Rex Banks.

Introduction

It is not difficult to understand why it is that many new Christians who are eager to "grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ" (2 Pet 3:18) turn trustingly to the latest theologian promising new insights into the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. Understandable yes, but also naive and all too often very dangerous. Unfortunately many times when the pretty platitudes and pious posturings are stripped away, the latest ("scholarly", "masterful", "groundbreaking") study presents us with a portrait of Jesus which is a travesty of the Biblical figure. Perhaps the Jesus on offer is an effete dreamer, a raving megalomaniac or a Machiavellian schemer, but usually his creator is on hand to assure us in smooth and dulcet tones that this in no way detracts from something called the "Easter message," which turns out to be some vaguely sentimental feeling about hope or goodwill or authentic living - or really anything you care to name. All too often our "theologian" begins his work with the assurance that he too is a "churchman" - yet he is content to leave his Jesus mouldering in a forgotten tomb. The writers of the New Testament on the other hand speak of One who conquered the grave, and personally I prefer the Jesus of scripture.

Just how did we get to the point where many who are hailed as leading academics in the field of Biblical studies have parted company so completely with the scriptural record? In order to understand this and in order to protect himself from egregious error posing as scholarly investigation, the Christian needs to understand something of the times in which he lives, and something of the spirit of the age which gave rise to modern Biblical criticism.

The Spirit of the Enlightenment

Certain basic presuppositions undergirding much modern Biblical criticism have emerged from what is often called the Enlightenment, a term used to describe an intellectual movement which began in the seventeenth century in England and developed in France in the eighteenth century. Under the heading Enlightenment in the Oxford Companion To Philosophy we have the following:

"'Enlightenment' contrasts with the darkness of irrationality and superstition that supposedly characterized the Middle Ages... Thus the watchword of the enlightenment is......'Have the courage to use one's own reason.' Thus the leading doctrines of the Enlightenment, shared by many, if not all, of its spokesmen, are these:

1) Reason is man's central capacity, and it enables him not only to think, but to act correctly...

6) Beliefs are to be accepted only on the basis of reason, not on the authority of priests, sacred texts, or tradition. Thus Enlightenment thinkers tended to atheism, or at most to a purely natural or rational deism, shorn of super-natural and miraculous elements and designed primarily to support an enlightened moral code and in some cases, to account for the fact that the universe is a rational system, wholly accessible to human reason.

Now clearly in the case of the Bible, if the supernatural and miraculous elements are simply dismissed out of hand, the very essence of its message is destroyed. There is, after all, no "good news" in scripture if Christ was not miraculously raised from the dead. (1 Cor 15:13) Yet the fact is that the guiding principles of modern Biblical criticism spawned by the Enlightenment operate to emasculate scripture in just this way. In his book The Modern Search For The Real Jesus, Robert B. Strimple lists the three primary principles which have guided modern Biblical criticism:

"(1) The principle of methodological doubt. All historical judgments (including those made concerning the events reported in the Bible) can only be statements of probability, which are always open to revision. They can never be regarded as absolutely true.

(2) The principle of analogy. All historical events are, in principle (in "quality") similar. Thus, "present experience and occurrence become the criteria of probability in the past....In our present experience, axe heads do not float, nor do five loaves and two fish suffice to feed five thousand people.

(3) The principle of correlation. all historical phenomena exist in a chain of cause and effect, and therefore are mutually interrelated and interdependent. There is no effect without an adequate and sufficient cause."

In a word modern Biblical criticism is grounded upon the assumption that the Bible is not a reliable historical document, that the miraculous accounts cannot be taken seriously, and that the universe is a closed system from which the supernatural is excluded. What we must keep in mind of course is that such an approach to the study of scripture is the product of a naturalistic world view. It is the result of having adopted anti- supernatural presuppositions, and of course given this bias it is a foregone conclusion that the central doctrines of scripture (e.g. the virgin birth, the resurrection) will not survive. The dice are loaded, the cards are stacked and the saddest thing of all is that many theologians are so steeped in this tradition that any alternative to naturalism is simply unthinkable.

