Jesus and Salvation Series (Part 15)

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.

Choosing Faith

This email that I received is a good follow-up to my last post about the Gospel In A Pluralistic World. The writer gave me permission to post it. A little background about him is helpful. TR retired as pastor of an American Baptist church in a college town. He was also my pastor when I was in college, so our dialogue about theology goes back over 40 years. He also has a PhD in history, and has taught university classes in history. All this is to say that this email comes after much thought and broad exposure to life outside the church.
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Hi Rudy:

After reading your lessons pertaining to the views of Jesus, my thinking has been re-stimulated about our Messiah. Given my teaching courses (one of which is Comparative Religion for senior honors students), I have been led into a serious study of textual criticism of all religious documents--our scriptures, Koran, Bhagavad-Gita, etc. Given the enormous variations in the texts, I have come to the conclusion, for now at least, that "proving" one's faith by empirical physical validation is not in one's best interest.

To quote your quote of Edwards: "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."

I have had a tendency in recent years as I study ever more intensely to question physical, intellectual knowledge and rely on/depend on my personal faith. Robert Penn Warren, a fine writer wrote some thing that connects with me: "But with the willing suspension of dis-belief life is thus the richer, even if we are fed, and know it, on a meat of shadows."

There is much of shadows in our biblical texts, conflicting theologies, and religious traditions, but I come back to choosing Jesus as my personal faith. I agree with your statement "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." Sometimes the reliability of certain scriptures comes into question, but what I accept is that God in Christ reconciling the world is that which is behind the thrust of the scriptures and I choose to follow that God.

So, I continue to move from the proving, knowledge, and claims of absolute Truth, to "Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief"--periods of questioning and doubt.

Thanks for the series of lessons. I feel spiritually rejuvenated by turning faith-inwardly.

TR
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In a phone call after receiving this message, TR and I talked more about the relationship between faith and knowledge, coming to the conclusion that since there is so little that we can "prove" about our faith, we ultimately must rely on pistis over epistemology.

How true again the scripture sounds: "We live by faith, not by sight." (2 Corinthians 5:7) We all go through the experience of questioning and doubting. All the study of this summer about the theories and opinions of various scholars is interesting and challenging, but it is not ultimately satisfying. What is satisfying for me is how the questions are put into perspective when I choose faith in Jesus Christ.

Jesus and Salvation Series (Part 14)

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.

Two Worlds, One Gospel

The seventh chapter of Edwards’ book is entitled “Can the Gospel Compete in a Pluralistic World?”. The answer is, “Yes. It already did.”

The gospel not only competed, it succeeded in being widely accepted; and it therefore changed the world.

This chapter is a wake-up call to our arrogance and historical ignorance. We act as if our situation is unique—that for the first time the gospel is too offensive to others in our pluralistic world, so it must be “updated” in order to compete for acceptance.

This is said to be “a multiethnic, multicultural, multifaith world in which is seems simply untenable and perhaps even immoral to believe in one absolute truth against which everything else is to be measured and judged.” (Edwards, page 116)

There is no question that the message (“I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6) is offensive to lots of people. Those whose creed says there are “many paths” and “many truths” are put off by such statements. They feel that the gospel, as traditionally preached, is too offensive to be accepted today.

I was in a church meeting when one member took offense at a reading from John 17, about the unity of the believers with Christ. That member said, “That reading troubles me because I believe that more than just Christians will be saved.”

The gospel is offensive to many today; and it was when it was first spoken. Our world and that world are not that much different.

On the West entrance to Norlin Library at the University of Colorado in Boulder is an inscription suggested by the former president of the University and professor of Greek, Dr. George Norlin. It reads, “Who knows only his own generation remains always a child.” The phrase is original with Dr. Norlin, but it is similar to something he quotes from Cicero. "To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child."

Those who might think that the gospel cannot compete today (because the world is smaller, communication is quicker, and we are more sophisticated now) are simply ignorant of the world into which the gospel first spread. There are reasons why some of the early Christians were martyred. That world was not friendly to the messengers of such an “exclusive” message.

What kind of world did the gospel first enter? It was a world which was dominated by one superpower; where roads and ships made travel easier and quicker than in previous generations; where there was one major language of commerce known by almost everyone; a world where old religions were passing and new religions and philosophies were vying for attention and adherents. It was also a dangerous world where human life was not highly valued; and a corrupt world where “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” were rampant. Sound familiar?

