What Jesus Really Said

I had a conversation with a colleague recently where a certain sentiment was expressed, basically: "It seems like people forget everything they have learned about the New Testament when they get into the pulpit. They preach as if these are things that Jesus really said, especially from the Gospel of John, when we know that, in all probability, that's not at all the case." We discussed it for a while, and I think there are a couple of things to point out in regard to this.

At the time, I framed my response as a matter of epistemic access. That is to say, I wanted to express that one has to already be in such a condition that one is able by faith to look at history in a certain way, otherwise one is necessarily using a different interperative paradigm. I argued that the rejection of the Gospels, or even of the Gospel of John, on the grounds that the words are not historical in the reductive sense of "word for word the case" is a one-sided, overly reductionistic argument. There's something to be said here regarding epistemic access and epistemic standpoint which will play into how I think about it, but I want to start somewhere else.

I think that this is probably best framed in a distinction between ipsissima verba and ipsissima vox. Ipsissima verba means "the very words", whereas ipsissima vox means "the very voice." Given that Jesus probably didn't do the majority of His teaching in Greek, and even if he had done so, the radical differences in vocabulary between John and the Synoptics make asserting ipsissima verba kind of problematic, in my opinion. That's not to say that there are not some things recorded that are Jesus' ipsissima verba, just that we can't assert that everything in the New Testament is.

But if I can argue from the standpoint of faith, I can say something like the following: Look at the process by which certain "gospels" were rejected, and the four we have made it into the canon. Even Mark is based on an earlier oral tradition, which preserved in part the ipsissimia verba and the ipsissima vox of Jesus. If we can accept providence in the formation of the canon, we can make the not-much-stronger claim that everything that got recorded as Scripture in those accepted works is providentially either ipsissima verba or ipsissima vox, and that for faith, the distinction doesn't really matter, as the providential inclusion of ipsissima vox which is true to the ipsissima verba wouldn't contradict the true teaching at any point. So I can have no problem with saying that, for example, John wrote certain things with a certain agenda, because the things that were written are a true expression of Jesus' proclamation of the Kingdom present in Him and His resurrection. Additionally, on this providential picture, there is dual authorial intent - John intended to express something, and God intended to express something as well, as the preservation of true ipsissima vox requires God in the picture, if it's providence. We can even go so far as to treat things that seem to be ipsissima vox as ipsissima verba, because of the providential preservation. In a certain sense, with the Triune God's authorial intention in play, the ipsissima vox have to become the ipsissma verba, because what is recorded is still God "speaking" to us, and we can't abstract the Son from this action.

That, my friend, is how one can get into the pulpit and say that Jesus told us He is the Way, the Truth and the Life - because that statement is His true voice speaking to us, whether or not we can determine a specific temporal recording of this statement during His earthly life.