Understandings of Jesus Essay Example for Free

Understandings of the Nazarene EssayThere are probably as many understandings of savior as there are people who write, think or speak about him. If there was one historic Jesus, we approach that Jesus through four gospels, which suggests that even without including other(a) gospels (so called non-canonical) Christians accept most diversity of images of Jesus. One Jesus of history produced many Christs of faith. Inside and outside Christian tradition, people bring their own agendas, influenced by culture, politics, social circumstances and even sexual orientation, to what they read. Marxists see a radical Jesus who challenged the status quo. rough see a sexually libertine Jesus, some a homosexual Jesus, some a feminist Jesus, some think that Jesus was preoccupied with the end of the world, others that he had no concern about this. Some beg that Jesus taught a social ethic, others that he was only interested in saving souls for life in a future realm. Some argue that Jesus i ntended to lead an armed revolt against Rome. Others say that he was a pacifist. Some say that he was a good Jew who never claimed to be God, whose teaching had much in common with the Pharisees. Others argue that Jesus roundly condemned the Pharisees (Bennett, 9 10).Pelikans book Jesus Through the Centuries His Place in the news report of Culture presents eighteen images of Jesus. He asks what it was that each age brought to its portrayal of Jesus? (Pelikan, 2) Language was an early reason why understandings of Jesus changed, due to cultural and historical context. Among the early Christians, the idea that a Messiah was expected who would usher in an era of peace or liberate Palestine from Roman rule had meat. However, magical spell Jews or some Jews were waiting for one or more Messiahs, Greeks and Romans had no such expectation.The Gospels were written in Greek, although Jesus had spoken Aramaic and Hebrew, so a process of translation took place. All those who think about Jesu s subsequent to the first generation of those who knew him must compute him through translation. The Hebrew playscript for Messiah was translated as Christ (anointed). However, this word did not carry any special religious significance for Greek speakers, so soon came to be apply as a name, as Bennett writes, The Greek word Christ became rather like a modern family name Jesus Christ as in Clinton Bennett (74).Christians often think that they know what Messiah means and are surprised to learn that Jews did not have a single concept alone several concepts of Messiah and that Jesus did not meet any of their expectations. Here, from the perspective of Jewish identity and tradition, Jesus fails to fulfill any of the criteria for being Messiah. Subsequently, Christian position did not spend much time clarifying Jesus Messianic status solely focused on how he could be understood as God, or as Gods son. Cultural differences between what emerged as the Western Catholic Church and the Ea stern Orthodox Church also squeeze on doctrine.All Christians recognized Jesus as savior of the world but how did Jesus save? Here, the West focuses on Jesus death, seeing this as a substitution or sacrifice for the sins of humanity. This is predicated on the idea that all people are sinners. In Orthodoxy, salvation is more closely linked with the beginning, not end, of Jesus life. Timothy Ware writes, Where Orthodoxy sees chiefly Christ the Victor, the late medieval and post-medieval West sees chiefly Christ the Victim (229). Orthodox thought sees the incarnation, God pickings on human form, sanctifying the whole of creation as a victory.This reunited humanity with God, by uniting humankind and God in His own person, Jesus reopened for us humans the path to union with God (225). Ware says that unlike the Western church, the Eastern argued that after the Fall humans still possessed free go out and were still capable of good action (225) thus doing what Jesus did takes priority ove r believing certain doctrines about him. East and West possess the equivalent gospels but emphasize various aspects of Jesus life. They then formulated contrastive views of the atonement.One Jesus lies behind these understandings but cultural context results in differences. The fact that the East survived the collapse of the Roman Empire much longer may have encouraged the idea of victory, of a Christ who command through the Emperor from the new, Christian city of Constantinople. Romes fall in the West, followed by division and rivalry, may have encouraged a view of Jesus as a victim. When Christian missionaries began to preach across the globe, they often took with them a picture of Jesus that had become domesticated within European culture.Jesus was a Mediterranean Jew, so was almost certainly dark, not light-skinned but became a blue-eyed, blond-haired European. Taken to an extreme, some Germans argued that Jesus was not Jewish but of European decent (see Bennett, 255). Racis t lenses, applied to reading the Gospels, transformed Jesus into a European. This Jesus, though, was unappealing to many who heard the Gospel. In Africa, new images or ways of seeing Jesus made more sense than some traditional understandings. If Messiah carried little meaning when translated from the Hebrew into the Greek context, fewer Biblical titles carried meaning into the African context.Thus, while theology in Europe concentrated on Jesus son-ship, on relations within the Trinity, on whether Jesus had one or two natures, Africans found images of Jesus as healer, ancestor or as chief more relevant and meaningful just as they asserted that Jesus could speak to them through their prophets and prophetesses (Bennett, 182). Schreites Faces of Jesus in Africa shows how African culture has influenced how Jesus is understood. In Asia, it was Jesus as the only way to God that attracted censure.Hindus and Buddhists byword Jesus as divine, as a manifestation of God (an personification) , as a savior but not as the one and only savior. Is avatar acceptable as a translation of Johns became flesh? Keshub Chunder Sen set up his Church of the New Dispensation. He looked to Jesus as a fully self-realized man so said that to worship Jesus was to worship humanity (Bennett, 330). With others, he believed that a single universal religion would emerge which would lodge culturally to different contexts. In India, that religion would wear Hindu dress.Pictorial images of Jesus as a yogi have been produced in India the Trinity has been show as the Hindu trimurti images of Brahma (creator), Vishnu (preserver) and Shiva (destroyer), clothing Jesus with Hindu dress. Buddhists have described Jesus as a Bodhisattva, and have pictured him in Buddhist iconography. Others insist on the blackness of Jesus, arguing that the Christian God became the God of slavery and oppression, so until whites hate their whiteness and embrace blackness, they fail to touch full humanity. Cone writes, W hat must I do to be saved? swartness and salvation are synonymous thus supplying a different answer to the same question than either the classical Catholic or Orthodox responses. Cones emphasis on Jesus blackness is resolute by his identity and cultural context. The kingdom Jesus preached is found wherever people suffer and die from want of dignity, says Cone. Language and context, including political context (are we oppressors or oppressed) contribute to how we understand Jesus. I agree with Bennett that all images need to be tested against what can plausibly be affirmed of the Jesus about whom we read, albeit usually in translation, in the gospels.I am reluctant to insist that my Jesus must be everyones Jesus, leaving Jesus free to meet different human needs. Jesus is not mine to control, or to limit to my particular perceptions and experience. Bennett, Clinton. 2001. In Search of Jesus Insider and outsider images. London Continuum. Cone, James H. 1986. A Black Theology of Liber ation. Maryknoll, NY Orbis. Pelikan, Jarasov. 1985. Jesus through the Centuries His place in the history of culture. NY Harper Row. Schreiter, Robert. 1991. Faces of Jesus in Africa. Maryknoll, NY Orbis. Ware, Timothy. 1993. The Orthodox Church. NY Penguin.