Liar, Lunatic, or Lord

Contrast Dr. Ehrman’s take on Jesus with that of C. S. Lewis who said you can’t just say that Jesus is an ordinary man.  He is one of three a liar, a lunatic or he is Lord of life.

We have found that Dr. Ehrman conveniently covers up the truth by not bringing to light all of the relevant data.   He is covering the data with a bias.

Dr. Ehrman entitles the 5^th chapter of Jesus Interrupted, Liar, Lunatic, or Lord?  Finding the Historical Jesus.  It appears that this title is a sneer toward what he perceives his evangelical roots to be.  The liar, lunatic or lord concept was popularized by a famous Englishman, C. S. Lewis in a statement about the person of Jesus and what is recorded of Him in the Greek New Testament.

Ehrman, however, simply notes this trilemma and adds “legend” which is his main thesis for the data widely accepted by most Christians as the best sources for Jesus’ teachings and the events of His life.  To bring you up to speed on what C. S. Lewis stated I have included the quote here.  Realize that at this point in Lewis’ life, he assumes much of the recorded data in the New Testament to be true.  He was not raised with that view.  In fact, it appears that he was an atheist who came very hesitantly into taking a more reverent view of Jesus.

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

To understand that these are our choices; you must put this trilemma in the context of the data of the New Testament.  Some today will not give the documentation of Jesus a fair shake and are not open to the possibility that Jesus even existed as a historical person.  Dr. Ehrman does believe that Jesus existed but looses focus on the closest and, what are I believe, the most accurate sources for Jesus, the Gospels.  He makes an assumption that other sources should be given equal weight.  These sources only muddy the water.  Dr. Ehrman and other modern scholars of any persuasion cannot retrieve in the 21^st century the context in which the 4 or the many gospels were written and the reaction of the “500” witnesses (I Corinthians 15) or other 1^st century Christians to those gospels.  The data is simply not available now.  Therefore,  the best approach is to accept the canon of New Testament scriptures realizing that the “experts” with relevant data developed that canon.  Modern “experts” do not have the resources that 1^st and 2^nd century “experts” had available to them.

The issue is not church father, Eusebius (3^rd century) vs. Water Bauer, an 18^th century theologian (Chapter 5).  What really matters is recorded in the Greek New Testament, and we don’t need the early church fathers to understand the historical Jesus.  We have the best documentation in the New Testament from the mouths of eyewitnesses.  These are the best sources because they are earliest and closest to the actual historical Jesus and the events of His life.

A Mass of Variant Views, Part 2

Now Back  Dr. Ehrman and Jesus Interrupted, on page 178 Dr.Ehrman says that he can’t even deal with an “event” such as a resurrection from the dead because he is a historian only.   So, though he counters some of what he reads in the Gospels about the resurrection, he is admitting, from a historical perspective (which is his domain now), that a historian such as he cannot deal with something like a resurrection from the dead.

But people like you and me can examine the Gospels along with the letter to the Corinthians and come away with our own judgments about the evidence presented there.   Those 500 people who saw Jesus after he died, was buried and subsequently raised from the dead, were Jews—Jews steeped in Jewish history and tradition.  Yet these Jews forsook their culture and history to follow this Jesus.  And not only did they reject their heritage in favor of the statements of Jesus, much of the world of that day became followers of this same Jesus.

This Galilean and his Galilean disciples, unlearned though they were, literally turned the then know world upside down and paid the ultimate price.  They all died martyrs’ deaths.

Just because Jesus’ story was told throughout the civilized world of the time and that he greatly impacted that world, is justification for looking into the claims of this lowly Galilean who claimed to be a great God and fulfiller of 300 Jewish prophesies.

Do you want to look into his claims?  John 10 (Gospel of John, chapter 10) is a great place to start looking.

A Mass of Variant Views, part 1

On page 177 of Jesus Interrupted, Dr. Ehrman says that “the earliest reference to Jesus’ tomb being empty is in the Gospel of Mark, written forty years later by someone living is a different country who had heard that it was empty.”

This is not true and I believe that Dr. Ehrman knows that the statement is not true.   Dr. Ehrman knows that Paul wrote much earlier than Mark.  He dealt extensively with the resurrection data and yet he did not mention Paul’s documentation in I Corinthians.  That documentation is the most important documentation because it is much earlier than Mark and for other reasons.

