What is, therefore, attempted is somewhat on the same order as that done by Jaroslav
Pelikan in his Jesus through the Centuries but with a difference. Whereas Pelikan relied heavily
upon paintings and works of artistic expression, testimonies of people who recognized Jesus as
contemporaneous to themselves provide the evidence as well as simple logic. Historical figures
leave legacies and enduring influences; that is the nature of the past. Jesus is not just historical;
he is mega-historical.
All prior quests sought after an historical Jesus. Those who sought after an historical
Jesus already had an idea of what they were going to find. John P. Meier, in his third volume of
A Marginal Jew, admitted that "the ,,historical Jesus is thus a scientific construct, a theoretical
abstraction of modern scholars that coincides only partially with the real Jesus of Nazareth."
4
Meier did not leave it at that. "If the historical Jesus is not the real Jesus, neither is he the
"theological Jesus" investigated by theologians according to their own proper methods and
criteria" for the purposes of a christological statement.
5
Harvey Cox and John J. Vincent, in the late 1960s and ealy 1970s, wrote of the secular
city and of the secular Christ for secular man. However one makes of the "secular" theologians,
they saw Jesus as one who calls secular man to discipleship.
6
In the process Cox, Vincent, and a
few others modernized him into the secularity of the 1960s and 1970s
He is of both times and the in-between times for He belongs to all times and as such is
able to communicate in each age.. Ainger, previously referred to speaks of Jesus as one who
belongs to us "and yet he is the outsider."
7
"The personality of Christ," writes Jack Finegan in
1952, "looms up above any of the categories in which we try to comprehend him. We seek to
understand him as a historical figure, but we know that he is also truly represented in the book
4
John P. Meier, Companions and Competitors, Vol. III of A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the
Historical Jesus. The Anchor Bible Reference Library (New York: Doubleday, 1991), p.9.
5
Ibid.
6
John J. Vincent.Secular Christ: A Contemporary Interpretation of Jesus (Nashville and New
York: Abingdon, 1968).
7
Geoffrey Ainger, p. 28.