Category: Rants, Opinions, and General Contrariness

Some Thoughts On Jesus and History

An arti­cle in the Stan­ford Dai­ly today caught my atten­tion: Jesus Nev­er Lived, Speak­er Says.

My first thought was a bit car­nal — how come our events don’t get the same cov­er­age in the Dai­ly? We almost cer­tain­ly draw more peo­ple (as when Dr. Bill Craig lec­tured on the exis­tence of God to a crowd of hun­dreds) and our views are cer­tain­ly con­tro­ver­sial (God exists, Jesus is God, sin is real, sal­va­tion is pos­si­ble, etc).

My sec­ond thought was more focused: I should respond to this. I hear more and more stu­dents talk­ing about the exis­tence of Jesus as though there is some real con­tro­ver­sy, so I should­n’t let this pass with­out com­ment.

Now I was­n’t at the talk, so I don’t know exact­ly what the speak­er said. All I know is what the arti­cle claims the speak­er said. He could have been con­sid­er­ably more effec­tive at mak­ing his point than the arti­cle seems to indi­cate. This isn’t, strict­ly speak­ing, a cri­tique of the speak­er so much as a reflec­tion on the whole notion of Jesus being a make-believe per­son.

Accord­ing to the arti­cle, there are two clues that Jesus nev­er exist­ed:
1) Paul did­n’t talk about the details of Jesus’ life
2) The sto­ries about Jesus sound pret­ty amaz­ing.

So Paul did­n’t talk about the details of Jesus’ life in his let­ters. I find this unsur­pris­ing giv­en that I, an ordained Pen­te­costal mis­sion­ary, rarely do so in my own let­ters. Even when writ­ing let­ters devot­ed to the­ol­o­gy I rarely talk about Jesus’ life the way that the speak­er seemed to assume that Paul should have:

“Paul nev­er dis­cuss­es Jesus’ fam­i­ly, his deeds, where he went or where he came from,” Car­ri­er said. “He nev­er dis­cuss­es any of his con­fronta­tions with the author­i­ties, nor any dis­putes about what he taught. He says Jesus became flesh, was cru­ci­fied and buried, but he nev­er says when or where or posi­tions these events in any his­tor­i­cal con­text.”

I rarely bring up these details because they are assumed to be the back­ground for the con­ver­sa­tion, in much the same way that I rarely men­tion the details of George Bush’s life when dis­cussing his pol­i­tics. That does­n’t mean I don’t believe in or am unaware of the fact that he has daugh­ters — it just means that I don’t always con­sid­er them ger­mane.

To insist that Paul should have men­tioned such details as evi­dence that he believed Jesus was a real per­son seems quite arbi­trary to me, espe­cial­ly giv­en that he men­tions Jesus by name 198 times with absolute­ly no indi­ca­tion that he’s refer­ring to a made-up indi­vid­ual. No one would argue that I don’t believe in George Bush on such grounds, and so I don’t see why we should think that this is evi­dence that Paul did­n’t believe in Jesus.

As to Jesus’ life sound­ing pret­ty amaz­ing — ya think? That sort of seems to be the point. The claim that Jesus was God in human form almost requires that cer­tain amaz­ing events occur through­out his life. So I sort of scratch my head when the guest lec­tur­er says:

“Jesus con­forms so close­ly to the cri­te­ri­on of a myth­ic hero the prob­a­bil­i­ty that he was a myth­ic hero increas­es sub­stan­tial­ly,” he said. “There are 22 fea­tures that have been iden­ti­fied by schol­ars that are com­mon­ly shared by many myth­ic heroes. They can be ranked with a score accord­ing to how many fea­tures they have. Jesus clear­ly scores at least 19 out of 22.”

…

Jesus scores high­er on this scale than almost all oth­er heroes, includ­ing Her­cules and Romu­lus, Car­ri­er said. Only Oedi­pus scores high­er.