Into that kind of world Christians took the gospel and won converts in spite of the competition it faced. Edwards elaborates on that competition as it took three major forms: Torah, the Emperor Cult, and Mystery Religions.

For the Jews, Torah provided the law necessary for a moral society.

The Caesars promoted a civil religion centered in themselves. This Emperor Cult was a growing phenomenon, starting with just veneration of the Emperor and reaching its apex when Domitian (the emperor from 81-98 AD) mandated that everyone worship him as “Master and God”.

A multitude of “mystery religions” were encountered as the gospel penetrated Greek and Roman societies. These groups were attractive for their “secret” knowledge, their emphasis on spiritual and emotional experience, and the status of being accepted into a unique group.

All three of the major competitors to the gospel had something attractive to offer. However, the Torah couldn’t save from sins, the civil religion of the Emperor cult offered no transcendent deity or hope for the future, and the experience offered by the mystery religions was shallow and transitory.

Can a gospel that is accused of being “exclusivist” compete in a pluralistic world? Yes. How? By offering substance instead of just form. Christians preached about a crucified Jesus Christ who vicariously died for our sins (so forgiveness was possible), who rose from the dead (so life after death was now a possibility), and who, though gone to be with the Father, was present in the person of the Holy Spirit (so daily comfort, guidance, and power for living were possible). See I Corinthians 15:1-5 for a summary of the kerygma (the message that was preached), and I Corinthians 15:58 for the reason the early Christians kept preaching that gospel in spite of hardship and persecution.

When people in the pluralistic 1st Century world who lived shallow, fearful, and guilt-ridden lives compared the options available in religions and philosophies of the day, many chose to accept Jesus Christ as their own savior—and they joined a body of believers who were on the way to changing the world.

The Good News of salvation in Jesus Christ is still attractive, even in our pluralistic 21st Century world. When those who live shallow, fearful, and guilt-ridden lives compare the options available in religions and philosophies of our day, many still chose to accept Jesus Christ as their own savior. The gospel still competes, and succeeds.

Jesus and Salvation Series (Part 13)

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.How Jesus Became “Savior of the World”

The New Testament, read in its entirety, appears designed to convey two seemingly incompatible ideas—that Jesus was divine and that in Jesus God became a human being. Those two ideas later were married into a surprising new concept.

It’s not just that Jesus did things and said things that one would only expect of God. The “great surprise” of the gospel is also the “great scandal”. It is summed up in one word, incarnation. “God chooses in Jesus Christ to be rejected and to suffer and die. It is not in heavenly splendor, but in one like us that we see the saving heart of God.” (Edwards, page 115)

In the gospels, and especially in John, Jesus is spoken of with language reserved for God: Lord, Light, Life, Savior. But it’s not because the early church elevated Jesus to divine status. “…God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ." (Acts 2:36)

Again, it’s not the elevation of Jesus to divinity that is the great surprise (although that too is a wonder since these were all monotheistic Jews). Rather, it is the condescension of God to human form, His incarnation, that makes Jesus uniquely the savior of the world.

That is why the dual emphases in the classic creeds are essential. Only Jesus, fully God and fully man, could be worshipped as Lord and Savior and followed as our Master Teacher.

For the Jews, God was transcendent and allowed no one but the High Priest to come into His presence in the holy of holies. For Greeks, the gods were super-human. For pagans the gods were everywhere, but inimical to a peaceful life or in need of being placated lest they wreak havoc. For Muslims, God did not become human, he dictated a book to a human.

For Christians, though, God took the initiative to reach out in person and reconcile us to Himself, even though we were hostile to Him. It is because God humbled Himself and came down to save us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth that Jesus is lifted up.

In that great hymn Paul quotes in Philippians 2:6-11, the reason “every tongue (shall) confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” is that Christ Jesus emptied Himself of His divine glory and became a man.

The reason we worship Jesus Christ as Lord and accept Him as our savior is not apotheosis (“The idea of ‘equating Jesus with God’ is called apotheosis: ‘to make someone godlike. See the blog post for Chapter 4 on July 1, 2006 and Edwards, page 52), but incarnation. We did not raise Jesus up, God did after He came to be one of us. “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him (Jesus), and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” (Colossians 1:19,20)

Jesus and Salvation Series (Part 12)

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.

