How can someone who lived two thousand years ago be relevant to me?
8
Doubts about Jesus Christ
Doubts about Jesus tend to be factual. Every now and then, television or radio features appear which claim to have radical new evidence that totally discredits the Christian understanding of Jesus. Pseudo-historical novels like Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (2004) lead their more uncritical readers to believe they are telling the truth about history, when they are just fiction. The more sensational, the better the book sells. Such sensationalist items may help attract large audiences; nevertheless, their scholarly content is generally low, and their alleged conclusions are forgotten within weeks. Some Christians, however, find serious doubts raised in their minds. They do not have access to the scholarly material on which these programmes claim to be based, and so tend to treat their claims as credible. The present chapter thus deals with the main doubts likely to arise in relation to the history of Jesus.
Have Christians got Jesus wrong?
A number of doubts might arise in this context. Very often, books are published with sensational titles (‘the explosively controversial international best-seller’, for example), which claim to have recovered ‘suppressed evidence’ concerning Jesus. Christians, it is alleged, hushed up facts about Jesus that didn’t fit in with their ideas. Sometimes, these claims cause Christians anxiety; however, these are needless.
One such doubt might be whether Jesus really existed. In fact, the grounds for suggesting he did not are astonishingly flimsy. Only someone who had already made up their mind that Jesus did not exist as a historical individual could approach the evidence and come to the conclusion he did not exist. If the existence of Jesus is to be denied on the basis of the evidence available, we would be obliged to deny the existence of an alarming number of historical individuals! Although doubts may be raised on this matter by your friends, or hostile critics of Christianity, the evidence is strongly against them. An example of this type of work is a book written by John Allegro, a hitherto respected scholar, who argued that the word ‘Jesus’ was nothing more and nothing less than some sort of code word for a sacred mushroom, which produced hallucinations in those who consumed it (The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross; published in 1970). The early Christians, he argued, far from being worshippers of Jesus Christ, were secret mushroom-eaters!
The evidence brought forward was quite inadequate. Apart from destroying Allegro’s reputation as a serious scholar, the book pointed to how easy it was to gain public attention for a theory that suggested Jesus wasn’t what Christians have claimed him to be, and how difficult it is to draw attention to the refutation of such theories by Christians. To claim to have sensational new evidence to disprove Christianity generates a lot of publicity, and helps sell the book or advertising space on the television feature in question. But the Christian side of the argument is generally not heard. It lacks novelty value. It’s not newsworthy.
The suggestion that Christianity may have got Jesus wrong has been thoroughly explored over the last two hundred years. Just about every possibility has been given careful weight. Jesus might have been a radical vegetarian, a failed revolutionary, a misguided prophet, or perhaps nothing more than a religious teacher of common sense. The first Christians might even have deliberately distorted him at points. All these possibilities have been given careful scholarly consideration, yet none has been shown to have any real plausibility.
In the nineteenth century, a movement known as the ‘Quest of the Historical Jesus’ got under way, aiming to show that the New Testament suppressed a picture of Jesus that Christians didn’t like. Although this movement can still be detected today, it has lost most of its intellectual credibility. It has been given full scholarly attention, and found wanting. Behind these allegedly historical ‘reconstructions’ of Jesus may be detected a web of questionable historical scholarship and vested interests. ‘Rediscovered Jesuses’ tended to look remarkably like their rediscoverers! In his essay ‘Fern-seed and Elephants’, C. S. Lewis writes as follows on ‘rediscovered Jesuses’:
All theology of the liberal type involves at some point – and very often involves throughout – the claim that the real behaviour and purpose and teaching of Christ came very rapidly to be misunderstood and misrepresented by his followers, and has been recovered or exhumed only by modern scholars. Now long before I became interested in theology I had met this kind of theory elsewhere...One was brought up to believe that the real meaning of Plato had been misunderstood by Aristotle, and wildly travestied by the neo-Platonists, only to be recovered by the moderns. When recovered, it turned out (most fortunately) that Plato had really all along been an English Hegelian, rather like T. H. Green. I have met it a third time in my own professional studies; every week or so a clever undergraduate, every quarter a dull American don, discovers for the first time what some Shakespearian play really meant.
Is the resurrection some sort of cover-up job?