“Jesus com­petes for sec­ond place only with The­seus and Moses,” he said. “Every­one who scores more than 11 on this scale is most like­ly myth­i­cal. No his­tor­i­cal fig­ures who accu­mu­lat­ed some of these fea­tures by chance or leg­end, such as Alexan­der the Great or Augus­tus Cae­sar, scores even as high as 11.”

Well of course he scores quite high. That’s like point­ing out that NBA play­ers are tall and ath­let­ic. How do you think they score all those points? Jesus being extra­or­di­nary is sim­ply evi­dence that he was extra­or­di­nary. Whether he was extra­or­di­nary by not exist­ing or extra­or­di­nary by being God is the ques­tion the guest speak­er wished to address — but his argu­ment does noth­ing to tip the bal­ance.

Against these fee­ble argu­ments stands the schol­ar­ly con­sen­sus that there was actu­al­ly a man named Jesus. Why is there such a con­sen­sus? Because in addi­tion to the Bible, there is plen­ty of exter­nal evi­dence that Jesus lived. For exam­ple:

There’s a very help­ful (although incom­plete) arti­cle sum­ma­riz­ing these and oth­er extra­bib­li­cal sources about Jesus which includes a dis­cus­sion of the reli­a­bil­i­ty of the Jose­phus text.

I think the reporter was wise to include this dis­claimer the guest speak­er offered:

Despite this evi­dence, Car­ri­er was quick to point out that this is just a the­o­ry.

“We need to go out and inter­act with the com­mu­ni­ty and see if it stands up to the evi­dence,” he said. “I’m not here declar­ing that this is absolute­ly true and it would be fool­ish to deny it. We’re not at that stage yet.

“The nor­mal pro­ce­dure is to assume that a per­son who is claimed to be his­tor­i­cal is his­tor­i­cal,” he con­tin­ued, “unless there is a rea­son to doubt it. I believe this is an appro­pri­ate prin­ci­ple. For exam­ple, mere­ly lack­ing evi­dence is not enough of an argu­ment for some­one not exist­ing his­tor­i­cal­ly. You need actu­al evi­dence for them being mythi­fied.”

I am still await­ing such evi­dence.

Rejected Texts For a Mother’s Day Sermon

Moth­er’s Day is an odd Sun­day in most church­es. Pas­tors get up and talk about Proverbs 31 or some oth­er pre­dictible text, and then give every lady a rose.

I’m not actu­al­ly preach­ing this week­end (Paula is, as it turns out), but if I was I’d be look­ing for a more unusu­al angle. For instance, here are some less­er-known vers­es which touch on the theme of moth­er­hood.

  1. Psalm 109:14 — may the sin of his moth­er nev­er be blot­ted out.
  2. Isa­iah 50:1 — This is what the LORD says: “Where is your moth­er’s cer­tifi­cate of divorce with which I sent her away?
  3. Jere­mi­ah 22:26 — I will hurl you and the moth­er who gave you birth into anoth­er coun­try, where nei­ther of you was born, and there you both will die.
  4. Hosea 2:2 Rebuke your moth­er
  5. Hosea 4:5 I will destroy your moth­er
  6. Luke 12:53 They will be divid­ed, father against son and son against father, moth­er against daugh­ter and daugh­ter against moth­er, moth­er-in-law against daugh­ter-in-law and daugh­ter-in-law against moth­er-in-law.
  7. Deuteron­o­my 22:7 You may take the young, but be sure to let the moth­er go
  8. Exo­dus 23:19 Do not cook a young goat in its moth­er’s milk.
  9. Job 17:14, CEV: say to the worms, “Hel­lo, moth­er!”
  10. Lev 18:7, MSG She is your moth­er. Don’t have sex with her.

Maybe Proverbs 31 isn’t such a bad choice after all… 😉

Please note that most of these vers­es have been hor­ri­bly wrenched from their con­text to make them even less appro­pri­ate for a moth­er’s day ser­mon.

Does Anyone Else Smell Irony?

Am I the only one who finds it iron­ic that the mul­ti-site church con­fer­ences are all sin­gle-loca­tion events? Just google for “mul­ti-site church con­fer­ences” and you’ll see what I mean.

