know the certainty of those things wherein you were instructed.
19
Much of what has been written, and Donald Bloesch has probably done the best
summation of what has been done in "Jesus" studies,
20
have been like darts missing the bulls-
eye of who Jesus is by their concentration on matters of ethnicity, what he said and how he said
it, or what role He lived out. More to the point is the witness of those whose lives were altered
because of the impact He had upon their lives; and, also of moment is the lack of unity among
those affected by Him as to who He Is. It is, therefore, far more advantageous to focus on the
responses of those whose lives have felt the brunt of his person and therewith transformed. The
only two this writer knows of who has done this kind of study are Alister McGrath in chapters 8
through 12 in his Knowing Jesus published in 2002 by Doubleday and John R. W. Stott in his
The Incomparable Christ published in the same year as McGraths but by InterVarsity Press.
What McGrath did was carried into the present by Stott. McGrath focused on Simon
Peter, Andrew, James, John, the Samaritan woman at the well, and doubting Thomas. Stott
singled out among others Justin Martyr, Anselm, Luther, William Wilberforce, Toyohiko
Kagawa, Roland Allen, Joni Tada, and addressed Jesus continuing influence into the futue.
It was not an historical Jesus who altered Justins life in the second century. It was not an
historical Jesus who transformed Antonys or Augustines in the late fourth century, a Blaise
Pascal in the 16th, a John Wesley in the eighteenth or a C.S. Lewis or Chuck Colson in the
twentieth. To speak of Jesus as a peasant Jewish cynic who addresses the oppressed of every age
and heals and delivers as John Dominic Crossan does simply does not answer the most important
question "Who Is He?"
21
Gregory A. Boyd, in his carefully written polemic Cynic Sage or Son
of God?, declares Jesus to be the resurrected Son of God and accuses Crossan and Mack as
building their theories "around the available data" which is an " illegitimate historical
19
Dibelius, p. 13
20
Donald G. Bloesch, Jesus Christ: Savior and Lord. Christian Foundations (Downers Grove,
IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997), pp. 15-24.
21
John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (San
Francisco: HarperSan Francisco, 1992).