“Generations of Rationalists and freethinkers have held that Jesus Christ corresponds to no historical character: There never was a Jesus of Nazareth. We might call this categorical denial “Jesus atheism.” What I am describing is something different, a “Jesus agnosticism.” There may have been a Jesus on earth in the past, but the state of the evidence is so ambiguous that we can never be sure what this figure was like or, indeed, whether there was such a person.”

— Robert M. Price

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Robert M. Price 17

American theologian 1954

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“I am not trying to say that there was a single origin of the Christian savior Jesus Christ, and that origin is pure myth; rather, I am saying that there may indeed have been such a myth, and that if so, it eventually flowed together with other Jesus images, some one of which may actually have been based on a historical Jesus the Nazorean.”

Robert M. Price (1954) American theologian

[Price, Robert M., w:Robert M. Price, Deconstructing Jesus, https://books.google.com/books?id=VJh1H-hf5EwC&pg=PA85, 2000, Prometheus Books, Publishers, 978-1-61592-120-1, 85]

“We too know the Jesus that the minister referred to. We have had an experience with him and we believe firmly in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. I can see no conflict between our devotion to Jesus Christ and our present action. In fact, I can see a necessary relationship. If one is truly devoted to the religion of Jesus he will seek to rid the earth of social evils. The gospel is social as well as personal..”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Stride Toward Freedom (1958); also quoted in The Life of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1982), by Stephen B. Oates, pp. 81-82
1950s
Variant: We believe firmly in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. I can see no conflict between our devotion to Jesus Christ and our present action. In fact, I can see a necessary relationship. If one is truly devoted to the religion of Jesus he will seek to rid the earth of social evils. The gospel is social as well as personal.

“My point here is simply that, even if there was a historical Jesus lying back of the gospel Christ, he can never be recovered. If there ever was a historical Jesus, there isn't one any more.”

Robert M. Price (1954) American theologian

Opening Statement by Robert Price http://infidels.org/library/modern/robert_price/price-rankin/price1.html
[Price, Robert M., w:Robert M. Price, The Price-Rankin Debate: Jesus: Fact or Fiction?, http://infidels.org/library/modern/robert_price/price-rankin/, infidels.org, 27 November 2016, 1997]

“We believe firmly in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. I can see no conflict between our devotion to Jesus Christ and our present action. In fact, I can see a necessary relationship. If one is truly devoted to the religion of Jesus he will seek to rid the earth of social evils. The gospel is social as well as personal.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Source: Stride Toward Freedom (1958); also quoted in The Life of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1982), by Stephen B. Oates, pp. 81-82 note: 1950s

“No one who begins a biography of Jesus with the words "The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God" or concludes an account with "these things have been written so that you might believe" is attempting to be neutral about the subject matter. The question that should be raised about such accounts is not whether they amount to a form of advocacy—because of course they do—but whether the interpretation of Jesus offered illuminates or obscures the historical subject matter that is being treated.”

Ben Witherington III (1951) American religion academic

Prolegomenon
New Testament History : A Narrative Account (2001)

“The Christ is Jesus and the negation of Jesus.”

Paul Tillich (1886–1965) German-American theologian and philosopher

Biblical Religion and the Search for Ultimate Reality (1955), p. 80
Context: Against Pascal I say: The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the God of the philosophers is the same God. He is a person and the negation of himself as a person.
Faith comprises both itself and the doubt of itself. The Christ is Jesus and the negation of Jesus.

“This dogma had first to be shattered before men could once more go out in quest of the historical Jesus, before they could even grasp the thought of His existence. That the historic Jesus is something different from the Jesus Christ of the doctrine of the Two Natures seems to us now self-evident. We can, at the present day, scarcely imagine the long agony in which the historical view of the life of Jesus came to birth. And even when He was once more recalled to life. He was still, like Lazarus of old, bound hand and foot with grave-clothes — the grave-clothes of the dogma of the Dual Nature.”

Albert Schweitzer book The Quest of the Historical Jesus

Source: The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906), p. 3

“Those who have the disease called Jesus will never be cured.”

Brennan Manning (1934–2013) writer, American Roman Catholic priest and United States Marine

The Relentless Tenderness of Jesus https://books.google.com/books?id=xvv4HcYdxd0C&pg=PA42&dq=%22Those+who+have+the+disease+called+Jesus+will+never+be+cured.%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi9_f7L-JTkAhXJ1VkKHfSGDHUQ6AEwAXoECAEQAg#v=onepage&q=%22Those%20who%20have%20the%20disease%20called%20Jesus%20will%20never%20be%20cured.%22&f=false (1986), p. 42
1980s
Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out

“The key issue is whether Jesus really did return from the dead and thus authenticate his claim to being the unique Son of God. As a skeptic, I was shocked to find that the historical evidence for the resurrection is so solid. We have, for instance, a report of the resurrection that goes back to within months of the death of Jesus, which is like a news flash in ancient history. This is historical gold! Whereas much of what we know from ancient history is derived from one or two sources, we have no fewer than nine ancient sources, inside and outside the New Testament, corroborating the disciples’ conviction that they encountered the resurrected Jesus. That’s an avalanche of data. I was thoroughly stunned by the quantity and quality of the evidence for Christ.”

Lee Strobel (1952) American writer

The Case for Christ: An Interview with Lee Strobel https://www.biblegateway.com/blog/2016/09/the-case-for-christ-an-interview-with-lee-strobel/ (September 7, 2016)

“The sublime title "Christ" is an adjective which only receives its specific value from the specificity of the noun, Jesus of Nazareth. If Jesus is forgotten, then it becomes possible to fill the adjective with whatever suits at the time, without checking whether Jesus was like that or not, or whether this means leaving the world sunk in its wretchedness or not; or worse still, without asking if this image legitimates the tragedy of the world or brings liberation from it.”

Jon Sobrino (1938) Spanish theologian

Source: Jesus the Liberator (1991), p. 15

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