Jesus’ View Of Jesus

I’m taking a few stops at James D.G. Dunn, Jesus According to the New Testament.

The central message of the NT is not justification by faith, it is Jesus — Jesus is the gospel, the gospel is Jesus, and how one thinks about justification or any other centralizing theme — God’s love, reconciliation, God’s justice —  depends on how one thinks about Jesus.

That alone is enough to buy this book and read it — for it relentlessly concentrates on Jesus in each NT segment.

He begins with how Jesus understood himself, but he does so — as Dunn is known for — with methodological rigor. So, first, Lessons learned from the impact of Jesus; second, distinctive features of Jesus’ ministry (and here there is an echo of Elizabeth Anscombe’s famous study on intention); and then — and only after these two steps — Jesus’ self understanding.

An outline will do the trick; you fill in references and explanations, but this would make for some very good class discussions, which I now frame as a question for each:

What were the major lessons the Evangelists/earliest Christians learned from Jesus?

What were the major elements of Jesus’ own ministry?

What did Jesus think of himself?

First, lessons learned from Jesus, and there are eight:

(1) The Love Command
(2) Priority of the Poor
(3) Sinners Welcome
(4) Openness to Gentiles
(5) Women among His Close Followers
(6) Openness to Children
(7) Relaxation of Food Laws
(8) The Last Supper or Lord’s Supper

Second, major features of Jesus’ own ministry:

(1)The Kingdom of God
(2) Teacher
(3) Teaching by Parable
(4) Exorcising Evil Spirits
(5) Concentration on Galilee
(6) Submission to High Priestly Authorities

Third, themes at work in Jesus’ self-understanding:

(1) Jesus’s Baptismal Commission
(2) “I Came” or “I Was Sent”
(3) Messiah/Christ
(4) Abba
(5) Son of God
(6) The Son of Man
(7) Jesus’s Self-Expectation