SYNOPSIS

Is the Son Eternally Submissive to the Father? The biblical doctrine of the Trinity is God’s self-revelation about His nature. Both the Old and New Testaments reveal God as a unity of three persons; because of this unity, we can enjoy the benefits of a relationship with Him. The Trinity makes possible the incarnation of God as man, and it is only through the incarnation that we can be saved from our sins, since God alone can be our savior. Believers, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, accept these truths by faith. Understanding precisely how the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit relate to one another remains a topic of debate, however, and this debate recently has been reinvigorated due to its implications for the egalitarian-complementarian debate about how male and female Christians should relate to one another in marriage and the church.

In the discussion that follows, Kevin Giles, Vicar of St. Michael’s Church, North Carlton, Australia, and Robert Letham, professor of Systematic and Historical Theology at Wales Evangelical School of Theology, Bryntirion, Wales, debate whether Jesus Christ is eternally submissive to the Father. They further discuss the applications of their respective positions to the egalitarian-complementarian debate.

Does the Son Submit to the Fatherin the Indivisible Unity of the Trinity?

by Robert Letham

The fourth century Trinitarian controversy established the elements of Trinitarian doctrine, which are entailed in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed (381): (1) God is one indivisible being in three persons; (2) each of the three persons is the whole God, one in being, equal in power and glory; (3) the persons mutually indwell one another;¹ (4) while any act of God is particularly attributable to one Trinitarian person, all three work together indivisibly in all God’s works, and, since will is a predicate of nature (thus Christ has two wills, a divine and a human), God has one indivisible will; and (5) there is an irreversible order between the persons—the Father sends the Son, the Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit; this order in relation to creation reflects an eternal order— the Father generates the Son and spirates (or breathes out) the Holy Spirit in the Son. Giles and I are in agreement on these cardinal points.

Four further ecumenical councils (Ephesus (431), Chalcedon (451), Constantinople II (553), and Constantinople III (680–681)) followed the resolution of the fourth-century crisis. Each recognized that the Son, sent by the Father, assumed into personal union a human nature, conceived by the Holy Spirit, that has no existence independently of this hypostatic union (i.e., the union of the divine and human natures in one Person). This personal union continues forever but does not exhaust who the Son eternally is, for He is and remains beyond the bounds of the assumed humanity.

THE POINT UNDER DISCUSSION

The prime question is whether the obedience rendered by the incarnate Christ reflects eternal realities in God. Giles denies it; I affirm it. Such an affirmation, however, needs careful qualification.

Giles denies a connection between the eternal Son and the obedience of Christ as second Adam on the following grounds. He maintains that the Son is eternally equal to the Father in power and authority, possessing the one identical divine will; that the obedience of Christ was as the second Adam, as man, for our salvation; and that once His saving work was done, He was exalted to the full exercise of omnipotence.

Others argue in varying ways that there is a connection—a congruity, as I prefer to call it—between the incarnate Son’s obedience and the eternal Son’s relation to the Father. I avoid talk of “subordination” since this conveys the heretical notion of gradations of deity. Since the Son is the whole God, and the will of God is indivisible, He is all that the Father is except for being the Father. Whatever the connection between His incarnate obedience and His eternal deity, I argue that His omnipotence is in no way abbreviated. The question at issue is the way He exercises His omnipotence; it concerns the relations between the persons.

Elsewhere I argue, following the orthodox pro-Nicenes, that the irreversible order of the persons in which the Father begets and sends the Son is not hierarchical but relational. As such, this order of persons does not refer to a difference of rank, status, or being, since all three persons are one identical being, equal in power and glory, but to “a fitting and suitable disposition”² between them. The Father’s sending of the Son, who is the full transcript of deity (John 10:30), reflects their eternal relations in the indivisible unity of the trinity; God’s self-revelation is utterly reliable. As English theologian John Owen (1616–1683) put it, “The Son receives all from the Father, and the Father nothing from the Son.”³

Giles and I agree that to argue from human experience to God is wrong; the Arians claimed that since human sons begin to be when conceived, so the Son began to be. In contrast, to argue from God to human experience in this area is correct; the archetype is the relation between the Father and the Son. Since the fall, all human relationships are sullied by sin, human power tending toward oppression and corruption. This is not so with God.

A FURTHER SERIES OF QUESTIONS TO ADDRESS

Is obedience to God and dependence on Him something that defines humanity qua or as humanity? If so, would Christ not continue in His exaltation in a relation of dependence qua (in the capacity of) His assumed and glorified humanity?

On the other hand, is dependence and obedience required of humanity only from the fall to the eschaton (end of time)? If this were so, Christ’s human obedience ended at the cross, and Adam would have been under no constraint to obey God before the fall, nor would we after our resurrection. Biblical evidence refutes this.

We conclude, then, that faithful dependence on God is a distinctive feature of what it means to be human. Lack of obedience dehumanized us after the fall. The obedient incarnate Christ was perfectly human. So shall we be in heaven—fully obedient, perfect in humanity. It follows that Christ’s human obedience cannot be restricted to the time from conception to crucifixion. This requires compatibility and congruence between the eternal Son and His continuing humanity.

The Three and the One

Giles argues elsewhere that “the best of theologians” consistently have focused on the unity of God; undue attention to the personal relations is a departure from orthodox trinitarianism.

The unity and simplicity of God is, of course, axiomatic in both East and West. Giles, however, neglects the East, apart from a few who have recently interacted with the West, and downplays differences between the two. This is unfortunate, since Eastern doctrine is found in the seamless web of tradition—the Bible, the writings of the fathers, and especially the liturgy. Byzantine or Eastern Orthodox theologian John Meyendorff points out that, in contrast to the West’s dominant focus on the one divine essence, the East’s Trinitarianism has been shaped by the three persons, with the Father as the source of the personal subsistence of the Son and the Holy Spirit.

In the classic Latin Trinitarian doctrine, “God is essentially one, except in the divine Persons, who are defined in terms of relations.”⁴ In Byzantine thought, however—to use an expression from Maximus the Confessor—“’God is identically monad and triad, and there is probably a tendency in both worship and philosophical formulations…to give a certain pre-eminence to personal diversity.’ We meet the incarnate Logos and the Holy Spirit first as divine agents of salvation, and only then do we discover there to be essentially one God.”⁵

Eastern Orthodox theologian Vladimir Lossky acknowledges that “‘to confess the unity of the nature is to recognize the Father as unique Source of the persons who receive from Him this same nature’ and that ‘in insisting upon the monarchy of the Father…the eastern theologians were defending a conception of the Trinity which they considered to be more concrete, more personal, than that against which they contended.’”⁶ Lossky strongly defends this emphasis from the charge of subordination, citing Gregory Nazianzen and Maximus the Confessor. There is no place in the East for a theology of the divine essence, he says.⁷ That God is identically monad and triad saturates the liturgy, which is rooted in the fourth century.

In Reformed theology, John Owen also strongly emphasizes the three persons, most notably in On Communion with God,⁸ expounding our communion with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit respectively. So strongly does Owen focus on the three persons consecutively that he recognizes the danger of tritheism and assuages it. Reformed theologian B.B. Warfield noted the trend in Western Trinitarianism, in the works of John Calvin especially, to equalization of the persons.⁹ Equalization is vital; homogenization is false.

Reformed Theology and the Covenant of Redemption

Since Reformed theologian Johannes Cocceius (1603–1669) propounded the idea of the covenant of redemption, much Reformed theology has argued that Christ’s incarnate obedience reflects eternal relations. This idea holds that salvation rests on an intra-Trinitarian covenant, the Father stipulating that the Son should take human nature, make atonement for sin, and promising rewards for the faithful discharge of these duties, and the Son accepting the covenantal terms. Of this covenant, both Owen and Francis Turretin (1623–1687), for example, were notable exponents.

With others, I have some reservations concerning this proposed covenant of redemption. It has not received confessional status; in Eastern terms, it is a theologoumenon—a theological opinion. It pictures the Trinity as a divine committee meeting that borders on tritheism: the Father leading, the Son simply responding to the Father, and the Holy Spirit absent. Certainly our salvation rests on the eternal intra-Trinitarian counsel; to describe it as a covenant, the three persons entering into judicial relations with one another, however, comes close to breaking the indivisible union. Despite the problems that such a description poses, it is difficult to make sense of the atonement without it. Those who claim that talk of the Son’s submission to the Father in eternity has erupted as a reaction to feminism show a lack of historical awareness.

In my estimation, the best exponent of the covenant of redemption is Owen. The Father and the Son were distinct persons and their relations were federal (covenantal). Owen, on John 14:28 where Jesus said “My Father is greater than I,” argues that “our Saviour speaks with respect unto the covenant engagement that was between the Father and himself as to the work which he had to do.”¹⁰ No more is intended than that the person of the Son is of the person of the Father.

“The will of the Father and the will of the Son concurred, seen in the authority of the Father in issuing commands to the Son as incarnate for the discharge of his work.”¹¹ The will of the Son was distinct.¹² So the Father loved us and gave His Son to die for us; while the Son loved us and gave Himself for us, and washed us in His own blood. “And whatever is expressed in the Scripture concerning the will of the human nature of Christ, as it was engaged in and bent upon its work, it is but a representation of the will of the Son of God when he engaged into this work from eternity” (emphasis added).¹³

Owen recognizes the Trinitarian problem this creates. The will of God is one; how can the will of the Father and the will of the Son concur distinctly? Owen’s answer is that the persons act reciprocally towards each other—they know and mutually love each other¹⁴ and they act and will distinctly by virtue of their mutual in-being.¹⁵ “The will of God as to the peculiar actings of the Father in this matter is the will of the Father, and the will of God with regard to the peculiar actings of the Son is the will of the Son; not by a distinction of sundry wills, but by the distinct application of the same will unto its distinct acts in the persons of the Father and the Son.”¹⁶ In this the covenant differs from a pure decree. The claim that Christ’s human obedience is connected to, and congruous with, the eternal relations is no novelty.

The Christological Question: Who Is Jesus Christ?

The questions raised by the relation between the incarnate Christ and the eternal Son are clearly Christological as well as Trinitarian. The ecumenical councils Chalcedon, Constantinople II, and Constantinople III established that Jesus Christ is the eternal Logos, who has assumed and personalized a human nature. Two natures did not join together to form a composite person; rather, the Son added humanity permanently. Constantinople II recognized the dogma of enhypostasia, entailing no separate, independent existence for the assumed humanity; rather, the Son personalized it. The humanity of Christ is the humanity of the Logos. The famous Cyrilline phrase, “One of the trinity suffered according to the flesh” expresses it well. The Jesus Christ of the gospels is thus personally identical to the eternal Son and the post-resurrection Son. In effect, the Christology of the early church father Cyril of Alexandria (ca. 376–444), seen especially in his Quod unus sint Christus, was canonized.¹⁷ Every act of Christ’s mediation is the act of the whole person.¹⁸

From this, I argue that the assumption of humanity was appropriate to the Son. If this were not so, a radical Nestorian chasm would exist between the person of the Son (for whom submission to the Father was alien) and the assumed humanity (in which obedience to God was rendered). If obedient assumed humanity is congruent with the Son Himself, it would seem that there is something about the Son that makes this congruence possible.

Philippians 2:5–11

Giles’s suggestions require the following Christological pattern. First, the Son is eternal God. Second, He became the obedient servant, set under the Father from conception to resurrection. Giles affirms Christ’s continuing deity, but his distancing of the incarnate obedience from the eternal Son seems to require one of two things: either a strong element of kenosis (emptying) so that the eternal Son in key respects is not what once He was or, alternatively, Christ’s humanity (and the obedience that goes with it) is held at arm’s length, so that some sort of Nestorian separation between deity and humanity exists. Third, at the resurrection Christ returns to glory with dependence and obedience no longer relevant to His humanity. This appears to require an equally strong kenosis of humanity. There is a further possible explanation—that God decreed for redemptive purposes that the Son appear in a way different than He eternally is. That, however, would prove too much; it would cast a huge question over the reality of our knowledge of God.

I have suggested elsewhere that the passage contemplates the refusal of the Son to exploit His deity for His own advantage, not only in His incarnate lowliness, but in His determination to become incarnate in the first place. It reaches back into eternity to show us a glimpse of what God is like.

MY SUGGESTION

Instead of Giles’s paradigm, I suggest the following. The Son is eternally God—yesterday, today and forever—and remains so. In the incarnation, He chose to lower Himself, adding human nature, in which He was obedient to the Father while simultaneously ruling the universe. From his resurrection, He was exalted to the right hand of the Father. As Christopher Wordsworth, Bishop of Lincoln (1807-1885), put it, “man with God is on the throne,”¹⁹ while the distinction of deity and humanity is still preserved, and will be so forever.

This is the way the Son exercises His Lordship—not with the oppressive power of fallen man, but as a servant; He did not come to be served, but to serve (see Matt. 20:20–28). He acts freely, not under compulsion. This tells us something vital about the Son and about God Himself.

As the Son became incarnate and the Spirit came at Pentecost, the Father sending, so the indivisible omnipotence of God comes to expression in distinct ways. No better summary can be found than that of Giles: “It is godlike to gladly subordinate oneself for the good of another.”²⁰

Glossary

Arian: The claim that the Son was created and so was not co-eternal or of the identical being with the Father.

disposition: An arrangement of some kind.

federal: From the Latin foedus (covenant), referring to an arrangement in the form of a covenant between two or more distinct parties.

hypostatic union: A term describing the result of the Son of God assuming into union a human nature conceived by the Holy Spirit.

hypostatic: Descriptive of something with a concrete existence, used in the doctrine of the trinity and Christology to refer to what are called “persons.”

kenosis: The teaching that in the incarnation the Son divested Himself of some or all attributes of Deity.

Nestorian: The claim that the two natures of Christ were conjoined, rather like two pieces of plywood, rather than united in one person. If this were so there would have been no incarnation, only an indwelling.

perichoresis: The mutual indwelling of the persons of the trinity in the one being of God.

pro-Nicenes: Those who supported the Trinitarian settlement begun at Nicaea (325) and developed at Constantinople (381).

second Adam: The NT teaching that the incarnate Christ took our place as man as head of his people. Adam had been the head of the human race and by his disobedience to God plunged the race into sin, death, and condemnation. Christ was made the head of a new humanity, lived in obedience to God, and suffered the penalty incurred by the sin of the first Adam. In doing so, He brings righteousness and life to all He represents.

notes

1. The term perichoresis (Greek, meaning “permeation without confusion”) was applied to this idea by John of Damascus (675–749), but the idea itself was proposed as early as the time of Athanasius, Bishop and patriarch of Alexandria (295–373).

2. G. W. H. Lampe (ed.), A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), 1372–1373.

3. W. H. Goold, ed., The Works of John Owen (London: Johnstone and Hunter, 1850–55), 1:71.

4. John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes (New York: Fordham University Press, 1979), 180–84.

5. Ibid., 184.

6. Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (London: James Clarke and Co. Ltd, 1957), 59–65.

7. Ibid., 59–65.

8. Gould, 2:8–9.

9. Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield, Biblical and Theological Studies (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, repr., 1952), 52–59.

10. Owen, 19:84–5.

11. Ibid., 19:86.

12. Cf., Augustine, De Trinitate, 4:20:27; PL 42:862–63.

13. Owen, Works, 19:87.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid., 19:88.

16. Ibid. The Christian church, in both east and west, maintains that God has one indivisible will, and—according to Constantinople III—that Christ has two wills (since if he did not have a human will he could not be said to have a full humanity).

17. J. A. McGuckin, St. Cyril of Alexandria: On the Unity of Christ (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladmir’s Seminary Press, 1995); J. A. McGuckin, St. Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy: Its History, Theology, and Texts (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2004); T. G. Weinandy, O.F.M., Cap, “Cyril and the Mystery of the Incarnation,” The Theology of St. Cyril of Alexandria: A Critical Appreciation (T. G. Weinandy; London: T. and T. Clark, 2003), 23–54.

18. Owen, Works, 1:234.

19. In his hymn, “See the Conqueror Mounts in Triumph.”

20. Kevin Giles, The Trinity and Subordinationism: The Doctrine of God and the Contemporary Gender Debate (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002), 31.

20.

The Son of God Is Not Eternally Inferior,Subordinate, or Submissive

by Kevin Giles

From the time of Bishop Athanasius, early in the fourth century, Philippians 2:4–11 has been recognized as the interpretative key to understanding the person of Christ. This text gives a “double account” of Jesus Christ, one as equal to God when in heaven and one as subordinated to God while on earth. Paul tells us that the Son of God, who had “equality” with the Father, gladly stepped down from heaven, took the form of a servant, and went to the cross for our salvation (Phil. 2:6–8). In reciprocal response the Father exalted Him in the resurrection to reign as Lord (Phil. 2:9–11)—equal God in all power and majesty. In taking human flesh the Son freely chose to be subordinated and humiliated.

Many texts, especially in the synoptic Gospels, indicate what this involved. The New Testament nevertheless makes it plain that Jesus was forever God in all power and majesty. Jesus thus is called God (John 1:1; 20:28; Rom. 9:5; Heb. 1:8, etc.) and confessed more than two-hundred times as “Lord,” Yahweh’s own name.

On this basis, orthodoxy consistently has taught the temporal and voluntary subordination of the Son in the incarnation and completely has rejected the eternal subordination of the Son in nature and/or authority—the heresy of “subordinationism.” The Athanasian Creed, the standard for Trinitarian orthodoxy for Western Christians for fifteen-hundred years, thus insists that the Son of God, like the Father, is “almighty” and “Lord,” the three “persons” are “coequal,” and “none is before or after, greater or lesser.” Virtually all of the Reformation and post-Reformation Protestant confessions speak similarly of the Son as one in being and one in power with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

It is thus surprising to find many of the most widely respected conservative evangelical theologians today arguing adamantly that the Son of God is eternally subordinated to the Father in function and authority, and sometimes admitting openly that this has ontological implications, as it clearly does. Let me explain. If the Son’s subordination in function and authority defines His nature, that is, what intrinsically differentiates Him from the Father, and if this subordination is eternal, then it speaks of who He is: His unchanging being.

THE “CHAIN OF SUBORDINATION”

The originator of the contemporary expression of subordinationism that has now engulfed the conservative evangelical world like a raging fire is George Knight, III. In his highly influential book New Testament Teaching on the Role Relationship of Men and Women, ¹ he developed the novel argument that just as women are permanently subordinated in role to the authority of their husbands in the home and to that of male leaders in the church, so the Son of God is eternally subordinated in role to the authority of the Father. He thus speaks of a “chain of subordination”² in the Trinity, adding that the Son’s subordination in role has “certain ontological aspects.”³ Before this time, to my knowledge, no one had ever spoken of subordination in role for women or for the Son of God, and no one had developed the idea that somehow the doctrine of the Trinity justified and explained the subordination of women.

This new teaching on the Trinity came to full fruition in 1994 with the publication of Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine.⁴ The impact of this book on evangelicals cannot be overestimated. It is one of the most widely used theology texts in evangelical seminaries. He is emphatic that the eternal subordination of the Son in authority stands at the heart of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. For Grudem, the Father has “the role of commanding, directing, and sending,” and the Son has the role of “obeying, going as the Father sends, and revealing God to us.”⁵ For him differing authority is what distinguishes the Father from the Son. He writes, “Authority and submission between the Father and the Son…and the Holy Spirit, is the fundamental difference between the persons of the Trinity.”⁶ “If we did not have such differences in authority in the relationships among the members of the Trinity, then we would not know of any differences at all.”⁷

Grudem’s Systematic Theology is the first systematic theology text to advocate the eternal subordination of the Son. Bruce Ware’s book, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,⁸ is the first full-length study on the Trinity to develop this doctrine. He argues that the eternal subordination of the Son in authority to the Father “marks the very nature of the eternal Being of the one who is three. In this authority-submission structure, the three Persons understand the rightful place each has. The Father possesses the place of supreme authority…the Son submits to the Father”⁹ (emphasis added). Ware thus concludes that a “hierarchical structure of authority exists in the eternal Godhead.”¹⁰

LETHAM’S CONTRIBUTION

I could go on giving examples of this distinctive and novel doctrine of the Trinity, which are found only in post 1970s conservative evangelical and Reformed literature, but length restrictions for this essay do not permit. I instead want to move directly to the 551-page book by Robert Letham, The Holy Trinity in Scripture, History, Theology, and Worship,¹¹ in which he paradoxically both denies and affirms this doctrine. Letham stands out from all others who have written in support of this doctrine. He has read and mastered Athanasius, the Cappadocian Fathers, Augustine, Calvin, Barth, and Eastern Orthodox theologians such as Bulgakov and Lossky, among others. I found very little that I would want to differ with him in his chapters dealing with these important theologians. He often warmly endorses contributions that exclude subordinationism,¹² and more than once warns against the tendency in Eastern Orthodoxy to slip into subordinationism.¹³

“The Vital Parameters”

To conclude his book Letham has a final section entitled “Critical Issues.” Here he gives firstly what he believes are “the vital parameters” of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. The three persons are one and yet eternally differentiated as Father, Son, and Spirit; they are one in being—“there are no gradations of deity”; they interpenetrate one another and work inseparably, and “there is an order among the persons,” understood as an “appropriate disposition.”¹⁴ What is missing is the affirmation that the three divine persons are indivisible in power and authority, a fundamental element in the historic doctrine of the Trinity, mentioned in every important Reformation and post-Reformation confession; because the divine three are one in being, they are one in power.

On the Subordering of the Son

Having noted this glaring omission in Letham’s summary of the key elements in the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity, we are prepared for what is to follow. In pages 389–404, in direct opposition to what he has argued previously, he introduces the novel contemporary evangelical doctrine of the subordering of the Son in authority. Letham agrees with me that to speak of “the eternal subordination of the Son is outside the boundaries of the tradition.”¹⁵ He tells us, instead, that he teaches “the submission of the Son eternally.”¹⁶ How this differs from “the eternal subordination of the Son” completely escapes me. If the Son is, and cannot be other than, the eternally submissive Son, surely He is the eternally subordinated Son. His person is defined by His unchanging and unchangeable subordering under the Father. If this is the case, then does it not imply ontological subordinationism?

We must ask, furthermore, is it legitimate to take the biblical Greek word hypotasso, which, according to the lexicons, means to stand under or be subordinate, and conveniently translate it as “subordinate” when used of women, but as “submissive” when used of the Son?

To argue for a coequal Trinity as others and I do, Letham holds, leads to “a thoroughgoing homogenization of the [divine] persons in fully mutual relations.”¹⁷ This then becomes a way “ontologically” to underpin “complete reciprocity between male and female in human society.”¹⁸ I take it Letham believes the reverse is also true. An argument for the eternal subordering of the Son gives an “ontological” basis for men ruling over women in perpetuity. This is his agenda. His claim that egalitarians deny or undermine male/female differentiation is simply rhetorical polemic. Absolutely no one, as far as I can see, denies male/female differentiation, and definitely no evangelical or reformed Christian does this.

What evangelical egalitarians deny is that the Bible makes the God-given ideal the permanent subordination of women. We evangelical egalitarians affirm gladly and boldly that God has made us men and women and that the sexes complement one another. Vive la différence.

Letham is aware that he is treading on dangerous ground in advocating the eternal submission of the Son and so he “emphatically” asserts that he is not speaking “of ‘command structures,’ ‘hierarchy,’ and ‘boss-servant relationships,’”¹⁹ and that he is definitely not suggesting that the Son is “inferior” to the Father.²⁰ Having said these things, however, he then goes on to argue dogmatically for “the submission of the Son eternally.”²¹ He says that “the Son submits in eternity to the Father,”²² that “being God he serves the Father,”²³ that the obedience the Son renders to the Father is “unconditional obedience,”²⁴ and that “his human obedience reflects his divine submission.”²⁵ On this last matter he adds, “It is impossible to separate the human obedience of Christ from who he is.”²⁶ I take this to mean that it is impossible to separate His obedience from “His being,” and that we are to believe that the Son is not just temporally obedient and submissive to the Father as the incarnate Christ, as the doctrinal tradition Letham previously has outlined teaches. Christ is the eternally submissive and obedient Son who is forever set under the Father’s authority. His submission and obedience define His nature. If this is the case, then surely this implies ontological subordination and inviolable hierarchical ordering. Letham offers four arguments in support of his doctrine of the “the submission of the Son eternally,” which I will now examine.

On Barth’s Christology

First, Letham appeals to the great Swiss theologian Karl Barth. It is true that Barth speaks of the eternal submission and obedience of the Son, but always dialectically and always when he is speaking of the Son as God identified with man for all eternity. The Son of God for Barth is eternally at one and the same time both the sovereign electing God and the elect man called to obedience, both Lord and servant. This dialectic, foundational to Barth’s Christology, Letham misses completely.

What is more, in Barth’s theology, while the Father is not the Son and vice versa, the Son is not other than the Father. The humiliation of the Son is part of the revelation of the Father. In the Son we see that the Father gladly stoops to save. The Father and the Son are never divided or separated. What is most worrying is that Letham’s appeal to Barth to support the eternal submission of the Son without qualification contradicts his own extended exposition of Barth’s doctrine of the Trinity given earlier in his book.²⁷ Here Letham notes that Barth stresses divine unity, a stress that excludes absolutely dividing the Father and the Son in authority, or in any other way.

On Christ’s Nature

Second, Letham argues that the human nature of Christ demands His eternal submission. He reasons that if Christ was subordinated in taking flesh to become man, as all agree, He must be subordinated eternally because He continues in a hypostatic union to be God and man. In this argument Letham fails to make the theologically important distinction between the subordinate, suffering, and humiliated incarnate Son on earth and the exalted, glorified, and triumphant Son now reigning as Lord. This contrast between the two epochs in the ministry of the one Christ is a fundamental of orthodox Christology, possibly most helpfully developed in the Reformed distinction between Christ’s “state of humiliation” in the incarnation on earth and “His state of exaltation” in heaven as the reigning Lord of the universe.

What this distinction makes clear is that in returning to heaven as God and man, the Son’s divine nature was not subordinated in any way because of His human nature; rather His human nature was exalted so that as God and man the Son could rule as omnipotent God. The united voice of the New Testament states that after His resurrection and exaltation, the Son is no longer the “submissive Son,” the second Adam, who obeys the Father to win our salvation, but the Lord and head of the universe. Letham seems to miss this idea completely in this unfortunate digression in his book.

