The Realm of God

For those of us who call ourselves Christians, our spiritual task is to know and follow Jesus, the real Jesus, the historical Jesus, and to see what he saw and try to do what he did. From Robert Funk's Honest to Jesus:

Scholars are universally agreed that the theme of Jesus' discourse was something he called "the kingdom of God," to use the traditional English translation...

When Jesus talked about this wonderful place, God's estate, he always talked about it in terms drawn from the everyday, the mundane world around him. The language of Jesus, consequently, was concrete and specific. The scenery of his parables and aphorisms consisted entirely of everyday events and topics, of ordinary times, places, and persons. He spoke of dinner parties, of travelers being mugged, of truant sons, of corrupt officials, of a cache of coins found in a field, of poor peasants, of precious pearls, of the hungry and tearful, of lawsuits and conscription, of beggars and lending, of birds and flowers, of purity and defilement, of the sabbath, of wealth, and occasionally of scholars...

Much to the surprise of the modern reader, he did not develop major themes on the basis of the Hebrew scriptures. He did not cite and interpret scripture. For the most part he did not interpret fine points in the law, and when he did, he tended to parody the legal process. He rarely spoke directly about the temple, the priests, and the sacred ceremonies... There are no theological statements and no philosophical generalizations among his formulations. He did not say things like:

I believe in God the Father Almighty, or

God is love, or

Everyone has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, or

I think; therefore I am.

Only in the gospel of John do you find Jesus delivering long theological discources, and mainstream biblical scholars have been in agreement for nearly two centuries now that the speech patterns and theological formulations of Jesus found in John are not the real Jesus. Many of them are profound and beautiful, and some are not, and there is no doubt about John's importance for the development of creedal Christianity, but if you want to know and follow the real historical Jesus the gospel of John is not a primary source.