What Is Meant By "The Authority of Scripture"?

Jesus and Salvation Series (Part 9)

Welcome to the Summer 2006 study for the Koinonia Class of Calvary Baptist Church, Denver, Colorado. We’re looking at the issue of Jesus and Salvation, using the book “Is Jesus The Only Savior” [James R. Edwards, Is Jesus The Only Savior? (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: 2005)]. We encourage each person to buy a copy and follow along.

I just finished reading “The Last Word: Beyond the Bible Wars to a New Understanding of the Authority of Scripture” by N. T. Wright (Harper San Francisco, 2005). It wasn’t quite what I expected or wanted, but it led me in a new direction that I believe will take me to a refreshing destination.

Wright spends a good bit of time on the meaning of “the authority of Scripture”, which he says “is a shorthand for ‘God’s authority exercised through Scripture’”. That is, the Bible is not the authority itself, God is; and God exercises His authority through the reading and preaching of the scriptures, through the telling of the Story (more about that later), and through the Church carrying the gospel into the world in work and witness. For more about this see his article, “How Can the Bible Be Authoritative?” on his web site: http://www.ntwrightpage.com/ .

In the story, of course, it is necessary to see how Israel and God’s Kingdom-people play out their parts, how Jesus was the climax of the story, and how over the years the Church has fared in taking the play on the road into various cultures. In other words, Wright goes into a lot of Church history as it involves God’s use of the scriptures to bring about His will and the Church’s interpretations (“improvisations” as Wright calls them) of the scriptures to meet its challenges.

A central focus of Church history concerning the Scripture is the Enlightenment, the 18th century explosion of Rationalism and reason, and how it continues to affect study of the Bible. In chapter 7, “Misreadings of Scripture”, Wright points out how both the “right wing” and the “left wing” of Christianity have taken positions based on misreadings of Scripture. It’s a helpful exercise to read both lists and see how many of one’s own positions are based on faulty readings of Scripture.

It is tempting to jump to Chapter 8, “How To Get Back On Track”, and get to the heart of his argument. It really got tempting for me as I read through the foundation-laying sections in the previous chapters. But in the end I could see the necessity for not skipping the foundation-laying parts.

Wright presents the storyline of the Scripture as a 5-Act play (recapitulating some of his writing in his book, “The New Testament and the People of God” (Fortress Press, 1992).
The five Acts are: Creation, the Fall, Israel, Jesus, and the Church. Living in and acting out Act Five, we are bound to be true to Scene One in Act Five (and that’s where the Church remembered, retold, and wrote down what occurred in Act Four with Jesus).

The heart of his argument is on page 127 under “Strategies for Honoring the Authority of Scripture”. Here I can only summarize his strategies by quoting him on page 127, “How can we be sure that our understandings and ‘improvisations’ of scripture facilitate the Spirit’s working in and through us, as individuals, congregations, and the larger church? We do so by a reading of scripture that is (a) totally contextual, (b) liturgically grounded, (c) privately studied, (d) refreshed by appropriate scholarship, and (e) taught by the church’s accredited leaders.”

Wright, himself a bishop in the Anglican Communion (Bishop of Durham, England) insists that for the church to get back on track its teachers and pastors (and bishops) must be able to teach scripture so as to ably lead the church in its mission to the world. He points to the “various crises in the Western church of our day—decline in numbers and resources, moral dilemmas, internal division, failure to present the gospel coherently to a new generation…” as the impetus for us to “open the Bible in the power of the Spirit…for God’s word to do its work in the world…”.

The destination to which this book led me was not to Athens but to Jerusalem. On page 77 Wright quoted Tertullian (a second century theologian), “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” and goes on to explain “in other words, what has unaided philosophical reason to do with the revelation of God in Jesus Christ? This book led me not to more scholarship for scholarship’s sake, but to a re-reading of the Bible with his 5-Act Play in mind, being reminded of his five strategies for honoring the authority of scripture, and allowing God through the Spirit to work out His authority in me and through my teaching of His Word.

