F.F. Bruce, "Myth & History," Colin Brown, ed., History, Criticism & Faith. Four Exploratory Studies. Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1976. Pbk. ISBN: 085111315X. pp.79-99.
My thanks to IVP (UK) for their kind permission to reproduce this article.
Bruce concludes:
Let us repeat: it is the person and work of Christ that are at issue. How much mythology has entered into the traditional concept of the combining of the divine and human natures in his person? None, we may say, in the sense that the long-accepted formulations are cast in metaphysical and not mythical language. But if the term ‘mythical’ or ‘mythological’ is used with a wider range of meaning, it can properly be applied to any statement about Christ which gives the impression, however faintly, that there was something vaguely ‘unreal’ about his manhood―that his temptations, his sufferings and his death were not as ‘real’ as ours are. Since God created man in his image, humanity provided a congenial medium for the revelation of God to this world. The ‘human face of God’ is a real face, not a mask assumed for a dramatic purpose. It is in the manhood of Jesus, not merely through it, that the divine glory shines for those who have eyes to see it. It was in ‘the form of a servant’ that the ‘form of God’ was most adequately displayed on earth (Phil. 2:6 f.). John the Evangelist knows what he is doing when he speaks of Jesus’ being ‘lifted up’ on the cross as the means of his being ‘lifted up’ in glory: the royalty of the God whom we adore is fully seen in the crucified one. To the same effect Mark the evangelist associates the moment of Jesus’ death with the rending of the temple veil and the centurion’s confession: ‘Truly this man was the Son of God’ (Mk. 15:38 f.). It is not on the dying and rising god of a ritual drama but on the once-for-all event of the passion and triumph of Jesus of Nazareth that the gospel of our salvation is firmly based.
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