One doubt that often arises is whether the resurrection really happened, or whether it was some kind of cover-up job to conceal the real fate of Jesus. This suggestion was made frequently in the eighteenth century, and is still encountered today. Doubts about the resurrection arise from suggestions of this kind, along with the deep-down feeling of some Christians that the resurrection is just too good to be true!
For example, some Christians experience anxiety over the resurrection on account of a feeling that can be expressed along the following lines. It was easy for the first Christians to believe in the resurrection of Jesus. After all, belief in resurrections was something of a commonplace at the time. The first Christians may have jumped to the conclusion that Jesus was raised from the dead, when something rather different actually happened. In fact, however, neither of the two contemporary beliefs of the time bear any resemblance to the resurrection of Jesus. The Sadducees denied the idea of a resurrection altogether (a fact Paul was able to exploit at an awkward moment: Acts 23:6–8) while the majority expectation was of a general resurrection on the last day, at the end of history itself.
The sheer oddness of the Christian proclamation of the resurrection of Jesus in human history, at a definite time and place, is all too easily overlooked today, even though it was obvious at the time. The unthinkable appeared to have happened, and for that very reason demanded careful attention. Far from merely fitting into the popular expectation of the pattern of resurrection, what happened to Jesus actually contradicted it. The sheer novelty of the Christian position at the time has been obscured by two thousand years’ experience of the Christian understanding of the resurrection. We’ve got used to the idea of Jesus being raised from the dead – yet at the time it was wildly unorthodox and radical. The resurrection of Jesus simply did not conform to contemporary expectations. In fact, so strange is that idea that we have to give a convincing explanation to account for it – which is provided by the resurrection as a historical event.
Of course, some critics have suggested, on Freudian grounds, that the resurrection of Jesus is explicable as some kind of wish-fulfilment on the part of the disciples. This also strains the imagination somewhat. Why should the disciples have responded to the catastrophe of Jesus’ death by making the hitherto unprecedented suggestion that he had been raised from the dead? The history of Israel is littered with the corpses of pious Jewish martyrs, none of whom was ever thought of as having been raised from the dead in such a manner. Furthermore, many of the disciples (such as Peter and Paul) appear to have been martyred for their faith: why die for a lie?
If you are anxious about the resurrection, you may find some of the following points helpful. They by no means exhaust the evidence for the resurrection, for which you should consult the works listed at the end of the chapter. Nevertheless, they are useful pointers to guide your thinking.
1. Note the emphasis upon the historical fact, common to all four Gospels: the tomb was empty (Matthew 28:1–10; Mark 16:1–8; Luke 24:1–11; John 20:1–9). This doesn’t prove the resurrection – but it is consistent with it. The Gospels build up an overall picture of the events of the first Easter Day, each of which falls into place like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle – consistent with the others, and giving a total picture of what happened.
2. The practice of ‘tomb veneration’ was common in New Testament times. In other words, the tomb of a prophet was used by his disciples as a place of worship. Matthew 23:29–30 almost certainly refers to this practice, which continues to this day: the tomb of David in Jerusalem is still venerated by many Jews. But there is no record whatsoever of any such veneration of the tomb of Jesus by his disciples. Why not? The simple fact was that Jesus’ body was disquietingly (for some) missing from its tomb.
There seems to have been no dispute about this at the time. The rumour of Jesus’ resurrection could have been suppressed without the slightest difficulty by the authorities simply by publicly displaying the corpse of Jesus. It is of the greatest importance that the New Testament doesn’t contain as much as a hint of any attempt to explain away the existence of the corpse of Jesus. Nor is there any hint that the Jewish authorities either produced, or attempted to produce, this corpse. Had this been done, the preaching of the early church would have been discredited immediately. But it wasn’t. All the evidence indicates that the tomb was empty on the third day. The controversy at the time concerned not the fact of the empty tomb, but the explanation of that emptiness.
3. Within a very short period of his death, Jesus was being described in remarkably exalted terms by his followers. Jesus was not venerated as a dead prophet or rabbi, but was worshipped as the living and risen Lord. At some points in the New Testament, Jesus appears to be explicitly identified with God himself. For example, in Romans 10:13, Paul quotes that ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord [Jesus] shall be saved’ – yet the original of this Old Testament quotation (Joel 2:32) is actually a statement to the effect that everyone who calls upon the name of God will be saved.