Jesus and Salvation Series (Part 8)

Welcome to the Summer 2006 study for the Koinonia Class of Calvary Baptist Church, Denver, Colorado. We’re looking at the issue of Jesus and Salvation, using the book “Is Jesus The Only Savior” [James R. Edwards, Is Jesus The Only Savior? (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: 2005)]. We encourage each person to buy a copy and follow along.

The Reliability of the New Testament

In 1943 F. F. Bruce first published “Are The New Testament Documents Reliable?”. Still relevant and popular, later editions, which are still being printed, are now titled, “The New Testament Documents, Are They Reliable?” This 135 page paperback, available for about $9.25 online, is packed with evidence that the answer is “Yes!”.

I believe I first read that book while in college. I’ve since referred to it numerous times because the question keeps being asked. Another way to phrase it is to ask, “Can we rely on the New Testament for credible information about Jesus?”.

The New Testament is understood as a Historical Document

Edwards has an interesting way to approach the question in Chapter 3: he discusses examples of the various types of literature in ancient and modern religious texts.

• Some are understood to be myths. The Bhagavad Gita and the stories of Greek and Roman mythology, for example, do not claim to be based on actual historical events.


• Some are simply collections of wise sayings (the Analects of Confucius), again making no claim to historicity.


• Some make claims to state historical fact, but for which there is no historical or archeological evidence (the Book of Mormon).


• The Bible, though, claims to be genuine history and its claims can be validated by research and comparison to other known historical documents (e.g. Tacitus’ Annals, or Josephus’ Wars).

You need only to check out the many historical reference points in the New Testament to see that other historical and archeological evidence exists for the people and places mentioned (Emperor Tiberius, Pontius Pilate, Herod Antipas, etc.). Edwards notes that the Roman historian Tacitus wrote that Jesus was “executed by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate when Tiberius was emperor.” (Annals 15.44)

So, the New Testament documents are seen to be historically reliable in those instances where people and places are mentioned.

Manuscript Evidence for the New Testament

Another point made by Edwards and F. F. Bruce is that the New Testament documents are vastly superior in comparison to other ancient writings at the point of manuscript evidence.

“Caesar’s Gallic War, which was written between 58 and 50 BC, has only ten manuscripts of worth, the oldest dating from nine hundred years after Caesar. Tacitus’s Histories, written about A. D. 100, and his Annals, written slightly later, depend on only two manuscripts, one ninth-century and one eleventh-century.”

By contrast, there are over 5,000 manuscripts of the New Testament in whole or in part. Some of these date from the early to late 2nd century. We have two copies of Greek manuscripts of the entire New Testament (Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus) which date from about 350 to 400 A. D.

See this link for a table of manuscript evidence for superior New Testament reliability when compared to other ancient documents.

And, this link to Oxford University’s manuscript collection which states, “Oxford’s most important manuscript of classical philosophy is the Clarke Plato (MS. E. D. Clarke 39), the oldest surviving manuscript for about half of Plato’s dialogues, which was acquired by the University in 1809: it was written in Constantinople in A.D. 895.”

Reliability of hand-copying of the New Testament

Another argument for the reliability of the New Testament documents comes from overwhelming evidence that the manuscripts (hand-copied texts) were carefully and meticulously copied, with only minor variations over centuries. That evidence came in 1947 when the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. Comparing those scrolls (from 100 B. C. or so to no later than 70 A. D.) to the Leningrad Codex (from about 1,000 A. D.), there is virtually no difference.

The printing press was invented in 1455 A. D. Those who hand-copied the scrolls and codices of the Bible in the prior 14 centuries took great care to be exact. And with so many documents to compare, our confidence in their reliability grows even more.