A Few of the Cast

Many who are united in the conviction that the Bible is nothing more than the product of human genius are not united in accounting for its origin and existence. Theories on this subject have abounded, and we will say just a few words about several of the figures associated with some of the more influential ideas. It will quickly become clear that there is a unbridgeable gulf between the claims of inspiration made by the original penmen of scripture and the imaginative reconstructions which were spawned by the enlightenment spirit.

a) Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694 - 1768)

In his book entitled Who Was Jesus, N.T. Wright states that the "so-called Quest for (or 'of') the historical Jesus" begins with H.S. Reimarus. According to Wright:

"A little over two hundred years ago, the German sceptic H.S.Reimus (1694 - 1768) declared that if we were to ask serious historical questions about Jesus, we would discover that Christianity was based on a mistake. Jesus was not a "divine" figure; he was a Jewish revolutionary, who died a failure. His disciples stole his body; then they wrote stories about him which made him out to be the great redeemer, expected by the Jews, who would appear on the clouds of heaven and bring the world to an end. This didn't happen either; but their early belief was adapted, not the least by Paul, into forms which enabled it to spread throughout the gullible ancient world. We today, said Reimarus, can see that the whole thing was a tissue of lies."

Thus Jesus viewed Himself and the Kingdom purely in political terms and His ethical and religious concepts were simply a reflection of His Jewish heritage. His "miracles" were nothing more than fables and/or trickery.

b) David Friedrich Strauss (1808 -74)

Strauss is perhaps best known for his three volume work The Life of Christ Critically Examined, in which he argued that the Gospel accounts are not historically reliable documents written by eyewitnesses but rather what he called, "historical myth." By this Strauss meant that the Gospels consist of myths woven around the birth and death of a unique moral genius by a people who were convinced that He was the long-awaited, miracle- working Messiah. As Strauss tells the story, Jesus' followers were thrown into confusion by His death, but when their faith revived they appealed to certain Old Testament passages such as Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 (which speak of a suffering dying figure) as proof that the crucifixion was a fulfilment of Messianic prophecy. In a state of expectation and self-delusion, the believers succumbed to subjective visions which convinced them that Jesus had been restored to life - and the rest is history.

In his book Have You Considered Him, Wilbur Smith describes Strauss as "the bitterest of all opponents of the supernatural elements of the gospels" and this appears to be a fair assessment. In his The Old Faith and the New Strauss wrote concerning Charles Darwin:

"Darwin....has opened the door by which a happier coming race will cast out miracles, never to return. Everyone who knows what miracles imply will praise him, in consequence, as one of the greatest benefactors of the human race."

c) Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792 -1860)

Considered by many the father of modern studies in church history, Baur was head of the influential "Tubingen school" which dominated Biblical scholarship in the mid-nineteenth century. Influenced by a particular view of history developed by the German philosopher Hegel, Baur concluded that early Christianity is to be explained as the outcome of a struggle between Jewish Christianity and Gentile (or Pauline) Christianity. According to Baur it is possible to date the books of the New Testament based upon the point of view expressed in each, because a particular writer's viewpoint reveals the place of his work in the historical development of Christianity. Thus Matthew, a Jewish-Christian document is early as are the Galatian, Corinthian and Roman epistles (the only letters written by Paul) which represent Pauline Christianity. Since the rest of the New Testament books reflect the compromise viewpoint which grew out of the conflict between these two streams of Christianity, they must be viewed as late productions (post 150 A.D.).

Baur's Jesus was a great moral teacher whose impact upon the world is explained by the fact that the religious people of His time were eagerly awaiting a Messianic deliverer, and many accepted Him as the promised one. It was thanks to the contribution made by the Pauline/Gentile stream of Christianity that the new religion did not languish as a Jewish sect but became universal in scope.

d) Albert Schweitzer (1875 - 1965)

Recipient of the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize, this amazingly versatile man gained prominence as a leading figure in theological studies with the publication in 1906 of his book The Quest of the Historical Jesus. Influenced by the views of earlier writers such as Johannes Weiss, Schweitzer depicted Jesus as an heroic figure driven by His conviction that the Kingdom of God was at hand. Some kind of subjective experience convinced Jesus at the time of His baptism that He had been designated to establish the Kingdom of Heaven as the future Messiah of God. Initially Jesus kept this secret to Himself, but later it was revealed to the inner circle of His disciples, then to the rest, and eventually, through the betrayal of Judas, to the priests and the mob. This resulted in Jesus' death.

