The last words of a book I've always found fascinating. More so if it's a theology book and the final few sentences gather up what has been argued and explained. Even more so if it's a book about Jesus, and those last sentences are effectively a confession by the author about what they really think of Jesus.
The other day I finished again a book I first read in College in 1975; The Person of Christ in New Testament Teaching, by Vincent Taylor. In the Preface he describes it as the culmination of a seven year series of lectures which had resulted in the trilogy The Names of Jesus, The Life and Ministry of Jesus, and now this final volume on Christology, The Person of Christ.
Taylor was a first rate Methodist scholar, author of the most thorough commentary on the Gospel According to Mark, and had previously written extensively on the work of Christ in an earlier trilogy: Jesus and His Sacrifice, The Atonement in New Testament Teaching, and Forgiveness and Reconciliation. This culminating volume on Christology came near the end of his intellectual and theological journey, and it has the ring of mature scholarship, patiently argued, but with an inner impetus of spiritual engagement.
Objective biblical and theological scholarship needn't lack an affective responsiveness and it is that personal experience of the Christian scholar that brings to a satisfying close Taylor's long record of explorations into the central mystery of Christian faith, the person and work of Jesus Christ.
These closing words are both scholarly summary and personal testimony:
In addition to the study of New Testament teaching a personal response to the revelation [of Christ] is necessary. The encounter is a challenge to faith. Faith alone knows who Jesus is.
This demand for faith is wrongly conceived if we imagine that we can short circuit the issue by neglecting the study of Scripture and the fellowship of the Church, for while God speaks to us directly by His Spirit, He speaks also through His Word and through the life of the Christian community. Faith is the response to this threefold witness. Only when this response is made do we learn the truth of the words addressed to Thomas, 'Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are they that have not seen, and have believed'.
Then only do we cry, 'My Lord and my God.'
The Person of Christ in New Testament Teaching, Vincent Taylor, (London: MacMillan, 1963) p.306
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