Did Jesus Consider Himself To Be God? (Section B)

In Section A of this topic (posted July 9th) we looked through a small window to see if we could see what was in Jesus’ mind as He went about doing God’s work.

It is real hard, though, to come close to understanding what someone thinks unless they reveal it openly. It is impossible to know all that is in someone else’s mind when they are in the same room, let alone someone who lived 2,000 years go. So, on the question of what Jesus thought about His self-identity, we just have to go on some clues He left for us.

Many of the clues to Jesus’ self-identity are in His authoritative actions. His actions were those that one (especially a Jew of Jesus’ time) would expect of God: forgiving sins; exorcism of demons; vanquishing Satan (see the last paragraph on page 83); His authority over nature with miraculous healings, raising from the dead, walking on water and calming the wind and waves; and more subtly His authority over social conventions such as establishing “the Twelve” (a clear analogy to the twelve tribes of Israel), and his acceptance of “outsiders” into His inner circle.

But perhaps in the Synoptic Gospels there is no better clue to Jesus’ self-identity than the way He spoke of His impending death. “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45) Of this Edwards says, “In presenting himself as a ransom otherwise offered by God, Jesus ascribed to himself the conclusive act in the divine drama of salvation.”

Another clue was Jesus’ re-casting of the Passover meal into a remembrance of the self-sacrifice which He was about to endure. Jesus’ interpretation of the bread and wine as His own body and blood of the new covenant which God was making with those who gave themselves to Jesus. “Jesus consciously assumed the role of the sacrificial Servant of Isaiah, whose ‘life is an offering for sin’ (Isaiah 53:10) and who ‘bore the sin of many and made intercession for transgressors’ (Isaiah 53:12).”

The Gospel of John is, of course, a special case. When reading John’s witness, it is no wonder that skeptics would want to exclude it or diminish its power by claiming it is the result of the church putting words into Jesus’ mouth. “…the Fourth Gospel shouts from the rooftops what elsewhere in the New Testament is whispered in the ear.” That is, to look for clear statements by Jesus about His relationship with God, John is the best place to start.

Consider just these statements of Jesus selected from many similar ones in John’s Gospel:

“Jesus said to them, "If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now am here. I have not come on my own; but he sent me.” (8:42)

“I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.” (17:4.5)

“Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.’" (14:6,7)

This fifth chapter in Edwards’ book is a transition from the first section (the foundation-laying chapters) to the second major section—the Gospel of Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord and its relevance today. Edwards summarizes the first section with, “Our reasons for trusting the historical reliability of the New Testament look brighter than our reasons for complacent trust in the assumptions of naturalism.” A solid foundation is laid. Now the framing and finishing of the structure can be completed.

Jesus of Nazareth, who came to be called Savior and Lord by both monotheistic Jews and multicultural Gentiles who accepted the Gospel message, lived 2,000 years ago. His impact on His disciples was so great that the world was changed. We even mark our calendars by (what was later thought to be) the year of his birth.

Now we will see how that Gospel message (which was primarily about Jesus’ life, death on a cross, burial, and resurrection) is relevant in a world of competing ideas and philosophies, moral relativism, scientific and postmodern worldviews, and the explosion of communications and travel which put us all face to face with people of different religions.

“Jesus—the Savior of the world”—what a statement to make as we start the second half of this study. Our hope for this study that each of us can also say, “Jesus—Savior of the world, and my personal Savior.”

Teachings Have Consequences

What a church teaches has consequences. Resolutions a denomination approves have consequences. They will either help people grow spiritually, and therefore attract people; or they will confuse and inhibit spiritual growth, and therefore drive members elsewhere.

We’ve been looking at differing approaches to the Bible and traditional Christian teachings as background to answer the question, “Is Jesus the only Savior?” We’ve seen that some people who go by the name “Christian” not only think that Jesus is not the only Savior, they think there is no such thing as a “savior” at all. They present a Jesus who was invented by the early church rather than the Jesus of the New Testament who was faithfully remembered and recorded by the church.

This article in the Los Angeles Times shows what happens when churches (or whole denominations) depart from “the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints.” (Jude 1:3) Here are some key sections:

“The accelerating fragmentation of the strife-torn Episcopal Church USA, in which several parishes and even a few dioceses are opting out of the church, isn't simply about gay bishops, the blessing of same-sex unions or the election of a woman as presiding bishop. It also is about the meltdown of liberal Christianity. … as all but a few die-hards now admit, all the mainline churches and movements within churches that have blurred doctrine and softened moral precepts are demographically declining and, in the case of the Episcopal Church, disintegrating.”