Edwards concludes “The historical framework of the New Testament is not only corroborated by Jewish and pagan sources. It is, in fact, the primary source document for first-century Palestine.” (page 44)

In this short article I can’t do this subject justice. I can only point you to do some research on your own. If this subject interest you at all, by all means get F. F. Bruce’s book in addition to reading chapter 3 of Edwards’ book. You can also read what Mark D. Roberts wrote in his 3 volume (30-part) blog series on this topic. It will be worthwhile, I guarantee. And chapter 3 of the book I mentioned in my last post by Douglas Groothuis “Searching for the Real Jesus in an Age of Controversy” is also a good brief source.
In summary, for every argument against the reliability of the New Testament there is at least one book, if not scores of books with answers that can provide intellectual support for trusting its historicity. Find one and prepare your own argument.

Jesus and Salvation Series (Part 7)

Welcome to the Summer 2006 study for the Koinonia Class of Calvary Baptist Church, Denver, Colorado. We’re looking at the issue of Jesus and Salvation, using the book “Is Jesus The Only Savior” [James R. Edwards, Is Jesus The Only Savior? (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: 2005)]. We encourage each person to buy a copy and follow along.

Excursus: Resources for this Study

The first two chapters of Edwards’ book (which dealt with the Quest for the Historical Jesus and The Jesus Seminar) looked at the skepticism of some New Testament scholars since the enlightenment.

From what I have read, those scholars’ answers to the question “Is Jesus the only savior?” is essentially to say “No, and in fact Jesus is not even a savior. No savior exists, only sages, teachers, models for living, etc. We can’t know enough about the real Jesus to know what he was, other than a teacher and maybe a healer. All we can know is what the early church wrote about Jesus.”

In effect, then, if the New Testament is as unreliable as claimed, we can’t know very much about the “real” Jesus at all. So how do we answer the skeptical scholars’ claims? We need to examine the evidence for the reliability of the New Testament as a credible source of information about Jesus.

Once we do that, then we will examine two more questions as we continue to lay the foundation for answering the book’s major question: (1) what specific claims does the New Testament make about Jesus?; and (2) what, if anything can be know about Jesus’ own self-understanding?

This is probably a good time for a brief excursus – to list some of the books and online sites I’ve been reading along with the major book for the summer, James R. Edwards’ “Is Jesus The Only Savior?”. These books give introductions to and different perspectives the major subjects in Edwards’ book: the reliability of the New Testament, the search for the “real” Jesus, and the message of the gospel in a pluralistic world.

My next post will treat the question of the reliability of the New Testament. For now, check out some of these resources. I don’t agree with all of them, but I feel a need to study all of them in order to come to informed conclusions.

Borg, Marcus J (site about his works) www.united.edu/portait/index/shtml
Borg, Marcus J. Meeting Jesus Again for The First Time
Borg, Marcus J. www.explorefaith.org/bio.borg.html
Borg, Marcus J. & Wright, N. T. The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions
Bruce, F. F. The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?
Edwards, James R. Is Jesus The Only Savior?
Groothuis, Douglas Searching for the Real Jesus In An Age of Controversy
Gundry, Okholm, Phillips, editors Four Views of Salvation In A Pluralistic World
Jesus Seminar www.westarinstitute.org/jesus_seminar/jesus_seminar.html
Lindsley, Art C.S. Lewis's Case For Christ
McGrath, Alister E. Christian Theology, An Introduction
Roberts, Mark D http://www.markdroberts.com/htmfiles/resources/gospelsreliable.htm
Roberts, Mark D http://www.markdroberts.com/htmfiles/resources/knowaboutjesus.htm
Roberts, Mark http://www.markdroberts.com/htmfiles/resources/unmaskingthejesus.htm
Smith, Huston The World's Religions
Witherington, III, Ben The Jesus Quest: The Third Search for the Jew of Nazareth
Wright, N. T. The Contemporary Quest For Jesus
Wright, N. T. http://www.ntwrightpage.com/
Wright, N. T. Simply Christian

Other than the Edwards book that we’re following as our text, the resources I would recommend for those just starting the study are:

• The book by both Borg and Wright which clearly delineates the different approaches to the historical study of Jesus (The Meaning of Jesus:Two Visions).