On Eastern Orthodox Theology

Third, Letham appeals to Eastern Orthodox theologians in support of his doctrine of the “the submission of the Son eternally.”²⁸ This is a surprising move because Letham repeatedly warns of the subordinationistic tendency in Eastern trinitarianism.²⁹ His appeal to Bulgakov at this point is most surprising. It seems to contradict his warnings about Bulgakov’s theology. Letham says that Bulgakov builds his doctrine of the Trinity on “human experience,” embraces “panentheism,” and has been censured by his own church for “infusing masculine and feminine elements into the members of the Trinity.”³⁰

On Scriptural Support

Fourth, Letham asks whether there is anything in Scripture that would support his novel doctrine of “the submission of the Son eternally,” and honestly admits, “there is very little.”³¹ The only two texts he quotes in support, Philippians 2:5ff and Hebrews 5:4–5, count against his thesis. These texts indicate that the Son is subordinated, or submissive, to the Father only in His incarnate existence: “in the days of his flesh” (Heb. 4:7), as the second Adam who wins our salvation by His obedience (c.f. Rom. 5:12–21). What Scripture actually teaches and emphasizes is the present Lordship of Christ. He reigns in all power, majesty, and glory.

How what Letham teaches in these few pages significantly differs from what Grudem and other conservative evangelicals are teaching completely escapes me. Letham avoids the confusing and confused use of the words “function” and “role” but he still eternally suborders the Son to the Father in authority. What he first repeatedly denies in his coverage of the Bible and the historical sources, namely the eternal subordering of the Son, he then unambiguously affirms in the final section of his book. The Son is eternally set under the Father’s authority as women are permanently set under the authority of men in the church and the home. Women’s subordination, he would have us believe, is grounded “ontologically” in a hierarchically ordered Trinity where the Father eternally rules and the Son eternally obeys.

On the Permanent Subordination of Women

This observation leads me lastly to point out that what is common to all those who advocate the eternal subordination or submission of the Son is a commitment to the permanent subordination of women. The doctrine of an eternally subordered Son is introduced to give the weightiest foundation possible for the permanent subordering of women.

As no one in the contemporary scene other than conservative evangelical and Reformed Christians who are committed to the permanent subordination of women teach this novel doctrine, we must ask, is the tail wagging the dog? Scripture teaches the unqualified Lordship of Christ and the coequality of the Trinity (see Matt. 28:19; 1 Cor. 13:13), but has the “women question” led theologically and politically conservative Protestants to deny the unqualified Lordship of Christ and thus undermine the doctrine of coequality in the Trinity?

Glossary

Cappadocian Fathers: This title refers to three learned supporters of the Nicene creed who lived in Cappadocia—central Turkey today: Basil (330–97), his brother Gregory of Nyssa (d. 394), and their friend, Gregory of Nazianzus (329–90).

egalitarian: Someone who believes in the equal dignity, worth and leadership potential of both sexes while not denying that God made us men and women.

modalism: The error of denying that the Father, Son and Spirit are eternally and indelibly differentiated yet one in being. Modalism teaches that there is one God who reveals himself in three modes.

Neo-Arian: This title refers to the Cappadocian fathers opponents who eternally subordinated the Son in being and authority. On this basic matter they agree with Arius who died in 336 but their theology was more developed and differed from Arius on other important matters. They may be described as the second generation radical Arians, or teachers of subordinationism.

ontological: This word transliterates the Greek word for “being.” The being of something or someone is what makes something or someone what they are.

panentheism: The view that while God and his creation are not to be identified, God is in creation and creation is in God.

subordering: The word “order” alludes to the relationship between things or people. It can be horizontal, vertical, circular, temporal, etc. To sub-order means to place under.

subordinationism: The teaching that the Son of God is eternally subordinated to the Father in being, function, or authority.

synoptic: “Seen together.” A term to designate the first three Gospels.

notes

1. George Knight, III, New Testament Teaching on the Role Relationship of Men and Women (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1977).

2. Ibid., 33.

3. Ibid., 56.

4. Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995).

5. Ibid., 250.

6. Wayne Grudem, ed., Biblical Foundations for Manhood and Womanhood (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2002), 31.

7. Wayne Grudem, Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 2004), 433.

8. Bruce Ware, Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2005), 21.

9. Ibid., 21. The terms “very nature” and “Being” speak of ontology, the Son’s being, essence, and/or nature.

10. Ibid.

11. Robert Letham, The Holy Trinity in Scripture, History, Theology, and Worship (Phillipsburg, NJ: P and R, 2004).

12. Letham, cf. 176–77, 199, 370.

13. Ibid., 3, 377.

14. Ibid., 382–83.

15. Ibid., 490, 399.

16. Ibid., 398.

17. Ibid., 392.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid., 398.

20. Ibid., 399.

21. Ibid., 398.

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid., 402.

24. Ibid., 401.

25. Ibid., 403.

26. Ibid., 396.

27. Ibid., 271–90.

28. Letham, 396 (appeal to Bulgakov), 400–01 (appeal to Bobrinskoy), and 251 (appeal to Meyendorff).

29. Letham, 3, 377.

30. Ibid., 338.

31. Ibid., 403.

31.

Three Areas of Concern:

A Response to Kevin Giles

I have three areas of concern with Giles’s position. These involve misunderstanding, misrepresentation, and a misapplication of terms.

First Concern: For a Co-Equal Trinity. Giles misunderstands what I wrote in my book. He suggests that what is missing “is the affirmation that the divine three are indivisible in power and authority.” He alleges that because these precise words are not there in that section, I therefore maintain the opposite and teach that the Son is a member of a hierarchy, less God than the Father. The logic behind this simply does not follow.

What Giles ignores is that on these same pages I state, “Each person [of the Trinity] is the whole God. The three together are not more God than any one by himself…no one person is of higher or lesser status than any other. There are no gradations of deity. Thus, all three together are worshiped.” Moreover, earlier I present extensive and overwhelming biblical evidence for the full and absolute deity of Christ, the Son. This entails omnipotence—as it does omniscience and omnipresence. Giles asserts that he and others “argue for a co-equal Trinity,” implying that I do not. He should read more carefully.

Second Concern: Unwarranted Inferences. This concern is, in my view, more serious. It involves a series of misrepresentations. Giles states that I introduce “the novel contemporary evangelical doctrine of the sub-ordering of the Son in authority.” Nowhere have I written of “sub-ordering.”

Giles claims that an argument for the eternal subordination of the Son gives an “ontological” basis for men ruling over women in perpetuity. I do not argue for “the eternal subordination of the Son”; note my caveat when citing the covenant of redemption.

Again, Giles says that my “claim that egalitarians deny or undermine male/female differentiation is simply rhetorical polemic. Absolutely no one, as far as I can see, denies male/female differentiation.” This might sound plausible were it not for the fact that I did not say that egalitarians do this! What I said was that a homogenization of the persons of the Trinity has been used to underpin complete reciprocity between male and female in society. Reciprocity is not the same as elimination of difference; the Oxford English Dictionary makes that clear.

Giles continues, “Women’s subordination, he would have us believe, is grounded ‘ontologically’ in a hierarchically ordered Trinity where the Father eternally ruled and the Son eternally obeys.” I have reread the book—I wrote it myself but maybe I missed something—and am at a loss to see where I refer to women’s subordination or to “a hierarchically ordered Trinity.”

In my letter to the editor accepting this assignment, I wrote, “I am uneasy about the phrase ‘eternal subordination of the Son,’ as I mention in my book. The Son is all that the Father is, except for being the Father. He is ‘light of light, very God of very God.’ There is a distinction; the Son is sent by the Father, and this is never reversed…It follows that I do not like to be categorized as belonging to one side.”

Giles repeatedly makes unwarranted inferences, creating caricatures of what his opponents may say in order to shoot them down. It accomplishes little.

Third Concern: Submission as Synonymous with Inferiority? The title of Giles’s essay is telling: submission is presented as synonymous with inferiority. For Giles, exaltation and submission are incompatible. This is obviously so in a fallen human world, twisted by self-interest, exploitation, and oppression. Being godlike, however, entails serving others (e.g., Matt. 20:20–28, Phil. 2:1ff). Christ is both Lord and Servant—no, I didn’t miss this in Barth, and I recognize that it is a biblical paradigm, too. The Father advances His kingdom through His Son. The Spirit glorifies not Himself, but the Son. The Son brings glory to the Father. In the unity of the indivisible Trinity each seeks the glory of the other.

Giles asks, “Has the ‘women question’ led theologically and politically conservative Protestants to deny the unqualified Lordship of Christ and thus undermine the doctrine of co-equality in the Trinity?” This astounding comment leaves me wondering whether to laugh or cry. As I have consistently preached, taught, and written, Christ is Lord totally, absolutely, unequivocally. The problem seems to be that Giles’s understanding of who God is, and what Lordship is, differs from mine; for him these seem to be predicated preeminently on power. In reality, however, God exercises His sovereign omnipotence in love, in Bonaventure’s terms, in “self-diffusive goodness.”

This God Is Love. In Islam, Allah is sheer power—his devotees submit. In glorious contrast, the holy Trinity is an indivisible union of three Persons, in eternal love and goodness. The triune God, in His determination to create, His sovereign providence, and His immeasurable grace, has planned that we humans, united to Christ our head, will share in the administration of the renewed and completed cosmos. This purpose He implements omnipotently, but in omnipotence expressive of His overflowing, self-diffusive goodness and love. This God is personal. This God is love; the three seek the interests of one another in indivisible union.

For our part, the Father is transforming us by the Spirit into the image of Christ (Rom. 8:29); this entails our seeking the good of others, submitting to one another in Christ. It mirrors what God is like and particularly the Son’s attitude in eternity in determining to embark on His mediatorial task (Phil. 2:5–7, Heb. 5:1ff). This is far from inferiority or subordination. The Son’s loving fulfillment of the Father’s will, His outpouring of self in coming not to be served, but to serve, is not a temporary act that tells us nothing of eternal realities; rather, it expresses who the Son is eternally.

—Robert Letham

One Matter of Disagreement:

A Response to Robert Letham

Letham generously accepts that on five cardinal points in the doctrine of the Trinity we are in complete agreement. We disagree absolutely on only one matter—the one that has divided the Church over the centuries more than any other—whether or not the Son is in some way eternally set under the Father.¹ In the past thirty years a large number of conservative evangelicals have endorsed this idea, arguing for “the eternal subordination of the Son.” Letham also sets the Son under the Father but prefers to speak of the “submission of the Son eternally” and of the eternal obedience of the Son. True, a difference in wording can be seen, but a difference in content escapes me. Those who teach explicitly the “eternal subordination of the Son” quote Letham as a supporter of their position.

I reject the idea that the Son of God must always obey the Father, primarily because I find no biblical support in favor and much in opposition of it. I note that in his essay Letham not once appeals to Scripture to substantiate this teaching. I have outlined in the positive presentation of my position the biblical teaching that the Son is subordinate, submissive, and obedient to the Father by His own choice temporally in the incarnation, and yet coequal with the Father in majesty, power, and authority eternally as God. Nowhere is the biblical teaching more explicit than in the confession that “Jesus is Lord.” If the Father and the Son (and the Spirit) are each “the Lord,” then one does not always obey another.

I also reject this teaching, no matter how it is worded, because I find not one line in support in any of the creeds or confessions—and Letham, it is to be noted, does not quote them in support. He cannot because they speak against it. What is more, not one word can be found to support this doctrine in Athanasius, the Cappadocian Fathers, Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, or T.F. Torrance, possibly the most important orthodox theologians on the Trinity. With one voice they oppose any suggestion that the Son is set under the Father in being or authority, or eternally obedient to Him.

My assertion is falsifiable. Letham simply has to come forward with a passage from one of these great theologians speaking of the eternal submission and obedience of the Son to prove me wrong. If John Owen taught the eternal submission and obedience of the Son, this does not prove that it is orthodoxy: it indicates that in this bleak time for the doctrine of the Trinity, Owen got it wrong.

Arian Controversy. In his section on Reformed theology and the covenant of redemption, Letham states, “Those who claim that talk of the Son’s submission to the Father in eternity mainly has erupted as a reaction to feminism show a lack of historical awareness.” On this he is half right and half wrong. An awareness of history shows that the way conservative evangelicals have formulated and worded their post-1970s doctrine of the eternal subordination/submission of the Son is entirely novel, and so is their claim that women must obey the men set over them because the Son always must obey the Father. An awareness of history, however, also shows that the idea that the Son is eternally subordinated, and/or submissive, and/or obedient to the Father has a very long history. Here I agree with Letham. In almost every century one or more theologians have promulgated this idea. It is called Arianism, or more generally, subordinationism.

That Arius ontologically subordinated the Son to the Father is well known. What is less well known and less adequately recognized is that he and all the other so-called fourth century Arians also set Him eternally under the Father’s authority, depicting Him as obedient to the Father. Richard Hanson, in his monumental study of Arianism, says that the Arians consistently taught that the Son “does the Father’s will and exhibits obedience and subordination to the Father, and adores and praises the Father, not only in his earthly ministry but in Heaven”² (emphasis added). In their important study, Early Arianism, historical theology scholars Robert Gregg and Dennis Groh actually make the eternal submission and obedience of the Son the primary element in Arian theology; the Son’s ontological subordination, they argue, was simply a necessary logical outcome.³ They assert, “At the center of Arian theology was a redeemer obedient to his Father’s will”⁴ (emphasis added).

Obedience Center Stage. When we come to Eunomius, the Cappadocians’ arch neo-Arian opponent, the obedience of the Son comes onto center stage. In his Confession of Faith, he professes,

We believe in the one and only true God…he has no sharer of his Godhead or participator of his glory, nor joint possessor of his authority.

And we believe in the Son of God…He is obedient in creating and giving being to things that exist, obedient in all his administration, not having received his being Son or God because of his obedience, but from his being Son and being generated as only-begotten God, being obedient in words, obedient in acts⁵ (emphasis added).

Athanasius and the Cappadocians vehemently opposed this teaching. They would not concede in any way that the Son was eternally obedient to the Father. With the Father and the Spirit, the Son reigned as Lord.

Godlike Submission. Finally, I thank Letham for endorsing my point that “it is godlike to gladly subordinate oneself for the good of another.” I simply add that in revealing this truth in word and deed Jesus tells us that this is what the Father is like. He said, “If you have seen me you have seen the Father.” If it is godlike for humans to subordinate themselves gladly, then it is godlike for men and women, who both happen to be human, to do so!

—Kevin Giles

notes

1. That we disagree on the importance of twentieth century Orthodox contributions is a small point. We are completely agreed on the importance of the Athanasius and the Cappadocians.

2. R. P. C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy, 318–381 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005), 103.

3. Robert Gregg and Dennis Groh, Early Arianism: A View of Salvation (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981).

4. Ibid, x.

5. The reconstituted text in full is given in Hanson, The Search, 619–21.

SYNOPSIS

Matthew, in his gospel account of the life of Christ, recorded the appearance of a star that guided magi to Bethlehem so that they might pay tribute to the newborn King of the Jews. Through the years there have been many hypothetical explanations, whether natural, astronomical, or astrological, of the nature and behavior of this so-called star of Bethlehem. The appearance could have been a new bright star or comet or the movements of the planets relative to each other, the sun, and the moon. Perhaps what the magi saw was a nova or supernova bright enough to qualify as a real star (as we know them today) with astronomical and historical significance. A comet might have moved, over a few months’ time, from one constellation to another, more southerly, constellation. It is possible that major planets could have come into close proximity with each other, appearing as one, which would have created significant interest in professional observers of the night sky. Any one of these natural occurrences would have been noteworthy, and God certainly could have used them in His divine plan to announce to the world the birth of His Son and to guide a select group of astronomers to be His first worshipers. It is possible, however, to follow Matthew’s account of the star from a more supernatural viewpoint, consistent with the biblical record and with the supernatural character of the event to which the star pointed and in doing so realize that the magi were led to Bethlehem, not by light from space, but by light from heaven.

Matthew’s Gospel records certain events that accompanied the birth of Jesus Christ. In his account alone is a record of the appearance of the “star of Bethlehem” and the coming of “wise men” from the east, guided by the star to the newborn King of the Jews.

Wise men, or magi, came to Jerusalem, seeking the King of the Jews. They were “from the east” (Matt.2:1)1—men who lived in a region of the world that was east of Jerusalem; consequently, they traveled westward. The guidance that was given to them took them from their eastern location to a destination west of their point of departure, not just in a general westerly direction, but to a specific location, the city of Jerusalem.

Any hypothesis of the star of Bethlehem must be able to explain how these men could be guided on a westward journey and how that guidance could be maintained over a fairly long period of time. Some who adhere to a supernatural explanation, as we shall see, place the guiding star in the west, stationary over Jerusalem, leading the magi in their journey. From this perspective, the magi, while in the east, saw the star in the west and followed it. In my view, not only were the magi guided westward by the star, they received their guidance while the star remained “in the east” (Matt.2:2). That is, the star, while in the east, guided them toward a destination in the west. Both views, of course, agree on this: the event was a supernatural one.

Some have tried to harmonize Matthew’s account with naturally occurring astronomical phenomena by limiting the magi’s observation of the star “in the east” to occurring only at its rising and not continually. Michael Molnar has speculated that “in the east” could be an astronomical term meaning “at the heliacal rising” or “at the morning appearance”² of a planet. Matthew, however, is not an astronomer who is using technical language: he is a tax collector turned disciple and gospel writer who is using a simple term that is familiar to his readers to refer to where the magi were from and where the star was.

The wise men arrived in Jerusalem. My assumption, consistent with Matthew’s record of a later reappearance (Matt.2:9),³ is that the star disappeared.

Herod secretly questioned the magi as to “the time the star appeared” (Matt.2:7). Herod (and others in Jerusalem) had not seen the star at all and had to ask the magi when they had seen the star, not because he (and his advisers) simply had missed some natural yet rare astronomical phenomenon (or at least missed its importance), but because he could not see the “star,” nor could anyone else except the magi. Herod had an evil motive (see Matt.2:12–18) and told the magi that they should go to Bethlehem to find the object of their search. The end of their journey was near—only a few miles to the south, but they needed more specific guidance, not just to a town, but to the house where the King of the Jews awaited them.

The magi started on the last leg of their journey, heading southward toward Bethlehem; “and lo, the star, which they had seen in the east went on before them, until it came and stood over where the child was” (Matt.2:9). Matthew records a sense of astonishment (“lo!” or “behold!”) when they saw the star again, the same star they had seen before “in the east.”⁴

The star not only had disappeared and then reappeared, it had also moved to a stationary place over a specific house in Bethlehem. If previous behaviors of the star are difficult to harmonize with natural astronomical phenomena, this one surely challenges all attempts at such an explanation. This was truly a unique and miraculous occurrence; it was “His star” (Matt.2:2) and its purpose was to bring wise men from the east westward to Jerusalem and southward to a house in Bethlehem, “where the Child was” (Matt.2:9), and where they would fall down and worship Him (Matt.2:11).

WHAT ASTRONOMY HAS TO SAY

Ernest L. Martin believed that “the star of Bethlehem can be explained in a thoroughly natural way.”⁵ Others have thought so, too. Johannes Kepler, a seventeenth-century astronomer, believed that the star could have been a supernova. A nova (Latin for “new”) is a star that has suddenly increased in brightness and therefore appears to be a new star in the night sky. It is, however, not a new star at all, but a long-lived star that is in the process of changing and maybe even dying; it is new only to earthly observers. The word supernova describes a star that grows in visibility to a much greater degree (and for different reasons). Both supernovas and novas will, of course, remain in their fixed positions on the celestial sphere and, thereby, rotate daily from east to west with the rest of the stars.

Others have proposed a more transient phenomenon: a comet. A comet is a “dirty snowball” orbiting the sun, usually in a highly elliptical orbit. As it nears the sun, solar radiation vaporizes gases and particles of dirt from the comet. These flow away from the comet nucleus, forming a head, or coma, and a tail that grows in length and brightness as the comet approaches the sun and then decreases as it recedes.

Colin Humphreys has argued that the star of Bethlehem was a comet that “was visible in 5BC, and described in ancient Chinese records.”⁶ His explanation involves the occurrence of conjunctions. A conjunction of planets occurs when two or more planets, in their individual paths across earth’s sky, come into close proximity, sometimes (though very rarely) close enough that they almost seem to merge into a single bright object. His argument depends on several factors: (1)the magi’s ability to decipher the theological significance of repeated conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn in 7BC, a conjunction of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn in Pisces in 6 BC, and, finally, the appearance of a comet in the constellation Capricornus in 5BC; (2)their association of the constellation Pisces with Israel; and (3)their grasp of the supposed allusion of the prophet Daniel to the constellations Capricornus and Aries (Dan.8:5–21).

“Thoroughly natural” explanations like those of Martin, Molnar, and Humphreys often involve complicated movements of planets that may involve a conjunction of planets or the movement of a planet behind the sun or the moon (an occultation). Roger Sinnott described a close conjunction of Venus and Jupiter that occurred on the evening of June17, 2BC, in the constellation of Leo the Lion.⁷ Martin and Craig Chester have endorsed and expanded on this “great celestial dance,” correlating other lesser conjunctions, eclipses, full moons, and planetary retrograde loops with historical events.⁸

Michael Molnar believes that “the answers to our questions about the Star of Bethlehem lie in the philosophical and religious practices of the people who interpreted celestial events as portents.”⁹ The conclusion from his extensive research is that April17, 6BC was the date of the birth of Christ. He writes, “Any horoscope drawn for April17, 6BC, [must have been] regal because the Sun, the Moon, Jupiter, and Saturn are in the sign of Aries, conditions which perfectly and simultaneously fulfill the major regal principles [of Greek astrology]! And amazingly, Jupiter, the Magi’s star, was heliacally rising in the east and in a close conjunction (occultation) with the Moon, which gave even more regal significance to that day.”¹⁰

WHAT CHRISTIAN COMMENTARIES HAVE TO SAY

Christian commentators generally come to one of three conclusions regarding the star of Bethlehem: (1)a few ignore the question of the nature and behavior of the star altogether ; (2)some accept a naturalistic explanation; and (3)some say the explanation is supernatural and miraculous but leave it at that.

The handful of commentators who make no attempt whatsoever to explain the star or to offer an opinion about it believe that it is unnecessary to identify the actual star, confess a lack of interest in the question, or declare their belief that it does not matter. Choosing not to dwell on these questions, Charles Spurgeon, for example, declared that they “are not of much importance to us.”¹¹

Some commentators, while accepting all the other miraculous aspects of the birth of Christ, prefer a more natural and “scientific” explanation of the star, such as: “The testimony of the Scriptures…is supported by the testimony of nature.”¹² Origen (third century AD) considered the star “to have been a new star, unlike any of the other well-known planetary bodies, either those in the firmament above or those among the lower orbs, but partaking of the nature of those celestial bodies which appear at times, such as comets, or…meteors.”¹³ Spurgeon pronounced the star “an unusual luminary”¹⁴ and offered the explanation that it “was probably a meteor, or moving light, which having shone long enough in the western heavens to guide them to Judea, then ceased to be visible; but shone forth again as they quitted Jerusalem.”¹⁵

Joseph Addison Alexander wrote of the planetary conjunction hypothesis, “This astronomical solution is…from its scientific character and from the high authority on which it rests, more satisfactory than the assumption of a transient meteor, a comet, or a purely miraculous appearance, which would here be less impressive than a natural phenomenon, coincident with such a juncture in the moral world, and showing both to be under the same infinitely powerful and wise control.”¹⁶

Donald Hagner agreed that the star “may well be…a ‘natural’ astronomical phenomenon”;¹⁷ however, what he accepted as a natural occurrence at the beginning of the story (the appearance of the star) became for him only “myth” later (the reappearance of the star): “This verse [Matt.2:9] makes difficult the explanation of the star as a strictly ‘natural’ astronomical phenomenon…If the ‘natural’ explanation of the star is accepted nevertheless, then the present verse…must be understood either as a touch of romantic myth growing out of the historical kernel or else as referring to something actually experienced by the magi and interpreted in terms of the leitmotif of the star that first ‘led’ them from the east to Jerusalem.”¹⁸

A few other writers incorporate elements of both the natural and the miraculous in their comments, but in the end offer no real explanation: “a remarkable astrological phenomenon”;¹⁹ “this unusual stellar manifestation”;²⁰ “a new phenomenon in the sky”;²¹ “I am inclined to think that Matthew is depicting a miraculous star, a ‘Wunderstern,’ that took on a natural star’s form.”²² The opinion of Ignatius (second century AD) was that “a star shone forth in heaven above all the other stars, the light of which was inexpressible, while its novelty struck men with astonishment. And all the rest of the stars, with the sun and moon, formed a chorus to this star, and its light was exceedingly great above them all. And there was agitation felt as to whence this new spectacle came, so unlike everything else [in the heavens].”²³ Calvin believed that “it was not a natural star, but extra-ordinary, for it was not of the order of nature…None of this accords with natural stars. It is more probable that it was like a comet, seen in the atmosphere rather than in the heaven.”²⁴

Most Christian commentators clearly support a supernatural approach, and most of those writers are content to declare the event “miraculous” without further comment: “it was a miracle”;²⁵ “a special sign, a miraculous star”;²⁶ “an unusual star…supernatural rather than natural”;²⁷ “a miracle…a special light in the sky”;²⁸ “the strange star…a supernatural phenomena [sic].”²⁹

Charles Eerdman declared the star to be “some sign in the heaven…It seems probable that the guidance was supernatural. Something like a star in appearance, but near the earth, may have been granted to lead those travelers to their sacred goal.”³⁰ R.C.H. Lenski wrote, “It ought to be plain that this was not a star such as others that our astronomers observe and study…what these magi saw was a startling phenomenon…a miraculous phenomenon.”³¹ Reflecting on Matthew2:9 and the reappearance of the star, Craig Blomberg concluded, “But regardless of how much the star had traveled, its motion here seems to require a supernatural event. Various attempts to link the star with different astronomical phenomena, especially for purposes of dating…prove interesting but are probably irrelevant.”³²

The opinion of John Broadus was this: “Taking Matthew’s language according to its obvious import, we have to set aside the above [natural] explanations, and to regard the appearance as miraculous; conjecture as to its nature will then be to no profit. The supernatural is easily admitted here, since there were so many miracles connected with the Savior’s birth.”³³

David Hill and Ed Glasscock cautioned their readers against any attempt at all at natural explanation. Hill declared, “The patently miraculous character of the star in the narrative makes it gratuitous to seek a material explanation of it from astronomical science.”³⁴ Glasscock stated, “Attempts to associate this star with certain conjunctions of the planets or other natural astronomical phenomena are unnecessary and unprofitable. There is no need to try to justify Matthew’s account with human reasoning because none of the explanations could offer more credibility to the account.… In reality, any attempt to explain the event by natural phenomena becomes derogatory rather than honoring to God.”³⁵

Spurgeon came closest to a supernatural explanation based on additional biblical evidence: “It must have been a star occupying quite another sphere from that in which the planets revolve. We believe it to have been a luminous appearance in mid-air; probably akin to that which led the children of Israel through the wilderness, which was a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.”³⁶ John MacArthur and James Montgomery Boice agreed. The star was “surely the glory of God, blazing as if it were an extremely bright star—visible only to the eyes for whom it was intended to be seen,”³⁷ “a miraculous phenomenon, possibly an appearance of the Shekinah glory.”³⁸

WHAT THE BIBLE SUGGESTS: LIGHT FROM HEAVEN

Let me now offer a different hypothesis of the star as a supernatural event. I propose that it was a source of light in the sky (as are naturally occurring astronomical objects), but that this was a different kind of source, emitting a different kind of light.