And again, “When a church doesn't take itself seriously, neither do its members. It is hard to believe that as recently as 1960, members of mainline churches — Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans and the like — accounted for 40% of all American Protestants. Today, it's more like 12% (17 million out of 135 million).”

And this critical piece, “When your religion says "whatever" on doctrinal matters, regards Jesus as just another wise teacher, refuses on principle to evangelize and lets you do pretty much what you want, it's a short step to deciding that one of the things you don't want to do is get up on Sunday morning and go to church.”

The ABC-USA is not one of the “mainline churches” mentioned in the article. However, the story sounds familiar with what has been going on in the ABC-USA recently.

For the sake of our study, I would like some help. Would someone who disagrees with the article please point out what you see as errors.

Help us, who have concerns about our own denomination’s future, understand alternate explanations for the decline of “mainline churches”.

From the data, it appears that today “mainline” no longer means “mainstream”. Why?

The article presents one explanation. Is there another?

Jesus and Salvation Series (Part 11)

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.

Did Jesus Consider Himself To Be God? (Section A)

What did Jesus think about Himself as He was growing up? As He started His public ministry? As He was teaching, healing, and training His disciples? As He hung on the cross? Did He at any time think of Himself as Divine?

The question of Jesus’ self-image may, or may not, be one that everyone who reads about Him asks, but it seems to be central to the arguments in the quests for the historical Jesus. This is the longest chapter in Edwards’ book. We’ll look at it in sections.

The fact that the New Testament does not have any record of Jesus saying, “I am God.” does not answer the question. Edwards makes a good point that such a statement would have ended His mission immediately with both the Jews and the Romans.

In fact, the New Testament does not present a psychological profile of Jesus. It is not written as a novel with a protagonist revealing his thoughts as he moves from scene to scene. About the only way we can discern what Jesus thought is to see what He did and what He said as He interacted with others.

There are two main questions Edwards presents that get to the heart of the matter: (1) “Why does Christianity alone exalt its founder to the status of God?”; and (2) did the early Christians, or we, “have any way of knowing whether their statements about Jesus re-present Jesus’ own self-understanding?”

One section of Chapter five is entitled, “A Window Into Jesus’ Soul”. In it Edwards shows both that some of the people opposed to Jesus believed that Jesus committed blasphemy by claiming to be the Son of God (John 10:36 & 19:7 and Matthew 27:43). Then there is Jesus Himself in Matthew 11:25-27 and the parallel passage in Luke 10:21-22 "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure. All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”

If others around Jesus (not His disciples) said that He claimed to be the “Son of God”, and if Jesus’ prayers, in Matthew above and in John 17, show that He believed that He had a special relationship as the unique “Son of God”, then perhaps there is a small window with frosted glass, at least, that gives us a peek into Jesus’ mind.

We really can’t read Jesus’ mind, though—and those who use long-distance psychology to try to pinpoint what He thought end up only revealing what they themselves think. The best we can do is to read the Gospels and, from what Jesus did and said, come to some conclusions about why His contemporaries believed He was uniquely the Son of God.

N.T. Wright argues in “Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense”
(HarperCollins, 2006) that Jesus probably didn’t “know” that He was divine, but He knew that the mission He was called to involved doing some things only God was supposed to be able to do (e.g. forgive sins, defeat evil) and involved revealing God in the most personal and intimate way possible. More on this next time.

Support for "Jesus--As The Gospels Portray Him"

Jesus and Salvation Series (Part 10)

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.

Most Christians assume that the person named Jesus of Nazareth who is portrayed in the New Testament was accurately portrayed. That is, the Jesus of the New Testament is the same as the “real” Jesus of history.

However, the scholars of the various “Quests for the Historical Jesus” over the past 200 years (including those of The Jesus Seminar) see it differently. For them, the Jesus of the Gospels is, for the most part, an invention of the early church. Their argument: as a Jew, Jesus would not have equated himself with God.

Nor would the earliest church (which was almost totally Jewish) have equated Jesus with God. They were fiercely monotheistic. It was only as the church spread into Gentile cultures, and needed to accommodate its message to those people, did they come up with the idea of Jesus being divine. Presumably this was to make him more acceptable to devotees of Greek and Roman gods and goddesses.

