Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 16, 1995 TAG: 9504180039
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Perhaps you've heard. They took a vote and decided that Jesus wasn't resurrected from the dead after all.
There was no tomb - empty or otherwise - the scholars conclude, and Jesus' body was disposed of by those who crucified him to decay as all human bodies decay.
This is the latest news from the people who a couple of years ago - just in time for Christmas - published their votes dismissing most of the quotes attributed to Jesus in the New Testament as figments of his biographers' imaginations.
The ostensible goals of the seminar are noble enough - to weed fiction from fact in the Christian religion. Reportedly they will be moving into the Hebrew Bible - the Christian Old Testament - next.
It is the scholars' methods that disturb me and their motivation that perplexes me.
Their method has been criticized by far better-educated people than me, and its primary flaw seems absurdly obvious.
Polling scholars for their votes on the ``authenticity'' of a specific verse of Scripture or a doctrine such as the Resurrection is a fit subject for a trivia game or ``Top 10'' list on late-night television, perhaps, but not a respectable method of determining ``truth.''
It is a technique that allows no nuance, no explanation, no rationale. Consequently, it has little chance of informing or educating others - particularly nonscholars.
Yet the participating scholars would have us believe that imparting truth and wisdom to the masses is their motivation.
They roundly deny that the object of their ballots is to destroy the faith of the faithful. Yet that seems the only likely result for someone who is not familiar with their critical method of studying Scripture but blindly buys into their widely publicized conclusions.
A secondary, but equally dangerous flaw, it seems to me, is their insistence on evaluating Scripture literally. These scholars no doubt would reject the literalist claims of Christian fundamentalists, but they pick apart at Scripture just the same way.
Their method involves poring over words and syllables and spellings, as if the Gospels were a transcription of a tape-recorded conversation with Jesus. It is a type of examination that can miss the larger stories the words are trying to tell.
This time, in an apparent acknowledgement of the shortcomings of their methodology, the seminar participants stopped short of saying flatly that there was no resurrection of any kind. There is just no evidence to support the doctrine of a physical resurrection, they conclude.
What are we to make of the seminar?
They admit the truth only of that which is rational, reasonable, natural.
Yet, if one denies the existence or even possibility of the supernatural, there can be no Christianity. Without acknowledging something beyond and above the ``natural,'' one cannot believe in God or a unique son of God. All prophets would be false, all Scripture a hoax. There would be no angels, no miracles, no afterlife.
Lots of folks don't believe in any of those things, of course, or in the resurrection. Nearly all of them are NOT Christians. I have no quarrel with them and I respect their right to reach their own conclusions about the claims of Christ and the church. No one could - or should - be compelled to believe any religious doctrine.
But it seems blatantly hypocritical to assert, as some would, that the dubious exercises of a group like the Jesus Seminar are designed to aid, enhance, elevate or advance the cause of Christ.
There is plenty of room for doctrinal argument, and disagreement, inside the church on any number of topics: capital punishment, abortion, euthanasia, the discipline of children, snake handling, speaking in tongues, the millennium, the characteristics of heaven and hell, the meaning of universal atonement, predestination - the list could go on and on.
But there are some fundamentals that one need not be a ``fundamentalist'' to insist are essential to the faith. Some may make the list longer than others. We might argue about whether the Virgin Birth is one of them, for instance. But most Christians around the globe would agree on a short list:
That Christ is the son of God; that while we all may claim the title of sons and daughters of God, Jesus of Nazareth had a unique claim to the title of son of God;
That Christ's sacrifice provided the only necessary atonement of sin to bring human beings into communion with God;
And that after his crucifixion, Christ rose from the dead - whether physically or not, in some way that his disciples recognized as material. And that through that resurrection he literally and symbolically freed humans from the finality of death and granted to them the possibility of eternal life in communion with God.
At this annual Easter celebration, Christians reconnect with belief that lies beyond and above any rational, logical, natural explanation. While faith for many of us demands the assent of our heads as well as our hearts, we understand we cannot rely on our own wisdom alone to ``know'' God.
As we have for almost 2,000 years, we who call ourselves Christian will have to rely on intangible, unexplainable, supernatural faith to justify our devotion to a humble Palestinian peasant whom we believe disguised and embodied the glory of God among us.
by CNB