..
Marveling at Such Unbelief
The quote went this way: "I find it remarkable, indeed extraordinary, that 2,000
years after he lived, a Jewish peasant from Nazareth continues to be such a
towering figure." This statement was made at a symposium of experts (of course)
at Oregon State University and sent via closed-circuit TV to universities around
the world. Another quote; this one a searching question: "Why did he become the
single most important person in the history of Western culture?" I would like to
have had an opportunity to tell them the answer; because while I may not be the
expert that they are, I know the answer to the question that they are asking!
But my answer would probably had been greeted with the same skepticism as Paul's
announcement of the resurrection on Mar's Hill in ancient Athens (Acts
17:31,32).
This is because I believe what the Bible says about Jesus. They do not, for the
most part. They are searching for what they call "the historical Jesus". Marcus
Borg,
professor of religion at Oregon State put it this way: the human "pre-Easter"
Jesus (The Jesus of the Bible was also "pre-Easter" in the sense of how it is
observed in
our day. During Bible times, Easter was a pagan holiday, having nothing at all
to do with the worship of Jehovah by Jews or Christians).
These scholars hold that "if TV crews had been assigned to cover the life of
Jesus of Nazareth, a significant number of his words and deeds and some of the
most important episodes of the Christian faith that are found in the gospels of
the New Testament wouldn't show up on their video tape - because they weren't
said or didn't happen."
Sounds to me like they are calling the eyewitnesses liars (stupid liars, too,
since the eyewitnesses gave up everything, including their lives, teaching what
we read
in the gospels as fact!).
The report, taken from the Chicago Tribune, Feb. 18, 1996, continues by saying,
"Yet the scholars also emphasize that this does not mean that such accounts are
not true, for even the stories that did not occur as reported impart essential
truths about the way Jesus affected and was perceived by his earliest
followers."
Pardon me for saying so, but I've lost all confidence in these learned men and
women because they obviously do not know what the word "true" means. How can
saying Jesus said "I am the way" still be true if He did not really say it? They
say He did not really claim to be the Son of God and that He was not really
raised... but "this does not mean that such accounts are not true."
I guess you have to be as smart as they are to figure this one out. I'm not.
By Jon W. Quinn
The Front Page
From Expository Files 3.4; April 1996