Therefore, the hypothesis goes, anything in the Gospels that appears to confer deity upon Jesus was a projection of the church back into the Gospels. It didn’t originate with Jesus.

This hypothesis of the Quest scholars is based on the assumptions of the philosophy of Naturalism. If you start with the assumption (or pre-condition) that we live in a “closed system” (where no miracles or divine interventions are possible), then not only your conclusions, but also your research, will be pre-determined. “Jesus couldn’t have come from God, so he didn’t; and our research demonstrates that the Jesus of the New Testament was invented by the church,” they seem to say.

The idea of “equating Jesus with God” is called apotheosis: “to make someone godlike”. Would the church have tried to apotheosize Jesus in order to appeal to the Gentiles? Edwards says “No”, and extensively develops his argument. I can only list his main points.

1. Rather than making the Gospels attractive to Gentiles, the apotheosis of Jesus as God’s Son and savior was a very big problem for some non-Christian philosophers of the second and third centuries.


2. It is “wildly improbable” that early Jewish Christians (including Paul, the “Apostle to the Gentiles”) would have compromised their own monotheism and proclaimed Jesus as Son of God just to appeal to Gentiles. Indeed the best explanation of their message that Jesus is the Son of God is that it came from Jesus himself, attested to by his bodily resurrection.

Everybody agrees that there was a period of oral transmission of the life and teachings of Jesus before they were written down. How can we know that the Gospels accurately depict what Jesus did and said, instead of being “freely invented stories and sayings that reflected the needs and experiences of the early church”?

Edwards gives five points, three of which he calls “quality controls”, which argue for the faithfulness of the church in reproducing what they received from Jesus, rather than what they said about Jesus. Again I can only list them. This is very helpful material, and I encourage you to read the entire chapter yourself.

1. “Eyewitnesses were still alive when the tradition was being formed.”


2. The “methodology of rabbinic teaching” would have ensured accurate memory and transmission of Jesus’ teachings.


3. The “embarrassing material” in the Gospels is not what one would expect if the church was just making up stories about Jesus and his disciples (e.g. Jesus’ rebuke of Peter in Mark 8:33 “Get behind me, Satan.”).


4. The content of Jesus’ teaching is not the same content as in the rest of the New Testament. If the church had projected its image of Jesus back onto the Gospels, you would expect to see the same language filling the rest of the New Testament (“Son of Man”, “Kingdom of God”, etc.). But there is little of that except in the Gospels themselves.


5. The “Gentile question” was a major concern of the early church. “Could Gentiles be saved without first becoming Jews?” But you see nothing about this in the Gospels. That is incredible if the early church was projecting its ideas back onto Jesus.

Most of these arguments have been made elsewhere for years, but Edwards does a great job of pulling them together in a readable and understandable format—and therefore a strong argument for the reliability of the Gospels for credible information about Jesus.

Next we will look at the question, “Did Jesus consider himself to be God?”

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.

Jesus and Salvation series - part 4

The Foundation Being Laid

How would you approach a subject like “Is Jesus The Only Savior?” if you were writing such a book?

Would you start by appealing to scripture? Come up with a list of reasons why you think Jesus is the only savior? Then compare Jesus with the founders of other religions, and of course they would compare negatively, right? That might make you feel good, but it would repel those you want to try to convince. Edwards takes a different approach.

The study this summer is about to go in a direction that will seem foreign to many. Edwards saw the need to lay down a foundation that will support the structure of evidence that will eventually answer his question. The foundation may seem strange and may raise some questions like: Where is he going with this? Why did he go off on this tangent? and How will this help answer my questions about talking with others about Jesus as the Savior?

As you saw in the outline of the book listed in Part 2, the foundation includes such subjects as the Quest for the Historical Jesus, The Jesus Seminar, the reliability of the New Testament, and Postmodernism. If these subjects are new to you, it may be quite a ride, but in the end it will be worth it. You will have a stronger foundation yourself.

The culture in which we live is not likely to become friendlier to Christianity soon. Moral relativism, multiculturalism, and instant worldwide communications that put us in contact with people of all backgrounds will tempt us all to either retreat to the safety of the church building or let go and float with the current. Whether you think of Edwards’ material as a foundation or as an anchor to hold you against a strong current, it will be important background material for the later chapters. Enjoy!