The Apostle Paul writes about the resurrected Jesus in I Corinthians and perhaps in other letters also.  The I Corinthians documentation is especially important because Paul is not the source of the evidence. Followers of Jesus early on, within 10 years, developed a creed which they repeated to one another and perhaps in worship services.  This creed summarized specific data about the life of Jesus Christ that they wanted to remember.  Here are the statements in that creed from one of the latest English translations based on the largest body of manuscripts available today.

that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,

that he was buried,

that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,

and that he appeared to Peter,

and then to the Twelve.

after that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.

then he appeared to James,

then to all the apostles

The first generation Jesus followers were quoting this creed to one another with a few years after Jesus ascended.  That this is a creed from these followers is well documented.  And the text of I Corinthians 15 indicates that:  “for I delivered to you as of first importance what I also receive.”  Paul said this primary statement he received from other believers, probably through his visits to Jerusalem, and passed it on to the Corinthians just as he had received it from the early Jesus followers.

This creed documents several essential beliefs about Jesus.  Jesus died for the sins of humanity. Jesus was buried in a grave by Joseph of Arimethea.  He was then raised from the dead three days after he was put in the grave in fulfillment of His own prophesy and of Old Testament prophesies.   He made several appearances after His resurrection. The most phenomenal appearance was to a group of 500 hundred believer/followers at one point.  According to Paul, most of those 500 were still alive as eyewitnesses to the life and post-resurrection appearance of Jesus.  The point that can be made here is that these 500 people could be contacted because they were still alive to get first hand information about Jesus’ appearance.

So this was a significant omission from the book and I can only conclude that it was omitted because it does not support Dr. Ehrman’s theses.

Mood and Conjecture

In Jesus Interrupted, page 102: “John and Matthew were both written by earthly disciples of Jesus, why are they so very different, on all sorts of levels?”   Because they were not written to you, a person in the 20^th century and they were written by two different men to very different audiences and cultures.  That is why they are different.  They used different teachings of Jesus to support the message they conveyed.  Matthew is more of a synoptic gospel, i.e., a chronology if teachings and events where John’s focus was more towards the identity of the person of Jesus and was written to a Jewish community.

By the way,  I need to note Ehrman’s admission on the last page of the book in a footnote (p. 292) “I am not claiming that the message of any book of the Bible is self-interpreting an that its meaning is somehow obvious on a simple reading—that somehow the meaning inheres in the words of the texts.  Texts don’t tell us their meaning.  They have to be interpreted, and they are always interpreted by living, breathing human beings with loves, hates, biases, prejudices, worldviews, fears, hopes, and everything else that makes us human.  All of these factors affect how texts are interpreted, and they explain why intelligent people can have such radically different interpretations of the same text.  Even so, some texts, interpreted according to standard practices that we use to interpret, are more obviously relevant and germane to our human condition today than others.”

Galilee or Greek

Dr. Ehrman in several places in Jesus Interrupted makes a big point of the Galilean disciples of Jesus being illiterate, or presumed to be illiterate.  I don’t think though that he deals specifically with Jesus and the passage in Luke 4 where Jesus stands in the Nazareth synagogue and reads from the Isaiah scroll.   Jesus knew how to read.  How was he trained to read, when he also comes from this poor region of Israel, Galilee?  Dr. Ehrman does not deal with the issue because he has no answer for why Jesus can read.

Whether the disciples read or write is not the issue that Dr. Ehrman makes it out to be in Jesus Interrupted.  What is interesting about this time in history are these facts:  1.  Rome ruled and so there was peace during this time in Israel.  2.  Rome had previously conquered Greece and Greek had become the dominant language of the Roman Empire.  3.  The literacy in the Roman Empire was very high and thus when the Gospels and Net Testament letters were written and copied a few years later, many people under Rome’s domain could read them.  This makes the era and ideal time for the Messiah to come and for His Message to be communicated.

I am sorry that Dr. Ehrman can not see this.  As historian he would be served by a broad survey 1st century history.  Researching Greek words in the New Testament or extra-New Testament literature may never get him to where he needs to be.

 

 

Who Invented Christianity?

That is a question that Christians answer in a very different way than someone like Dr. Ehrman.   I am reading and reviewing the book by Dr. Bart Ehrman, Jesus Interrupted.

I don’t always read a book straight through because in many books there is much paper giving little information that I want to read.  I move to what I hoped would be an interesting chapter:  Who Invented Christianity? Ehrman starts the chapter with an interesting proposition to Christians:  Why don’t they read their book?   That is a great question—we deserve to have to answer that question seriously and often.

However, overall,  this a very lackluster chapter.  There is nothing new, different, or interesting in this chapter—old arguments many writers have delivered before.  It is a sleeper of a chapter.