My fundamental premise is this: the star was an opening in the supernatural, other-dimensional boundary that separates heaven and earth; it was a tear in the fabric of heaven. God made an opening so that the light of heaven shone on the earth. This was, I believe, the star of Bethlehem, and it was a heavenly light that guided the magi.

This proposal of an opening of heaven is consistent with other biblical accounts. When Jesus was baptized, heaven was opened (Matt.3:16; Mark1:10; Luke3:21). When Saul met the Lord Jesus on the road to Damascus, “suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him” (Acts9:3). On special occasions, then, God has opened heaven and sent light from heaven to earth.

This special opening in the earth/heaven boundary would have appeared in the sky either to the west or to the east of the initial location of the magi. Since this source of light was not connected in any natural way to the celestial sphere (along with the sun, moon, stars, planets, and comets), it could remain stationary with respect to the earth. All the naturally occurring astronomical objects rise in the east and set in the west from day to day, and they drift on the celestial sphere over longer periods of time. The star of Bethlehem, however, stayed just above the western horizon, beckoning the magi to Jerusalem, or behind them, on the eastern horizon, throughout their journey. In either case, they saw this star in a fixed location in the sky: there it appeared and there it stood.

This opening in heaven (God’s abode) would not have been visible to other earthly observers (Herod had not seen it). The opening would have been near the wise men,³⁹ low in the sky, emitting the light from heaven, not in all directions as a natural star does, but in a well-defined, narrow beam, much like today’s lasers.

Exactly how this light provided guidance depends on where one locates the star and the magi. Some place the magi in the east and the star in the west.⁴⁰ “The magi, and not the star, were in the east and followed the star in the western sky.”⁴¹ In this view, the heavenly opening is in front of the wise men. They observe this unusual phenomenon,⁴² that is, light from a “star” that remains stationary in the west, and follow it to Jerusalem, much as they followed this same “star” as it “went on before them” to Bethlehem in the south.

Some place the magi in the east and the star in the east (“We have seen His star in the east”).⁴³ If this was the case, then the light from heaven, shining from behind the magi, would have served as a source of illumination on their path westward.⁴⁴ Consequently, this opening in heaven’s fabric is in a fixed location in the eastern sky, and the light is shining on or in front of the magi much as it did on Paul when the light flashed “around him.“

Isaiah prophesied, “The people who walk in darkness will see a great light; those who live in a dark land, the light will shine on them” (Isa.9:2), as he foresaw the birth of the Prince of Peace (9:6). Matthew saw the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy in Jesus’ coming and preaching in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali (see Isa.9:1–2; Matt.4:12–17). Jesus is the Light to the Gentiles; in Him is the prophecy fulfilled. I think Isaiah’s words may also invite a literal reading of light shining on some future God-seekers: they lived “in a [spiritually] dark land” and saw “a great [heavenly] light,” which shone “on them,” and it guided them to the “child [who would] be born.” The illumination was sufficient for them to travel at night or during the day,⁴⁵ and it brought the wise travelers finally to the western limit of their journey: Jerusalem. At that time, according to this scenario, the opening in heaven was closed; the star disappeared.

God waited as the wise men met with Herod and received further directions to turn southward toward Bethlehem. The directions were accurate and true to Scripture, but God was not going to leave the magi without His supernatural guidance and confirmation. As the wise men turned toward the south to continue their search for the King of the Jews, “Lo, the star, which they had seen in the east, went on before them” (Matt.2:9). The source of heavenly illumination opened to their south, over Bethlehem, and the light from heaven beckoned the magi to their final destination.

The wise men followed the star as it moved before them “until it came and stood over where the Child was” (Matt.2:9). Whether by positioning the heavenly opening over the house (and in the line of sight of the magi) or by illuminating the house itself with light from heaven, God guided the wise men to their final destination. They did what they came to do and departed. The opening(s) in the heavenly fabric did what it was meant to do, then closed.

HOW THIS NEW APPROACH HELPS US

The star of Bethlehem was, I believe, a supernatural event, and its nature and behavior can be explained reasonably using a consistently biblical approach. John Chrysostom (fourth century AD) was right:

For if ye can learn what the star was, and of what kind, and whether it were one of the common stars, or new and unlike the rest, and whether it was a star by nature or a star in appearance only, we shall easily know the other things also. Whence then will these points be manifest? From the very things that are written. Thus, that this star was not of the common sort, or rather not a star at all, as it seems at least to me, but some invisible power transformed into this appearance, is in the first place evident from its very course. For there is not, there is not any star that moves by this way…[it was] some power highly endued with reason.⁴⁶

In the end, by adopting this “light-from-heaven” approach, I have not denied the importance and reliability of good science; we have simply said that astronomy (or astrology) is not a necessary factor in the interpretation of Matthew2:1–11. Of course, I can offer no tangible evidence that this hypothesis is absolutely correct. This was a unique, miraculous event; God employed unique, miraculous means to bring it about; and Scripture is a necessary and sufficient source of understanding of the means. Preachers and teachers of God’s Word can take heart in knowing that they now can offer a biblically based, fully consistent description of the nature and behavior of the star of Bethlehem without feeling inadequate in astronomical matters or, in fact, relying on them at all.

notes

1. All Scripture quotations are from the New American Standard Bible.

2. Michael R. Molnar, The Star of Bethlehem: The Legacy of the Magi (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1999),87. Molnar offers an explanation of the star that integrates ancient coinage, ancient astrological techniques, and modern astronomy, depending mainly on astrology. Magi may have been ancient astronomers who relied on astrology and horoscopes to seek guidance, but God would have had no use for or need of astrology. These magi may indeed have been experts in the stars, but they were “wise men” because they followed the supernatural guidance of the Creator of the stars.

3. Defenders of a natural approach suggest that the star had simply moved from an easterly location to one further south. The two astronomical phenomena that come closest to this behavior are the movements of a comet, which can place it in different parts of the sky, and the retrograde (backward) motion of a planet against the background of stationary stars, which requires the planet to stop before it begins to move retrograde.

4. Matthew’s use of the word “lo” in his record (idou in the Greek) is important to my understanding of the nature and behavior of the star. Unfortunately, the New American Standard Updated version omits from v. 9 this expression of astonishment. This amazement is clearly seen in v. 10: “And when they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy.”

5. Ernest L. Martin, New Star over Bethlehem (Pasadena, CA: FBR Publications, 1980),1.

6. Colin Humphreys, “The Star of Bethlehem,” Science and Christian Belief 5 (October 1995):83–101.

7. Roger W. Sinnott, “Thoughts on the Star of Bethlehem,” Sky and Telescope (December 1968):384–86.

8. Craig Chester, “The Star of Bethlehem,” Imprimis 25, 12 (December1996): 1–6. See also www.askelm.com (Associates for Scriptural Knowledge) for a good discussion of the conjunction hypothesis.

9. Molnar, 32.

10. Ibid., 101.

11. C. H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1950), 1:13.

12. W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Jr., The Gospel according to Saint Matthew, International Critical Commentary (New York: T. and T. Clark, 1988),233.

13. Origen, Origen against Celsus (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994),4:422.

14. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The King Has Come, ed. Larry Richards (Old Tappan, NJ: Revell, 1987),21.

15. Ibid., 23. We may not be exactly sure of Spurgeon’s thinking in suggesting the star of Bethlehem was “probably a meteor”; however, we do know today that meteors are pieces of solid interplanetary material that burn up while passing through the earth’s atmosphere. This “shooting star” or “falling star” leaves a luminous trail across the sky that lasts less than a few seconds, a time far too short to guide men on a journey of hundreds of miles.

16. Joseph Addison Alexander, The Gospel according to Matthew, Thornapple Commentaries (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1980),23.

17. Donald A. Hagner, Matthew 1–13, Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas: Word, 1993),27.

18. Ibid.,30.

19. R. V. G. Tasker, The Gospel according to St. Matthew, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1961),37.

20. Stanley D. Toussaint, Behold the King (Portland: Multnomah, 1980), 50.

21. John Phillips, Matthew (Neptune, NJ: Loizeaux Brothers, 1999),39.

22. Frederick Dale Bruner, Matthew: A Commentary, rev. and exp. ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004),59.

23. Ignatius, The Epistle of Ignatius to the Ephesians, Library of the Christian Church: Ante-Nicene Fathers (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994),57.

24. John Calvin, A Harmony of the Gospels Matthew, Mark and Luke (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972),83.

25. Herschel H. Hobbs, The Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1961),19.

26. Warren W. Wiersbe, Be Loyal (Wheaton, IL: Victor, 1980),18.

27. John F. Walvoord, Matthew: Thy Kingdom Come (Chicago: Moody, 1974),21–23.

28. Oliver B. Greene, The Gospel according to Matthew (Greenville, SC: The Gospel Hour, 1971),65.

29. Stuart K. Weber, Matthew, HolNTC (Nashville: Holman, 2000),20.

30. Charles R. Eerdman, The Gospel of Matthew (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1948),33.

31. R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Matthew’s Gospel (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1943),60.

32. Craig L. Blomberg, Matthew, New American Commentary Series (Nashville: Broadman, 1992),65.

33. John A. Broadus, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (Philadelphia: American Baptist, 1886), 17.

34. David Hill, The Gospel of Matthew, The New Century Bible Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972),83.

35. Ed Glasscock, Matthew, Moody Gospel Commentary (Chicago: Moody, 1997),51–52.

36. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Treasury of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1950),1:12.

37. John MacArthur, Jr., Matthew 1–7, The MacArthur New Testament Commentary (Chicago: Moody, 1985),29.

38. James Montgomery Boice, The Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001),30.

39. Calvin believed that the star was “in the atmosphere rather than in the heaven” (i.e., rather than in outer space, the realm of astronomical phenomena).

40. See, e.g., the New International Reader’s Version: “When we were in the east, we saw his star.”

41. Leander E. Keck, Senior New Testament Editor, The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. VIII (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995),142.

42. “Matthew is clearly describing a miraculous phenomenon directed behind the scenes by God.” New Interpreter’s Bible,142.

43. See, e.g., The Message: “We observed a star in the eastern sky.”

44. Bernard Ramm, in fact, used this “over the shoulder” argument, but he used it against the hypothesis that the star was a nova: “The theory that it was Nova Cassipeiae must be rejected, as this is a northern star and the wise men would have traveled to Palestine with the star at their backs!” (Bernard Ramm, The Christian View of Science and Scripture [Exeter, England: Paternoster, 1964],113.)

45. John Chrysostom thought that “it appears not in the night, but in mid-day” (John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of Saint Matthew, Library of the Christian Church: Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ed. Philip Schaff [Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994],10:37).

46. Ibid.

The Discovery Channel recently aired “The Lost Tomb of Jesus,” a documentary about ten ossuaries that archaeologists discovered at Talpiot in south Jerusalem, that, the documentary claims, originally contained the bones of Jesus, his mother, his “wife,” his “son,” and other relatives. The ossuaries were empty, since, shortly after their original discovery, the remains were reburied at a designated place in Greater Jerusalem.

The documentary, although skillfully filmed and interesting to view, reaches sensational conclusions that continue what seems to be a long-running media attack on the historical Jesus, which in popular parlance might be termed “More Junk on Jesus.” One might have thought that this had culminated in that book of falsehoods, The Da Vinci Code, but, no, the misinformation on Jesus continues, usually just in time for the church’s seasons of Advent (before Christmas) or Lent (before Easter).

The television audience has reacted to the program in various ways:

Unqualified Acceptance: “Scholars were involved, DNA evidence was used, statisticians gave the odds at 600-to-1 that this had to be Jesus’ family tomb, so it must be a slam-dunk: Jesus’ remains have been discovered, so I no longer believe.” Or, “I never did in the first place.” This is the response of the credulous and naïve, who accept anything in print or on film as factual truth.

Conditional Response, No Concern: “If those really are Jesus’ bones, would it affect my faith? Not my faith!” said Jesus Seminar co-founder John Dominic Crossan, to which most Christians might respond (were it not so judgmental): “Of course not. He has no faith.”

Tepid Response: “I don’t know. I’ll wait for further evidence. I really don’t know what the fuss is all about.” When there is an attempt to rip out the very heart of the Christian faith, such an attitude makes little sense, particularly for the Christian.

Conditional Response, Much Concern: “If those really are Jesus’ bones, it could destroy my faith.” This reaction is certainly grounded in logic, but the premise is without merit, as we shall see.

Hostile rejection: “This is blasphemy! The Bible says that Jesus rose from the dead, so how could He have left His bones behind?” This response may be fine for fellow Christians, but it leaves the rest of the world unimpressed.

None of the above, I think, is an optimal way for Christians to react to this latest furor (although I must confess to a good deal of sympathy for the last!). Instead, I propose a response based on reason and fostered by faith.

Reason. The obvious first step should be to examine—with cool dispassion—the evidence supplied by the producers of this docudrama. This is difficult, however, due to the extremely fragile nature of that evidence. (There is a much stronger case for discovering Jesus’ bones and for how that would affect the world in the scenario I conjure up in my novel A Skeleton in God’s Closet than there is in the gossamer chain of “proofs” uncovered at Talpiot. Don’t worry, though: the novel has a happy ending.) Nearly every interested archaeologist or historian in the world has found the conclusions of the Discovery Channel’s documentary absolutely unfounded. Here are the most important reasons they put forth:

(1) Nothing is new here: scholars have known about the ossuaries—and been unimpressed by them—ever since March of 1980, so this is old news recycled. The general public learned about the ossuaries in 1996, when the BBC filmed a documentary on them and the “findings” tanked again, although more recently, James Tabor’s book, The Jesus Dynasty, tried to revive interest. Filmmakers James Cameron (The Titanic, Terminator films) and Simcha Jacobovici (various documentaries relating to Judaism) have climbed aboard the sensationalist bandwagon as well, the latter coauthoring a newly published book, The Jesus Family Tomb, which is equally as groundless as The Jesus Dynasty.

(2) All of the names inscribed on the ossuaries—Yeshua (Joshua, Jesus) son of Joseph, Jose (Joseph), Maria (Mary), Mariamene e Mara, Matia, and Judah son of Jesus—are extremely common names for Jews of that time and place, and thus nearly all scholars consider that these names are merely coincidental, as they did from the start. Some even dispute that “Yeshua” is one of the names, suggesting “Hanan” instead. One out of four Jewish women at that time, for example, was named Mary. There were 21 Yeshuas (Jesuses) who were important enough for the first-century Jewish historian Josephus to record, with many thousands of others that never made history.

(3) The “wondrous” mathematical odds that these names must refer to Jesus and his family are simply numbers games hyped by Jacobovici. One must believe, to reach his conclusions, that every link in a long chain of hypotheses he presents is true, when in fact every link is weak enough to break the chain.

(4) There is no reason whatever to equate “Mariamene e Mara” with Mary Magdalene, as Jacobovici claims. Using a late, apocryphal, fifth-century romance like the Acts of Philip to try to demonstrate this link shows how far he has to reach. In fact, a better translation of “Mariamene e Mara” is “Mariamne (as it is usually spelled today) also called Mara.” Better yet, the latest evidence reports that there were two skeletal remains inside that ossuary, so the inscription is best translated, “Mariamne and Mara” or “Martha.”

(5) It also does not matter if Mariamene’s DNA is different from that of “Yeshua.” That particular “Mariamne” could have been the wife of that particular “Yeshua,” who was certainly not Jesus, or she could have been the wife or sister or daughter of any other male in that group! Although a magnet for attention, this use of DNA proved nothing whatever.

(6) There is also good reason not to equate “Maria” with Mary the mother of Jesus. Church tradition and the earliest Christian historian, Eusebius of Caesarea, are unanimous in reporting that Mary, the mother of Jesus, died in Ephesus, where the apostle John, faithful to Jesus’ commission from the cross, had accompanied her.

(7) Why in the world would the “Jesus Family” have a burial site in Jerusalem, of all places, the very city that crucified Jesus? Galilee was their home. They might have had such a family burial site in Galilee, but not Judea.

(8) The “Jesus Family” simply could not have afforded the large, ornate crypt uncovered at Talpiot. This is the burial site of a prominent, upper middle-class or wealthy family from Jerusalem, not a carpenter’s clan from Galilee.

(9) Nor, had the disciples stolen Jesus’ body for reburial there, would they have put his name on the ossuary. Their motive, obviously, would have been to hide the identity of Jesus’ body in view of its “claimed” resurrection.

(10) If this were Jesus’ family burial site, what is Matthew doing there—if indeed “Matia” is thus to be translated?

(11) Why is there no tradition whatever—Christian, Jewish, or secular—that any of the Holy Family were buried at a family plot in Jerusalem?

(12) Please note the extreme bias of the Canadian director and leading figure in this documentary, Simcha Jacobovici, who seems often to sensationalize in his films. You may have caught his television special, The Exodus Decoded, in which he “explained” just about everything that still needed proving or explaining in the Exodus account in the Old Testament! It finally bordered on the ludicrous, and now he’s doing it again, though in reverse: this time attacking the scriptural record. As for James Cameron, how do you follow the success of The Titanic? Well, with an even more “titanic” story. The television footage of Jacobovici and Cameron making their drastic statements in a press conference on February26,2007, prior to the airing of “The Lost Tomb of Jesus,” was disgusting, as was their subsequent claim that they “respected” Jesus. The dramatic recreations in the documentary, which favored their own hypotheses, the statements of experts taken out of context, the misquotations of some of those experts, and the selective editing are all a disservice to the truth. (Ted Koppel’s sober discussion following the docudrama was the finest part of the program, and a touch of objectivity on the part of the Discovery Channel.)

(13) Even Israeli archaeologists and authorities, who—were they anti-Christian—might have used this “discovery” to discredit Christianity, did not do so. In fact, they did quite the opposite. Joe Zias, for example, for years the director of the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem, holds Jacobovici’s claims up for scorn and his documentary as “nonsense.” Those involved in the project, he added, “have no credibility whatever.” Amos Kloner, the first archaeologist to examine the site, called the conclusions in question “completely impossible…nonsense.” He added, in a Jerusalem Post interview, “Three or four ossuaries have been discovered with the names, ‘Jesus, son of Joseph.’” David Mevorah, curator of the Israel Museum, calls the results “far-fetched.” William Dever, one of America’s prominent archaeologists, said, “This would be amusing if it didn’t mislead so many people.”

(14) Finally, and most importantly, there is no external literary or historical evidence whatsoever that Jesus’ family was interred together in a common burial place anywhere, let alone Jerusalem. All the surviving evidence, in fact, totally controverts this in the case of Jesus Christ.

Faith. The New Testament reports specifically that Jesus was buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea near Golgotha (not miles away in Talpiot), and that He did not remain there long. All four gospels; the Book of Acts; the letters of Paul, Peter, and other apostles; and the writings of the early church all testify that Jesus rose from the dead, and did not leave His bones behind in any tomb or ossuary, as the current sensationalists claim.

Only a fraction of a page needed to be devoted to “faith” here, since reason alone is sufficient to show that this documentary has constructed a house of cards over the Talpiot tomb. Its assumptions about the ossuaries turn out to be nothing less than naked hype, baseless sensationalism, and media fraud, “more junk on Jesus.”

—Paul L. Maier

SYNOPSIS

In the current scholarly debate, the answer to Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am?” has encountered a few stumbling blocks. For example, Jesus never used the term “God” when referring to Himself, none of the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, or Luke) ever explicitly gives the title “God” to Jesus, no sermon in the Book of Acts attributes the title “God” to Jesus, no existing Christian confession(s) of Jesus as “God” exist earlier than the late 50s and, although there are seventeen texts that are considered to be possible “Jesus-God” passages, only four of them appear in the approximately fifty Greek New Testament manuscripts that predate the fourth century. Also, and perhaps the biggest obstacle in ascribing the title “God” to Jesus, the existing New Testament manuscripts differ in all potential passages that explicitly call Jesus “God.” What is at stake, if these stumbling blocks are not removed, is that the traditional and essential Christian doctrine of the divinity of Christ is undermined.

“Who do you say that I am?”

As we turn to the Bible, we expect an explicit answer to Jesus’ question. Most New Testament scholars, at some point, have searched the New Testament for passages that explicitly refer to Jesus as “God.”¹ This may seem like a painless pursuit with plenty of “proof” passages, but several stumbling blocks quickly emerge from it.

First, Jesus never used the term “God” when referring to Himself. Mark10:18 and 15:34 even record that He differentiates Himself from God (the Father). He similarly differentiates Himself in other statements throughout the other gospels, such as Matthew19:17,27:46; Luke18:19; and John20:17.²

Second, none of the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, or Luke) ever explicitly gives the title “God” to Jesus.

Third, no sermon in the Book of Acts attributes the title “God” to Jesus.

Fourth, no existing Christian confession(s) of Jesus as “God” exist earlier than the late 50s. Romans 9:5 probably would be the first, but its punctuation and grammar is uncertain, which casts doubt on whether it qualifies as such a confession. In other words, the absence of systematic punctuation in the earliest transmission of New Testament manuscripts prevents us from definitively solving the grammar of this text.³

Fifth, although there are seventeen texts that are considered to be possible “Jesus-God” passages, only four of them appear in the approximately fifty Greek New Testament manuscripts that predate the fourth century. The importance of this period in Church history (especially regarding this topic) revolves around the raging Christological debates, leading some scholars to suspect that the Orthodox Church corrupted all or most of the manuscripts in order to make them agree with their own doctrine.

Finally—and arguably the biggest obstacle in ascribing the title “God” to Jesus—the existing New Testament manuscripts differ in all potential passages that explicitly call Jesus “God.” The authors of a recent book, Reinventing Jesus, emphasize this problem by noting, “If a particular verse does not teach the deity of Christ in some of the manuscripts, does this mean that that doctrine is suspect? It would only be suspect if all the verses that affirm Christ’s deity are textually suspect.”⁵ Regarding the explicit “Jesus-God” passages, however, that unfortunately is the case. The authors continue, “even then the variants [differences between the manuscripts] would have to be plausible.” This further reveals the importance of this topic.

What is at stake here is that this undermines the traditional and essential Christian doctrine of the divinity of Christ. All three branches of Christianity (Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Protestantism) confess Jesus as “God,” often pointing to the first ecumenical council that formalized this into a creedal confession concerning Jesus: “True God from true God” (Nicaea, AD325⁶).

This ascription of Jesus as “God” appears in some of our earliest writings outside the New Testament. “We must think about Christ as we think about God,” the author of 2 Clement opens his homily. “I bid you farewell always in our God Jesus Christ,” concludes early Christian author Ignatius in his letter to Polycarp. These writers seem to agree that the title “God” significantly contributes to our understanding of who Christ is.

Likewise, G.K. Chesterton, in Orthodoxy, explains, “Orthodox theology has specially insisted that Christ was not a being apart from God and man, like an elf, not yet a being half human and half not, like a centaur, but both things at once and both things thoroughly, very man and very God.”⁷

As Paul Barnett, respected classicist and ancient historian, rightly states, “It was Christology that gave birth to Christianity,” therefore, “Christianity is Christology.”⁸

Why is this issue important? Several scholars continually challenge the textual authenticity of these passages—leaving people in doubt whether the New Testament ever explicitly calls Jesus “God.” For example, professor and best-selling author Bart Ehrman, in at least three published books and one published lecture series, suggests that the original text does not necessarily teach the deity of Christ. He bases these allegations on alleged textual problems that he attributes to manipulative scribes (those who made copies of the manuscripts). He almost exclusively leans toward the manipulation of these early proto-orthodox scribes in the development of a high Christology in his book The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament.

In the face of these challenges, we too, however, can turn to the Scriptures and their transmission. Close examination will demonstrate that the New Testament actually does call Jesus “God.”⁹

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO TEXTUAL CRITICISM

We begin by considering the compilation of the Bible. After a group or person received an original gospel or letter (called an “autograph”), copies were made in order to make them accessible to a wider audience. The apostle Paul commands the Colossian church to distribute his letter to a wider audience in Colossians 4:16: “And after you have read this letter, have it read to the church of Laodicea; and see that you also read the letter from Laodicea.”

The loss of the original autographs over time is not surprising due to their constant usage and the materials on which they were written (typically the papyrus plant). Unfortunately for us, scribes lacked the “copy and paste” functions current technology offers. They wrote copies by hand, and such copies were inconsistent. Most of the inconsistencies happened by mistake, such as spelling errors or word-order differences, but some changes were intentional. How do we know what they did and why? How can we know for sure what the original autograph said?

Textual criticism is the study and comparison of surviving copies of lost documents in order to determine the exact wording of the original autograph. In this case, it is the study of the surviving copies of the New Testament.

A textual critic, then, is not one who has a “critical attitude” toward the Bible, but rather one who works in the field of determining originals. This task is important because we have none of the original New Testament autographs, and all the copies we do have differ from one another. As a result, we first must determine what the Bible says, before we can determine what the Bible means. It is for this reason that some textual critics now challenge the “Jesus-God” passages.

Though different methods exist for determining what the original said, most textual critics today include both internal and external evidence when deciding on the original text. In other words, they evaluate everything, including where it was geographically written, when it was written, how it was written (e.g., style, context, vocabulary), what type of scribal tendencies are detectable (e.g., faulty eyesight, misspellings, theological manipulations), and so forth. This may seem mechanical, but most scholars working in this discipline would say that it is both an art and a science.¹⁰

Let us now turn to the Scriptures. Each of the following is a potential “Jesus-God” passage that scholars hold in dispute.

John 1:1

Until 1996, when Bart Ehrman first published The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, New Testament scholars agreed unanimously in their textual certainty of the statement in John 1:1, “and the Word was God”¹¹ (a verse that appears in at least one manuscript prior to the second century). This scholarly agreement continues today¹² with the exception of Ehrman. In this case, John 1:1, he remains unpersuaded by the scholarly consensus because of his hesitancy to dismiss a single eighth-century manuscript—a manuscript that has an additional Greek article in front of “God.”¹³ This manuscript, then, gives him the “distinct impression” that the Orthodox Church changed the text in order to confirm the full deity of Christ.¹⁴

The Church allegedly changed this after declaring a bishop named Arius heretical for denying the full deity of Christ. The Orthodox Church, then, according to Ehrman, changed this text so that the implicit identification—Jesus as simply divine—would become an explicit one—God Himself.