• The web sites with materials by and about Marcus Borg (for the view held by scholars connected with The Jesus Seminar)


• The web site for N. T. Wright (for a view that represents scholars with a more traditional view of Jesus)


• The blog links for Mark D. Roberts (for a view of a scholarly pastor – PhD from Harvard, and Senior Pastor of Irvine Presbyterian Church in Irvine, California). He has written extensively on a multitude of subjects and posted them online, so they are accessible without having to go to a library or buy a bunch of books. He also teaches some classes at Fuller Theological Seminary (conservative) and San Francisco Theological Seminary (liberal), so he has to wrestle with subjects that are germane to Christians in the world today

Enjoy!

Jesus and Salvation Series (Part 6B)

Welcome to the Summer 2006 study for the Koinonia Class of Calvary Baptist Church, Denver, Colorado. We’re looking at the issue of Jesus and Salvation, using the book “Is Jesus The Only Savior” [James R. Edwards, Is Jesus The Only Savior? (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: 2005)]. We encourage each person to buy a copy and follow along


Which Jesus is The Revised Jesus?

“Perhaps ‘the revised Jesus’ you refer to is the Jesus of the four gospels.” That was the opening comment to a series of questions emailed to me which I posted in the last article (Part 6A).

If I read that comment (and the other questions) correctly, and if I’m reading The Jesus Seminar scholars correctly, it is a very good summary of how I think Marcus Borg and the other Jesus Seminar scholars would state the question at hand. All we have to do is change the questions to positive comments using the writings of The Jesus Seminar scholars themselves.

My summary of The Jesus Seminar’s concept of Jesus

1. The Jesus of the four gospels is not “the real Jesus”. The gospels, as written, revised history so as to present a concept of Jesus that included the mythology that developed over the years between the crucifixion and the writing of the gospels. The result was that the biblical Jesus became more than just a man.
   
   
2. In particular, the fourth gospel (John) put words into Jesus’ mouth that made it appear that Jesus himself knew that he was the Messiah and more—“the way, the truth, and the life”—the only way to God. Then Paul theologized about Jesus in his letters; and his writings added to the growing revisionary history making it seem like Jesus was co-equal with God and that Jesus’ death was the means to our salvation.
   


3. In addition, over the next 250-300 years, as the church grew and became accepted and institutionalized, church leaders revised history even more: through their theologies, church councils (and the creeds which came out of those councils), and especially in selecting certain books to be included in the canon of Scripture and rejecting others, they formalized the mythology which had developed about Jesus (e.g. Jesus dying for our sins, the physical resurrection, etc.). None of that mythology was historically “true”, the scholars would say (i.e. you could not have captured it with a video camera). But it could be considered spiritually true because in believing it, people did seem to develop a deep spiritual relationship with God; and their lives were consequently changed.
   


4. The scholars would say that, as historians, they have been able to get behind the layers of stories, interpretations, and metaphors and come up with a concept of Jesus that is historically more true to the original Jesus than the picture presented in the four Gospels, the rest of the New Testament, and the later creeds of the church.Therefore, they would say that theirs is not a “revised Jesus”, but the “true Jesus”; and the Jesus the church has preached for the past 1900 plus years is the “revised Jesus”.

Conclusion:

Question 7 in the last post was, “Why do we need faith if doctrine provides all the answers?” Surely that does not mean to imply that we don’t need doctrine because faith provides all the answers. No, both the question and the last sentence are hyperbole. We will have both faith and doctrine whichever way we go.

As I quoted Edwards in the last post, “The conclusions of the Jesus Seminar about Jesus—indeed, anyone’s conclusions about any figure of history—are ultimately questions of faith based on the best evidence possible. That being the case, the proper question to ask is which reconstructions best fit the evidence we possess.”

Traditionalists have faith and doctrine, and faith that their doctrine is true.

Non-traditionalists have faith and doctrine, and faith that their doctrine is true.

