used the phrase "present grace" repeatedly. Christians of late antiquity, therefore, did not gain
understanding from examining events from a chronolgical distance but from the perspective of a
continuous presence that never left the scene.
When one advances into the next millenium and when Christian mysticism flowered
between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, awareness of a very contemporaneous Jesus
persists. The Christian mystics understood Christian life as a relationship between believers and
Jesus and which relationship affirms the individuality of the believers. It is impossible to have a
relationship with a person from the past. The very existence of Christian mysticism requires a
contemporaneous Jesus. No more telling statement can be made than that made by Julian of
Norwich sometime about 1373 or 1374 " . . .his goodness never suffers us to be alone; but he is
(italics, mine) with us lastingly . . . . "
26
In his 1940 book, Anno Domini, Kenneth Scott Latourette, in reference to Jesus, wrote
that "the impress of that life, far from fading with the passing centuries, has deepened." He
continued, "Through him millions of individuals have been transformed and have begun to live
the kind of life which he exemplified. Through him movements have been set in motion . . . "
27
Latourette made an evaluation of the effect of Jesus: "Gauged by the consequences which have
followed, the birth, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus have been the most important events
in the history of man. Measured by his influence, Jesus is central in the human story."
28
Those
who belong to the past -- the dead and gone -- have no such abiding influence and impact. This
makes the question "Just Who Is this Jesus?" all the more important for no mere mortal has done
and continues to do as this person Jesus.
This is what makes all the propositions of those involved in the quest for Jesus beside the
point. They never get around to asking "Who are you, really?" which is to ask "What is it about
you?" "Who are you, anyway, that you attract so much attention and excite so much
26
Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Love. Edited and Translated by John Skinner. Image Books
(New York: Doubleday, 1996), p. 174.
27
Kenneth Scott Latourette, Anno Domini (New York: Harper & Bros., 1940), p.227.
28
Ibid., p. 227.