One problem with Ehrman’s thesis is that Arius never had a problem calling Jesus “God.” In fact, he does so in a letter he wrote to Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia, in which he wrote, “He [the Son] subsisted before times and ages, full of grace and truth, God, only-begotten, unchangeable.”¹⁵ Ehrman’s orthodox-corruption theory, in this case, remains unjustifiable at its basic level.¹⁶

Further, the difference in this one eighth-century manuscript does not deny the deity of Jesus (with or without the additional Greek article). Most scholars interpret this phrase as, “the Word had the same nature as God.”¹⁷

“Regarding Jesus as merely ‘divine’ but not deity violates the context,” New Testament professor Craig Keener writes in his commentary on the Gospel of John, “identifying him with the Father does the same. For this reason…scholars from across the contemporary theological spectrum recognize that, although Father and Son are distinct in this text, they share deity in the same way.”¹⁸

Attempts to understand the theological motive(s) behind the variant in this one eighth-century manuscript do not change the fact that the text is certain and it explicitly ascribes the title “God” to Jesus: “and the Word was God.”

John 20:28

Next we consider John 20:28. As world-renowned New Testament scholar N. T. Wright believes, John 20:28 is the fullest confession of faith in the entire Gospel.¹⁹ “My Lord and my God,” cries Thomas upon touching the risen Christ. Even more intriguing is that this confession comes from the lips of “doubting Thomas.”

Now before we assess its textual pedigree, some have argued that Jesus merely allowed this statement in order not to “ruin the moment.” Jesus’ teachings and convictions (here and elsewhere), however, seem to contradict this option. For example, in Matthew 4:10 and Luke 4:8, He quotes Deuteronomy 6:13, “You are to worship the Lord your God and serve only Him.”

Does John 20:28 have an untrustworthy textual history? Once again, a single fifth-century manuscript has given Ehrman some textual reflux because it omits a Greek article before “God,” thus changing Thomas’s confession. Assuming Ehrman is correct, however, his argument is backwards. If the variant in this one manuscript maintained the original wording, then the verse has a Greek grammatical construction that requires the application of a rule scholars label Granville Sharp’s Rule. This grammatical rule requires us to understand both “Lord” and “God” in this verse as referring to Jesus. In other words, if Ehrman is correct in going with this one fifth-century manuscript, this verse is actually even more explicit. No matter which manuscript contains the original wording, John 20:28 thus explicitly refers to Jesus as “God.”

Titus 2:13

Titus 2:13 presumably reveals a conceptual unity between “God” and Jesus: “of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.”²⁰ Much of the debate over this verse congregates around the Greek grammatical construction mentioned earlier and the application of Granville Sharp’s Rule to it. Daniel Wallace in his forthcoming book Granville Sharp’s Canon and Its Kin, concisely explains:

By way of conclusion, we are reminded of A. T. Robertson’s words: “Sharp stands vindicated after all the dust has settled.” As I began this investigation, I assumed that perhaps he was too bold, too premature in his assessment. But the evidence has shown that Robertson was right on the mark, and that Sharp’s canon has been terribly neglected and abused in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In the least, it ought to be resurrected as a sound principle that has overwhelming validity in all of Greek literature—when properly understood. Consequently, in Titus 2:13 and 2 Pet 1:1 we should at least recognize that, on a grammatical level, a heavy burden of proof rests with the one who wishes to deny that “God and Savior” refers to one person, Jesus Christ. (emphases in original)²¹

This issue, however, should not entirely distract us as we look at the textual evidence behind the translation of Titus 2:13. With that aside, the prior question remains, “Is the textual pedigree certain?”²² The answer is absolutely, “Yes!”²³ This assessment still has its foes, but most grammarians, like Wallace, state that this text clearly indicates that one person is in view. (The only possible variant in it concerns the order of the last two words: “Jesus Christ” or “Christ Jesus.”) To my knowledge, not one jot or tittle ever has been penned against its textual certainty, making Titus 2:13 an explicit reference to Jesus as “God,” as it reads: “of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.”²⁴

Hebrews 1:8

Hebrews 1:8, “but to the Son [he declares], ‘Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, and a righteous scepter is the scepter of your kingdom.’” is another verse that possibly attributes “God” to Jesus. The main textual difference is whether the last word in Greek should read “his” or “your.”²⁵ The answer will help us determine whether it explicitly calls Jesus “God”:

Option 1 is a direct address, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, and a righteous scepter is the scepter of your kingdom.”

Option 2 makes God the subject, “God is your throne [or, Your throne is God] forever and ever, and a righteous scepter is the scepter of his [i.e. God’s] kingdom.”

Given the internal context, whereas both of these options are grammatically possible, only the first (i.e., direct address) is contextually plausible. It resonates with the central theme of the section and book, which is the exalted Christ. The portions of the quote within this verse that are not in dispute clearly match Psalm 45:6; of the portions that are in dispute, only those in option 1 match the Psalm.²⁶ The author of Hebrews and those of the rest of the New Testament, who stood in the exegetical tradition of the quoted Psalm, surely viewed such texts as Davidic prophecies that escalated, culminated, and thus were fulfilled in Christ. A clear distinction exists between the angels (subordinate, ephemeral, and servants) and Christ (superior, eternal, and deity), which disappears if the second option (i.e., God as subject) is chosen.

External evidence favors the pronoun “your” (in option 1) as having better textual credentials than the pronoun “his” (in option 2).²⁷ Ehrman nonetheless says, “It is interesting to observe that the same manuscripts that evidence corruption in Hebrews 1:8 do so in John 1:18 as well, one of the other [“Jesus-God”] passages.”²⁸ This brief statement is correct, but it leaves the reader with a blurred view of the manuscript evidence. Indeed, all the manuscripts Ehrman used in discussing this topic include other “Jesus-God” passages in them. Let’s look at four examples:

1. The fifth-century Western manuscript (D/05)

· Corrupted text according to Ehrman: John 1:1.

· Text that supports Ehrman’s reading: John 20:28.

2. The eighth-century Alexandrian manuscript (L/019)

· Corrupted text according to Ehrman: John 20:28.

· Text that supports Ehrman’s reading: John 1:1.

3. The fourth-century Alexandrian manuscript (A/01)

· Corrupted texts according to Ehrman: John 1:1; 1:18; 20:28.

· Texts that support Ehrman’s reading: Heb. 1:8; 2 Pet. 1:1.

4. The fourth/fifth-century Alexandrian manuscript (W/032)

· Corrupted texts according to Ehrman: John 1:1; John 20:28.

· Text that supports Ehrman’s reading: John 1:18.

In light of these four examples, which are only a small sampling, no groups would have received a distorted view of the deity of Christ if they received only their manuscript. All of the manuscripts listed above have at least one “Jesus-God” verse that affirms the full deity of Christ. It is not essential, then, that every potential “Jesus-God” passage in every manuscript affirm the same. This evidential conclusion causes another major problem in Ehrman’s overall orthodox-corruption thesis.

In the end, the best evidence in Hebrews 1:8 points to the true textual reading, “but to the Son [he declares], ‘Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, and a righteous scepter is the scepter of your kingdom.’” In other words, there is a high probability that Hebrews 1:8 is another explicit affirmation of Jesus as “God.”

2 Peter 1:1

Second Peter 1:1 is potentially the last New Testament verse for explicitly equating Jesus with “God.” Some manuscripts read “Lord” instead of “God” in verse 1:

“through the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ.”

“through the righteousness of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”

Those who accept “Lord” as the original reading attempt to justify their conclusion several different ways. First, the phrase “Lord and Savior” occurs much more frequently in 2 Peter (1:11; 2:20; 3:2; 3:18). Second, all New Testament references to righteousness refer to God, not to Christ (except perhaps Phil. 1:11). Third, “Lord” maintains the possible parallelism between 1:1 and 1:2, distinguishing God and Jesus. Fourth, a shift to “God” could have been a motivated orthodox corruption to make the text speak explicitly of Jesus as “God.” Fifth, the New Testament rarely attributes “God” to Jesus.

Those who accept “God” as the original reading reverse most of the critiques above while including a few additional ones. First, since “Lord and Savior” is the New Testament norm, a scribe could have changed it to harmonize with his familiarity of other biblical passages. Second, almost all references to righteousness in the New Testament do refer to God, so a scribe may have changed it to agree. Third, “Lord” maintains the alleged parallelism between 1:1 and 1:2 (even though this alleged parallelism would be extremely rare in the New Testament). Fourth, “God” is the harder reading as the opposing critiques correctly reveal (the harder reading is often preferred in the discipline of Textual Criticism, based on the observation that scribes had a tendency to simplify the text). Fifth, when an author desires to distinguish two people, he uses a different Greek construction (e.g., 2 Pet. 1:2). Sixth, the external evidence is much better and earlier (not to mention the complete agreement within all major published Greek texts).

It is highly probable, then, that “God” goes back to the original manuscript because it best accounts for all the evidence. If so, this verse explicitly attributes the title “God” to Jesus.

A REASONABLE INFERENCEFROM REVIEWED STATEMENTS

No one contests that the New Testament usually reserves the title “God” for the Father. This usage, however, though dominant, is not exclusive.²⁹ The question, therefore, is not whether Jesus is explicitly called “God” in the New Testament, but how many times He is thus identified and by whom.³⁰ This debate, then, does not jeopardize Orthodox Christology, since textual criticism demonstrates that Jesus is called God: the title “God” only makes explicit what other Christological titles such as “Lord” and “Son of God” imply. We therefore can have confidence amid these Christological challenges. As Murray Harris, prolific author and expert on the deity of Christ, concludes:

Even if the early Church had never applied the title [“God”] to Jesus, his deity would still be apparent in his being the object of human and angelic worship and of saving faith; the exerciser of exclusively divine functions such as creatorial agency, the forgiveness of sins, and the final judgment; the addressee in petitionary prayer; the possessor of all divine attributes; the bearer of numerous titles used of Yahweh in the Old Testament; and the co-author of divine blessing. Faith in the deity of Christ does not rest on the evidence or validity of a series of “proof-texts” in which Jesus may receive the title [“God”] but on the general testimony of the New Testament corroborated at the bar of personal experience.³¹

With at least one text that undoubtedly calls Jesus “God” in every respect (John 20:28), the question whether Jesus is ever called “God” in the New Testament is resolved.³²[1] This still will not silence the cries of all skeptics, but any other conclusion divorces itself from the textual evidence, internally and externally. In other words, the overwhelming testimony of available ancient manuscripts clearly attests that the claim “Jesus is God” is in fact a scriptural claim. Whether one chooses to believe in Him as such is another matter.

notes

1. I am discussing the origin of the title “God” and not the origin of understanding Jesus as divine. That understanding was early and expressed in various ways. See, among others, C.F.D. Moule, The Origin of Christology (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1977).

2. It may be true that Jesus never uses the term “God” for Himself, but none of these texts or interpretations are intended to portray a complete New Testament Christology.

3. For more information, see Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (New York: United Bible Societies, 2005), 459–62. Cf. Bart Ehrman’s comment, “Nor will I take into account variant modes of punctuation that prove christologically significant, as these cannot be traced back to the period of our concern, when most manuscripts were not punctuated,” Bart D. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 31; and Cuthbert Lattey, “The Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus in Romans ix. 5,” [ExpT 35 (1923–24)], 42–43. For the most recent critical discussion see Robert Jewett, Romans (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 555, 566–69.

4. The number fifty only represents Greek New Testament manuscripts and not any of the earlier manuscripts (e.g., Latin, Coptic, and Syriac) or the works of other Christian writers prior to the fourth century (e.g., Clement, Ignatius, and Irenaeus). For more information, see Ed Komoszewski, M. James Sawyer, and Daniel B. Wallace, Reinventing Jesus: What The Da Vinci Code and Other Novel Speculations Don’t Tell You (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2006), 116.

5. Ibid., 114.

6. F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 1151–52.

7. G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1995), 98.

8. Paul Barnett, The Birth of Christianity: The First Twenty Years (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 8 and 26.

9. For a recent argument for an early high Christology, see Larry W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003).

10. For more information see Bart D. Ehrman, Bruce M. Metzger, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, 4th ed. (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2005).

11. Unless otherwise noted, all Bible quotations are my own Greek translations.

12. To my knowledge no standard work lists any textual debates on this passage. Neither the United Bible Society 4 nor the Nestle Aland 27 list variants of any kind for John 1:1c. Only three other major published Greek texts even list it in their textual apparatus (Tischendorf, Merk, von Soden), with one-hundred percent scholarly unanimity as to its original form.

13. Another manuscript (W/032) exists that has the additional Greek article before “God,” but since neither Ehrman nor others have used it, to my knowledge, I will not dialogue with it here. For a more thorough textual examination regarding this passage, though, see Matthew P. Morgan, Egregious Regius: Sabellianism or Scribal Blunder in John 1:1c? (Grand Rapids: Kregel, forthcoming).

14. Ehrman, Orthodox Corruption, 179.

15. William Rusch, The Trinitarian Controversy (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), 29–30. For Greek text see Urkunden zur Geschichte des arianischen Streites, ed. H. G. Opitz (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1934). Cf. R. P. C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy, 318–381 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005), 6; Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 105–126.

16. As theologian Wayne Grudem states, “Arius taught that God the Son was at one point created by God the Father, and that before that time the Son did not exist, nor did the Holy Spirit, but the Father only. Thus, though the Son is a heavenly being who existed before the rest of creation and who is far greater than all the rest of creation, he is still not equal to the Father in all his attributes—he may even be said to be ‘like the Father’ or ‘similar to the Father’ in his nature, but he cannot be said to be ‘of the same nature’ as the Father.” Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 243.

17. For surveys of the grammar in this passage, see Wallace 1996: 256–70; Colwell 1933: 12–31; Köstenberger, John: 28–29; Mastin, “Theos in the Christology of John”: 32–51; Harris, Jesus as God: 51–71; Westcott 1975: 8–22; Harner 1973: 75–87.

18. Craig S. Keener, The Gospel of John: A Commentary (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2003), 372–74.

19. N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 664.

20. The wording “our great God and Savior,” which is applied to Jesus in this verse, was current among Greek-speaking Christians. See James H. Moulton, “Prolegomena,” vol. 1 of A Grammar of New Testament Greek (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1906), 84.

21. Daniel B. Wallace, Granville Sharp’s Canon and Its Kin (Bern: Peter Lang, forthcoming).

22. This seemingly backwards approach has not influenced my method or conviction that the text determines the grammar, not the reverse.

23. Cf. Moulton, 1:84; Robertson, 786; Wallace, 270–78, esp. 276; Moule, Idiom 109–10; Blass-Debrunner, §276; A. Brooks, Carlton L. Winbery, Syntax of New Testament Greek (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1979), 76. Further, the majority of critical commentators and exegetes agree with the grammarians.

24. For a grammatical (not textual) treatment against this view, see Gordon Fee, Pauline Christology: An Exegetical-Theological Study (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007). Cf. Wallace, Granville Sharp’s Canon and Its Kin.

25. Actually, two other variants in this verse exist that do not need further discussion here. The second one in no way affects our question of whether the author explicitly calls Jesus “God” and the first one, according to many textual critics (e.g., Bruce Metzger), would only slightly reduce the difficulty of the last variant if it were to read “of him.” See Bruce Metzger.

26. The phrase, “Your throne, O God,” from option 1, is taken directly from Psalm 45:6. The phrase “God is your throne” from option 2 of Heb. 1:8, however, is used nowhere else, to my knowledge. The expression, according to commentator T. K. Cheyne, is not “consistent with the religion of the psalmists.” See T. K. Cheyne, The Book of Psalms, or, The Praises of Israel (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, and Company, 1888), 127.

27. For more information, see G. K. Beale and D. A. Carson, eds. Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 938–39.

28. Ehrman, Orthodox Corruption, 265.

29. I should also note that an argument based on the New Testament’s usage or nonusage of the title “God” for Jesus is different from the claim that the New Testament authors were so embedded with Jewish monotheism that they could not have thought of Jesus as God. Such a claim assumes that the New Testament authors could not reconcile two truths or break away from their prior presuppositions. Even though they may use “contradictory” terminology, they believed in the divinity of Jesus, sometimes even in preexistent categories. Cf. Larry W. Hurtado, How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God? Historical Questions about Earliest Devotion to Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005).

30. A conceptual fallacy exists when any scholar rejects every possible text in support of a concept to show that the original author(s) did not support that concept. The answer to this question nevertheless inevitably will boil down to the presuppositions of each scholar. See, for example, Robert H. Stein, Jesus the Messiah: A Survey of the Life of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 17.

31. Murray J. Harris, “Titus 2:13 and the Deity of Christ,” in Pauline Studies, ed. Donald A. Hagner and Murray J. Harris (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980), 271.

32. Theologian A. W. Wainwright makes two additional points. First, he says that many critics have chosen a less natural translation of the Greek because they believe it was psychologically impossible for the writer to have said that Jesus was God. Second, he feels that the argument from inconsistency in usage must be used with care because we are not certain that the writer saw an inconsistency in only occasionally using a title (the rarity of usage to some extent is dependent on the rejection of most of the potential “Jesus-God” passages. By combining only a few of these instances with the others the usage thus is not so rare). His conclusion, therefore, is that just because “God” for Jesus seems rare in the New Testament it should not always be considered improbable. See A. W. Wainwright, “The Confession ‘Jesus as God’ in the New Testament,” Scottish Journal of Theology 10 (1957): 274–99 esp. 277.

SYNOPSIS

Various cults claim that the Council of Nicaea (AD 325) inaugurated belief in Christ’s deity. The Da Vinci Code, a fictional work on the New York Times “Best Sellers” list, has recently popularized this view. The New Testament, however, explicitly uses the Greek term theos (“God”) in reference to Jesus Christ. Further, there was a consistent application of theos to Jesus Christ throughout the second century. Authors such as Ignatius, Justin Martyr, Melito, Athenagoras, and Irenaeus all spoke of Christ as “God.” They were equally convinced of an indispensable monotheism inherited from Judaism and of the deity of Jesus Christ, the risen Lord. Even though these second-century writers did not clarify the person and nature of Christ as precisely as subsequent theologians, their works demonstrate that the Council of Nicaea did not originate the doctrine of His deity. The early church witnessed developments in terminology and explanatory nuances regarding this doctrine, but a definite continuity of theology and worship related to it flowed throughout the first four centuries as well.

Many readers unwittingly have accepted the background data found in the fictional bestseller The Da Vinci Code as historical truth. Halfway through the novel, one of the characters, Sir Leigh Teabing, a former British Royal Historian, discusses the fourth–century Council of Nicaea. He explains, “Until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet…a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless. A mortal.” Teabing continues, “Jesus’ establishment as ‘the Son of God’ was officially proposed and voted on by the Council of Nicaea….Because Constantine upgraded Jesus’ status almost four centuries after Jesus’ death, thousands of documents already existed chronicling His life as a mortal man”¹ (emphases in original).

Certain cults also claim that the deity of Jesus Christ was “created” by the Council of Nicaea in AD 325. For instance, Restoration Fellowship (Church of God) publishes a tract entitled “Who Is Jesus? Do the Creeds Tell Us the Truth about Him?” This work asserts that belief in the deity of Jesus Christ is not found in the Scriptures, but was only instituted by the Nicene Council in the fourth century, “well after the New Testament apostolic times.”² The Way International contends that pagan concepts entered Christianity at the Council of Nicaea and “if Jesus is God…we have not yet been redeemed.”³ A Christadelphian pamphlet entitled “Jesus: God the Son or Son of God?” makes a similar case.⁴

Despite such claims, various New Testament texts do use the Greek term theos (“God”) to refer to Jesus Christ. MurrayJ.Harris has written an important introduction to this topic, entitled Jesus as God: The New Testament Use of Theos in Reference to Jesus. He lists the more probable uses of theos in reference to Jesus as John1:1,18;20:28; Romans9:5; Titus2:13; Hebrews1:8; and 2Peter1:1.⁵ This explicit application of theos to Jesus Christ can be traced from the New Testament period into the second century without interruption. Ignatius, Justin Martyr, Melito, and Athenagoras frequently used the term theos of Jesus, as did the early biblical theologian, Irenaeus of Lyons.

IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH

Ignatius wrote seven epistles, or “letters,” on his way to martyrdom in Rome (probably between AD 110 and 117). Throughout his epistles, Ignatius repeatedly condemned the Docetists,6 who denied the reality of the human flesh of Jesus. Ignatius also stressed the true deity of the Son, however, and he referred to Jesus Christ as theos about a dozen times.⁷

His Epistle to the Ephesians contains the largest number of such references. For example, he reminds the Ephesian church that their sufferings came only by “the will of the Father, and Jesus Christ, our God.”⁸ In chapter 7, Ignatius clearly affirms that “Jesus Christ our Lord” is “God in the flesh” (Ephesians7.2). Ignatius later refers to “our Lord and God, Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God,” adding, “Whatever we do, then, let it be done as though He Himself were dwelling within us, we being as it were His temples and He within us as their God” (Ephesians15.3). Ignatius refers to Jesus’ deity in relation to the incarnation in two other passages: “For our God, Jesus the Christ, was according to the appointment of God, conceived in the womb by Mary, of the seed of David, but by the Holy Ghost” (Ephesians18.2), and “God Himself was manifested in human form for the renewal of eternal life” (Ephesians19.3).

Ignatius also addressed an epistle to the Roman church, calling them “beloved and enlightened by the will of Him that willeth all things which are according to the love of Jesus Christ our God.” Ignatius wishes the Romans an “abundance of happiness unblameably, in Jesus Christ our God.”⁹ He conveys to them his desire to imitate the “suffering of my God,” and he asserts, “our God, Jesus Christ, now that He is with the Father, is all the more revealed (in glory)” (Romans3.3;6.3).

Ignatius tells the church of Smyrna, “I glorify God, even Jesus Christ, who has given you such wisdom” and refers to “Christ our God” (Smyrnaeans1.1;10.1).¹⁰ He exhorts the Trallians, “Continue in intimate union with Jesus Christ, our God” (Trallians7). Ignatius also relates to Polycarp, “I pray for your happiness forever in our God, Jesus Christ” (Polycarp8).

JUSTIN MARTYR

Justin Martyr explicitly describes the Son as theos in both his First Apology and in his Dialogue with Trypho, a Jew (AD 150s and early 160s). In Dialogue, Justin designates Jesus Christ as “Lord and God” (129). The Son “as God” is “strong and to be worshipped” and is “deserving to be worshipped as God and as Christ.”¹¹ Dialogue71 asserts, “This very man who was crucified is proved to have been set forth expressly as God and man.” Christ should be recognized “as God coming forth from above, and man living among men” (64). Justin later tells Trypho, “If you had understood what has been written by the prophets, you would not have denied that He was God, Son of the only, unbegotten, unutterable God” (126). Jesus Christ is “Lord, and God the Son of God,” since the “prophetic word” calls Him “God” (128;60). Trypho readily recognizes Justin’s unmistakable application of theos to Christ (48;64;87;128).

Justin identifies the Son with the “Angel of the Lord” who appeared to Abraham in Genesis 18, and he specifically notes that this angel is called “God” in the biblical text (Dialogue56;58;126). According to Justin, it was also the Logos (“Word”) who spoke to Moses in the burning bush as the “Angel of the Lord,” saying: “I am that I am, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, and the God of your Fathers” (1Apology59;63;75). This biblical account serves as a reminder that “the Father of the universe has a Son; who also, being the first-begotten Word of God, is even God” (1Apology63). Dialogue61 states that “God begat before all creatures a Beginning, a certain rational power from Himself,” who is variously called, “the Glory of the Lord,” “Son,” “Wisdom,” “Angel,” “God,” “Lord,” “Captain,” and “Logos.”¹²

Justin repeatedly uses the Greek term Logos (“Word”) of the Son, so that his Christology has been labeled “Logos Christology.”¹³ Any attempt to systematize Justin’s Logos Christology is a difficult (and frustrating) task;¹⁴ nevertheless, a strand of pronounced Subordinationism¹⁵ seems to run through his Christology. A “Subordinationist” text in which Justin explicitly refers to the Son as “God” is found in Dialogue55–56: The Logos is “another God and Lord subject to the Maker of all things”…“above whom there is no other God.” Dialogue60 similarly uses theos for the Logos and in marked contrast with the “Father of all things” whom the Logos serves (cf.61;127). Justin asserts that the Logos is the “first power after God” (1Apology32), “numerically distinct” (Dialogue56;62;128;129), and to be worshiped “in second place” (1Apology13). The Second Apology relates, “For next to God, we worship and love the Word who is from the unbegotten and ineffable God, since also He became man for ourselves” (13.4).

According to historian J.N.D.Kelly, Justin’s “Word” remained immanent in God until being issued forth (“begotten”) before creation, or in the eternal mind of God until utterance.¹⁶ Dialogue125 states that Christ “yet nevertheless is God, in that He is the first-begotten of all creatures.”¹⁷ The Logos then stands as the intermediary between God (from whom the preexistent Logos issued forth) and the material realm (which the Logos created).¹⁸ Justin shared the philosophical presupposition commonly held by his contemporaries that “God is so totally transcendent to created reality he needs an intermediary, his Word, to act for him and to mediate between himself and creation.”¹⁹ All divine self-communication and self-revelation, therefore, comes through the ministering Logos. Justin was endeavoring to retain the eternal unity of the Godhead, the proper designation of the divine Son as “God,” and a sharp distinction between the Son and “God,” “the Father and ineffable Lord of all” (Dialogue126–28).²⁰ Justin’s philosophical tendencies led him to explanations that differed from the more precise formulations of later generations.²¹

MELITO OF SARDIS

One of the first sermons we have available outside the New Testament is On the Passover by Melito of Sardis, who flourished around AD 170. Melito proclaims that Jesus Christ is “by nature (Gk. phusis) God and man….This is Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen” (On the Passover8–10).²² And again, “the almighty God has made His dwelling through Christ Jesus” (On the Passover45).

Some statements in On the Passover4 and7 use theos of the Son but could be interpreted in an Adoptionist²³ manner: Christ was slain as a lamb “but resurrected as God”; “For indeed the law has become word,…and the Man God.” Furthermore, in On the Passover8–9, Melito says of Christ, “He rose from the dead as God, being by nature God and Man….inasmuch as He begets, Father; inasmuch as He is begotten, Son; inasmuch as He is buried, Man; inasmuch as He is raised, God.” Elsewhere, however, Melito makes clear that the deity of the Son did not begin only at the resurrection: “He who fastened the universe has been fastened to a tree; the Sovereign has been insulted; the God has been murdered” (On the Passover96).²⁴

Melito’s use of the term “Father” for Christ (On the Passover9) raises another issue. Campbell Bonner characterized Melito’s theology as naïve Modalism,²⁵ since “Christ is equated with God with no serious considerations of the implications.”²⁶ Melito does, however, plainly differentiate the Father from the Son at times. For example, the Son through whom the Father created the cosmos now sits at the Father’s right hand (On the Passover104–5).