The question for each Christian is who to believe. I admit that I am an amateur when it comes to the specialized study of the type done by those in The Jesus Seminar and other New Testament scholars. I don’t know enough to write the books myself, so I have to read both sides (see “The Meaning of Jesus—Two Visions” by Marcus Borg and N. T. Wright) and then choose which one to believe.

For me the choice is whether to believe almost 2,000 years of Christian faith and doctrine from those who tend to believe the Bible is reliable, rather than almost 200 years of the faith and doctrine of those who tend to believe the Bible is not reliable. After all, if we discard the Bible (or 88% of it), why should we believe anything about Jesus? What could possibly be left that is of value for the ultimate questions of life?

In the next chapter of Edwards’ book, we will look at the question: “How Reliable Is The New Testament as a Historical Document?”

Jesus and Salvation Series (Part 6A)

Questions About a “Revised Jesus” and “Revised Gospel”

Welcome to the Summer 2006 study for the Koinonia Class of Calvary Baptist Church, Denver, Colorado. We’re looking at the issue of Jesus and Salvation, using the book “Is Jesus The Only Savior” [James R. Edwards, Is Jesus The Only Savior? (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: 2005)]. We encourage each person to buy a copy and follow along.

In my last email introducing the latest post (A Seminar on The Jesus Seminar), I talked about a “revised Jesus” and a “revised Gospel” as the product of The Jesus Seminar. The “revised Jesus” is what I also described as the “acceptable Jesus” that I see presented in the “secular media”.

In response to the email and the article, I received an email with the following comments and questions. (I copied the email verbatim and just re-formatted it for better readability online.)

Rudy:

1. Perhaps "the revised Jesus" you refer to is the Jesus of the four gospels.


2. Do you suppose that "the acceptable Jesus" you mention is the Jesus of councils and creeds and systematic theologies (i.e. orthodoxy)?


3. Can we know "the real Jesus" through countless layers of interpretation and reinterpretation, beginning with the many and various interpretations of Jesus in the very first century?


4. Is there a distinct difference (and unbridgeable chasm) between "the real Jesus" (i.e. the actual person and what he actually did) and "the Christ of faith" (i.e. who we believe Jesus was and what he means to us)?


5. Should we dismiss the work of reputable scholars, many of them sincere believers (e.g. Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan), without giving their methodologies and conclusions careful (and prayerful) consideration?


6. If they are partly, even mostly, correct, how does that threaten our faith and practice as Christians?


7. Why do we need faith if doctrine provides all the answers?


8. Are all media outlets not in the service of "doctrinally-correct" authorities "secular" and not to be trusted?


9. Are such blanket statements helpful to our search for deeper truth? Just wondering.

Grace and Peace, Bruce Greer.

I really appreciate such comments and questions. This study is designed to be a dialogue, and with such comments we will all learn more. I won’t be able to answer the entire email this time, so look for follow-up posts in the next few days.

It may help if you copy and print the last post (A Seminar on The Jesus Seminar) and this one, so you can see how these questions go with the original article.

For now, just three comments on the email I received. First, thanks Bruce, for sending the comments and allowing me to share them with the other participants in the study.

Second, it is clear that there are two quite different perspectives here. Edwards’ book takes one viewpoint (which I share); and Bruce’s questions take a different viewpoint. It’s not just a cliché to say that even though we disagree, we can agree to disagree agreeably.

And third, I’ll intentionally leave specific comments on the questions for the next post, giving everyone time to understand the issues and formulate responses for themselves. To leave a comment that everyone can see, click on the lightly-colored word “comments” below to bring up the comments page (or you can also email your comments to me as Bruce did, and I will share them with the group).

Jesus And Salvation Series (Part 6)

Welcome to the Summer 2006 study for the Koinonia Class of Calvary Baptist Church, Denver, Colorado. We’re looking at the issue of Jesus and Salvation, using the book “Is Jesus The Only Savior” [James R. Edwards, Is Jesus The Only Savior? (Eerdmans, Grand Rapids/Cambridge: 2005)]. We encourage each person to buy a copy and follow along.

