Overview of the Journey

As you read this chapter, note the elements of the journey:

• Accessing Jesus
• The historical method
• Myth of the historical Jesus and the human Jesus
• The unleashing of Jesus

Discussion Questions — printout

1. How does the quest for the historical Jesus result in the myth of the human Jesus?
2. Why can't there be an objective view of Jesus as he really was? In what ways do we project our views and needs into the search for the historical Jesus?
3. Do you agree "No scholar can construct a picture of Jesus beyond the level and spiritual awareness that she or he has attained"? Defend your position.
4. What was Jesus' original impulse and how is it related to structures of domination?
5. How are you willing to change in soul, mind and passion for justice by what you discover in the quest for the historical Jesus?
6. What if Jesus was “just like us”? How would that affect our faith?
7. How do you feel about the term, “Christian myth”?
8. How do you react to the idea that there is a domination system in place in our society today?
9. Respond to Wink’s statement: “The churches have largely failed to continue Jesus’ mission."
10. Historical research has provided information about Jesus, the human being. Wink says that information provides an image of someone who is  “numinously activating, religiously compelling, and spiritually transformative." What would a faith community based on that image look like? Would it be Christian or something else? In what ways?
11. Wink says the biblical text is not a “Rorschach inkblot onto which any conceivable interpretation can be read." Discuss your perspective on that statement. (You will want to reflect on how the Bible is used to support positions in social discussions.)
12. Discuss the statement: “For no one was aware, until Albert Schweitzer exposed it, that the real driving force behind this scholarly exertion was in fact a modern longing to be encountered by the divine.”

Class Exercises

• Write a mythology about yourself; how is your historical self different from your mythological self?
• Find a newspaper article from several different newspapers around the world about the same topic on the same date. What are the “ historical facts”? What mythologies are evident? What appears to be influencing the reporters?
• Speaking about the Bible, Wink says the following on page 105:

  I listen intently to the Book. But I do not acquiesce in it. I rail at it. I make accusations. I censure it for endorsing patriarchalism, violence, anti-Judaism, homophobia, and slavery. It rails back at me, accusing me of greed, presumption, narcissism, and cowardice. We wrestle. We roll on the ground, neither of us capitulating, until it wounds my thigh with “new-ancient” words. And the Holy Spirit is right there the whole time, strengthening us both.

Describe how you study and perhaps wrestle with the messages you find in the Bible. Respond to the specific issues Wink surfaces as requiring censure. Reflect on your own issues with biblical texts and concepts.

Theological Terms for Consideration — handout

• domination system
• historical critical method
• historical Jesus
• historiography
• mythology

Theological Thinkers for Consideration — printout

• Martin Luther King
• Nicholas Berdyaev
• Mahatma Gandhi
• Desmond Tutu
• Bruce Chilton
• Albert Schweitzer

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