Lindbeck's essay exemplifies the careful, charitable readings and agenda that has characterized his work throughout his career. The essay evinces the influence of his colleague, Hans Frei, on his work at this time, particularly Frei's work, The Identity of Jesus Christ and The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative. Lindbeck brings this archive into conversation with his own ecumenical agenda in his essay in response to a presentation by Kung.

Lindbeck analyzed Kung's argument in three premises: (1) "We can . . .distinguish without separating the Jesus of history from the faith responses of the early Christians as embodied in their various images of the Christ of faith" (p. 81); (2) The Jesus of history is the standard of the Christian faith and that "the theologically most important function of Scripture . . . is to supply the data for the historical reconstruction of who and what Jesus was in his life upon earth. Now that such a reconstruction is possible, it must be normative for theology in general" (p. 81); and (3) "the 'critical correlation' of the Jesus of history and early Christian experience with contemporary experience can lead to convergence in all areas of theology" (p. 81). In this, Lindbeck argues that Kung is motivated by a program that is "at one and the same time reformatory, ecumenical, and Catholic" (p. 81).

Lindbeck thoroughly approves of Kung's goals, his motivation. As always, Lindbeck is concerned with the renewal and unity of the church in its catholicity. It is not the goals that Lindbeck found problematic, but Kung's method. Lindbeck questions the ability of historical-critical reconstructions to reach a consensus that Kung presupposes as the basis for reform, ecumenicity, and catholic. He notes that Kung's "critical correlation" itself has problems. Lindbeck writes, "If one asks why theologians look for such different things in the Bible (and in Jesus),the answer is that they differ in their analyses of what human beings needs, i.e., in their anthropologies and/or in their analyses of the requirements of the contemporary situation and experiences. They adopt some extra-biblical hermeneutical or interpretive framework . . . within whcih to read the Bible. The frameworks at least partly determine the kinds of questions which are asked and therefore also influence the answers received. . . . One can sympathize with why theologians proceed in this way. They want to make the Gospel relevant to human experience especially in its currently salient aspects; . . . Nevertheless, the result of this multiplicity of apologetic, correlational, and traditionalist approaches is a pluralism which threatens to become chaos" (p. 83). In other words, a correlational method defeats the reforming, ecumenical, and catholic motives in its very basis, fragmenting the life and thought of the church according to what exactly the theologian presupposes as the "given" with which the faith must be correlated. The past twenty five years of the history of the church and even local congregations in North America shows Lindbeck's concerns are well-flounded. Churches display deep differences according to what sociological, philosophical, economic, political, sexual preference, or demographic "givens" that produces the "needs" to which the leader correlates the language and mission of the congregation or Christian institution. Whereas in the '50s and '60s, ecumenical work was demanded between "denominations" to work for unity of the church, now it has to take place first within denominations, or even congregations. Indeed, some types of conservative and/or liberal Protestants and Catholics will find their confession of Jesus as fundamentally irrelevant in the unity that they discover with certain types of conservative and/or liberal Jews when compared to the inverse group of their own "denomination." The reason for this is the "correlational method" that lies at the basis of much of church growth, niche-marketed evangelicalism and mainline liberal Protestantism and its similar Roman Catholic manifestations.

How to respond, then? Lindbeck writes, "In all this, Kung's instincts are sound. He is quite right in seeking to find a criterion in the sources of Christian faith which has enough independence of later hermeneutical frameworks to enable theology to escape from the unmanageable pluralism of both traditional contemporary apologetic, correlational, and speculative approaches. My one and only question is whether there might not be a better way to meet the challenge.
It seems to me worth asking whether Scripture does not perhaps supply its own interpretive framework" (p. 84). Here Lindbeck is most Lutheran in his appeal to Sola Scriptura as the Reformers intended as a means of reaching towards catholicity and ecumenicity. The unity of the church finds its center in the Scriptures which has the "primary purpose" to "'render a character . . . offer an identity description of an agent,' viz., God (ibid.). Its primary purpose is not to tell the reader what actually happened in the sense of either profane or salvation history, and even less to provide doctrinal propositions, theological concepts, or symbolic expressions or re-presentations of religious experience or authentic Existenz--although it may do all these things as well" (pp. 84-85). Scriptures intent is to reveal God the Father through the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit.

As a result, Lindbeck notes two important consequences from Kung. "It gives more theological weight to the Old Testament. . . . The fundamental identity description of God is provided by the stories of Israel, Exodus, and Creation. This identity description is then completed or fulfilled by the stories of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, bt tue latter stories must be read in the context of what went before. . . . Second, when looked at canonically rather than historically-criticalkly, the purpose of the gospels is not at all to provide information for its own sake about the earthly Jesus, but rather to tell about the risen, ascended, and now-present Christ whose identity as the divine-human agent is irreplaceably enacted in the stories of Jesus" (p. 85).

