The Faith of Jesus Christ in Early Christian Traditions (Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series, Series Number 84)

by Ian G. Wallis

We are used to the idea of people believing in Christ, but did the early church consider that Jesus also had faith in God? This book examines the meaning of faith in Judaism and Graeco-Roman literature, identifies two main trajectories of interest in the question of Jesus' faith, and traces the progress of these trajectories through the literature of the first four Christian centuries, up to the point where the interpretation of Jesus as a man of faith eventually proved incompatible with the orthodoxy of Nicene Christianity.

304 pages, Paperback

First published March 31, 1995

Reviews

[Chris Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a much needed work in furthering the faith of Jesus/faith in Jesus debate. This book gives a number of trajectories that the early church seemingly spoke about Jesus' faith as a human being. Wallis spends a bit too much time in Paul giving interpretations that are still and perhaps will always be highly debated. Chapter 6 was the most crucially important chapter of the work. Here Wallis gives tons and tons of early church father quotations and references to the various trajectories of faith that Wallis identified in the New Testament. He then proposes a theory of how Athanasius' debate with Arius caused the church to not really explore the question, "Does Jesus have faith". Athanasius in refuting Arius' interpretation of Hebrews 3:2, refuses to attribute faith to the humanity of the Second Person of the Trinity. This set a trend that others such as Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, and Augustine of Hippo would follow in (not attributing faith as a characteristic of Jesus' humanity). I believe that Wallis' assessment of Athanasius' importance in setting this trend is a bit over exaggerated. However Athanasius is an important figure to understand when looking at the implications of the incarnation of Christ. It seems to me that Athanasius was concerned about the divinity of Christ since that was what was under attack in His day...and the church followed that pattern for years to come. It did not seem that too many people (if any) attacked the humanity of Christ by citing a lack of references to his faith. Perhaps this is a question that has become important in our own time and the past from Athanasius onward is shockingly silent about it. There is reason to believe however that before Athanasius the church did have a way of speaking of Jesus' faith...however this was neither the focal point of the church's teaching nor even an stressed point of importance. All in all, this is a work that needs to be consulted in the midst of the faith of Jesus/faith in Jesus debate! Thank you Ian Wallis for dedicating a lot of your time to write this work!