Extant fragments of other sermons probably by Melito also label the Son as theos.²⁷ A later writer rhetorically could ask, “For who does not know the books of Irenaeus and Melito and the rest, which proclaim Christ as God and man?” (frag.8a). In summary, Melito has a “Christocentric monotheism,” as seen also in all of his doxologies, which are all addressed to Christ, and never to the Father (On the Passover10,45,65,105; frag.15; new frag.2.23).²⁸

ATHENAGORAS

Athenagoras’s Embassy for Christians (c. AD 178) is an example of the Son being called theos within the context of an emerging Trinitarianism in the second century, even though the work never uses the term Trinity.²⁹ According to Athenagoras, Christians “speak of God the Father, and of God the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” and “declare both their power in union and their distinction in order” (Embassy10). Christians also know “what is the oneness of the Son with the Father, what is the communion of the Father with the Son, what is the Spirit, what is the unity of these three: the Spirit, the Son, the Father, and their distinction in unity” (Embassy2). Christians acknowledge “one God, uncreated, eternal, invisible, impassible, incomprehensible, illimitable, who is apprehended by the understanding only and the reason…the Son being in the Father and the Father in the Son, in oneness and power of spirit” (Embassy10).

Like Justin, Athenagoras stresses that the universe was created by the Logos (who is the “first-begotten” of the Father) who issued forth from God. This Logos, or “reason,” was eternally in the Father, since God is rational by eternal nature (Embassy10).³⁰ In Embassy 6, Athenagoras repeatedly stresses the oneness of the Godhead, yet also describes the distinct roles of both the Logos and the Spirit. Athenagoras attempts to find a parallel in the Stoic philosophers who “multiply the Deity in name, yet in reality they consider God to be one” (6.4). Athenagoras concludes, “We say that there is God and the Son, his Word, and the Holy Spirit, united in power yet distinguished in rank as the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, since the Son is mind, reason (word), and wisdom of the Father and the Spirit an effluence like light from fire” (Embassy24).³¹ Winslow comments, “Here, we see intimations of Trinitarian thought, but as yet conceptually inchoate.”³²

IRENAEUS

The second century closed with Irenaeus, the first important biblical theologian. Not surprisingly, Irenaeus also used the term theos of the Son.³³ In Against Heresies4.6.7, he proclaims that Christ “received testimony from all that He was very man, and that He was very God.” Irenaeus exhorts his readers to acknowledge both Christ’s “divinity” and His “human nature,” so that they might overturn “all those notions of the heretics which were concocted afterwards” (5.14.4). Jesus’ name Emmanuel (which means “God with us”) signifies “His essence, that He is God,” since the description of Emmanuel is “proper to God” (3.16.2;3.21.4). Irenaeus interprets the titles “God over all, blessed for ever” (Rom.9:5), “Mighty God” (Isa.9:6), and “God” (Hab.3:3) as references to Jesus Christ (3.16.3;3.19.2;3.20.4). Christ is rightfully called God, Lord, eternal King, and Word incarnate in Scripture, revealing that He is not a mere man (since no other descendant of Adam is ever called God or named Lord) (3.19.2).

Irenaeus emphasizes that Jesus Christ must have been fully God in order to accomplish His salvific work effectively. The Lord Himself became very man, so that He might save humans (3.20.4). God came in the flesh so that people might know Him and have fellowship with Him (4.20.4–5). “God, then, was made man, and the Lord did Himself save us, giving us the token of the Virgin” (3.21.1). “Unless it had been God who had freely given salvation, we could never have possessed it securely.…For it was incumbent upon the Mediator between God and men, by His relationship to both, to bring both to friendship and concord, and present man to God, while He revealed God to man.…God recapitulated in Himself the ancient form of man, that He might kill sin, deprive death of its power, and vivify man” (3.18.7). Irenaeus wonders of the Ebionites,³⁴ “how can they be saved unless it was God who wrought out their salvation upon earth?” (4.33.4).

In his Proof of Apostolic Preaching, Irenaeus explains, “Therefore the Father is Lord, and the Son is Lord, and the Father is God and the Son is God; for He who is born of God is God. And thus God is shown to be one according to the essence of His being in power; but at the same time, as the administrator of the economy of our redemption, He is both Father and Son: since the Father of all is invisible and inaccessible to creatures, it is through the Son that those who are to approach God must have access to the Father” (47).³⁵ This text uses important phraseology in the development of Trinitarianism: “one according to the essence of His being and power.” The passage, however, also places the discussion within the context of Irenaeus’ characteristic interest in the economy of God’s redemptive plan and the role of the Son in revelation and salvation.

In fact, the Father, Son, and Spirit are especially united in the work of salvation: “The Spirit indeed working, and the Son ministering, while the Father was approving, and man’s salvation being accomplished” (Against Heresies4.20.6). “Wherefore, then, in all things, and through all things, there is one God, the Father, and one Word, and one Son, and one Spirit, and one salvation to all who believe in Him” (4.6.7). Believers “ascend through the Spirit to the Son, and through the Son to the Father” (5.36.2). The Spirit prepares individuals, the Son leads them, and the Father grants eternal life (4.20.5).

OTHER SECOND-CENTURY WRITINGS

An assortment of other second-century writers also attest to the label “God” being applied to Jesus Christ. Pliny’s correspondence with the emperor Trajan (c. AD 112) relates how local Christians assembled before sunrise to sing “a hymn to Christ, as to a god” (Letter10.96).³⁶ Taking into account Pliny’s pagan perspective, the passage provides secondhand evidence that Christians in the early second century were worshiping Christ as a divine figure in their hymnody.³⁷ In some of the extant manuscripts, Polycarp’s Philippians12.2 (c. AD 115) refers to “our Lord and God Jesus Christ.” A Syriac version of the Apology of Aristides (c. AD 125) states, “The Christians, then, trace the beginning of their religion from Jesus the Messiah; and he is named the Son of God Most High. And it is said that God came down from heaven, and from a Hebrew virgin assumed and clothed himself with flesh” (Apology2). Tatian’s Address to the Greeks21 affirms that Christians “announce that God was born in the form of a man.” The Epistle to Diognetus7 echoes, “As a king sends his son, who is also a king, so God sent Him (Jesus Christ). He sent Him as God.” So-called Second Clement, which some have labeled as “the oldest complete Christian sermon that has survived,”³⁸ exhorts, “Brethren, it is fitting that you should think of Jesus Christ as of God—as the Judge of the living and the dead.…for if we think little of Him, we shall also hope but to obtain little (from Him)” (2Clement1). The Christian material in the Sibylline Oracles, book6, proclaims, “O blessed tree, on which God was hung!”³⁹

CONTINUITY OF CHRISTOLOGY

These second-century works do not consistently use such theological terms as Trinity, person, essence,⁴⁰ substance,⁴¹ or nature,⁴² much less consubstantiality or hypostatic union;⁴³ nevertheless, the deity of Christ found a secure place in both the theology and worship of the early church. D.F.Wright notes the important role of early Christian worship of Christ as God: “From the outset, Father, Son, and Spirit were named together in baptism and in benediction. Christians at worship regularly expressed what theologians struggled to articulate satisfactorily.”⁴⁴ There is a constant strand of tradition that refers to Jesus Christ as theos all the way from the New Testament throughout the second century. Larry Hurtado concludes, “Only a certain wishful thinking continues to attribute the reverence of Jesus as divine decisively to the influence of pagan religion and the influx of Gentile converts, characterizing it as developing late and incrementally.”⁴⁵

Second-century authors often equated Jesus Christ with God without developing a full explanation or pursuing all the implications. Most of the second-century writers were “concerned with professing their beliefs, not with a philosophical discussion of them.”⁴⁶ Their “testimony to their faith in Jesus as God is straightforward proclamation, with little consideration given to how this might be.”⁴⁷ At times they even stated monotheism and the deity of the Son side-by-side without attempting a systematic harmonization.⁴⁸ They were bound, as it were, by two nonnegotiable theological presuppositions: the settled monotheism inherited from Judaism and the firm belief that the risen Christ is indeed the divine Lord. When they ventured to offer explanations, they found that their attempts were nuanced in various ways.

There is continuity nevertheless in the development between the New Testament and the later creeds of the councils.⁴⁹ The later creedal statements were already present in the second century in basic form: Jesus was fully human (against the Docetists), but He was also frequently referred to as theos. Whatever their explanatory shortcomings, these second-century authors clearly and explicitly affirmed that Jesus was theos, “God.” A third-century composition thus boldly could refer to a series of teachers from the second century, “in all of whose work Christ is spoken of as God.”⁵⁰

notes

1. Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code (New York: Doubleday, 2003), 233–34. See also Richard E. Rubenstein’s misleadingly titled When Jesus Became God: The Epic Fight over Christ’s Divinity in the Last Days of Rome (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999).

2. Anthony Buzzard, “Who Is Jesus? Do the Creeds Tell Us the Truth about Him?” Restoration Fellowship, http://www.mindspring.com/~anthonybuzzard/jesus.htm.

3. Victor Paul Wierwille, Jesus Christ Is Not God (New Knoxville, OH: American Christian Press, 1975),1–20.

4. The Christadelphian Magazine and Publishing Association Ltd., “Jesus: God the Son or Son of God?” Christadelphia World Wide, http://www.christadelphia.org/pamphlet/ jesus.htm.

5. MurrayJ.Harris, Jesus As God: The New Testament Use of Theos in Reference to Jesus (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1993),271–73. See also RobertL.Reymond’s Jesus, Divine Messiah: The New Testament Witness (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1990).

6. These were early sects who denied the true humanity of Christ and taught that His corporeal (physical) body was only an “appearance” or disguise.

7. See Edmund J. Fortman, The Triune God: A Historical Study of the Doctrine of the Trinity (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1972),39.

8. Ephesians inscription; see also Ephesians1. Except where otherwise noted, all quotations of Greek works in this article are from Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds.,The Ante-Nicene Fathers,vol.1, The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, rev. ed. (1867; repr., Grand Rapids:Eerdmans,2001).

9. Romans inscription.

10. There is a textual question concerning the latter.

11. Dialogue with Trypho56;63;68;76;126; 1Apology6.1–2;13.3. Justin observes that Hebrews1:8 applies theos to the Son.

12. Cf. Dialogue with Trypho34.2;59.1;126.1.

13. Cf. John 1:1–3, 14–17.

14. Donald F. Winslow, Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, ed. Everett Ferguson, 2nd ed. (New York: Garland, 1997), s.v. “Logos.”

15. This is a christological perspective that subordinates the Son to the Father. The term has been used of an estimation of the Son as either subject to the Father (especially in His redemptive role) or as essentially inferior to the Father. Theologians thus differentiate between a “functional subordination” in office or duty and an “ontological subordination” in nature or being.

16. J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (London: Black, 1958),97–101.

17. Cf. Dialogue 61.1; 62.4; 129.4. Justin applied the description of “Wisdom” in Proverbs 8 to Christ (Dialogue61;129).

18. Louis Bouyer, The Eternal Son (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 1978),309.

19. John Behr, The Way to Nicaea (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001), 103.

20. See Bernard Lonergan, The Way to Nicea: The Dialectical Development of Trinitarian Theology, trans. Conn O’Donovan (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976),41.

21. Irenaeus is thought to have criticized Justin’s views (without naming him directly) in Against Heresies4.20.5. See Behr, Way to Nicaea,104–5. Cf. L. W. Barnard, Justin Martyr (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 100; Richard A. Burridge and Graham Gould, Jesus Now and Then (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004),161–62.

22. The translations of Melito’s works come from Stuart G. Hall, ed., Melito of Sardis: On Pascha and Fragments (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979).

23. Adoptionism is the view that Jesus Christ was a mere human who was adopted as the Son of God, either at His baptism or after His resurrection.

24. Some might prefer to be more precise and say it was the “God-man” (Gk. theanthropos) who was murdered, being able to die in His humanity and not His deity.

25. This is the view that denies any permanent distinctions within the Godhead, believing that God has alternately revealed Himself through the temporary modes of Father, Son, and Spirit.

26. Campbell Bonner, The Homily on the Passion by Melito Bishop of Sardis and Some Fragments of the Apocryphal Ezekiel (London: Christophers, 1940), 27–28. See Hall, Melito of Sardis,xliii.

27. Fragment 15 Hall; new fragment 2.4 Hall. Other fragments of Melito also refer to Jesus Christ as “God” (frag. 6, 14), but Hall contests their authenticity (Melito of Sardis,xxviii–xxxix).

28. Hall, Melito of Sardis, xliii–xliv. See also Stuart G. Hall, “The Christology of Melito,” Studia Patristica 13 (1963):154–68.

29. Tertullian was the first writer to use the term Trinity (Latin trinitatis), around AD 212–13 (Against Praxeas3). Prior to this, Theophilus of Antioch had used the term triad (Gk. trias), around AD 180 (To Autolycus2.15). For examples of early tripartite formulas (outside the New Testament), see 1Clement46.6; 58.2; see also Ignatius, Ephesians9.1; Magnesians13.1.

30. Winslow speaks of Athenagoras’s “implicit subordination,” which is “even more deliberately stated in Justin Martyr” (Winslow, “Logos”).

31. Translation from William R. Schoedel, ed., Athenagoras: Legatio and De Resurrectione (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1972).

32. Winslow, “Logos.”

33. For a good overview, see Mary Ann Donovan, One Right Reading? A Guide to Irenaeus (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1997),79–92.

34. These were Jewish-Christian sects that lived according to the Jewish law and believed that Jesus was a nondivine prophet.

35. Quotations from Irenaeus’s Proof of the Apostolic Preaching are taken from Joseph P. Smith, trans., St. Irenaeus: Proof of the Apostolic Preaching (Westminster, MD: Newman Press,1952).

36. Naturally, the Latin text would not contain the definite article.

37. Most likely the Latin text reflects a pagan concept of a divine figure, considering the author and recipient.

38. Michael W. Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999),102.

39. See note 26.

40. Melito’s fragment 6 speaks of Christ as having two “essences” (Gk. ousiai), one human and one divine, but this fragment may not be authentic. See Hall’s arguments against its authenticity in Melito of Sardis,xxx–xxxi;xliii–xliv.

41. Irenaeus uses both “essence” and “substance” (Proof of Apostolic Preaching 47).

42. Melito’s On the Passover 8 employs the word “nature” (Gk. phusis).

43. This refers to the doctrine that the fully divine Son of God was united to a perfect human nature, resulting in the union of two natures (divine and human) in one person. A fragment of an exposition of 2Kings6 attributed to Irenaeus speaks of the Logos “being united with the flesh, by a union natural and hypostatic.” But the fragment’s authenticity is frequently doubted.

44. D. F. Wright, Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, ed. E.Ferguson, 2nd ed. (New York: Garland, 1997), s.v. “Trinity.” See Matt.28:19-20 and 2Cor.13:14. Cf. Roch A. Kereszty, Jesus Christ: Fundamentals of Christology, rev. ed. (New York: Alba House, 2002),189–90.

45. Larry Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003),650.

46. Brennan Hill, Jesus the Christ: Contemporary Perspectives (Mystic, CT: Twenty-Third Publications, 1991),211.

47. Ibid., 211–12.

48. Kelly, 145–46.

49. Donald J. Goergen, Jesus of Christian History (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1992), 51. Cf. Kereszty, Jesus Christ,222.

50. The Little Labyrinth, as found in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History5.28.

This article first appeared in the Christian Research Journal, volume30, number5 (2007). For further information or to subscribe to the Christian Research Journal go to: http://www.equip.org

SYNOPSIS

The historic picture of Jesus is under an intellectual onslaught from radical scholars, popular historians, television documentaries, feature films, bestselling authors, Internet bloggers, Muslim debaters, and atheist think tanks. They are capturing the public’s imagination with a radical new portrait of Jesus that bears scant resemblance to the picture historically embraced by the church; but how persuasive is this new image of Jesus?

Two of the most popular challenges to Christianity are decisively debunked once they are thoroughly investigated. First, some charge that the New Testament’s picture of Jesus cannot be trusted because the church has tampered with the text, but a balanced analysis of the evidence supports the conclusion that no essential doctrine of the church or belief about Jesus is jeopardized by any scribal errors or changes. Second, others tout the theory that Christianity is a “copycat” religion that stole its basic beliefs—including the resurrection—from earlier “mystery religions.” This argument quickly falls apart under scrutiny: knowledgeable scholars have documented that Jesus’ resurrection is a unique belief that has no connection to the mythological stories about dying and rising gods that were tied to vegetation cycles. The nearly universal consensus of experts, moreover, is that these mythological tales postdate Christianity.

Best-selling books and Web sites claim that Christianity derived its beliefs and practices from a mystery religion called Mithraism, but scholars have refuted this idea by showing that the parallels are inaccurate, are too vague to be meaningful, or involve reading Christian practices into Mithraic rituals that bear no resemblance to the rites of Christianity.

Please help me. I have just read Bart Ehrman’s book Misquoting Jesus….This book has devastated my faith….Is Ehrman correct?²

From the Internet to television documentaries, from college classrooms to popular books, Jesus is under fire from radical scholars, skeptical bloggers, Muslim debaters, and militant atheists. These challenges to the church’s historic picture of Jesus have intensified in the decade since my book The Case for Christ³ summarized the affirmative evidence for Jesus being the unique Son of God who authenticated His identity by returning from the dead.

It was time again for me to do research for my new book, The Case for the Real Jesus, and to interview leading experts about the most troubling claims skeptics were advancing. Among the most damaging charges are the assertion that the Bible’s portrait of Jesus can’t be trusted because the church tampered with the text, and the theory that Christianity merely stole its essential beliefs from earlier “mystery” religions.

IS THE NEW TESTAMENT TEXT RELIABLE?

The best-selling book Misquoting Jesus: The Story behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (HarperSanFrancisco, 2005) by Bart D. Ehrman, a Christian-turned-agnostic who casts doubt on the reliability of the New Testament text, is part of a wide-ranging attack on the traditional understanding of Jesus. Ehrman has alarmed the public by pointing out that the number of variants, or differences, between various handwritten New Testament manuscripts total between 200,000 and perhaps 400,000.⁴

“How does it help us to say that the Bible is the inerrant word of God if in fact we don’t have the words that God inerrantly inspired, but only the words copied by the scribes—sometimes correctly but sometimes (many times!) incorrectly?” Ehrman asked.⁵

Even more shockingly, Ehrman said that some scribes through the centuries intentionally tampered with the text for theological and other reasons. “In some instances,” he said, “the very meaning of the text is at stake, depending on how one resolves a textual problem.”⁶

Manuscripts and Variants

To get the other side of the story, I flew to Dallas to interview Daniel B. Wallace, professor of New Testament studies at Dallas Seminary and executive director of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts.

“On one level,” I observed, “it seems Ehrman has merely told a general audience about the kind of issues that textual critics have grappled with for centuries.”

“That’s right. He peeled back the curtain on scholarly work, and that revelation alarmed many Christians, who weren’t equipped to fully understand the issues,” said Wallace. “On another level, though, he tries to create strong doubt as to what the original text said, using more innuendo than substance. Readers end up having far more doubts about what the Bible says than any textual critic today would ever have. I think Ehrman has simply overstated his case.”

I asked Wallace about the quantity and quality of the New Testament manuscripts that scholars possess. The more copies they have, the easier it is to discern the contents of the originals that have long ago crumbled into dust.

“Quite simply, we have more witnesses to the text of the New Testament than to any other ancient Greek or Latin literature. It’s really an embarrassment of riches,” he said.

“We have more than 5,700 Greek copies of the New Testament. There are another 10,000 copies in Latin. Then there are versions in other languages—Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Georgian, and so on. These are estimated to number between 10,000 and 15,000. So right there we’ve got 25,000 to 30,000 handwritten copies of the New Testament.

“Now, if we were to destroy all of these manuscripts, would we be left without a witness?” he asked. “Not at all. The ancient church fathers quoted so often from the New Testament that it would be possible to reconstruct almost the entire New Testament from their writings alone.”

I asked Wallace about the dates of the manuscripts. “About ten percent of these manuscripts come from the first millennium,” he said. “Through the first three centuries, we have nearly fifty manuscripts in Greek alone.”

“So we have a really small gap, then, between the actual earliest papyrus and the New Testament documents,” I said.

“Right. There’s just no comparison to others,” he said. “For other great historians, there’s a three hundred-year gap before you get a sliver of a fragment, and then sometimes you have to wait another thousand years before you see something else.”

“What about the two hundred thousand to maybe four hundred thousand variants between New Testament manuscripts? Are they really significant—and do they jeopardize the traditional picture of Jesus?” I wondered.

“Somewhere between seventy to eighty percent of all textual variants are spelling differences that can’t even be translated into English and have zero impact on meaning,” Wallace explained.

“Then you’ve got nonsense errors, where a scribe was inattentive and makes a mistake that’s an obvious no-brainer to spot,” he added. “There are also variants involving synonyms. Does John 4:1 say, ‘When Jesus knew’ or ‘When the Lord knew’? We’re not sure which one goes back to the original, but both words are true. A lot of variants involve the Greek practice of using a definite article with a proper name, which we don’t do in English. For example, a manuscript might refer to ‘the Mary’ or ‘the Joseph,’ but the scribe might have simply written ‘Mary’ or ‘Joseph.’ Again, there’s no impact on meaning, but they’re all counted as variants.”

“On top of that, you’ve got variants that can’t even be translated into English. Greek is a highly inflected language. That means the order of words in Greek isn’t as important as it is in English. For example, there are 16 different ways in Greek to say, ‘Jesus loves Paul,’ and they would be translated into English the very same way. Still, it counts as a textual variant if there’s a difference in the order of words, even if the meaning is unaffected.”

“So if we have approximately 200,000 to 400,000 variants among the Greek manuscripts, I’m just shocked that there are so few!” he declared. “What would the potential number be? Tens of millions! Part of the reason we have so many variants is because we have so many manuscripts. And we’re glad we’ve got so many manuscripts—it helps us immensely in getting back to the original.”

I asked, “How many textual variants really make a difference?”

“Only about one percent of variants are both meaningful, which means they affect the meaning of the text to some degree, and viable, which means they have a decent chance of going back to the original text. But most of these are not very significant at all,” he said.

“Give me an example,” I replied.

“I’ll describe two of the most notorious issues. One involves Romans 5:1. Did Paul say, ‘We have peace’ or ‘let us have peace’? The difference amounts to one letter in the Greek. Scholars are split on this, but the big point is that neither variant is a contradiction of the teachings of Scripture.

“Another famous example is First John 1:4. The verse says either, ‘Thus we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete,’ or, ‘Thus we are writing these things so that your joy may be complete.’ There’s ancient testimony for both readings. So, yes, the meaning is affected, but no foundational beliefs are in jeopardy. Either way, the obvious meaning of the verse is that the writing of this letter brings joy.”

I noted that one point Ehrman emphasized is that some scribes intentionally altered the text.⁷ “Well, he’s absolutely correct,” Wallace said. “Sometimes scribes did intentionally change the text.”

“What’s the most common reason?” I asked.

“They wanted to make the text more explicit. Through the centuries, for example, the church started using sections of Scripture for daily readings. These are called lectionaries. About 2,200 of our Greek manuscripts are lectionaries, where they will set forth a year’s worth of daily or weekly scripture readings.

“Here’s what happened: in the Gospel of Mark, there are 89 verses in a row where the name of Jesus isn’t mentioned once. Just pronouns are used, with ‘he,’ referring to Jesus. Well, if you excerpt a passage for a daily lectionary reading, you can’t start with: ‘When he was going someplace….’ The reader wouldn’t know whom you were referring to. So it was logical for the scribe to replace ‘he’ with ‘Jesus’ in order to be more specific in the lectionary. But it’s counted as a variant every single time.

“Now, I don’t want to give the impression that the scribes didn’t ever change the text for theological reasons. They did, and almost always such changes were in the direction of making the New Testament look more orthodox. Probably the most common are harmonizations among the Gospels. The further we get from the original text, the more the copyists harmonized so as to rid the text of any apparent discrepancies. But such harmonizations are fairly easy to detect.”

I interrupted. “Exactly how many Christian doctrines are jeopardized by textual variants in the New Testament?” I asked.

“Ehrman didn’t prove that any doctrine is jeopardized,” he replied. “Let me repeat the basic thesis that has been argued since 1707: No cardinal or essential doctrine is altered by any textual variant that has plausibility of going back to the original. The evidence for that has not changed to this day.”

“What comes the closest?”

“Mark 9:29 could impact orthopraxy, which is right practice, but not orthodoxy, which is right belief. Here Jesus says you can’t cast out a certain kind of demon except by prayer—and some manuscripts add, ‘and fasting.’ So if ‘and fasting’ is part of what Jesus said, then here’s a textual variant that affects orthopraxy. But…does my salvation depend on that?”

I then asked, “Are there any ways in which our understanding of Jesus is significantly altered by textual variants?” Ehrman contends that in Mark 1:41, the Gospel incorrectly says Jesus was “moved with compassion” when He healed a leper; actually, said Ehrman, the original text said that Jesus became angry.⁸

“I think Ehrman is probably correct about the text,” Wallace said.

“Although he doesn’t come out and say it, Ehrman seems to make an implicit argument that if Jesus was angry, He can’t be God, because God is love,” I observed.

That triggered a strong response from Wallace. “Wait a minute—there were only two groups in the ancient world—the Stoics and the one branch of the Pharisees—who felt that anger was always wrong. Everybody else felt that righteous indignation had a place in life—and Jesus was one of them.”

“Do you think this change in Mark 1:41 alters our picture of Jesus?”

“It changes how we interpret this one particular verse,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean we suddenly have a different Jesus.”

“Why not?”

“Later in the same Gospel, Mark 3:5 says Jesus responded in anger because He was distressed at the stubborn hearts of the religious leaders who were looking for an excuse to accuse Him. In Mark 10:13–16, He gets indignant toward His disciples because they were blocking people from bringing their little children to be blessed by Him. Did Jesus express anger and indignation at times? Yes, we’ve already known that, but this was certainly appropriate on His part.”

“But why,” I asked, “would He have been angry when He healed the leper?”

“We can hypothesize several reasons. Ehrman summarily dismisses some possibilities out of hand—for instance, that Jesus was angry at the state of the world that’s full of disease, or that He loves the sick but hates the sickness. But the text is ambiguous, so we don’t really know. What we do know is that Ehrman fails to back up his claim that Jesus gets angry when anyone questions His authority, ability, or desire to heal. That’s simply unsupported unless you twist the text.”