A SEMINAR ON "THE JESUS SEMINAR"

Unless you’ve been in a theological seminary or graduate program in religion, you’ve probably not heard of “The Jesus Seminar” before. Yet, you have very probably been influenced by its work. That work is what I mentioned in the last post about an “acceptable Jesus”.

A Christmas or Easter special on “Jesus of Nazareth” almost certainly has a script that tries to show Jesus as a man who influenced people, uttered wise sayings, performed some “miraculous healings”, and who was thought of by his disciples as possibly being the expected Jewish messiah. It will not speak of Jesus as the Son of God or Savior.

If the crucifixion of Jesus is included at all, its theological significance for traditional Christianity will be avoided. The resurrection will either be avoided entirely or, if mentioned, it will be introduced with something like, “His disciples were convinced that Jesus had risen from the dead.” It almost certainly will not be treated as an historical fact. That is the influence of The Jesus Seminar.

A Brief Seminar on “The Jesus Seminar”:

• Started in 1985 with 30 scholars resuming the “quest for the historical Jesus” (i.e. they wanted to “…inquire simply, rigorously after the voice of Jesus, after what he really said.” ) Over the years a number of other scholars have participated in the Seminar.


• Published “The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus”, and other books. “The Five Gospels” (the ones from the New Testament plus the “Gospel of Thomas”) was the result of an examination of all the known writings with sayings attributed to Jesus with no privilege or extra weight given to those in the New Testament. They were studied “historically”, not theologically.


• Used a unique method of determining which words they thought were “authentic words of Jesus”. They concluded that only 18% of the words attributed to Jesus were actually spoken by him. “Only one statement in the Gospel of Mark…is judged to have come with certainty from Jesus: ‘Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s’(Mark 12:17).” (Edwards, page 27). And nothing from the Gospel of John could with certainty be traced back to Jesus, according to the Seminar scholars.

To reach this conclusion every scholar voted on each saying by contributing a colored bead:

red: Jesus undoubtedly said this or something very like it.

pink: Jesus probably said something like this.

gray: Jesus did not say this, but the ideas contained in it are close to his own.

black: Jesus did not say this; it represents the perspective or content of a later or different tradition.

Then a weighted formula was used to determine how to print each saying in the final publication. Read Edwards' explanation on page 28 under “Criteria of Authority” to see the three principles they used to consider whether a saying was authentically from Jesus or not.

Summary and Analysis:

No one is completely objective, historians included (or maybe I should say, especially historians). The very act of writing an article or a book necessitates selecting certain items for inclusion and discarding others. Otherwise a book would never be completed.

Following in the footprints of Rationalism and Naturalism, the Seminar scholars started with the assumption that the historical Jesus was just a man, not the Son of God that the church later proclaimed him to be. He was a remarkable man, and therefore worthy of study, but nothing like the New Testament portrays him.

With that assumption in mind, the sayings attributed to Jesus that did not fit the pattern were discarded. What emerged was someone most Christians would not recognize. As one of the scholars wrote:

“First let us say what Jesus was not.

1. He never claimed to be the Son of God.
   
2. He never claimed to be the Messiah.


3. He was not an apocalyptic prophet, announcing the imminent end of the world.


4. He was not the founder of Christianity.


5. He was not a Christian.”

Another scholar, rejecting any divinity of Jesus, sketches a picture of Jesus using “four broad strokes”: (1) a spirit person; (2) a teacher of wisdom; (3) a social prophet; and (4) a movement founder.

Edwards, in the book we are studying, says “The conclusions of the Jesus Seminar about Jesus—indeed, anyone’s conclusions about any figure of history—are ultimately questions of faith based on the best evidence possible. That being the case, the proper question to ask is which reconstructions best fit the evidence we possess.”

My conclusion is that when it comes to choosing which reconstruction best fits the evidence, I have to ask, “Why should I accept the Jesus of The Jesus Seminar as being more authentic than the Jesus of the New Testament and of 2000 years of church teaching?"

