hake. The ling (Molva molva) is found in deep water about the North
Sea.
A related genus, Lota, the burbot, called also ling and, in America,
the lawyer, is found in fresh waters. This genus contains the only
fresh-water members of the group of Anacanthini.
The European burbot, Lota lota, is common in the streams and lakes
of northern Europe and Siberia. It is a bottom fish, coarse in flesh
and rather tasteless, eaten sometimes when boiled and soaked in
vinegar or made into salad. It is dark olive in color, thickly marbled
with blackish.
The American burbot, or lawyer (Lota maculosa), is very much like
the European species. It is found from New England throughout the
Great Lakes to the Yukon. It reaches a length of usually two or three
feet and is little valued as food in the United States, but rises much
in esteem farther north. The liver and roe are said to be delicious. In
Siberia its skin is used instead of glass for windows. In Alaska,
according to Dr. Dall, it reaches a length of six feet and a weight of
sixty pounds.

Fig. 490.—Burbot, Lota maculosa (Le Sueur). New York.

Fig. 491.—Four-bearded Rockling, Enchelyopus cimbrius (Linnæus).

Nahant, Mass.
The rocklings (Gaidropsarus and Enchelyopus) have the first dorsal
composed of a band of fringes preceded by a single ray. The species
are small and slender, abounding chiefly in the Mediterranean and
the North Atlantic. The young have been called "mackerel-midges."
Our commonest species is Enchelyopus cimbrius, found also in Great
Britain.
The cusk, or torsk, Brosme brosme, has a single dorsal fin only. It is
a large fish found on both shores of the North Atlantic, but rather
rare on our coasts.
Fossil codfishes are not numerous. Fragments thought to belong to
this family are found in English Eocene rocks.
Nemopteryx troscheli, from the Oligocene of Glarus, has three dorsal
fins and a lunate caudal fin. Other forms have been referred with
more or less doubt to Gadus, Brosmius, Strinsia, and
Melanogrammus.
Gill separates the "three-forked hake" (Raniceps trifurcus) of
northern Europe as a distinct family, Ranicipitidæ. In this species the
head is very large, broad and depressed, differing in this regard from
the codlings and hakes, which have also two dorsal fins. The deep-
water genus, Bathyonus, is also regarded as a distinct family,
Bathyonidæ.
The Hakes: Merluciidæ.—Better defined than these families is the
family of hakes, Merluciidæ. These pike-like codfishes have the skull
peculiarly formed, the frontal bones being paired, excavated above,
with diverging crests continuous forward from the forked occipital
crest. The species are large fishes, very voracious, without barbels,
with the skeleton papery and the flesh generally soft. The various
species are all very much alike, large, ill-favored fishes with strong
teeth and a ragged appearance, the flesh of fair quality. Merluccius
merluccius, the hake or stock-fish, is common in Europe; Merluccius
bilinearis, the silver hake, is common in New England, Merluccius
productus in California, and Merluccius gayi in Chile.
 Fig. 492.—California Hake, Merluccius productus (Ayres). Seattle.

Fig. 493.—Coryphænoides carapinus (Goode & Bean), showing

leptoceral tail. Gulf Stream.

The Grenadiers: Macrouridæ.—The large family of grenadiers, or

rat-tails, Macrouridæ, is confined entirely to the oceanic depths,
especially of the north Atlantic and Pacific. The head is formed much
as in the codfishes, with usually a barbel at the chin. There are two
dorsals, the second like the anal being low, but the leptocercal tail is
very long and tapering, ending in a filament without caudal fin. The
scales are usually rough and spinous. The species are usually large
in size, and dull gray or black in color.
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