Wallace was right: Ehrman has simply overstated his case. We can have confidence that none of the inadvertent—or intentional—changes in the text by scribes through the centuries jeopardizes any essential doctrine or teaching about Jesus.

IS THE NEW TESTAMENT JESUS HISTORIC?

A second widely circulated challenge stems from a wave of recent books claiming that Christianity’s key tenets about Jesus—especially His resurrection—are not historical, but rather were plagiarized from earlier “mystery” religions that flourished in the Mediterranean world.

“Each mystery religion taught its own version of the myth of the dying and resurrecting Godman, who was known by different names in different places,” said Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy in their book The Laughing Jesus: Religious Lies and Gnostic Wisdom. “In Egypt, where the mysteries began, he was Osiris. In Greece he becomes Dionysus, in Asia Minor he is known as Attis, in Syria he is Adonis, in Persia he is Mithras, in Alexandria he is Serapis, to name a few.”⁹

At first blush, the parallels appear striking. For instance, writers have said that the pre-Christian god Mithras was born of a virgin in a cave on December 25, was considered a great traveling teacher, had twelve disciples, promised his followers immortality, sacrificed himself for world peace, was buried in a tomb and rose again three days later, instituted a Eucharist or “Lord’s Supper,” and was considered the Logos, redeemer, Messiah, and “the way, the truth, and the life.”¹⁰

Ancient Myths and Historical Facts

But are these charges accurate? To get answers, I arranged to interview Michael Licona, coauthor of the award-winning book The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus.

“Why,” I asked, “should the story of Jesus’ resurrection have any more credibility than pagan stories of dying and rising gods—such as Osiris, Adonis, Attis, and Marduk—that are so obviously mythological?”

“First of all, it’s important to understand that these claims don’t in any way negate the good historical evidence we have for Jesus’ resurrection,” he pointed out.

“Second, T. N. D. Mettinger—a senior Swedish scholar, professor at Lund University, and member of the Royal Academy of Letters, History, and Antiquities of Stockholm, who wrote an academic treatment of dying and rising gods in antiquity—admits in his book The Riddle of Resurrection, that the nearly universal consensus among modern scholars is that there were no dying and rising gods that preceded Christianity. They all post-dated the first century.”

That timing is absolutely crucial: Christianity couldn’t have borrowed the idea of the resurrection if myths about dying and rising gods weren’t even circulating when Christianity was birthed in the first century AD.

“Then Mettinger said he was going to take exception to that nearly universal scholarly conviction,” Licona continued. “He takes a decidedly minority position and claims that there are at least three and possibly as many as five dying and rising gods that predate Christianity. But the key question is this: are there any actual parallels between these myths and Jesus’ resurrection?”

“What did Mettinger conclude?” I asked.

“In the end, after combing through all of these accounts and critically analyzing them, Mettinger adds that none of these serve as parallels to Jesus. None of them,” Licona emphasized.

“They are far different from the reports of Jesus rising from the dead. They occurred in the unspecified and distant past and were usually related to the seasonal life-and-death cycle of vegetation. In contrast, Jesus’ resurrection isn’t repeated, isn’t related to changes in the seasons, and was sincerely believed to be an actual event by those who lived in the same generation of the historical Jesus. In addition, Mettinger concludes that ‘there is no evidence for the death of the dying and rising gods as vicarious suffering for sins.’”¹¹

I later obtained Mettinger’s book. Sure enough, he caps his study with this statement: “There is, as far as I am aware, no prima facie evidence that the death and resurrection of Jesus is a mythological construct, drawing on the myths and rites of the dying and rising gods of the surrounding world.”¹²

In short, this leading scholar’s analysis is a sharp rebuke to popular-level authors who make grand claims about the pagan origins of Jesus’ return from the dead. Ultimately, Mettinger affirmed, “the death and resurrection of Jesus retains its unique character in the history of religions.”¹³

Mettinger’s assessment was extremely significant, but I wanted to dig deeper. “Do I understand correctly that these ancient myths were used to try to explain why things died in the fall and came back in the spring?” I asked.

“Yes, things like that,” Licona replied. “When I was a kid, I asked my mom, ‘What’s thunder?’ She said, ‘It’s angels bowling in heaven.’ Obviously, that’s just a story. Similarly, in ancient Canaan, a kid would ask his mom, ‘Why does the rain stop in the summer?’ And his mom would tell him the story of Baal.”

“Is this one of the myths that Mettinger thinks predates Christianity?” I asked.

“That’s right. In one of the more popular stories, Baal is the storm god in heaven. He’s responsible for the rain. His nemesis is Mot, who’s in the netherworld. One day Mot and Baal are trash-talking each other. Mot says, ‘You think you’re so tough, Baal? You leave behind your clouds and lightning bolts and wind and rain and come on down here—I’ll show you.’ So Baal leaves everything behind and goes to the underworld—where Mot swallows him. How do we know this? It stopped raining!”

“Later, Baal’s mother goes down and tells Mot, ‘Let my son go!’ Mot says, ‘No!’ So she brutalizes him until he finally says, ‘Okay, mercy! Go away and I’ll let him go!’ She leaves the netherworld and a couple of months later, Baal’s dad says, ‘Our son’s alive.’ How does he know? It’s raining again!”

“This is like my mom trying to explain thunder to me as a child. They talked about this every year: Baal died and Baal came back. Nobody ever saw it. There were no eyewitnesses. It supposedly occurred in the gray, distant, undated past. It was a fable to explain why there’s no rain in the summer—and nothing more. Now, does that sound anything like the resurrection of Jesus? Absolutely not! It’s totally different. Jesus’ resurrection is supported by strong historical data that is by far best explained by Him returning from the dead.”

“How about the other fables that are commonly mentioned?” I asked.

“Attis? This myth is older than Christianity, but the first report we have of a resurrection of Attis comes long after the first century. Adonis is more than a hundred years after Jesus. There’s no clear account in antiquity of Marduk even dying—and so a resurrection is even less clear. Some scholars say Tammuz is an account of a dying and rising god—but that’s disputed and, besides, it’s not a good parallel since there are no reports of an appearance or an empty tomb and this myth was tied to the changing of the seasons.”

“What about Osiris?”

“The most popular account says Osiris’s brother killed him, chopped him into fourteen pieces, and scattered them around the world. Well, the goddess Isis feels compassion for Osiris, so she looks for his body parts to give him a proper burial. She only finds thirteen of them, puts them back together, and Osiris is buried. But he doesn’t come back to this world; he’s given the status of god of the netherworld—a gloomy, shadowy place of semiconsciousness. As a friend of mine says, ‘This isn’t a resurrection, it’s a zombification!’ This is no parallel to Jesus’ resurrection, for which there is strong historical support.”

I later interviewed Edwin M. Yamauchi, now-retired ancient history professor at Miami University of Ohio and an expert on Mithraism, the “mystery” religion that some charge was the source of many Christian beliefs about Jesus.

“Mithraism was a late Roman mystery religion that was popular among soldiers and merchants, and which became a chief rival to Christianity in the second century and later,” Yamauchi explained. “The participants met in a cave-like structure called a mithraeum, which had as its cult statue Mithras stabbing a bull, the so-called tauroctony.”

“Much of what has been circulated on Mithraism has been based on the theories of a Belgian scholar named Franz Cumont. He published his famous work, Mysteries of Mithras, in 1903; however, much of what Cumont suggested turned out to be quite unfounded. In the 1970s, scholars at the Second Mithraic Congress in Teheran…concluded that Cumont’s theory was not supported by the evidence, and, in fact, Cumont’s interpretations have now been analyzed and rejected on all major points.”¹⁴

“Contrary to what Cumont believed, even though Mithras was a Persian god who was attested as early as the fourteenth century BC, we have almost no evidence of Mithraism in the sense of a mystery religion in the West until very late—too late to have influenced the beginnings of Christianity….Most of what we have as evidence of Mithraism comes in the second, third, and fourth centuries AD.”

Yamauchi gave me copies of academic articles and books by highly regarded scholars who back up this claim. Gary Lease, professor of religious studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz, noted that such scholars as Adolf von Harnack, Arthur Darby Nock, S. G. F. Brandon, William R. Halliday, and Ernst Benz “have seen little evidence to support claims of such influence and mutual borrowing” between Mithraism and Christianity.¹⁵

Concluded Lease: “After almost one hundred years of unremitting labor, the conclusion appears inescapable that neither Mithraism nor Christianity proved to be an obvious and direct influence upon the other in the development and demise or survival of either religion.”

What about the supposed parallels between Mithraism and Christianity? “First, popular writers claim that Mithras was born of a virgin,” I said to Yamauchi. “Is that true that this was what Mithraism taught?”

“No, that’s definitely not true,” he insisted. “He was born out of a rock.”

“A rock?”

“Yes, the rock birth is commonly depicted in Mithraic reliefs,” he explained. “Mithras emerges fully grown and naked except for a Phrygian cap, and he’s holding a dagger and torch. In some variations, flames shoot out from the rock, or he’s holding a globe in his hand.”

“And that means he wasn’t born in a cave, which some writers claim is a second parallel to Christianity,” I commented.

Yamauchi said it was true that Mithraic sanctuaries were designed to look like caves. On the other hand, nowhere in the New Testament is Jesus described as having been born in a cave. This idea is first mentioned in the letter of Barnabas at the beginning of the second century. Lease pointed out that scholar Ernst Benz “has shown conclusively that this Christian tradition does not come from a dependency on Mithraism, but rather from an ages old tradition in Palestine itself of holy shrines in caves.”¹⁶

I said to Yamauchi, “The third supposed parallel with Jesus is that Mithras was born on December 25.”

“Again, that’s not a parallel,” he replied.

“Why not?”

“Because we don’t know the date Jesus was born,” he said.

“What about the fourth parallel that Mithras was a great traveler or master with 12 disciples?”

“No—he was a god, not a teacher,” Yamauchi replied.

“The fifth parallel is that his followers were promised immortality.”

“Well, that can be inferred, but certainly that was the hope of most followers of any religion,” he said. “So that’s not surprising.”

“How about the sixth claim, which says that Mithras sacrificed himself for world peace?”

“That’s reading Christian theology into what’s not there,” Yamauchi replied. “He didn’t sacrifice himself—he (merely) killed a bull.”

“The seventh parallel is that Mithras was buried in a tomb and rose after three days,” I said.

“We don’t know anything about the death of Mithras,” Yamauchi said. “We have a lot of monuments, but we have almost no textual evidence, because this was a secret religion. But I know of no references to a supposed death and resurrection.”

Indeed, British scholar Richard Gordon declared in his book Image and Value in the Greco-Roman World that there is “no death of Mithras”—and thus, there cannot be a resurrection.¹⁷

“Eighth,” I said, “Mithras was considered the Good Shepherd, the Way, the Truth, and the Life, the Logos, the Redeemer, the Savior.”

“No, again, that’s reading Christian theology into this,” Yamauchi answered.

“Ninth, there was a sacramental meal in Mithraism that paralleled the Lord’s Supper.”

“Common meals are found in almost all religious communities,” Yamauchi replied. “Clearly, the Christian meal was based on the Passover, not on a mystery religion.”

One last supposed parallel remained: whether a gory Mithraic ritual was the source for the apostle Paul’s teaching of redemption through the blood of Jesus.

I asked Yamauchi to describe the ritual. “In its developed form, the initiate was placed in a pit and a bull was slaughtered on a grate above him, drenching him in the bull’s blood,” he said.

This seemed totally alien to the practices of the Jewish sacrificial system and its foreshadowing of Jesus’ death as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”¹⁸

“Again,” continued Yamauchi, “the dating of practices like this are the Achilles’ heel of these comparative studies—they don’t pay attention to the dates of the sources and they’re used anachronistically.

“This rite is reported in the second century AD,” he added. “So there’s no way this rite could have influenced Christianity’s theology about redemption.”

Like Ehrman’s allegations about the New Testament text, the grandiose claims that Christianity fashioned itself after Mithraism had been convincingly swept away by solid scholarship. Over and over again, the pattern remained the same: as I investigated the current challenges to the traditional picture of Jesus, I consistently walked away even more convinced that the church’s historic portrait of Him is well supported by the evidence.

notes

1. This article is adapted from The Case for the Real Jesus: A Journalist Investigates Current Attacks on the Identity of Christ by Lee Strobel. Copyright © 2007 by Lee Strobel. Used by permission of Zondervan.

2. Personal e-mail to author.

3. Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998).

4. Bart D. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus: The Story behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005), 89.

5. Ibid., 7.

6. Ibid., 208.

7. Ibid., 151–75.

8. Ibid., 133–39.

9. Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, The Laughing Jesus (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2005), 55–56.

10. See: J. P. Holding, “Mighty Mithraic Madness: Did the Mithraic Mysteries Influence Christianity?” Texts Outside the Bible, Confronting the Copycat Thesis, Tekton Apologetics Ministries, http://www.tektonics.org/copycat/mithra.html. This article addresses alleged parallels described in Acharya S, The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold (Kempton, IL: Adventures Unlimited Press, 1999), 118–20. Several similar parallels are found in Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code (New York: Doubleday, 2003), 232.

11. Tryggve N. D. Mettinger, The Riddle of Resurrection: “Dying and Rising Gods” in the Ancient Near East (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wicksell, 2001), 221.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid.

14. See: Richard Gordon, “Franz Cumont and the Doctrines of Mithraism,” Mithraic Studies 1:236 (1975).

15. Gary Lease, “Mithraism and Christianity: Borrowings and Transformations,” in Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt, vol. 2, ed. Wolfgang Haase (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1980), 1316.

16. Ibid.,” 1321–22.

17. Richard Gordon, Image and Value in the Greco-Roman World (Aldershot: Variorum, 1996), 96, quoted in Holding.

18. See John 1:29.

“We wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ” (Titus2:13).²

Many biblical texts can be used to demonstrate that Jesus is God. Three, however, stand out above the rest. Not only are they clear and convincing, but their “addresses” are easy to remember as well—John1, Colossians1, and Hebrews1.

First, is John1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (v.1). Here Jesus is not only in existence before the world began, but is differentiated from the Father and explicitly called God, indicating that He shares the same nature as His Father.

Furthermore, Colossians1 informs us that “all things were created by him” (v.16); He is “before all things” (v.17); and “God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him” (v.19). Only deity has the prerogative of creation, preexists all things, and personifies the full essence and nature of God.

Finally, Hebrews1 overtly tells us that according to God the Father Himself—Jesus is God: “But about the Son he [the Father] says, ‘Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever’” (v.8). Not only is the entirety of Hebrews 1 devoted to demonstrating the absolute deity of Jesus, but in verses 10–12 the inspired writer quotes a passage in Psalm102 referring to Yahweh and directly applies it to Christ. In doing so, the Scripture specifically declares Jesus ontologically equal with Israel’s God.

Many similar texts could be adduced. For example, in Revelation1 the Lord God says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty” (v.8). In the last chapter of Revelation, Jesus applies these self same words—“Alpha and Omega”—to Himself! Additionally, in 2Peter1 Jesus is referred to as “our God and Savior Jesus Christ” (v.1). In these passages and a host of others, the Bible explicitly claims that Jesus is God.

What Credentials Back Up Jesus’ Claim to Deity?

“When John heard in prison what Christ was doing, he sent his disciples to ask him, ‘Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?’ Jesus replied, ‘Go back and report to John what you hear and see; the blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor’” (Matt.11:2–5).

Not only does the Bible explicitly teach that Jesus is God, but Jesus Himself also has provided many convincing proofs that He indeed is divine.

First, Jesus demonstrated that He was God in human flesh by manifesting the credential of sinlessness. While the Qur’an exhorts Muhammad to seek forgiveness for his sins, the Bible exonerates Messiah, saying Jesus “had no sin” (2Cor.5:21); and this is not a singular statement. John declares that “in him is no sin” (1John3:5), and Peter says Jesus “committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth” (1Pet.2:22). Jesus Himself went so far as to challenge His antagonists, asking, “Can any of you prove me guilty of sin?” (John8:46).

Furthermore, Jesus demonstrated supernatural authority over sickness, the forces of nature, fallen angels, and even death itself. Matthew4 records that Jesus went throughout Galilee teaching, preaching, “and healing every disease and sickness among the people” (v.23). Mark4 documents Jesus rebuking the wind and the waves, saying, “Quiet! Be still!” (v.39). In Luke4 Jesus encounters a man possessed by an evil spirit and commands the demon: “Come out of him!” (v.35). And in John4, Jesus tells a royal official whose son was close to death, “Your son will live” (v.50). In fact, the four Gospels record how Jesus demonstrated ultimate power over death through the immutable fact of His resurrection.

Finally, the credentials of Christ’s deity are seen in the lives of countless men, women, and children. Each day, people of every tongue and tribe and nation experience the resurrected Christ by repenting of their sins and receiving Jesus as Lord and Savior of their lives. Thus, they not only come to know about Christ evidentially, but experientially Christ becomes more real to them than the very flesh upon their bones.

— Hank Hanegraaff

NOTES

1. Adapted from Hank Hanegraaff, The Bible Answer Book (Nashville: J. Countryman, 2004). For further study, see Hank Hanegraaff, Resurrection (Nashville: Word Publishing, 2000) and William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, rev. ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1994), chaps. 7–8.

2. All Bible quotations are from the New International Version.

“I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever!” (Rev.1:17–18).²

When Jesus came to Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples the mother of all questions, “Who do you say I am?” (Matt.16:15; Mark8:29; Luke9:20). Mormons answer this question by saying that Jesus is the spirit brother of Lucifer; Jehovah’s Witnesses answer by saying that Jesus is the archangel Michael; New Agers say Jesus is an avatar or enlightened messenger. Jesus, however, answered by claiming that He was God.

First, Jesus claimed to be the unique Son of God. As a result, the Jewish leaders tried to kill Him because in “calling God his own Father, [Jesus was] making himself equal with God” (John5:18). In John8:58 Jesus went so far as to use the very words by which God revealed Himself to Moses from the burning bush (Exod.3:14). To the Jews this was the epitome of blasphemy, for they knew that in doing so Jesus was clearly claiming to be God. On yet another occasion, Jesus explicitly told the Jews: “‘I and the Father are one.’ Again the Jews picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus said to them, ‘I have shown you many great miracles from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?’ ‘We are not stoning you for any of these,’ replied the Jews, ‘but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God’” (John10:30–33).

Furthermore, Jesus made an unmistakable claim to deity before the chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin. Caiaphas the high priest asked Him: “‘Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?’ ‘I am,’ said Jesus. ‘And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven’” (Mark14:61–62). A biblically illiterate person might well have missed the import of Jesus’ words. Caiaphas and the council, however, did not. They knew that in saying he was “the Son of Man” who would come “on the clouds of heaven” he was making an overt reference to the Son of Man in Daniel’s prophecy (Dan. 7:13–14). In doing so, He was not only claiming to be the preexistent Sovereign of the universe but prophesying that He would vindicate His claim by judging the very court that was now condemning Him. Moreover, by combining Daniel’s prophecy with David’s proclamation in Psalm 110, Jesus was claiming that He would sit upon the throne of Israel’s God and share God’s very glory. To students of the Old Testament this was the height of “blasphemy,” thus “they all condemned him as worthy of death” (Mark14:64–65).

Finally, Jesus claimed to possess the very attributes of God. For example, He claimed omniscience by telling Peter, “This very night, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times” (Matt.26:34); declared omnipotence by not only resurrecting Lazarus (John11:43) but by raising Himself from the dead (John2:19); and professed omnipresence by promising that He would be with His disciples “to the very end of the age” (Matt.28:20). Not only so, but Jesus said to the paralytic in Luke5:20, “Friend, your sins are forgiven.” In doing so, He claimed a prerogative reserved for God alone. In addition, when Thomas worshiped Jesus saying “My Lord and my God!” (John20:28), Jesus responded with commendation rather than condemnation.

For further study, see Millard J. Erickson, The Word Became Flesh: A Contemporary Incarnational Christology (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1996).

— Hank Hanegraaff

NOTES

1. Adapted from Hank Hanegraaff, The Bible Answer Book (Nashville: J. Countryman, 2004).

2. All Bible quotations are from the New International Version.

Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code has generated the sort of controversy that will sustain it for months into the future, especially after it goes into paperback and Ron Howard’s movie, which is based on the book, is released. Controversy, of course, stirs sales.

Christians are now in something of a dilemma. They can reduce the controversy — and therefore Da Vinci sales — by ignoring the novel, or they can sustain the controversy — and therefore sales — by giving a spirited response. Considering the attack on the historic Christian faith posed by Brown’s novel, only the latter would seem the proper option. Besides, a massive Christian response via books and the Internet, as well as media appearances by knowledgeable experts, may finally demonstrate to millions of gullible, conspiracy-happy readers that they are victims of one of the great literary hoaxes of modern times.

Public discussion of Christ, Christianity, and the church is again front-and-center in media attention. The book’s attacks against the Christian faith ironically provide Christians with a unique opportunity for effective evangelism. Sharing the truth in this case, however, will require some restraint.

In view of the unfounded, actually outrageous claims Brown makes in his novel, an angry gut reaction against his falsehoods naturally wells up in any informed Christian reader, and the temptation to trash the man can be almost overwhelming. If, however, we engage secular or ill-informed Christians in dialogue over the book with a fuming tirade, we will not persuade them to reconsider their opinion, especially if they enjoyed reading it. We, not Dan Brown, will lose credibility. Ire, therefore, is hardly the best way to evangelize effectively, and it seems that the apostle Peter learned that lesson, and that’s why he wrote: “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect” (1Pet.3:15 NIV). “Sweet reason” remains both the best shield and the best weapon in any struggle for the truth.

Readers’ reactions to The Da Vinci Code come in all colors, shapes, and sizes. Here is a list of some you may encounter, along with suggested responses.

“I thought The Da Vinci Code was a fun read.” Why not agree? It was an interesting mystery, and this is why the novel borders on the diabolical: the poison is served up hidden inside tasty flavoring! You must, however, go to the heart of the issue and ask, “Do you think the author presented an honest, accurate portrait of Christ and Christianity?” If the person’s response has even a hint of the positive, you’ll have much work to do, beginning with an explanation of some important basics of the Christian faith, such as the deity of Christ, which is clearly denied in the novel.

“OK, a few things may be wrong in the novel, but basically it’s factual.” This is probably the most common reaction to Da Vinci, and it demonstrates that the reader is either a non-Christian or a believer who is very poorly grounded in the faith. A useful response might be to point out that more than ”a few things” are wrong in the novel; for example, the entire premise of The Da Vinci Code is based on a false “fact.” On the first page, Brown claims that a secret European society called “The Priory of Sion,” which supposedly preserved the secret “truth” about the “real” Jesus, was founded in Jerusalem in 1099, when, instead, it was officially registered in France in 1956. Another example would be what Brown calls the “relatively close vote” at the Council of Nicea endorsing Jesus’ divinity (233). In fact, the vote was 300 to 2! Probably the worst error in the book is the claim that “the early Jewish tradition involved ritualistic sex. In the temple, no less” (309, emphasis in original). Not only is this a horrendously unfounded claim, but it is also a blasphemous affront to both Judaism and Christianity. There are dozens upon dozens of such falsehoods throughout the book.

“Chill out! This is fiction, after all!” Right, except that, on the very first page of the book, the author claims his novel is based on fact; unfortunately, too many people today read fiction but accept it as fact. When real situations or personalities — past or present — are involved in fictional backgrounds, a good writer will strive to represent them accurately. You might ask, “How fair or credible would you find a novel set in the World War II era, for example, that claimed Adolf Hitler won the war and executed Franklin D. Roosevelt?” The distortion of facts in The Da Vinci Code is just as grotesque.

“But the author says he did a lot of research to uncover the real truth.” So he did. In media interviews, Dan Brown even states he, too, was skeptical at first, but the “evidence” convinced him otherwise. Sound reassuring? In sober fact, the sources listed by Brown have no scholarly or historical value whatever; rather, they are sensationalizing tripe, New Age esoterica, and conspiracy speculations that all serious scholars disdain.

“I still believe that Brown is really on to something and that the church has engaged in a vast cover-up.” You might respond, “Then you are exactly the sort of impressionable reader who is being seduced by Brown’s deceptions.” (OK, leave out the “impressionable” so as not to antagonize your dialogue partner!) You should then ask, “Can you identify even one serious scholar, writer, professional authority, historian, or theologian anywhere in the world who agrees with Brown?” I seriously question if Brown really believes his own material despite his claims that he does. The New York Times certainly does not, since its February22,2004, book review aptly referred to his novel as “The Da Vinci Con.”

“Look, this material must be reasonable and accurate or a prestigious New York publisher such as Doubleday would never have published it.” We should be careful not to ascribe high moral values to any secular publisher where the fiscal bottom line is concerned, nor indulge the fantasy that “if it’s in print, it must be true.” Amazingly careless editing went into The Da Vinci Code. The book bulges with factual errors, but no one is faulting the editor, at least not when seven million copies are in print!

In other cases, either malicious intent or editorial ignorance is involved. In 1970, John M. Allegro’s The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross (Doubleday) appeared, in which the author seriously argued that Jesus was invented by myth-makers who got high on the hallucinogenic qualities of the red-topped, white-flecked fly agaric mushroom and wrote the Gospels to communicate their cultic secrets. Allegro’s colleagues in England called the book “a Semitics [i.e., the study of Jewish history] scholar’s erotic nightmare,” and it faced similar derision on this side of the Atlantic. This book, of course, is an intellectual fraud from beginning to end. “In print” does not equal “true.”

“The main plot of the book has Jesus marrying Mary Magdalene. What’s wrong with that?” If Jesus had married her, it would not have been wrong, but there is no evidence whatever that Jesus ever married. Conversely, there is powerful evidence that He did not. In fact, Paul defended his right to have a wife (a prerogative that he never exercised) when he wrote, “Don’t we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord’s brothers and Cephas [Peter]?” (1Cor.9:5niv). If Jesus Himself had ever married, Paul would surely have cited His marriage as the greatest precedent of all, after which it would have been unnecessary even to mention figures subordinate to Him. To claim that the church covered up the “fact” of Jesus’ marriage to Mary Magdalene because this would have humanized Him out of any divinity, so to speak, is outrageous, but this is exactly what The Da Vinci Code maintains as its central thesis.

“I really enjoyed the book until, about halfway through, I started reading the most despicable statements about my faith. I made a list of the errors until I ran out of paper.” Yes! At last! The proper reaction! No response necessary, except congratulations to an informed Christian.

Are Christians Supplying Answers? In the face of Brown’s gratuitous assaults on the faith, Christians have not been sleeping. No less than 10 books currently are being published that provide a devastating critique of The Da Vinci Code. These range from Darrell L. Bock’s Breaking the Da Vinci Code (Thomas Nelson, 2004), which rivals Brown’s book in size, to the 96-page The Da Vinci Code — Fact or Fiction? (Tyndale House, 2004), written by Hank Hanegraaff and me.