But how could this remarkable transformation in the perceived status of Jesus have come about? He died as a common criminal, perhaps even a prophet, or maybe a martyr – but the most this would merit would be veneration of his tomb (see Matthew 23:29). Why did the early Christians start talking about a dead rabbi as if he were God? And, perhaps even more intriguing, why did they start talking about him as if he were alive, praying to him, and worshipping him? Once more, the resurrection fits this general pattern. Taken on its own, it proves little; taken in conjunction with all the other pointers, it helps build up a consistent and convincing picture of the resurrection event.
How can someone who lived two thousand years ago be relevant to me?
This question does cause difficulty and anxiety for some Christians. To deal with this anxiety, think of Jesus as an event, rather than just a person. Something happened through Jesus. God made something possible through Jesus. Think of Jesus as establishing the grounds of a renewed relationship with God, a new attitude to life, a new hope in the face of death. Or think of him as opening the way home to God. For in dealing with Jesus, we aren’t dealing simply with a human being like ourselves, but with God himself, acting in history to redeem us. God chose to act through Jesus Christ, supremely through his death and resurrection, making available to us something that otherwise would not have been open to us. You can sense this excitement in the opening of 1 Peter:
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade...
(1 Peter 1:3–4, NIV)
First, then, Jesus is of importance to the Christian faith in that, through his death and resurrection, he made possible a whole new way of living. Jesus is the ground of faith: it is on account of his obedience to the will of his Father, supremely demonstrated in his suffering and death on the cross, that our new relationship to God is possible. The cross is not just an event in history, which took place some two thousand years ago: it is the ground of our faith now. It is through the death of Jesus Christ that our new life is possible. ‘He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed’ (1 Peter 2:24, NIV). Without the achievement of the cross, redemption would not be a present possibility for us. Jesus is important because God achieves the salvation of sinful humanity through him. He is the agent of salvation, the one through whom God worked and still works.
Second, Jesus prompts people to ask questions, to begin thinking about God and themselves. Jesus once asked the disciples, ‘who do you say that I am?’ (Mark 8:29). That same question has caused many to ponder and wonder ever since. For Christianity is not merely the teachings of Jesus, as Marxism is based upon the views of Karl Marx, or Thatcherism on those of Margaret Thatcher. The gospel is not just about Jesus: it is Jesus. Christianity isn’t just about ideas: it is about a person. For many people who subsequently become Christians, Jesus acts as a catalyst or a stimulant to their thinking. The long chain of thought that climaxes in repentance and acceptance of forgiveness often begins with interest in the person of Jesus.
There is something strangely attractive about Jesus, something that is able to reach across the gulf of history and intrigue people even today. Questions about Jesus soon become questions about God and salvation. ‘Who is Jesus?’ easily becomes ‘How can I find a gracious God?’ ‘Why did Jesus have to die?’ gives way to ‘What must I do to be saved?’ Interest in Jesus as a person is often the beginning of a long and secret process of reflection, which eventually culminates in acceptance of him as Lord and Saviour.
Finally, Jesus indicates what that redeemed life is like. Not only is he the ground or foundation of the life of faith; by his life, he shows us what shape or form the Christian life takes. He maps out a way of living appropriate for believers. His teaching points to the need to value God, to obey him, and to ensure nothing comes before him. By his example, he helps us understand what obedience to God implies. He acts as a model for the sort of love Christians should show to one another. Writing to the Thessalonian Christians, Paul speaks of how through their conversion they ‘became imitators of us and of the Lord’ (1 Thessalonians 1:6, NIV). Being a Christian means being ‘conformed to the likeness of his [God’s] Son’ (Romans 8:29, NIV), a process in which God graciously makes us more like Jesus as we deepen in our faith and obedience.
So the fact that Jesus lived two thousand years ago doesn’t diminish his relevance to the life of faith. Without what Jesus achieved, that life and all it implies would be impossible. Our faith, our hope, all that matters to us – these are all the consequence of what God achieved for us through Jesus. The fact that this new life is a present possibility for others rests upon the solid foundation of Jesus Christ. In evangelism, we proclaim that the death and resurrection of Jesus makes possible and makes available a new way of living, a way of living charged with the knowledge of forgiveness and the hope of resurrection and eternal life. That process may be described as ‘being conformed to Christ’, so that we become more like him in the way we behave. Both the foundation and the shape of the redeemed life are built upon Jesus – in New Testament times and today. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, God conforms us to the likeness of his Son, who lives and reigns within us – not as one from the dim and distant past, but as the risen and present Lord.