“When did Jesus become the Son of God?” is a question that Ehrman asks but I am not sure why he even wants to bring the subject up because we know he does not believe that Jesus is the Son of God.  Christians who know the Bible know that Jesus did not become the Son of God. Dr Ehrman disappoints in this chapter because he showed his lack of understand of the texts, of God, and of Christianity in general.

Dr. Ehrman does assume here that the historical Jewish view (though we know there were variations in Jewish views) was that the Messiah was to be a conquering king.  We can deduce that the reason that they had this view is because they listened to teachers who had this view and who did not integrate key passages of the Jewish Bible into a  theology of the Messiah.   This would explain why many Jews totally missed Jesus as their Messiah.  For all the other reasons, read the New Testament.

Is Richard Dawkins right?

Is Richard Dawkins right?  Are the values that atheism brings best for the individual and for society?

After reading this article I had to quote the whole of it.  To me, this is an apologetic that should not go unnoticed by Christians and atheists also.  There is even something here to ponder for Muslims.

Ask yourself, do you agree with Ranald’s valuation of the human soul?  Where does the valuation that he speaks of come from?

Agreeing and Disagreeing with Dawkins

A chill swept through me as I read Charles Moore’s recent article on the Beijing games (1). Media images of hard, cruel-faced bodyguards accompanying the Olympic torch around the world now slotted into place. ‘As the choice of Berlin for the Olympic Games in 1936 marked Hitler’s success and international acceptance so the choice of Beijing for 2008 marks China’s’. In other words the global community is being treated to a massive con exercise. An emblem of peace masks a system of despotism.

The juxtaposition – Berlin and Beijing – is uncomfortable to say the least. And recent reports of secret nuclear submarine bases in south China, not to mention America’s unprecedented financial indebtedness to the Asian giant, make it the more so. It will be dismissed out of hand by some as ill-timed and uncharitable scare-mongering from an envious and declining West. But what struck me most about Moore’s comment is his historical and comparative analysis for, as well as being true, it provides a helpful introduction to what I want to say about Richard Dawkins. ‘We have spent much time in recent years complaining about America’s abuse of power. Sometimes the criticism is justified, but we have hardly begun to consider the alternative and how appalling it would be. Whenever we attack America we do so in the knowledge that it has a visible system of self-correction that might listen to us. It has a constitutional structure which is built to accommodate differing views. China has nothing of the sort, and never has had.’

I emphasise the last four words deliberately: ‘and never has had’. At no point has China had anything remotely like the degree of social freedom and overall prosperity enjoyed for centuries in the West. In the more distant past its wealth and inventiveness surpassed anything comparable at the time. Similarly its social cohesion fostered by Confucian ethics was impressive. But none of these achievements ever existed alongside the enjoyment of individual freedom within the state. John Roberts, author of ‘The Triumph of the West’ (1984), expands on this. ‘At the deepest level it is in its Christian nature that the explanation of medieval society in shaping the future must lie…(for) at the heart of Christianity…lay always the concept of the supreme, infinite value of the individual soul. This was the taproot of respect for the individual in the here and now…(and) its importance can easily be sensed by considering the absence in other great cultures – Islam, Hindu India and China – of such an emphasis…In none of them was the safeguarding of individual rights to be given much attention until the coming of Western ideas’. And if this is true of what Roberts calls ‘the great cultures’, certainly it is more so of ‘the lesser cultures’, the indigenous and principally animistic societies of pre-Christian Europe, Africa, North and South America and the rest of Asia.

The relevance of all this for Dawkins is the attention it draws to Christianity’s uniqueness. Moore and Roberts seem to be in little doubt that one factor above all others distinguishes western civilization from cultures before and after. Through no inherent virtue of race or cultural heritage and with unreserved admissions of crimes and misdemeanours like the crusades and slavery committed en route, it still remains true that this civilization, uniquely in history, ordered its affairs according to the ‘supreme, infinite value of the human soul’. Whatever constitutional procedures, freedom of speech, relatively high standards of living etc it enjoyed, it enjoyed because of the Christian faith. That it became the envy and model of the world simply reinforces the fact that it was unknown elsewhere.

So, as was pointed out in Part I of this brief comment on ‘The God Delusion’, we readily accept Dawkins’ strictures about ‘religion’ in general. The Bible itself endorses them – that false religion lies at the root of human misery. But Christianity refuses to be aligned like this and interposes along with its other powerful evidences the empirical reality of ‘Christian heritage’ which refuses to let Dawkins off the hook. For if his assertions are correct it would seem to follow that atheism’s displacement of religion should usher in a more humane society. But the opposite is in fact the case for nothing in all history surpasses the brutality of the social systems most consistently modelled upon his own atheistic world-view – Nazism and Communism. He is of course unhappy with this juxtaposition and tries to avoid it, but his reasoning makes it hard to conclude otherwise.