The current powerful Christian response to Dan Brown’s novel is proving to be effective. I’ve now heard hundreds of potential Da Vinci Code readers confess, “Well, I was going to buy the book, but now I won’t waste my money.” In any case, the Da Vinci Code discussion can be a blessing in disguise if it encourages people to reexamine the true facts about Christ, Christianity, and the church. Every informed believer can, and should, help in the process.

— Paul L. Maier

As Justin Martyr, a great apologist of the early second century, wrote, “All things which the Savior did, He did in the first place in order that what was spoken concerning Him in the prophets might be fulfilled, ‘that the blind should receive sight, and the deaf hear’ (Isaiah 35:5), and so on; but also to induce the belief that in the resurrection the flesh shall arise entire. For if on earth He healed the sicknesses of the flesh, and made the body whole, much more will He do this in the resurrection, so that the flesh shall rise perfect and entire.”⁵ Indeed, in heaven “there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Rev. 21:4).

More complete answers to this and other questions are available in Hank Hanegraaff’s new book Resurrection. Learn the answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about the resurrection, including Will pets be resurrected? If heaven is perfect, won’t it be perfectly boring? Will there be sex after the resurrection? Are reincarnation and resurrection mutually exclusive?

First and foremost, as noted by Dr. Geisler, the passage under consideration, as well as the rest of Scripture, clearly refers to the moment of death as one of disembodiment, not of re-embodiment.2 In the immediate context, Paul refers to death as being “naked” (v. 3) or “away from the body” (v. 8). Why would he dread being “naked” if he were going to receive another body at the moment of death? Says Geisler, “Speaking of death as disembodiment (‘absent from the body’) and as an undesirable experience makes little sense if that is the moment of one’s ultimate triumph with a resurrection body (see 2 Corinthians 5:1, 4; 1 Corinthians 15:50-58 NKJV).”³ In fact, Paul makes it crystal-clear in verse 8 that being “at home with the Lord” is tantamount to being “away from the body.”⁴

Further, if believers received their resurrected bodies at the moment of death, they obviously could not receive them at the Second Coming of Christ, as Scripture teaches (John 5:28-29; I Thess. 4:16). And finally, there is a direct correspondence between the body when it dies and the body when it rises. Thus, our resurrection bodies are not second bodies but our present bodies transformed.

One day, when Christ returns, the very body of my father that I watched being lowered into the ground, will be raised from its grave. It was sown a perishable body, it will be raised imperishable; it was sown in dishonor, it will be raised in glory; it was sown in weakness, it will be raised in power; it was sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body (1 Cor. 15:42-44). On that day, Dad’s body will no longer be dominated by natural proclivities; instead, he will have a supernatural, spiritual body dominated by the Holy Spirit and set free from slavery to sin — “an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands” (2 Cor. 5:1). Apart from that hope, there is no hope. “If the dead are not raised,” says Paul, “let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” (1 Cor. 15:32).

More complete answers to this and other questions are available in Hank Hanegraaff’s new book Resurrection. Learn the answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about the resurrection, including Will pets be resurrected? If heaven is perfect, won’t it be perfectly boring? Will there be sex after the resurrection? Are reincarnation and resurrection mutually exclusive?

Notes

1 1 Norman L. Geisler, The Battle for the Resurrection (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1992), 211.

2 2 Ibid., 212

3 3 Ibid., 213.

4 Ibid., 212

When they had crucified him, above his head they placed the written charge against him: THIS IS JESUS, THE KING OF THE JEWS. Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, “You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!” In the same way the chief priests, the teachers of the law, and the elders mocked him — and the robbers who were crucified with him also heaped insults on him. About the ninth hour, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” — which means, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Then Jesus, knowing that the Passover plot was nearing completion, cried out, “I am thirsty.” As if on cue, an unidentified friend of Joseph of Arimathea ran, filled a sponge with a sleeping potion, put it on a stick, and offered it to Jesus to drink. When he had received it, Jesus cried out, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and swooned.

Because the Jews did not want the bodies left on the crosses during the Sabbath, they asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies taken down. But when they came to Jesus and found that he was apparently already dead, they did not break his legs. Instead, one of the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side with a spear.

As evening approached, Joseph of Arimathea went boldly to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. He took the body, wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and placed it in a tomb cut out of rock.

There Joseph and the unidentified Jew worked feverishly to nurse Jesus back to life.

Tragically, the Roman spear led to the death of Jesus and the virtual destruction of the Passover Plot. Jesus regained consciousness only long enough to cry out, “Do not let me die in vain. Deceive my disciples into believing I have overcome death and the grave.” With that, he bowed his head and died. Immediately Joseph and the unidentified Jew took the body of Jesus and disposed of it.

During the next forty days the unidentified Jew appeared to the disciples and through many con­vincing fabrications deluded them into believing that he was the resurrected Christ. Beginning with Moses and all the prophets he explained to them everything that the Scriptures had taught concerning the Messiah — how he should suffer, die, and be raised again. The hearts of the disciples burned within as they believed the lie.

To this very day, the Passover Plot engineered by Jesus, Joseph, and the unidentified Jew continues to delude millions into believing that Jesus Christ has risen from the dead.¹

Mythologies 27:22-41

Critical Theories

In 1965 Hugh Schonfield published a 287-page volume titled The Passover Plot.² In this runaway bestseller, Schonfield contends that Jesus “deliberately plotted” His crucifixion and subsequent resurrection. According to The Passover Plot:

Jesus contrived to be arrested the night before the Passover, fully aware that he would be nailed to the cross the following day, but taken down before the onset of the Sabbath in accordance with Jewish law. He would survive the agony of but three hours on the cross.

To ensure his safe removal, he arranged to be given, while on the cross, not the traditional vinegar but a drug that would render him unconscious and make him appear dead. He would then be cut down from the cross in a deathlike trance, removed by accomplices to the tomb where he would be nursed back to health and then “resurrected.”³

This new interpretation of the life and death of Jesus captured the imagination of the world. Magazines and ministers immediately lauded it as perhaps the most important book published in a decade. Time magazine contended, “Schonfield does not discredit Christ. Instead, he argues that Christ was indeed the Messiah – the Son of Man, as he thought of himself, but not the Son of God – who had been foretold by Jewish prophets of old, and that this is glory enough.”⁴ Bible scholar William Barclay called The Passover Plot “a book of enormous learning and erudition, meticulously documented.”⁵

While the critics of historic Christianity have passionately proclaimed the virtues of Schonfield and his scholarship, The Passover Plot is little more than a novel regurgitation of swoon theories that were popular in the first half of the nineteenth century. As noted investigative journalist Lee Strobel points out in The Case for Christ, the swoon hypothesis is an urban legend that is continually being resuscitated.⁶

Swoon theorists dismiss the Resurrection by contending that Jesus never really died on the cross. Instead, He merely fainted and was later revived. A never-ending stream of imaginative stories has flowed from this basic thesis.

The swoon hypothesis is not the only novel notion critics of Christianity have used to explain away the Resurrection. Other hypotheses used to explain away the biblical account of the Resurrection emanate from world religions. One such theory is found in Islam. From a Muslim perspective, Jesus was never crucified and, thus, never resurrected.⁷ As Christian philosopher Norman Geisler explains, orthodox Muslims have traditionally held that “God made someone else look like Jesus and this person was mistakenly crucified as Christ.”⁸

Other theories on Jesus’ resurrection can be found in the kingdom of the cults. Jehovah’s Witnesses, for example, not only deny the deity of Jesus Christ but His bodily resurrection as well. They contend that God created Jesus as the archangel Michael; that He became merely human during His earthly sojourn; and that He was recreated as an immaterial spirit creature after His crucifixion.

A Gargantuan Fraud or the Greatest Feat in History

If liberal scholars, adherents of world religions, or devotees of the kingdom of the cults are correct, the biblical account of the Resurrection is either fiction, fantasy, or a gargantuan fraud. On the other hand, if Christianity is factually reliable, the Resurrection is the greatest feat in human history. As apologist Josh McDowell puts it, “After more than 700 hours of studying this subject, and thoroughly investigating its foundation, I have come to the conclusion that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is one of the ‘most wicked, vicious, heartless hoaxes ever foisted upon the minds of men, or it is the most fantastic fact of history.’”⁹ The apostle Paul made it crystal clear that no middle ground exists. The Resurrection is either history or hoax, miracle or myth, fact or fantasy:

If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. (1 Corinthians 15:14–19)

It is precisely because of the strategic importance of the Resurrection that each Christian must be prepared to defend its historicity. Apologetics – the defense of the faith – has a dual purpose. On the one hand, it involves pre-evangelism. In post-Christian America few people are aware that belief in the Resurrection is not a blind leap into the dark, but faith founded on fact. It is historic and evidential. Thus, it is defensible. On the other hand, it involves postevangelism. During an age in which the Resurrection is under siege, knowing how to defend its reliability serves to strengthen our faith.

The Resurrection is not merely important to the historic Christian faith — without it there would be no Christianity. It elevates Christianity above all other world religions. Through the Resurrection Christ demonstrated that He does not stand in a line of peers with Abraham, Buddha, Confucius, or Muhammad. Jesus Christ is utterly unique. He had the power not only to lay down His life, but also to take it up again.

Because of its centrality to Christianity, those who take the sacred name of Christ upon their lips must be prepared to defend the reliability of the Resurrection. To make the process memorable, I’ve developed the acronym F-E-A-T. Each letter in this acronym serves to underscore an undeniable fact of the Resurrection:

Fatal torment

Empty tomb

Appearances

Transformation

Fatal torment

The fatal suffering of Jesus Christ is one of the most well-established facts of ancient history. Even in today’s modern age of science and technology, there is a virtual consensus among New Testament scholars, both conservative and liberal, that Jesus died on the cross, that He was buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, and that His death drove His disciples to despair.¹⁰ The best medical minds of ancient and modern times have demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that Christ’s physical trauma was fatal.¹¹

Taking into account today’s medical knowledge, we can reconstruct our Savior’s suffering. His torment begins in the Garden of Gethsemane after the emotional Last Supper. There Jesus experiences a medical condition known as hermatidrosis. Tiny capillaries in His sweat glands rupture, mixing sweat with blood. As a result, Christ’s skin becomes extremely fragile.

The same night, Jesus is betrayed by Judas, disowned by Peter, and arrested by the temple guard. Before Caiaphas the High Priest, Jesus is mocked, spat upon, and beaten. The next morning, Jesus — battered, bruised, and bleeding — is led into the Praetorium. There He is stripped and subjected to the brutality of Roman flogging. A whip replete with razor sharp bones and lead balls reduces His body to “quivering ribbons of bleeding flesh.” As Christ slumps into the pool of His own blood, the soldiers throw a scarlet robe across His shoulders, thrust a scepter into His hands, and press sharp thorns into His scalp.

After the soldiers mock Jesus, they take the scepter out of His hand and repeatedly strike Him on the head. A heavy wooden beam is thrust upon Christ’s bleeding body, now in critical condition, and He is led away to a place called Golgotha. There the Lord experiences ultimate physical torture in the form of the cross. The Roman system of crucifixion had been finely tuned to produce maximum pain. In fact, the word excruciating (literally “out of the cross”) had to be invented to codify its horror.¹²

At “the place of the skull,” the Roman soldiers drive thick seven-inch iron spikes through Christ’s hands and feet. Waves of pain pulsate through His body as the nails lacerate His nerves. Breathing becomes an agonizing endeavor as Christ pushes His tortured body upward to gasp small gulps of air. In the ensuing hours He experiences cycles of joint-wrenching cramps, intermittent asphyxiation, and excruciating pain as His lacerated back moves up and down against the rough timber of the cross.

As the chill of death creeps through His body, Jesus cries out, “‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?’ — which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” In that anguished cry is encapsulated the greatest agony of all. For on the cross Christ is bearing the sin and suffering of all humanity. Then with His passion complete, Jesus gives up His spirit.

Shortly thereafter a Roman legionnaire drives his spear through the fifth interspace between the ribs, upward through the pericardium and into Christ’s heart. Immediately, there rushes forth blood and water, demonstrating conclusively that Jesus has suffered fatal torment.

In light of all the evidence, to believe that Jesus merely swooned stretches credulity beyond the breaking point. It means that Christ survived six trials, lack of sleep, the scourge, being spiked to a cross, and a spear wound in His side.

Adherence to some of the more implausible versions of the swoon hypothesis would take even more faith. It would entail believing that Jesus survived three days without medical attention; single-handedly rolled away an enormously heavy tombstone; subdued an armed guard; strolled around on pierced feet; and seduced His disciples into communicating the myth that He had conquered death while He lived out the remainder of His pathetic life in obscurity.

Having established the fact that Jesus was fatally tormented, we now turn to the “E” in the acronym F-E-A-T, which will serve to remind us of the second undeniable fact supporting the Resurrection: The Empty Tomb.

Empty Tomb

The year 1985 marks the beginning of one of the most well-publicized wars in history — a war of words rather than weapons. It began with a coalition of “scholars” who dubbed themselves the Jesus Seminar. These scholars were determined to demolish the biblical Jesus in the public arena, rather than in private academia. Basically, they sought “to liberate the people of the church from the ‘dark ages of theological tyranny.’”¹³

Cofounder Robert Funk declared, “We want to liberate Jesus. The only Jesus most people know is the mythic one. They don’t want the real Jesus, they want the one they can worship. The cultic Jesus.”¹⁴

For his part, the other cofounder, John Dominic Crossan, took dead aim at the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Time magazine reports Crossan’s pontification: “The tales of entombment and resurrection were latter-day wishful thinking. Instead, Jesus’ corpse went the way of all abandoned criminals bodies: it was probably barely covered with dirt, vulnerable to the wild dogs that roamed the wasteland of the execution grounds.”¹⁵

At times the assertions of Jesus Seminar participants were so outrageous that the eminent Jewish scholar Jacob Neusner called the Jesus Seminar “either the greatest scholarly hoax since the Piltdown Man or the utter bankruptcy of New Testament studies — I hope the former.”¹⁶

Tragically, multitudes have uncritically accepted the assertions of the Jesus Seminar, failing to recognize that they fly in the face of well-established facts. Unlike a consensus of credible scholarship, Jesus Seminar scholars are famous for making dogmatic assertions while failing to provide defensible arguments. Christian philosopher and theologian William Lane Craig lamented, “It is sobering to think that it is this sort of idiosyncratic speculation that thousands of lay readers of magazines like Time have come to believe represents the best of contemporary New Testament scholarship.”¹⁷

As the reliability of the Resurrection is undermined in the media it is crucial that Christians are prepared to demonstrate that on Easter morning some two thousand years ago the tomb was indeed empty. Contrary to Crossan, the late liberal scholar John A. T. Robinson of Cambridge conceded that the burial of Jesus Christ “is one of the earliest and best-attested facts about Jesus.”¹⁸ As scholar D. H. van Daalen has noted, “It is extremely difficult to object to the empty tomb on historical grounds; those who deny it do so on the basis of theological or philosophical assumptions.”¹⁹ These statements are not merely dogmatic assertions but rather stand firmly upon sound argumentation.

First, both liberal and conservative New Testament scholars agree that the body of Jesus was buried in the private tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. Craig underscores this fact by noting that (1) as a member of the Jewish court that condemned Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea is unlikely to be a Christian invention; (2) no competing burial story exists; (3) the account of Jesus’ entombment is substantiated by Mark’s gospel and is, therefore, far too early to have been the subject of legendary corruption.²⁰

Furthermore, as noted in The Case for Christ, “When you understand the role of women in first-century Jewish society, what’s really extraordinary is that this empty tomb story should feature women as the discoverers of the empty tomb.”²¹ Not only did women have low social status in Jewish society, but their testimonies were not even legally valid. “Any later legendary account would have certainly portrayed male disciples as discovering the tomb….This shows that the Gospel writers faithfully recorded what happened, even if it was embarrassing.”²²

Finally, as Craig emphasizes in Jesus Under Fire, the earliest Jewish response to the Resurrection of Jesus Christ presupposes the empty tomb. Instead of denying that the tomb was empty, the antagonists of Christ accused his disciples of stealing the body. Their response to the proclamation, “He has risen – He is risen indeed” was not “His body is still in the tomb” or “He was thrown into a shallow grave and eaten by dogs.” Instead, they responded, “His disciples came during the night and stole him away.”²³

In short, early Christianity simply could not have survived an identifiable tomb containing the corpse of Christ. The enemies of Christ could have easily put an end to the charade by displaying the body, as depicted in the medieval Jewish polemic, Toledot Yeshu. Even Jesus Seminar cofounder Crossan would be forced by the facts to concede that no one can affirm the historicity of Christ’s burial while simultaneously denying the historicity of the empty tomb.²⁴

Having demonstrated that the empty tomb is an unassailable reality, we now turn to the letter “A” in the acronym F-E-A-T. This will serve to remind us of the third pillar supporting the Resurrection: The Appearances of Christ.

Appearances

In the Acts of the Apostles, Dr. Luke writes that Jesus gave the disciples “many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appear­ed to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God” (Acts 1:3). Likewise, Peter in his powerful Pentecost proclamation declared that many credible eyewitnesses could confirm the fact of Christ’s physical postresurrection appearances:

Brothers, I can tell you confidently that the patriarch David died and was buried, and his tomb is here to this day. But he was a prophet and knew that God had promised him on oath that he would place one of his descendants on his throne. Seeing what was ahead, he spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to the grave, nor did his body see decay. God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact. (Acts 2:29–32; emphasis added).

Like the apostle Peter, the apostle Paul exudes confidence in the appearances of Christ. In his first letter to the Corinthian Christians he provides details and descriptions:

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born. (1 Cor. 15:3–8; emphasis added)

One thing is sure. The apostles did not merely propagate Christ’s teachings; they were absolutely certain that he had appeared to them in the flesh. Although two thousand years removed from the actual event, we too can be absolutely confident in Christ’s postresurrection appearances.

First, in the passage cited above, Paul is reiterating a Christian creed that can be traced all the way back to the formative stages of the early Christian church.²⁵ Incredibly, scholars of all stripes agree that this creed can be dated to within three to eight years of the Crucifixion itself.²⁶ The eminent scholar Joachim Jeremias calls this creed “the earliest tradition of all,” and Ulrich Wilckens says it “indubitably goes back to the oldest phase of all in the history of primitive Christianity.”²⁷ Greco-Roman classical historian A. N. Sherwin White argues that it would be unprecedented historically for legend to have grown up that fast.²⁸ Dr. Gary Habermas concludes that the creed is not only early but “that it’s free from legendary contamination, that it’s unambiguous and specific, and that it’s ultimately rooted in eyewitness accounts.”²⁹

Furthermore, Peter, Paul, and the rest of the apostles claimed that Christ appeared to hundreds of people who were still alive and available for cross-examination (1 Cor. 15:6).³⁰ It would have been one thing to attribute these supernatural experiences to people who had already died. It was quite another to attribute them to multitudes who were still alive. Suppose I announced publicly that I played a private round of golf with Arnold Palmer at Bay Hill County Club in Orlando. During the round I hit the longest drive Palmer had ever seen, made a hole-in-one, and set a new course record. As long as Palmer was living, my credibility could easily be called into question. Likewise, Paul’s assertions regarding the eyewitnesses who had seen the resurrected Christ could have easily been refuted if in fact they were not true.³¹

Finally, no one has ever come up with a credible means to explain away the postresurrection appearances of Christ. As previously noted, the references to Christ’s appearances are early and free from legendary corruption. Thus, skeptics are often reduced to pawning them off as mere hallucinations.

In reality, hallucinations are subjective and scarce. Yet Christ appeared to many people over a long period of time. In addition, hallucinations are typically relegated to people with certain personality disorders, are stimulated by expectations, and do not stop abruptly. In the case of Christ, he appeared to all kinds of personality types with no expectations, and then the appearances stopped abruptly.

Perhaps Professor Perrin, the late New Testament scholar at the University of Chicago said it best. In summing up the consensus of both liberal and conservative scholarship he wrote, “The more we study the tradition with regard to the appearances, the firmer the rock begins to appear upon which they are based.”³²

At this point, there should be no doubt that Christ suffered fatal torment; that the empty tomb is a factual reality; and that Christ’s postresurrection appearances cannot be explained away as legends or hallucinations. We now move on to the final letter in the acronym F-E-A-T, which represents the word Transformation.

Transformation

What happened as a result of the Resurrection is unprecedented in all of history. In the span of 300 years, a small following of seemingly insignificant believers succeeded in turning an entire empire upside down and conquering it. As has been well said, “They faced the tyrants’ brandished steel, the lions’ gory mane, and the fires of a thousand deaths” because they were utterly convinced that they, like their Master, would one day rise from the grave in glorified, resurrected bodies. While it is conceivable that they would have faced torture, vilification, and even cruel deaths for what they fervently believed to be true, it is inconceivable that they would have been willing to die for what they knew to be a lie.

Peter, who was once afraid of a maid, after the Resurrection was transformed into a lion of the faith. According to tradition, he was crucified upside down because he felt unworthy to be crucified in the same manner as his Lord.³³

James, the brother of Jesus, who once hated everything his brother stood for, after the Resurrection called himself a bondservant of Jesus Christ (James 1:1). He not only became the leader of the Jerusalem church, but in A.D. 62 was martyred for his faith.³⁴ Eusebius of Caesarea describes how James was thrown from the pinnacle of the temple and subsequently stoned.³⁵

Paul likewise was transformed. Once a ceaseless persecutor of the growing church, he became the chief proselytizer of the Gentile Christians.

Peter, James, and Paul were not alone. As Christian philosopher J. P. Moreland points out, within weeks of the Resurrection not just one but an entire community of at least ten thousand Jews was willing to give up the very sociological and theological traditions that had given them their national identity.³⁶

To this day, Christ’s Resurrection continues to transform lives. Every day people of every tongue and tribe and nation are being baptized in the name of the risen Christ.

Recently, before the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem, I encountered a tourist who had no concept of the Resurrection’s significance. I explained to him that Christ had cloaked Himself in human flesh to restore the relationship with God broken by our sin; that in our behalf Christ had lived the perfect life that we could never live; and that He died for our sins, was buried, and on the third day rose again from the dead. I went on to explain that this was no mere fantasy but the most well-attested fact of ancient history. After communicating the F-E-A-T that demonstrates the fact of the Resurrection, this young man took the final step and personally experienced the resurrected Christ. Recognizing that he was a sinner, he repented of his sins and received Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior of his life.

Today he not only knows Christ evidentially, but he knows him experientially as well. Today Christ is more real to him than the very flesh on his bones.

Yes, Christ is risen indeed! In the inspired words of the apostle Paul, “He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification” (Rom. 4:25).

A longer version of this article is available in booklet form with an audio cassette from the Christian Research Institute (CRI). For ordering information contact CRI at 949-858-6100.

NOTES

¹ Adapted from the Holy Bible, New International Version, but radically altered to accommodate Hugh Schonfield’s “Passover plot” hypothesis. All further Scripture quotations are from the NIV.

² Hugh J. Schonfield, The Passover Plot: A New Interpretation of the Life and Death of Jesus (New York: Bernard Geis Associates, 1965).

³ Ibid., inside front and back cover flaps.

⁴ Ibid., back cover.

⁵ Ibid.

⁶ Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998), 192–93.

⁷ See Qur’an 4:157–59.

⁸ Norman L. Geisler and Abdul Saleeb, Answering Islam: The Crescent in Light of the Cross (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1993), 65.

⁹ Josh McDowell, Evidence That Demands a Verdict (Arrowhead Springs, CA: Campus Crusade for Christ, 1972), 185.

¹⁰ See Gary Habermas, The Historical Jesus (Joplin, MO: College Press, 1996), 143–70 (see especially 158); Paul Copan, ed., Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? A Debate between William Lane Craig and John Dominic Crossan (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1998), 26–27.

¹¹ Except as noted, the following medical data and descriptions concerning Christ’s suffering are adapted from C. Truman Davis, “The Crucifixion of Jesus: The Passion of Christ from a Medical Point of View,” Arizona Medicine (Arizona Medical Association), March 1965, 183–87; and William D. Edwards, Wesley J. Gabel, and Floyd E. Hosmer, “On the Physical Death of Jesus Christ,” The Journal of the American Medical Association, 21 March 1986, 1455–63.

¹² Strobel, 197–98.

¹³ Wilkins and Moreland, 2.

¹⁴ Interview by Mary Rourke, “Cross Examination,” Los Angeles Times, 24 February 1994, E1, E5, as quoted in Wilkins and Moreland, 2.

¹⁵ Richard N. Ostling, “Jesus Christ, Plain and Simple,” Time, 10 January 1994, from the Time web site at http://cgi.pathfinder.com/time/magazine/archive/1994/940110/940110.religion.html.

¹⁶ Ibid.

¹⁷ Wilkins and Moreland, 142.

¹⁸ John A. T. Robinson, The Human Face of God (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1973), 131, as quoted in Copan, 27.

¹⁹ William Lane Craig, “Contemporary Scholarship and the Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ,” Truth 1 (1985): 89–95, from the Leadership

University web site at http://www.leaderu.com/truth/1truth22.html; see Wilkins and Moreland, 152.

²⁰ Wilkins and Moreland, 146–47; Craig, “Contemporary Scholarship and the Historical Evidence.”

²¹ Strobel, 217.

²² Ibid., 218.

²³ Adapted from Wilkins and Moreland, 152. See Matthew 28:13.

²⁴ Adapted from ibid., 146–47.

²⁵ Wilkins and Moreland, 147. In an interview with investigative journalist Lee Strobel, William Lane Craig notes that the confession used by Paul is exceedingly early and therefore trustworthy. Craig goes on to say that “essentially, it is a four-line quote. The first line refers to the crucifixion, the second to the burial, the third to the resurrection, and the fourth to Jesus’ appearances….This creed is actually a summary that corresponds line for line with what the gospels teach. When we turn to the Gospels, we find multiple, independent attestation of this burial story, and Joseph of Arimathea is specifically named in all four accounts. On top of that, the burial story in Mark is so extremely early that it’s simply not possible for it to have been subject to legendary corruption” (Strobel, 209).

²⁶ Habermas, 154. Cf. Wilkins and Moreland, 40–41, 147.

²⁷ Strobel, 230.

²⁸ William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1994), 285.

²⁹ Strobel, 233.

³⁰ Paul received this creed from the believing community (v. 3), perhaps from Peter and James in Jerusalem (Gal. 1:18–19), if not sooner (see Habermas, 155).

³¹ Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians is dated at about A.D. 55; that is, 25 years after Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection. His statement that “most [of the eyewitnesses] are still living” (1 Cor. 15:6) is what one would expect.

