What or who is Jesus? Is this not the question you pose? He is neither angelic nor heroic. In fact, he is a failure. But let us not read this statement outside of its proper context. He is a failure precisely insofar as his life led to no real break in the situation. He came from nowhere, for a time was a someone, accrued those followers who glimpsed in him something higher than those animal interests so common in our species. But in the final hour all left him: his monument was little more than the tattered clothing of a common Jew, once a disciple "committed unto death" in this Nazarene cause, left behind when their owner fled for his life at the first sign of opposition. Pilate certainly never said the words "Ecce homo!" Perhaps only to ridicule this worm standing before him. Perhaps only appended to the gospel letter long after the fact. Here was no man, but something much less!
But you understand the radical break in history the death of this worm would wreak. Had the story ended with the crucifixion we would be left with any other self-deluded messianic fool, a lesson for other fools. History is replete with them. The life and death of this madman had zero consequences within the previous order. All those who were formerly willing to die with him (and declared so!), now returned to the sea whence they had been called with tail between legs. Zero consequences=zero Event. Ah but the world and ages this void would soon fill! No angels, no heroes present.. but grace was present.
We will not speak of "historicity." A truth is not of the historical order. We will speak of a break within a situation, a "creative novelty" if there ever was one. We will speak of maximal consequences, of the maximal existence of an inexistent. Why else is the Nazarene's "biography" so dispensable for St. Paul? It is clear that it is so because it is the biography of a madman and failure. It is a lesson for fools. But St. Paul is no fool! For him it is clear that the Resurrection retroactively reinstates this man from Nazareth: not his virgin birth, not his life among his disciples (Paul has no interest in biography), but his Death. This is so because the Death immanentizes the possibility of the Resurrection.
If we are to locate the meaning of Jesus in the regime of the given, it is here at this impossible moment, at this hole punched into the cosmos, a void circumscribed by being's appearance. That this void had such consequences is not a fantastic determination. This is merely its historical and political one. Fantasy is not a proper designate here. It belonged to the previous order of Messianic nationalism (an order Judas himself defended and grew disenchanted with). We are reminded of René Magritte's famous painting of a pipe with the inscription "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" beneath it. Here too might we not inscribe the field of the historical Nazarene with the words: "Ceci est un Immortel"?
gobbledygook.
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