It just seems… odd.

As pro­gram­mers are want to say, eat your own dog food.

The Assemblies of God and Campus Freedom

A thought­ful friend drew my atten­tion to this sto­ry about North Cen­tral Uni­ver­si­ty and the Equal­i­ty Rid­ers. To sum­ma­rize: gay activists are barred from hold­ing events at an Assem­blies of God uni­ver­si­ty.

I find sto­ries like this very inter­est­ing, because I find myself in the same sit­u­a­tion as the Equal­i­ty Rid­ers. I am on a pri­vate uni­ver­si­ty not exact­ly enthu­si­as­tic about my views and have to labor under cer­tain restric­tions as a result. Hav­ing said that, Stan­ford is much more gra­cious to me than North Cen­tral has been to the Equal­i­ty Rid­ers (even if the rid­ers’ ver­sion of events proves to be exag­ger­at­ed). I am allowed to be on cam­pus, to hold meet­ings with oth­er inter­est­ed stu­dents on cam­pus, and
to uti­lize cam­pus resources.

At first blush, it seems that the Assem­blies of God (who spon­sors both my min­istry and that of North Cen­tral Uni­ver­si­ty) wants to have it both ways: they want to be allowed to express their views via peo­ple like me at pri­vate uni­ver­si­ties while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly deny­ing oth­er groups that right at their own schools (such as NCU).

I’m not sure that’s a com­plete­ly fair assess­ment, since there’s a cat­e­go­ry dif­fer­ence between denom­i­na­tion­al schools and some­place like Stan­ford or Yale. These lat­ter schools, although pri­vate, like to think of them­selves as self-con­scious­ly neu­tral on reli­gious and moral mat­ters, where­as denom­i­na­tion­al schools have reli­gious and moral
posi­tions to which all stu­dents are required to con­form. The upshot is that NCU can rep­re­sent the stu­dent body in a way that Stan­ford can­not.

Still, it does seem a lit­tle hyp­o­crit­i­cal (the gold­en rule seems rel­e­vant in this con­text) and unwise. As a pro­fes­sion­al who works with col­lege stu­dents, I assure you that NCU did every­thing they could to intrigue stu­dents with the Equal­i­ty Rid­ers’ mes­sage. If they tru­ly want­ed to side­line the rid­ers, the admin­is­tra­tion should have invit­ed them onto cam­pus, giv­en them a pub­lic forum, and then offered a calm and
thor­ough rebut­tal. As it is, they’ve like­ly fanned a spark into flame.

And fir­ing reporters for report­ing is always a short­sight­ed move (although legal). Fir­ing reporters always leaves peo­ple feel­ing suspicious–what is being hid­den? Again, the way to derail any sto­ry is by being calm and rea­son­able in your response (sup­pos­ing that you have a bet­ter case, that is). If the reporters write sto­ries that the admin­is­tra­tors find trou­bling, let­ters to the edi­tor (or even an edi­to­r­i­al col­umn, depend­ing on the paper’s gov­er­nance) are supreme­ly appro­pri­ate.

Still, I would be very inter­est­ed to hear NCU’s offi­cial per­spec­tive on the events described by the Equal­i­ty Rid­ers. It does­n’t take much read­ing between the lines to notice that the Equal­i­ty Rid­ers were hyp­ing the lev­el of force used by the uni­ver­si­ty, so per­haps oth­er details are also mis­lead­ing.

[UPDATE: this is pre­cise­ly the uni­ver­si­ty’s asser­tion. They claim that the Equal­i­ty Rid­ers have mis­rep­re­sent­ed the events. Read the uni­ver­si­ty’s response at http://www.northcentral.edu/news/soulforce.php

and also hear a mes­sage from the uni­ver­si­ty pres­i­dent about the events.]