Fast forward to the current day when ecumenicity and catholicity have fallen off the board except as a common program for socio-political causes. Think of the turmoil within denominations and within Roman Catholicism itself. Over twenty-five years separate the essay of Lindbeck and the upcoming book by Benedict. Benedict introduces his book biographically:

"I have come to the book on Jesus, the first part of which I now present, following a long interior journey. In the period of my youth -- the thirties and forties -- a series of fascinating books were published on Jesus. . . . through the man Jesus, God was made visible and from God the image of the just man could be seen.

Beginning in the fifties, the situation changed. The split between the "historical Jesus" and the "Christ of faith" became ever greater . . . Progress in historical-critical research led to ever more subtle distinctions between the different strata of tradition. In the wake of this research, the figure of Jesus, on which faith leans, became ever more uncertain, it took on increasingly less defined features.

At the same time, reconstructions of this Jesus, who should be sought after the traditions of the evangelists and their sources, became ever more contradictory: from the revolutionary enemy of the Romans who opposed the established power and naturally failed, to the gentle moralist who allowed everything and inexplicably ended up by causing his own ruin."

TAs a result, the life of the church, the life of individual's faith in Jesus, became unstable, shaky, fragmented. "All these attempts have left in their wake, as common denominator, the impression that we know very little about Jesus, and that only later faith in his divinity has formed his image. Meanwhile, this image has been penetrating profoundly in the common consciousness of Christianity. Such a situation is tragic for the faith, because it makes its authentic point of reference uncertain: intimate friendship with Jesus, from whom everything depends, is debated and runs the risk of becoming useless." Benedict notes in retrospect the same problem that Lindbeck foresaw of such a correlational model based on historical reconstructions that Kung offered.

What is Benedict's solution? It is to turn to the Scriptures -- a very Protestant, Reforming, and Vatican II move: "this Jesus -- the one of the Gospels -- is a historically honest and convincing figure. The Crucifixion and its efficacy can only be explained if something extraordinary happened, if Jesus' figure and words radically exceeded all the hopes and expectations of the age.

Approximately twenty years after Jesus' death, we find fully displayed in the great hymn to Christ that is the Letter to the Philippians (2:6-8) a Christology which says that Jesus was equal to God but that he stripped himself, became man, humbled himself unto death on the cross and that to him is owed the homage of creation, the adoration that in the prophet Isaiah (45:23) God proclaimed is owed only to Him. . . . Is it not more logical, also from the historical point of view, that greatness be found in the origin and that the figure of Jesus break all available categories and thus be understood only from the mystery of God?"

The canonical view of Jesus, the realistic narrative of the Scriptures presents a Jesus from faith for faith -- not a historical distortion, but the fullness of the mystery of the revelation of "the face of God" in the human Jesus of Nazareth. "If from this conviction of faith the texts are read with the historical method and the opening is greater, the texts open to reveal a path and a figure that are worthy of faith. Also clarified then is the struggle at other levels present in the writings of the New Testament around the figure of Jesus and despite all the differences, one comes to profound agreement with these writings."

Neither Benedict, nor Lindbeck, writing ignorantly of historical-critical scholarship nor deny its significance. But it belongs to a different order, a different polity than the church in its end. Benedict's questions have been pressed profoundly and to similar end by Larry Hurtado in The Lord Jesus Christ and other works. Richard Bauckham has a new work out on the closeness of the gospels to apostolic origins. Benedict's work updates the position of Lindbeck.

Yet the impulse is the same. Correlational theology does not provide an adequate, stable basis for reform nor provide what is necessary for not only the unity of the faith, but even the possibility of faith. The goal is not to ignore history, nor the accomplishments of historical-criticism, but to have it raised to its divine end in God by witnessing to the reality that is the Jesus revealed in the canonical Jesus as embedded in the narrative context of the Scriptures. Benedict writes, "I have attempted to go beyond the mere historical-critical interpretation applying new methodological criteria, which allows us to make a properly theological interpretation of the Bible and that naturally requires faith, without by so doing wanting in any way to renounce historical seriousness."

We see in Lindbeck and Benedict XVI not an identity, but a structural theological similarity in responding to our contemporary world, "up-dating the faith" but an up-dating that does not seek a correlation to the givenness of the contemporary world, but in a return to the sources, biblical and patristic. It is this joining of evangelical catholicism and catholic evangelicalism that I think holds the promise for the future faithful witness of the church in the decades to come. I hope that next weeks conversations might be a means to that end.