The Jesus of the New Testament changed history and has changed my life. I’m still trying to figure out why anyone would want to have faith in the Jesus of The Jesus Seminar.

Jesus and Salvation Series (Part 5)

Welcome to the Summer 2006 study for the Koinonia Class of Calvary Baptist Church, Denver, Colorado. We’re looking at the issue of Jesus and Salvation, using the book “Is Jesus The Only Savior” [James R. Edwards, Is Jesus The Only Savior? (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: 2005)]. We encourage each person to buy a copy and follow along.

The Search for an “Acceptable Jesus”

When you see a magazine article or a television program about Jesus (usually at Christmas or Easter) it will almost certainly be a “Jesus” who is acceptable in secular circles—not the Jesus you read about in the Bible. The Jesus of the Bible and of Christian tradition is an affront to the secular multiculturalism and moral relativism which is dominant among opinion leaders in 21st Century America and Europe.

The “acceptable Jesus” will be a wise man, a teacher, a miracle-worker maybe, a social prophet definitely—in short, a man. He may even be married and have children (as in “The DaVinci Code”). He will not be the Savior of the world or the Son of God.

As Edwards says in Chapter One (page 9), “The Jesus who interests the modern world is Jesus as a spiritual personality who is recoverable by scholars, historians, and social scientists, not the Jesus proclaimed from pulpits. The ‘Sunday Jesus’ is suspected of having been tarnished by legend and dogma.”

Over the past 200 years or so there have been three rounds of a “quest for the historical Jesus”-- what was supposed as the “real” Jesus instead of the figure the church came to proclaim as the Christ, the Savior of the world.

The first quest is seen in Albert Schweitzer’s book written about 1910, “Quest of the Historical Jesus”, which summed up the liberal approach in over 100 years of debate. It separates the “Christ of the church” from the “Enlightenment Jesus”—who by the scholars’ methodology was stripped of anything supernatural.

The second quest (taking place in the early to mid 20th Century) tried to get beyond the “myths” that they saw as a projection of the beliefs of the church, and through a study of the forms of oral tradition discover what the church believed. That was because they felt we can’t know anything about who Jesus actually was.

Edwards summarized what the 2nd Quest scholars believed like this: “The early church transposed its views onto Jesus in the four Gospels, and thus the Gospels tell us not who Jesus was, but what the church believed him to be. In so doing, the hypothesis concludes, the early church obscured for the most part the real Jesus from historical recovery.”

The third quest (since the late 1980’s) is seen primarily in the proponents and the critics of “The Jesus Seminar” (which is the subject of Chapter 2, so we’ll get to more of that later). For now, I’ll just quote Edwards (page 20): “The chief invention of the Third Quest is the attempt to understand the historical Jesus through the lenses of the social sciences, cross-cultural anthropology, and the ideology of liberation.” The Jesus Seminar scholars are not as interested in what Jesus taught, as in what the cultural conditions were that influenced Jesus.

The common assumption that led to radical results in all three quests is that of the philosophy of Naturalism. That is, "the rules of the game” require that “all events must be accounted for by natural causes rather than by supernatural ones…”. Reason and Rationalism could supposedly lead us to the truth that faith and religious authority had obscured.

However, there was one problem—the scholars’ reasoning started with an assumption that pre-determined the end result. If the Deistic god of the Enlightenment would not intrude into history, then obviously Jesus could not have come from God. Jesus’ life and his effect on others must be explained away as due to some cause other than what the Bible claimed.

As we shall see in the next chapter on The Jesus Seminar, though, the only way an “acceptable Jesus” can be obtained is to radically excise those parts of the New Testament that don’t fit the desired outcome.

The New Testament (as taught in 2000 years of orthodox Christianity) may not present an “acceptable Jesus”; but Truth often confronts us with what we don’t wish to accept. In the end, though, Truth is more satisfying than political correctness. Truth afflicts the comfortable even as it comforts the afflicted.