According to Schweitzer, Jesus initially viewed His life's work simply in terms of His mission to announce the imminent arrival of the Kingdom, but a progression in His thinking is evidenced by His words to the disciples in Matthew 10:23: "you will not finish going through the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes." But the Kingdom did not come, forcing Jesus to draw certain conclusions based upon His understanding of Jewish Kingdom expectations. According to Jewish belief, a time of tribulation would precede the establishment of the Kingdom, and when it did not arrive Jesus concluded that the Lord had appointed Him to undergo this suffering in Israel's stead. Thus Jesus spoke to His followers of His suffering and death, and He also spoke to them of his resurrection, which Schweitzer sees as a reference to his coming again. Basically Schweitzer's Jesus died a failure, but the theologian offers some vague assurance that His life was in some sense a triumph.

e) Rudolf Bultmann (1884 -1976)

Along with the names of K.L. Schmidt and M. Dibelius, Rudolf Bultmann is chiefly associated with the discipline known as "form criticism" which, as a form of Biblical investigation, originated in Germany in the years following World War 1. Form criticism began as a type of literary analysis but unfortunately certain presuppositions underlying its application to the Biblical documents produced very negative results.

The form critic takes the position that the Gospel accounts are made up of small independent units (called "pericopes") which take the form of parables, miracle stories, exorcisms and the like. These units originally circulated independently and were communicated orally by the early church. The Gospel writers were editors who created an artificial framework of events, situations, geography, dates and the like in which to place and connect the various pericopes (which means of course that such details are not historically accurate). What's more, for a variety of reasons, the pericopes themselves also tell us very little about the real Jesus. The main reason for this is that the various units are understood to have been devised or shaped by the needs of the early church. More often than not then the "words of Jesus" recorded by the Gospel writers are actually creations of the early Christian community, and they tell us more about the "life situation" (sitz im leben) of the early church than about the teachings of Jesus.

Of course there is much more to Bultmann, Baur and the rest, and much more to modern Biblical criticism, but hopefully enough has been said in this "readers digest" summary of a few key ideas to make the point that much modern scholarship rests upon unproven assumptions which effectively cut the heart out of the gospel message. No amount of equivocation and double-speak can conceal the fact that there is no "good news" in a Bible that cannot be trusted and no power to save in a message which ends with a whimper - but all too often a gutted Bible and an impotent Jesus are all that remain after modern Biblical scholarship has eviscerated the sacred text.

Let's conclude this discussion with an example of a recent hatchet job performed upon the Bible by a group of critical scholars who make up an alliance known as the Jesus Seminar. The hatchet job has been a very public affair and this is not surprising. After all we are all inspired by stories of bold innovators heroically battling the forces of blind tradition, and it is in this role as courageous liberators from entrenched ignorance that the liberal theologians involved in the Jesus Seminar have become hits with the media.

The Jesus Seminar

In 1985 a group of thirty scholars began meeting under the patronage of the Westar Institute with the declared intention of reviving the quest for the historical Jesus. The Institute describes its twofold mission as that of (1) fostering collaborative research in the field of religious studies and (2) communicating the results of this research to the public at large. The Jesus Seminar is its best-known undertaking and over time membership grew to more than two hundred Fellows before dwindling to seventy-four. Participants possessed advanced academic credentials, but critics pointed out that the Seminar was heavily weighted in favour of liberal scholarship. What is important about the Seminar is not the fact that it represents some new initiative, but rather the fact that its activities have made the man in the street aware of certain issues which were usually only discussed by the professional theologians.