“The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at bottom no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference…”(2)

‘No evil and no good’. It is the chilling logic of an atheistic worldview whether Chinese or British. And if the latter, because western, feels less threatening right now we should recall Berlin 1936.

(1) Daily Telegraph12/04/08
(2) The Blind Watchmaker

Source: http://www.christianheritageuk.org.uk/Articles/115123/Home/Resources/Recent_Articles/Agreeing_and_disagreeing.aspx

Can one be Muslim and Christian?

The obvious answer is “no.”  But that did not solve the dilemma for one Episcopal priest.

This dear lady seemed to think saying the shahada was simply adding something.  In fact, she quoted her shahada as: “there’s no God but God and that Mohammed is God’s prophet or messenger.”   When in fact,  the shahada of Islam is more strictly:  “There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is His final messenger.”  What is in the shahada is a redirection of the allegiance of the person to Allah.  In fact,  this priest probably said the shahada in both Arabic and English.  Most Imam’s don’t take the shahada as legitimate unless it is stated in Arabic, even though the person does not know Arabic.

The priest went on to say that no part of the shahada denies any part of Christianity.   I don’t know where she got her education but she is obviously light on investigation in her personal life and ministry.  Islam denies many basic beliefs that a follower of Jesus believes.  A true move from real Christianity to Islam is a radical shift.  I’ve seen many testimonies of supposed Christians who converted to Islam and they understand the shift.

Muslims do not believe that Jesus died.  That means He did not die for man’s sin and thus salvation is not based on anything He did or faith in Him.  The Qur’an and the teachings of Mohammed are clear–you do it–all of it–yourself.  You don’t depend on anyone else.  Your good deeds (and you need lots of them) get you into paradise or the equivalent in the Qur’an to heaven.

I feel sorry for this priest because she does not understand that when she befriended the Imam and said the shahada, her life when an entirely different direction.  She failed to read all the Qur’an first, especially Surah 112.

What are your thoughts?

more…

Who is Jesus and will you ever know who He is?

Who is Jesus? Do you think you know who He is? Will you ever know who He is? Until you have really contemplated Him and looked at the recorded history of Him, you will never know.

Paul’s friend and companion wrote precise details about his life. That would be one place to go and read if you want the history. Read it as history. Ignore the supernatural if you like for the moment and just find out what happened in his life. You owe it to yourself. What have you got to loose? Get an opinion or belief about him based on fact.

If He, Jesus is God-Incarnate, the God-Man, then, He is superior to all!!! No other man on earth claimed deity–that is, no other sane man. No other man/prophet on earth proved or backed up the claim to deity. We, followers of Jesus, simply believe that He is who He claimed to be and that He backed that up in the most forceful way by His life on earth. The largest proof is His resurrection from the dead and ascension into Heaven.

Who is Jesus? — The Incarnation-Implications for you

Actually, the incarnation points to a truth that the cross will make clear, namely, that our salvation is by sheeeeeer grace. I can’t stress that enough. In every other religion the founder is a human being sent by God to show us what to do to be saved. But Jesus is God come Himself. Now if God only needed to inform us what to do for salvation, he could have sent a prophet!!!!!! His personal coming means He will not just tell us what we have to do to be saved, but will do for us all that we cannot do ourselves. He will live the obedient life we should have lived but did not. He will die to pay the penalty for the disobedient life we shouldn’t have lived but did. He came himself to accomplish our salvation for us.

If Jesus is God, there is endless hope for the world and for you! The Bible tells us that Jesus brought “the kingdom of God.” That means that Jesus, the true King, has returned and has begun to put the world right with His power. Right now, that healing is only partial but some day all deformity, decay, sin, disease and imperfection will be complete taken away from here. This means we live with infallible hope (Romans 8:18-25) Whatever problem we face-whether disease or injustice or some other suffering-eventually God’s power will triumph over it. Weeping may remain for the night but Joy comes with the morning (Ps 30:5) Jesus is God. That means God has landed!!! The ideal has penetrated the real and is transforming it into his likeness. The world is destined for joy sooner or later.

I savor these thought and will for my lifetime. Whatever your state today, I hope and pray you have a wonderful day and are overcome by joy in Him.