(Continued) 3. Theologians always seek the ideal Jesus. They take great pains to ensure
that the image of Jesus in every age can serve as an ideal. Therefore it must be correct from the point of view of both politics and church dogma. When anti-Semitism was widespread in the 19th century, critical statements about Judaism were often attributed to Jesus. That would be unthinkable today; today political correctness and Jesus’s function as an ideal demand that the church present Jesus as a pious Jew.
- Theologians dispute that the gospels owe any literary influence to heathen classical literature in order to ensure the historicity of the tales (this is how the new theological concept of the “remembered Jesus” arose).
5. The theologians’ image of Jesus is not plausible without relating it to God.