The objective of the Seminar was to reach consensus on the historical authenticity of the words and events attributed to Jesus by the writers of the Gospels, and following their deliberations the scholars rendered their verdicts by voting using colour-coded beads/marbles. A fourfold choice was offered: (1) sayings attributed to Jesus that were likely authentic (red bead); (2) sayings that are somewhat likely to have been spoken by Jesus (pink bead); (3) sayings which are somewhat unlikely to have been spoken by Jesus (gray bead); (4) sayings that Jesus is unlikely to have spoken (black bead). A full account of the Seminar's deliberations were reported in The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus. We are assured by these erudite specialists that only about 18% of the sayings and 16% of the events normally associated with Jesus are authentic!

Now of course the Fellows knew that such a claim by individuals 2,000 years removed from the Jesus of history is not likely to go unchallenged, and in his opening address to the Seminar in 1985, founder Robert W. Funk had this to say:

"We are about to embark on a momentous enterprise. We are going to inquire simply, rigorously after the voice of Jesus, after what he really said. In this process, we will be asking a question that borders the sacred, that even abuts blasphemy, for many in our society. As a consequence, the course we shall follow may prove hazardous. We may well provoke hostility. But we will set out, in spite of the dangers, because we are professionals and because the issue of Jesus is there to be faced, much as Mt Everest confronts the team of climbers."

And like Strauss, Schweitzer et al. before them the Fellows found their Jesus. They found an itinerant wise man who was not virgin-born, not a miracle worker, not the unique Son of God and who was not raised from the dead. (What's left you may well ask). What's more they claim to have recovered this authentic portrait of Christ because the results of their deliberations were not predetermined by theological bias! And there's the rub. It's this claim of scholarly objectivity which rings so hollow and which simply cannot go unchallenged. You see the Jesus of the Seminar is a product of that same naturalistic, anti-supernatural spirit which has pervaded modern Biblical criticism for generations, and the best way to highlight this lack of objectivity is to mention some of the presuppositions which guided the Fellows in their deliberations.

Burden of Proof

The following very revealing statement is taken from The Five Gospels:

"(T)he gospels are now assumed to be narratives in which the memory of Jesus is embellished by mythic elements that express the church's faith in him, and by plausible fiction that enhance the telling of the gospel story for first-century listeners who knew about divine men and miracle workers firsthand. Supposedly historical elements in these narratives must therefore be demonstrated to be so. The Jesus Seminar has accordingly assumed the burden of proof: the seminar is investigating in minute detail the data preserved by the gospels and is also identifying those that have some claim to historical veracity." (emphasis mine)

So having "assumed" that mythical embellishments overlay the Gospel accounts, the Fellows proceed on the basis that the burden of proof rests upon those who argue for the genuineness of a particular saying rather than upon those who deny its authenticity. Guilty unless proven innocent! How stacked is this particular deck, how loaded are these particular dice and how real is the claim of objectivity?

The Creative Community

Of course the above quotation from The Five Gospels also makes clear that members of the Jesus Seminar have taken the unproven assumptions of Form Criticism on board, (see Bultmann above) treating many of the sayings normally attributed to Jesus as reflections of the "life situation" of the early Church. Only by going beneath these layers of embellishments can we see something of the Jesus of history, we are told, and of course the Fellows can help us here. Consider a few examples of the process whereby the Seminar peeled away the layers of myth from the Jesus of the Gospels:

-on the assumption that predictive prophecy is just not possible, any statements by Jesus about the future (e.g. the destruction of Jerusalem) were considered unauthentic;

-on the assumption that miracles simply do not happen these too were viewed as embellishments or explained away;

-on the assumption that Jesus did not quote or interpret scripture, any passages which record His doing so were considered inauthentic;

-on the assumption that Jesus never claimed to be divine, to be the expected Messiah, to have power to forgive sins and the like, such claims were treated as creations of a later generation of believers;

-on the assumption that the early church attempted to deal with certain issues by attributing particular sayings to Jesus, any saying attributed to Him which could have been useful in promoting later Christian causes were deemed inauthentic;

We could go on but the point is clear - rigid presuppositions provided the sieve through which the words and deeds of Jesus had to pass before they received the Fellows' (coveted?) seal of approval and of course these rules of engagement also ensured that the Seminar would find exactly the kind of Jesus that they set out to find. So much for objectivity, yet in the Introduction to The Five Gospels we read:

"The Fellows of the Seminar are critical scholars. To be a critical scholar means to make empirical, factual evidence - evidence open to confirmation by independent neutral observers - the controlling factor in historical judgements."