The Problem With Prayer Studies

I men­tioned this to my stu­dents last night at Chi Alpha’s week­ly meet­ing and I thought I’d pass it along here as well: there have been a whole series of dou­ble-blind stud­ies on prayer, some of which show that prayer is potent and oth­ers which fail to demon­strate any ben­e­fit. Why such wide­ly vary­ing results? Because prayer stud­ies are ridicu­lous­ly dif­fi­cult to con­struct, as high­light­ed by this humor­ous arti­cle from Scrap­ple­face.

(2006–03-31) — A team of sci­en­tists today end­ed a 10-year study on the so-called “pow­er of prayer” by con­clud­ing that God can­not be manip­u­lat­ed by humans, not even by sci­en­tists with a $2.4 mil­lion research grant.

The sci­en­tists also not­ed that their work was “sab­o­taged by reli­gious zealots” secret­ly pray­ing for study sub­jects who were sup­posed to receive no prayer.

There are just too many inde­pen­dent vari­ables. How can you know that the con­trol group is actu­al­ly receiv­ing no prayer? How can you be sure that the peo­ple who are pray­ing are pray­ing with faith? With the right faith? In the right God?

And then, of course, there is THE Inde­pen­dent Vari­able. What if, as the arti­cle sug­gests, God sim­ply choos­es not to be our lab rat?

I’m sure some clever sci­en­tists will some­day fig­ure out how to iso­late the vari­ables more mean­ing­ful­ly, but for now the stud­ies tell us much less than the media would have us believe.

And for the record, it’s the media to blame for the hype. I’m sure the sci­en­tists are mak­ing appro­pri­ate­ly cau­tious claims. Sci­en­tists almost always do.

Hymnody

I sent this email to our wor­ship lead­ers and I thought oth­ers might be inter­est­ed in it.

Why do we try to incor­po­rate a hymn each week into wor­ship?

The short­est answer I can give is to quote C. S. Lewis on old books: “Every age has its own out­look. It is spe­cial­ly good at see­ing cer­tain truths and spe­cial­ly liable to make cer­tain mis­takes. We all, there­fore, need the books that will cor­rect the char­ac­ter­is­tic mis­takes of our own peri­od. And that means the old books. All con­tem­po­rary writ­ers share to some extent the con­tem­po­rary outlook–even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. None of us can escape this blind­ness, but we shall cer­tain­ly increase it, and weak­en our guard against it, if we read only mod­ern books. The only pal­lia­tive is to keep the clean sea breeze of the cen­turies blow­ing through our minds, and this can be done only by read­ing old books. Not, of course, that there is any mag­ic about the past. Peo­ple were no clev­er­er then than they are now; they made as many mis­takes as we. But not the same mis­takes.” (from his intro­duc­tion to Athana­sius’ On The Incar­na­tion).

The same thing is true of songs. There are some great wor­ship songs out today and I want the major­i­ty of our wor­ship to fea­ture them. But I don’t want us to just fea­ture them. They have notable weak­ness­es (pdf link) and so I want the “sea breeze of the cen­turies” to blow through our wor­ship and keep us root­ed.

Hav­ing said that, tra­di­tion­al hymn music does­n’t real­ly con­nect with today’s stu­dents. That’s why I urge you to seek out or make up (yes, you are allowed to do that) con­tem­po­rary arrange­ments for the hymns that we do sing.

I’ve found a few that illus­trate what I’m talk­ing about. Check out http://igracemusic.com/igracemusic/hymnbook/hymns.html

Each one has a sam­ple mp3, lead sheets, tab sheets, and oth­er resources avail­able for wor­ship teams.

Anoth­er excel­lent exam­ple is the Dave Crow­der band’s record­ing of “All Crea­tures Of Our God And King.”

Any­way, I’ve been mean­ing to explain myself on that for a while but I’ve nev­er actu­al­ly got­ten around to it.

So there.

Footnotes Are Infinitely Superior To Endnotes

I hate end­notes. In fact, I loathe them. They force me to read with two book­marks and for no good rea­son. Foot­notes are a fun­da­men­tal­ly supe­ri­or way to attribute infor­ma­tion and are even bet­ter for digress­ing with­out inter­rupt­ing an argu­ment.

Yet more books use end­notes than foot­notes. Why?