Dear Friends,
It seems that every year as Holy Week and Easter approach, the secular press goes off in search of the historical Jesus. They run articles that are intended to shock, if not offend the average church goer. Did you know, for example, that in addition to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, other documents called Thomas, Judas, and Phillip are also in existence? Why did these not make it into the Bible? It must have been some sort of theological or cultural conspiracy that silenced their voices. Did you know that the birth stories of Jesus in Matthew and Luke don’t agree with each other, and that Mark and John don’t include infancy narratives at all? Say it ain’t so!
How about Easter? Did you know that the four canonical Gospels vary greatly in their telling of what happened at the tomb of Jesus? Concerning the central, most important event in the Christian faith, you would think that the early church would have seen to it that they had the story straight. They didn’t. Why not? Could it mean that the documents are unreliable accounts, or at best, historical fiction?
The latest of these offerings appeared in the March 24 edition of The New Yorker magazine. It is an article entitled “We’re Still Not Done With Jesus,” by the author, Adam Gopniik. Gopnik is not disrespectful in what he writes, but he relies heavily on certain iconoclastic scholars whose mission has been to tear down and leave in tatters the central claims of Christianity. In reply to Gopnik’s article, The New York Times columnist Ross Douthat asked (March 28) “Can the Jesus of History Support the Christ of Faith?” His answer is, in a word, Yes. He is critical of Gopnik’s piece because “entirely absent is any meaningful treatment of the arguments for taking the Gospels seriously as what they claim to be: eyewitness accounts, or syntheses of eyewitness accounts, with a straightforward claim to basic historical credibility.”
I believe that whenever we contend with the tough questions about the origins of Christianity, the process strengthens rather than depletes our faith. At its best, the church has been engaged in honest, rigorous, scholarship from the very beginning. We have nothing to fear from it. In fact, it is what we have been trying to do at the Sunday Forum this Lent. Concerning the events of Holy Week – the last week of Jesus’ life – we have been asking, “What really happened?” This Sunday I’m looking forward to turning the question to Easter itself. Is it possible to make an historical case for the resurrection of Jesus? Gopnik is right in one respect: we’re still not done with Jesus. Join us at 10 am in the reception room. Breakfast treats served.
See you in church,
Don