Evidently it is far easier to make this claim than to abide by it.

A New Canon

By speaking of the five Gospels as opposed to the fourfold Gospel, Funk et. al. alert us to the fact that our Fellows have also decided to abandon the traditional canon of scripture, and it is instructive to consider a little of the tortured logic behind this decision.

Briefly, since predictive prophecy simply does not happen, Mark, the earliest Gospel must have been written sometime after 70 A.D. because it describes the destruction of Jerusalem. The other Gospels of course are later still. In this case, earlier sources devoid of many embellishments must have appeared sometime between the time of Christ's death and 70 A.D. Clearly these sources, being early, should enjoy priority, and our scholarly friends believe that they have identified two such sources, namely "Q" (or "Quelle") and the Gospel of Thomas.

1) Source "Q" If you've never read "Q" don't panic because no-one else has read it either. In fact no-one has ever seen a copy. The name of C. H. Weisse (1801-1866) is associated with the so-called Markan or two document hypothesis, which holds that where Matthew and Luke are parallel and agree with Mark, the first two Gospels are dependent upon the last. However Matthew and Luke are longer than Mark and they also share some of the extra Markan material. The theory holds that here Matthew and Luke show dependence upon another source which came to be designated "Q" (short for Ouelle, the German word for source). Despite the fact that there is no manuscript evidence to support this hypothesis, the Fellows regard the "Q" material as earlier than that of the canonical Gospels.

2) The Gospel of Thomas In the 1940's a library of ancient Christian and Gnostic texts was discovered at Nag Hammadi in Egypt. One Coptic text dated at about the 4th century A.D. was the so-called Gospel of Thomas, which consists of a collection of wisdom sayings attributed to Jesus. The text begins: "These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke and which Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down. And he said, 'Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not experience death.' " The emphasis upon salvation through secret knowledge (gnosis) identifies this as a Gnostic document. There is evidence that an earlier version of Thomas may have existed, and the Fellows claim to be able to identify material from an "early edition" which dates from about 50-60 A.D.

So we have a truly ludicrous situation. Privileged status is given to two so-called "source" documents: one which exists only as a theoretical concept, ("Q") and another which clearly advances second and third century gnostic ideas! And all this because these alleged sources are easily harmonized with a preconceived view of Jesus as a "laconic sage" (Funk) who did not perform miracles, forgive sins or speak of His future resurrection from the dead.

Apart from anything else, the Jesus of the Seminar is an unbelievable figure. Why would such an innocuous figure arouse the ire of the Jewish leaders? How can we entertain the idea that the concept of a miracle-working, suffering, atoning and resurrected Christ evolved gradually over time, when there is abundant evidence that Paul was preaching such a Christ from the 40's of the first century? Why did multitudes of people in the decades immediately following the crucifixion make incredible sacrifices to follow a dead man, if he was remembered as nothing more than wise man who made no special claims for himself? An avalanche of questions remains unanswered.

Concluding Comments

The Bible warns us again and again that Christians are to exercise discernment and that they must protect themselves from egregious error communicated in smooth and comforting words. The Bible has nothing to fear from intensive investigation, and Christians acknowledge that when legitimate methods of historical research are judiciously applied to scripture this serves to enhance our understanding and appreciation of the sacred text. But the Christian must also understand the times in which he lives and the sad fact is that ours is an age so saturated with theological modernism that many who are hailed as Christian leaders/thinkers have stripped the gospel of all those elements which are offensive to the naturalistic world view, thereby depriving it of its power to save. Christians are of course to be "innocent as doves" in their dealing with others, but let's not forget that there is also a time to be "shrewd as serpents". (Matt 10:16)

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