J. R. Daniel Kirk and Anthony Buzzard on Kirk’s New Book

J. R. Daniel Kirk has written his new monograph A Man Attested by God: The Human Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels. He has an online discussion about his book with Anthony Buzzard, a unitarian theologian and scholar, that is available on youtube. I find myself in a similar boat as Kirk as I worship and teach in a Trinitarian Christian framework, but I also think it took time and intellectual effort for Christians to come to a full realization of the Trinity. I do not think the Synoptic tradition itself goes beyond seeing Jesus as a human who has been exalted to the highest place to rule over the cosmos, the Davidic Messiah who far surpasses the rule of the Roman emperor and the representative of the saints of Israel in Daniel 7. However, reading the Synoptics in the canon of Christian Scripture, alongside the images of Jesus as God’s Word or Wisdom incarnate in other parts of the New Testament, enables Christians to begin to articulate a complete understanding of Jesus’ full divine and human natures. Thus, I think Professor Buzzard is mistaken in his reading of Paul and John and on the theological implications that he draws from the canon as a whole. I will have more to say on this in an article for the Journal of the Jesus Movement in its Jewish Setting that will be published near the end of October.