Jesus and Salvation Series (Part 3)

Metaphors Of Our Cultural Shift

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 his Introduction, titled “The Shore and the Current”, Edwards explains why this apologetic is needed. There has been a massive shift away from a respect for religion (and Christianity in particular) by those who shape our culture and influence public opinion.

Movies, television, magazines, books, universities, and the amplified voices of those who enforce Political Correctness have all made it harder for a Christian to speak up and say “I believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior”.

Rather, it is more common to hear someone talk about their “mix-and-match religion”. In “The DaVinci Code” movie the Opus Dei leader Bishop Aringarosa rejects “cafeteria Catholicism” in which people feel free to pick and choose which parts of the Catholic faith they want to incorporate in their own personally-devised faith. To see what he means, check out “Cafeteria Catholicism” for the perspective that describes the cafeteria approach and sees it as a good thing—the dominant view of the culture in which we live.

The point is that people want to design their own religion to suit. As a Realtor, I often see a similar phenomenon. A client will say, “I like this kitchen, the open floor plan of the first house we saw, and the location of the last house. Too bad we can’t pick out the best parts and combine them.” Well, with religion, some people think they can pick out “the best parts” and combine them (even if the various parts from different religions are in direct opposition to each other). What they end up with might be an attractive flower arrangement that will make them feel good and make no demands on them, but it will be a religion without roots.

For example, I often hear the phrase “judge not” as someone’s reason that they accept any belief, behavior, or lifestyle. It’s as if it is now impossible to call anything “sin” or “heresy” because we are not to judge someone else. Edwards refers to a study in which The Barna Research Group “concluded that American Christianity is suffering theological collapse. The primary commitments of church members seem to be to peace, the search for personal fulfillment, and the conviction that God judges no one.” (p. 4)

This is replacing a distortion of the command to “judge not” with a concept of “no Judge”. If there is no sin and therefore no ultimate Judge, then God (or whatever you want to call your own personal deity) devolves to irrelevance, or at the most nothing more than a benevolent dispenser of goodies (“cheap grace” as Dietrich Bonhoefer called it in “The Cost Of Discipleship”).

Edwards uses the metaphors of the shore (a fixed point—“the biblical testimony to Jesus as savior of the world”) and the current (“a riptide of cultural values and assumptions” that is the confluence of the currents of “Enlightenment rationalism and the scientific method, pluralism, moral relativism, postmodernism, the quest for peace, and the challenge of other religions”).

This current carries us along without our conscious awareness of its effect on us (because in the current, and without constant reference to the fixed point on the shore, we don’t sense that we are moving). Unless we learn to use and navigate that current to further our understanding and our faith we will drift farther and farther from the shore. That’s his intention with this book—to give us the tools so we can navigate the current and not be swept away by it.

Jesus and Salvation--Part 2

The Book We're Using

In my last post I said the series would follow the outline of the book “Is Jesus The Only Savior?” by James R. Edwards. This will not be a review of the book, nor a study of just this one book, but by following the book’s outline anyone who has a personal copy will know the path the study will take.

Whether you agree with the book at every point is not the point. The study will probably raise more questions than it answers. If you agree with the book, submit your comments. If you disagree with the book (or my comments), submit your comments. We will all learn together, as was my hope in starting my blog.

Here is the outline of the book: James R. Edwards, Is Jesus The Only Savior? (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: 2005)

Introduction: The Shore and the Current
1. The Quest of the Historical Jesus
2. The Jesus Seminar
3. How Reliable Is The New Testament as a Historical Document?
4. What Can We Know about the Jesus of History?
5. Did Jesus Consider Himself God?
6. Jesus—The Savior of he World
7. Can the Gospel Compete in a Pluralistic World?
8. Is a Savior from Sin Meaningful in a Day of Moral Relativism?
9. The Gospel and Postmodernism
10. Does an Exclusive Savior Threaten World Peace?
11. How Should Christians Think About Other Religions?
12. The Mystery of the Incarnation

Isn’t that a daunting list of subjects? Doesn’t it pose an important list of questions? This should be enough to keep us occupied for one summer. I’m looking forward to the journey, and I’m glad you are coming along with me.

Summer Series On Jesus and Salvation

In the Koinonia Class this morning we discussed several options for our summer study. We landed on one that is very timely in light of The DaVinci Code movie, the Gospel of Judas hype of the past month, and current religious debates—taken from the title of a recent book by James R. Edwards, our study asks “Is Jesus The Only Savior?”

