James Dunn Part 2 - Earthly Mission of Jesus

Dunn challenges those who claim that Paul's gospel message ignored the earthly mission of Jesus: 

The good news about Jesus must have included some narrative explaining who Jesus was and recounting something at least of the character of what he had said and done during his mission. The gospel which converted so many Gentiles could hardly have been simply that an unidentified ‘X’ had died and been raised from the dead.   On the contrary, since new believers in Paul’s gospel were beginning to be called ‘Christians’ (Acts 11.26), baptised ‘in the name of Christ’ (1 Cor. 1.12–15), that would inevitably have prompted them to ask more about this ‘Christ’, not least so that they could give an answer to any questions as to why they had changed their lives and now based them on this ‘Christ’.

James D.G. Dunn, Jesus, Paul and the Gospels (Wm. B. Eerdmanns Pub. Co.  2011).  Yes, an "unidentified 'X' " would not have turned the world upside down the way the risen Jesus did.  Believers get to know him through a study of his words and deeds.   I have blogged about Frank Sheed's comments on this subject: 

To know Christ Jesus:  If we do know  not him as he lived among us, acted and reacted and suffered among us, we risk not knowing him at all.  For we cannot see him at the right hand of the Father as we can see him in Palestine. And we shall end either in constructing our own Christ, image of our own needs or dreams, or in having no Christ but a shadow and a name.

                     

Frank J. Sheed, To Know Christ Jesus (Sheed and Ward, Inc. 1962) at page 11.

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