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.