I recommend this book for both of the intended targets of the material as Edwards states in his preface (see below). The material in this book is scholarly, but very readable.

In the preface Edwards says, “A constellation of factors…has subjected the claim that Jesus is the only savior to suspicion and doubt. It has become fashionable to express such doubts in public venues. It is my impression that people are anxious about this question, and that they would breathe more easily if we could all agree that Jesus is a savior of the word, not the savior of the world.”

Edwards goes on to say the book is written to “help two types of readers … (those) whose faith has been unsettled or stimulated by the views of Jesus expressed above … (and) a second group of readers …, one that does not adhere to any particular Christian claims…”

Some of the statements I have heard and the questions that have been raised recently have led me to conclude that there is one overarching religious question making the rounds in our culture—the question of salvation. But it’s not really asked in the way Edwards states it. It comes masked in two other questions: (1) What can we really believe about the Bible?; and (2) What can we really believe about Jesus Christ?.

The DaVinci Code book and movie present the dominant secular view of Western culture—that the Bible is not trustworthy and Jesus was just a (married) man whose teachings and compassion inspired his followers to later claim that he was divine. So, the Church is both deluded and deceptive in continuing to promise heaven to Jesus’ followers.

Following the material in the Edwards book and other sources, we will answer the objections to both the trustworthiness of the Bible and of Jesus as the source of salvation for a world in need of being saved.

Out of my own study and reflection on this and several other books which will be referenced throughout this study, I drew up some questions under a heading of “Salvation Series”.


1. Is there a need for “salvation”?
2. Is there such a thing as “salvation”?
3. Does salvation require a savior? (or is it attainable by one’s own efforts or automatically conferred by some deity, spirit, or force?)
4. What would a savior look like? (what qualifications would a “savior” have?)
5. Are there any “saviors”? (i.e. at least one; how many possible?)
6. Is Jesus a savior?
7. Is Jesus the only savior?
8. Is Jesus the savior for everyone? (i.e. universally available salvation through Jesus)
9. Is Jesus the savior of everyone? (i.e. universally accomplished salvation by Jesus—or that salvation is a fait accompli)
10. What about those who have heard of Jesus and rejected Him as their savior?
11. What about those who have not heard of Jesus, or lived before Him?

You might think of some other questions. If so, feel free to ask them in the comments or email me the questions.

In various ways each of these questions will be addressed this summer. In order for us to stay together, I’ll be following the outline of Edwards’ book. This will also result in an overview of the foundational questions that are essential to explore and answer the ultimate question of the book: “Is Jesus the only Savior?”.

Follow Up To The Gospel Of Judas Debate

An editorial in the current issue of “Christianity Today” gives some important information and analysis of the “Gospel of Judas”. Check it out here:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/006/3.22.html

Some key graphs:

“More importantly, the best liberal scholars admitted up front that this find "tells us nothing about the historical Jesus, nothing about the historical Judas." Those are the words of James M. Robinson, lead scholar of the team that investigated the last great find of Gnostic Gospels, the Nag Hammadi library. Or as Adam Gopnik told New Yorker readers, "The finding of the new Gospel … no more challenges the basis of the church's faith than the discovery of a document from the nineteenth century written in Ohio and defending King George would be a challenge to the basis of American democracy."

"The latest Gnostic gospel may tell us little about Jesus or Judas, but the credulous public fascination with it tells us something about the spiritual state of America. Our nation continues to be enamored with a version of religion—Gnosticism—that is little more than a reflection of the self.”

This graph speaks to the issue of the canon of the New Testament and why this “gospel” was not included.

“The reason that lost Gospels like Judas disappeared is not, as some are now claiming, that "orthodoxy" is simply a record of the winners writing history. Rather, these Gnostic texts were rejected precisely because they had rejected the Christian continuity with historic Jewish faith. Orthodoxy was a serious attempt to be faithful to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob rather than to seek the little-G god within.”

And here is an opinion as to why “The Da Vinci Code” and the “Gospel of Judas” appeal to so many. Read the entire editorial to put this in context.

“Finally, the Gospel of Judas appeals to our American neighbors because we have made a religion out of diversity.

Americans have a phobia about making commitments to truth.”

As we head into the weekend when the movie form of “The Da Vinci Code” comes out, we need all the information available to be able to stand for truth and answer questions that are sure to come.