³² Norman Perrin, The Resurrection According to Matthew, Mark, and Luke (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), 80, as quoted in Copan, 28.

³³ See Eusebius, History of the Church, Book II:XXV; Book. III:I; Clement of Rome, First Epistle to the Corinthians, ch. 5.

³⁴ Kenneth Barker, gen. ed., The NIV Study Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1985), 1879. See F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone, eds., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 2d ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 722.

³⁵ Eusebius, Bk. II: XXIII. Cf. Josephus, Antiquities, 20:9:1; see John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, vol. 1 (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 57–59.

³⁶ Strobel, 251.

THE CONFESSION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH

First, the confession of the Christian church is instructive. The church has not only always affirmed the immortality of the resurrection body, but also its materiality. While it has agreed with the apostle that the resurrection body is a “spiritual” (i.e., spirit-directed) body (1 Cor. 15:44), it has never denied that it is a material body.

The Apostolic Testimony

The Christian church has from the beginning confessed that the same physical body of flesh that was laid in Jesus’ tomb was raised immortal. This belief is based on several explicit New Testament references and extensive tangible evidence. Jesus Himself said His resurrection body was one of “flesh and bones” (Luke 24:39; cf. 13:37). Speaking of the resurrection of Christ, Peter insisted that His “flesh did not see corruption” (Acts 2:31). Writing after the Resurrection, John declared that Jesus “came [and remained] in the flesh” (1 John 4:2; cf. 2 John 7). The body that emerged from the tomb on Easter morning was seen (Matt. 28:17), heard (John 20:15-16), and even touched (Matt. 28:9) on many occasions after the Resurrection. Moreover, Jesus ate food at least four times after the Resurrection (Luke 24:30; 24:42-43; John 21:12-13; Acts 1:4). He also showed His crucifixion scars on two occasions, once challenging doubting Thomas: “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe” (John 20:27).

The “Ante-Nicene” Testimony

Following the apostolic testimony, the church down through the centuries has confessed its belief in “the resurrection of the flesh” — both that of Jesus in particular and of humanity in general. “Ante-Nicene” (i.e., before the 325 A.D. Council of Nicea) father Justin Martyr (A.D. 100-165) said plainly: “The resurrection is a resurrection of the flesh which dies.”⁵ As for those who “maintain that even Jesus Himself appeared only as spiritual, and not in flesh, but presented merely the appearance of flesh: these persons seek to rob the flesh of the promise.”⁶ Justin even insisted that Christ’s ascension shows that it is possible “for flesh to ascend into heaven.”⁷ Tertullian (c. A.D. 160-230) declared the resurrection of the flesh to be the church’s “rule of faith,” saying it “was taught by Christ” and only denied by heretics.⁸ In his treatise on “The Resurrection of the Dead” (ch. 3), second century Christian teacher Athenagoras concluded that God’s “power is sufficient for the raising of dead bodies, and is shown by the creation of these same bodies. For if, when they did not exist, He made at their first formation the bodies of men, and their original elements, He will, when they are dissolved, in whatever manner that may take place, raise them again with equal ease: for this, too, is equally possible to Him.”⁹

The “Post-Nicene” Testimony

In the fourth century, The Second Creed of Epiphanius (A.D. 374) confessed that “the Word became flesh,…the same suffered in the flesh; rose again; and went up to heaven in the same body;…is coming in the same body in glory to judge the quick and the dead.”¹⁰ Cyril of Jerusalem (A.D. 315-386) considered any view heretical that claims “the resurrection of the Saviour was phantom-wise, and not real, not heeding Paul who says, ‘Who was made flesh of the seed of David according to the flesh;’ and again ‘By the resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord from the dead.’”¹¹ The preeminent theologian, St. Augustine (A.D. 354-430), declared: “It is indubitable that the resurrection of Christ, and His ascension into heaven with the flesh in which He rose, is already preached and believed in the whole world.” Augustine even held that God would reassemble in the resurrection body “all the portions which have been consumed by beasts or fire, or have been dissolved into dust of ashes….”¹²

The Medieval Testimony

St. Anselm of Cantebury (A.D. 1033-1109) insisted on the material nature of the resurrection body. Speaking on the topic, “How man will rise with the same body which he has in this world,” he argued that “if a man is to be perfectly restored, the restoration should make him such as he would have been had he never sinned….Therefore, as man, had he not sinned, was to have been transformed with the same body to an immortal state, so when he shall be restored, it must properly be with his own body as he lived in this world.”¹³ The great theologian, Thomas Aquinas (A.D. 1224-1274), said of the resurrection: “The soul does not take an airy or heavenly body, or a body of another organic constitution, but a human body composed of flesh and bones and the same members enjoyed at present.”¹⁴

The Reformation Testimony

The Protestant Reformation continued the orthodox affirmation of the material nature of the resurrection body. The Lutheran Formula of Concord (A.D. 1576) reads: “We believe, teach, and confess…the chief articles of our faith (of Creation, of Redemption, of Sanctification, and the Resurrection of the flesh)….”¹⁵ The French Confession of Faith, prepared with the help of John Calvin and approved by the Synod of Paris (A.D. 1559), pronounced that “although Jesus Christ, in rising from the dead, bestowed immortality upon his body, yet it did not take away from the truth of its nature, and we so consider him in his divinity that we do not despoil him of his humanity.”¹⁶ The Belgic Confession (A.D. 1561), adopted by the Synod of Dort (A.D. 1619), declares that “all the dead shall be raised out of the earth, and their soul joined and united with their proper bodies in which they formerly lived.”¹⁷ Further, the Thirty Nine Articles of Religion of the Church of England (A.D. 1562) confess that “Christ did truly rise again from death, and took again his body, with flesh, bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of Man’s nature; wherewith he ascended into Heaven….”¹⁸ And the Westminster Confession (A.D. 1647) proclaimed that Jesus “was crucified, and died; was buried, and remained under the power of death, yet saw no corruption. On the third day he arose from the dead, with the same body in which he suffered; with which he ascended into heaven….”¹⁹ Even some who deny that Christ rose in the flesh admit that “until the time of the Reformation the creeds of the West spoke only of the resurrection of the flesh.”²⁰

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE RESURRECTION OF THE FLESH

Having examined the historical evidence, we must now turn to the theological question: What difference does it make whether Christ arose in the same body of flesh in which He lived and died? The New Testament’s response is clear and unequivocal. Without Christ’s physical resurrection there is no salvation (Rom. 10:9), for the Resurrection is at the very heart of the gospel by which we are saved (1 Cor. 15:1-5). The apostle Paul listed a litany of consequences that follow a denial of the physical resurrection. If Christ did not rise, then :1) Our faith is useless; 2) We are still in our sins; 3) Our departed loved ones are lost; 4) The apostles are false witnesses; and 5) We are the most to be pitied of all men (1 Cor. 15:14-19). In addition to this sobering list of dire results for denying the literal resurrection, there are some crucial theological problems that follow failure to join the apostolic confession of “the resurrection of the flesh.”

The Problem of Creation

God created the material universe (Gen. 1:1) and pronounced it “very good” (v. 31). Sin, however, brought death and decay to God’s creation: “Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men….” (Rom. 5:12). Furthermore, because of man’s sin “the creation was subjected to frustration….” (Rom. 8:20). Thus, the creation has been groaning and waiting “to be liberated from its bondage to decay” (v. 21). Likewise, believers “wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we are saved” (vv. 23-24). Since God’s material creation fell, it is clear that in order for redemption to be effective it must restore this material creation. Humans sin and die in material bodies and they must be redeemed in the same physical bodies. Any other kind of deliverance would be an admission of defeat. Likewise, just as the world God created and which subsequently fell was material, even so God will eventually deliver this material universe from decay by recreating a new heaven and a new earth (Rev. 21:1-4). If redemption does not restore God’s physical creation, including our material bodies, then God’s original purpose in creating a material world would be frustrated. As Professor Robert Gundry aptly noted, “Anything less than that undercuts Paul’s ultimate intention that redeemed man possess physical means of concrete activity for eternal service and worship of God in a restored creation.” So, “to dematerialize resurrection, by any means, is to emasculate the sovereignty of God in both creative purpose and redemptive grace.”²¹

The Problem of the Incarnation

The denial that Christ came in human flesh is called docetism. Hence, the denial that He rose in human flesh is a kind of neodocetism. Both diminish the full humanity of Christ, one before and the other after His resurrection. A similar doctrinal deviation existed in the first century. John addressed it when he warned against those who deny that ‘Jesus Christ has come [and remains] in the flesh’ (1 John 4:2). The use of the perfect participle (“has come”) implies that Jesus came in the flesh in the past and He remained in the flesh when John penned these words after the Resurrection. In the parallel passage (2 John 7) John used the present tense, warning against those “who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh.” This makes it even clearer that John considered it wrong to deny flesh of Christ either before or after His resurrection. The reason is obvious: human flesh is part of our true human nature as God created it. Hence, to deny that Christ was resurrected in human flesh is to deprive Him of full humanity.

The Problem of Salvation

Among other things, salvation is victory over death (1 Cor. 15:54-55). Since the death which resulted from sin directly involved the material body, the body that is raised again must be material for there to be real victory over death. Failure to confess that Christ rose in a material body undercuts the very gospel itself. In his definitive work on the nature of “body” (Greek: soma) in the New Testament, Professor Gundry noted that unless Christ rose in the same physical body in which He died, then “the relationship of the two bodies to each other is extrinsic and to that degree unimpressive as a demonstration of Christ’s victory over death.”²² Hence, “the resurrection of Christ was and the resurrection of Christians will be physical in nature.”²³ Anything less undercuts God’s redemptive purposes for the human race.

The Problem of Deception

There is also a serious moral problem. Some claim that Christ’s appearances were merely “materializations” aimed at convincing the disciples of His reality but not His materiality. But Jesus said: “Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have” (Luke 24:27). Jesus challenged Thomas to put his finger into the scar in His hand and to put his hand into the wound in His side and “stop doubting and believe” (John 20:27). Given the identity of the scars with His preresurrection body, the only impression these words could have left on the disciples’ minds was that Jesus was claiming to have resurrected in the same literal, material body in which He died. However, if He did not rise in this physical body, He was intentionally misleading His disciples. In short, either Jesus rose in the same material body in which He died, or else He lied.

The Problem of Immortality

A denial of the material nature of the resurrection body is fatal for Christian immortality. Unlike the ancient Greeks, Christians believe true immortality involves the whole person, including the body; not just the continuing existence of the soul. But if Christ did not rise in the same physical body in which He died, then we have no real hope that we will ever attain true immortality either. Paul declared that Christ “has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Tim. 1:10). It is only through Christ’s victory over physical death that believers can proclaim: “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Cor. 15:55). Otherwise, as Paul informed the Corinthians, “if Christ has not been raised…those who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost” (1 Cor. 15:18).

The Problem of Verification

A nonmaterial resurrection has no evidential value. If Christ did not rise in the same material body placed in the tomb, then the Resurrection loses its value as an evidence for His claim to be God. However, Jesus often offered His resurrection as a proof of His claims (John 2:19-22; 10:18). On one occasion He offered it as the unique sign of who He is, declaring that no other sign would be given to that unbelieving generation (Matt. 12:40). The apostles also offered Jesus’ resurrection appearances as “many convincing proofs” (Acts 1:3). They used the Resurrection as the basis of their fearless preaching of Christ over and over again (Acts. 2:22-36; 4:2,10; 13:32-41; 17:1-4,22-31). Paul told the philosophers of his day that God “has given proof…to all men by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:31). There is a very good reason for this repeated connection between the fact of the physical resurrection and the truth of Christianity: there is no real evidential difference between an immaterial resurrection and no resurrection at all. An immaterial body has no verifiable connection with a material body. The only objective way the world could know that Christ rose was if He rose in the same material body in which He died. As the poet John Updike powerfully stated,

Make no mistake; if He rose at all it was as His body, if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules reknit, the amino acids rekindle, the Church will fail.

Dr. Geisler is Dean of the Liberty Center for Research and Scholarship and Professor of Philosophy of Religion at Liberty University, Lynchburg, Virginia. He is the author of nearly 30 books, including the forthcoming The Battle for the Resurrection (Thomas Nelson Publishers).

NOTES

¹ Wolfhart Pannenburg, Jesus — God and Man, 2d ed., trans. Lewis L. Wilkins and Duane A. Priebe, (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1977), 75. ² E. Glenn Hinson, Jesus Christ (Wilmington: Consortium Books, 1977), 111. ³ Murray Harris, Raised Immortal (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985), 53. ⁴ Ibid., 124. ⁵ Justin Martyr, Fragments of the Lost Work of Justin on the Resurrection, ch. 10. (All citations from the Ante-Nicene and Post-Nicene fathers can be found in Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds., The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vols. 1-14 [Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1985], and Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, eds., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vols. 1-14; Second Series, vols. 1-14 [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1983]). ⁶ Ibid., ch. 2. ⁷ Ibid., ch. 9. ⁸ Tertullian, The Prescription Against Heretics, ch. 13. ⁹ Athenagoras, The Resurrection of the Dead. ¹⁰ Philip Schaff, ed., The Creeds of Christendom, 6th ed., vol. 2 (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1983), 37.¹¹ Cyril of Jerusalem: Catechetical Lectures, XIV, 21. ¹² Augustine, The City of God, Book 12, ch. 5. ¹³ Anselm of Cantebury, Curus Deus Homo, Book 2, ch. 3, in St. Anselm: Basic Writings, 2d ed., trans. S. N. Deane (La Salle: Open Court, 1962), 241. ¹⁴ Thomas Aquinas, Compendium of Theology, 153, in Saint Thomas Aquinas Philosophical Texts, selected and trans. Thomas Gilby (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), 278. See also III Summa Contra Gentiles, 79, in Saint Thomas Aquinas Theological Texts, selected and trans. Thomas Gilby (Durham: The Labyrinth Press, 1982), 405. ¹⁵ Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, 98. ¹⁶ Ibid., 368-69. ¹⁷ Ibid., 434. ¹⁸ Ibid., 489. ¹⁹ Ibid., 621. ²⁰ Harris, 132. ²¹ Robert Gundry, Soma in Biblical Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 176,181-82. ²² Ibid. 176. ²³ Ibid. 182.

What was the central truth of the early apostles’ preaching? What was the stimulus to the miraculous growth of the early church? What was the energizing force which spread the gospel across the face of the earth?” These questions, posed by Dr. Walter Martin in his book Essential Christianity, all find their answer in the singular event of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. “He is risen!” was the victory cry of the early Christians, as they spread the message of Christ’s bodily resurrection to the ends of the earth.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the very capstone in the arch of Christianity. When it is removed all else crumbles. It is, in fact, the singular doctrine that elevated Christianity above all the pagan religions of the Mediterranean world. And it is precisely because of its strategic importance to the Christian faith that each person who takes the sacred name Christian upon his lips must be prepared to defend its historicity.

Thus the question must be asked, How can we know beyond any doubt that Jesus really rose from the dead — that this singular event is not some queer predilection on the part of the Christian but is rather faith founded on irrefutable fact?

As Christians, we must be prepared to demonstrate that Christ’s resurrection was an event that occurred in time and space — that it was, in reality, historical and not mythological (cf. 2 Pet. 1:16). The importance of this event cannot be minimized, for Jesus Himself proclaimed that His resurrection would prove His power over death, and thus His deity (John 2:18–22). Not only that, but Christ’s resurrection is the very heart of the gospel (1 Cor. 15:1–4).

When I first began examining the evidences for Christianity, I discovered that belief in the Resurrection does not constitute a blind leap into a dark chasm but rather a step into the light. Indeed, the evidence for Christ’s resurrection is so overwhelming that no one can examine it with an open mind desiring to know the truth without becoming convinced of its truth.

Of the many evidences available, none is more compelling than the fact that the resurrected Christ appeared to over five hundred individuals at a single time (1 Cor. 15:6). Christ appeared to numerous other individuals as well, providing “many convincing proofs” of His resurrection (Acts 1:3). Christ in His resurrection body was even touched on two occasions (Matt. 28:9; John 20:17), and challenged the disciples (Luke 24:39) and Thomas (John 20:27) to feel His wounds.

For those who continue to harbor doubts about the veracity of the biblical evidence, one need only point to Dr. Simon Greenleaf, the greatest authority on legal evidences in the 19th century. It is noteworthy that after examining the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Greenleaf suggested that any cross-examination of the eyewitness testimonies recorded in Scripture would result in “an undoubting conviction of their integrity, ability, and truth.”

Despite the biblical evidence, some have suggested that Jesus’ body was stolen from the tomb —by either the Romans, the Jews, or the disciples. However, even as we consider such alternative explanations, reason drives us back to the conclusion that Christ rose from the dead. Consider the following: We know that the Romans would have no reason to steal Christ’s body. After all, they wanted to keep the peace in Palestine.

The Jewish religious leaders would also have no motive in stealing the body since that would only stir up the very movement they had tried to crush. Besides, if the Jewish leaders had stolen the body, they could have later openly displayed the body to prove to the disciples and indeed the world that Jesus had not really risen from the dead.

And certainly, the disciples wouldn’t have stolen the body, for why would they choose to suffer and die for a cause they knew to be a lie? While it is conceivable that someone might choose to die for what they know to be the truth, it is inconceivable that hundreds of Jesus’ followers would be willing to die for what they knew to be a lie.

Another theory that has been resuscitated (ad nauseam and ad infinitum) in a desperate attempt to explain away the Resurrection is the so-called “Swoon theory.” This theory says that Jesus did not really die on the cross, but merely passed out and was later revived. However, this theory is hopelessly flawed. Think about it for a minute. Can you imagine that Jesus endured six trials, a crown of thorns, a Roman scourge, a crucifixion, a spear thrust into His side, the loss of a great deal of blood, going three days without medical attention or food, pushing a two-ton stone away from His tomb’s entrance, and then physically overcoming an armed Roman guard while walking on pierced feet? No! The Swoon theory is ridiculous in the extreme. And yet, amazingly, some people continue to hang their hats on it.

After carefully examining all the evidence, one can only come to the singular conclusion that Jesus did indeed rise from the dead and that He now lives to be our Lord and Savior (Rev. 1:18). And let me emphasize that the resurrection of Christ is not just an Easter-time phenomenon to be celebrated in song and service. Rather, it is a truth that should daily fill us with eternal hope. Not only did the resurrection of Christ transform the disciples from cowards to lions of the faith, but His resurrection still continues to transform lives today. Because Christ lives, the Scripture says, we will live also. Indeed, in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, we shall be transformed into physical resurrected bodies like unto His resurrected body.

SYNOPSIS

While largely ignoring credible scholarship, The Search for Jesus, Peter Jennings’s TV special, presents what might be called two extremes of fundamentalism: The Jesus Seminar on the one hand and blind, solely subjective belief on the other, which includes heretical Oneness Pentecostalism. At either extreme, the emerging Jesus hardly resembles the Christ of the New Testament. According to the Jesus Seminar, Jesus is said to be the illegitimate son of a Roman soldier, while the story of His Virgin Birth was a cover-up; He wasn’t born in Bethlehem; the betrayal of Jesus was a fabrication concocted by Christians as an anti-Semitic slur; His dead body was not buried but left on the cross and then eaten by birds and prowling dogs; and His resurrection is a story borrowed from the literature of Eastern pagan cults called mystery religions.

Such conclusions amount to little more than dogmatic assertions without defensible argumentation, suggesting a blind faith biased by emotion. In contrast, Christianity is rooted in discernible historical events. Through honest historical analysis we can know, rationally and beyond a reasonable doubt, that Jesus was buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, rose from the dead, and appeared physically to authenticate His claim to be God in human flesh. In ruling out a priori the Christ of biblical faith, Peter Jennings and the Jesus Seminar have failed to find the Jesus of history.

On 26 June 2000, ABC’s Peter Jennings hosted what might best be described as a two-hour, prime time, made-for-television infomercial for two extreme brands of fundamentalism. On the liberal extreme was the fundamentalism of the Jesus Seminar1 — a band of rogue scholars infamous for making dogmatic assertions while failing to provide defensible arguments. On the other extreme were the Pentecostals of Alexandria, Louisiana — a fringe fundamentalist sect that explicitly denies the Trinity and holds that unless people are baptized into their group by their formula with the evidence of speaking in tongues they are not saved.2

Jennings began his narration of Peter Jennings Reporting: The Search For Jesus by promoting the Enlightenment’s false dichotomy between faith and reason. As he put it, “We’ve tried to be respectful about what people believe as we have gone in search of what we can know” (emphases added). Translated: religionists peddle faith biased by emotion; reporters present facts backed by evidence.

As the broadcast progressed, a Jesus altogether different from the biblical Jesus emerged. According to Jennings, the Bible is not much help in reconstructing the historical Jesus. In his view, the Gospels contains four different and contradictory versions of Christ’s life; there is no reliable evidence as to who wrote them; and there is a virtual consensus among scholars that whoever wrote the Gospels were not eyewitnesses and may have written them up to a hundred years after Jesus’ death.

The portrait of Jesus that emerged was not particularly flattering. Contrary to His claim to be God in human flesh, Jesus turns out to be a mere man — He was the illegitimate son of Mary, and the story of His Virgin Birth was concocted as a cover-up; He wasn’t born in Bethlehem; Judas’s betrayal of Jesus was a story likely fabricated by Christians as an anti-Semitic slur; He was not buried, but left on the cross and then eaten by animals ranging from crows to prowling dogs; and His resurrection is a story borrowed from Eastern pagan cults called mystery religions.

Sadly, this is just the tip of an insidious iceberg. While this forum does not afford the opportunity to respond to every acrimonious allegation forwarded by The Search For Jesus, they are dealt with in full on the Christian Research Institute Web site at www.equip.org. As “we demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God” (2 Cor. 10:4–5), the refrain of an old hymn of the faith rings ever more true: “How firm a foundation ye saints of the Lord is laid for your faith in His excellent Word.” Let’s begin by demolishing the following assertions articulated by Jennings:

Scholars told us early on that they don’t take everything that they read in the New Testament literally because the New Testament has four different and sometimes contradictory versions of Jesus’ life — the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. There is no reliable evidence about who the authors actually were. It is pretty much agreed that they were not eyewitnesses. In fact, the Gospels were probably written 40 to 100 years after Jesus’ death.

Gospel Truth or Ghastly Tales

As is consistently the case throughout Jennings’ report of his alleged search for Jesus, dogmatic assertions are made without much attempt to offer credible proof. In other words, the suggestion that the Gospels contain contradictory versions of Christ’s life is never substantiated. In reality, far from being contradictory, the Gospels are clearly complementary. Throughout the centuries, countless Bible scholars and commentaries have attested to that fact. Had all the Gospel writers said the exact same thing in the exact same way, they could have legitimately been questioned on the grounds of collusion.

Furthermore, even a cursory evaluation of the Jesus Seminar reveals that participants hold an anti-supernatural bias and thus reject the Gospel accounts concerning Christ’s resurrection a priori. Using colored beads in a ballot vote, they reject the authenticity of statements attributed to Christ by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. In their view, fewer than 20 percent of Christ’s sayings are credible. Seminar fellows clearly loathe the Gospel of John and yet love the Gospel of Thomas — this despite the fact that Thomas includes such patently ignorant and politically incorrect passages as the following conversation between Peter and Jesus: “Simon Peter said to them, ‘Make Mary leave us, for females don’t deserve life.’ Jesus said, ‘Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the domain of Heaven.’”3

Nonetheless, Seminar scholars consider the Gospel of Thomas more dependable and important than even Matthew and Luke, particularly when it comes to recreating the original words of the historical Jesus.4 Their bias is revealed in the speculation that the Gospel of Thomas is earlier and more authentic than the biblical accounts despite the fact that it was clearly influenced by second-century Gnostic concepts that came into vogue long after the New Testament period.5

Finally, the notion that there is no reliable evidence about who wrote the Gospels, that the writers were not eyewitnesses, and that they probably wrote the Gospels 40–100 years after Jesus’ death is completely ad hoc. The early Christian church offers virtual unanimous affirmation as to authorship and no competing claim to authorship even exists. The early church also explicitly acknowledged the canonical Gospels precisely because they were written by eyewitnesses or by their associates. While a plethora of alleged gospels, including the Gospel of Thomas, were rejected in accordance with strict criteria, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were never in doubt.

With regard to dating the Gospels, Jesus Seminar fellows stand in opposition to even their liberal counterparts. As New Testament scholar Craig Blomberg points out, the standard dating accepted by liberal scholars sets “Mark in the 70s, Matthew and Luke in the 80s, and John in the 90s.” Says Blomberg, these dates are well within the lifetimes of “eyewitnesses of the life of Jesus, including hostile eyewitnesses who would have served as a corrective if false teachings about Jesus were going around.”6 Moreover, there are substantial reasons to suggest that the entire New Testament was completed by a.d. 70, including the fact that the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple (August a.d. 70) is repeatedly prophesied but is never mentioned in the New Testament as having happened.7

Demigod or Deity

One of the more chilling claims made in The Search For Jesus is that Jesus is likely a mere man, whose virgin conception was really a story stolen from pagan mythology or, even worse, was concocted to cover-up His mother’s promiscuity. Jesus Seminar cofounder John Dominic Crossan claims that there were dozens of virgin birth stories circulating in Greek and Roman mythology during the first century. Says Crossan, “They’re all over Greek and Roman mythology, so what do I do? Do I believe all of those stories, or do I say all of those stories are lies except for our Christian story?” Crossan then offers as an example the myth of Caesar Augustus’s birth, in which his mother became impregnated by the sun god Apollo: “His mother was in the temple of Apollo, she fell asleep. During the night she was impregnated by Apollo in the form of a snake, and therefore, of course, the child who was born was divine, Augustus, and of course millions of people would have said in the first century, ‘…look what’s he’s done. He’s brought peace to the warring empire. He’s got rid of the civil wars. He’s our man.’”

Nor is simple mythology the end of it. Jesus Seminar chairman Robert Funk suggests that Jesus was the illegitimate son of a Roman soldier while the account of the virgin conception was a cover-up.8 Jennings explains the alleged evidence for this view: “After the birth stories Joseph pretty much disappears from the New Testament. In the Gospel of John someone criticizing Jesus says no one knows who His father was and an anti-Christian writer in the second century mentions a rumor that a Roman soldier made Mary pregnant.”

When I first heard these sobering claims, I could not but think that if these men are going to suggest that Jesus was illegitimate rather than divinely immortal and that His mother was a fornicator, they had better be certain they are correct. If wrong, they are guilty of blaspheming God. A far more circumspect course of action would have been to exercise restraint just in case they might be mistaken. In fact, Jennings and Jesus Seminar fellows Crossan and Funk are dead wrong.

First, Jennings’s assertion that the Virgin Birth of Jesus is very similar to a story told about Augustus and the Roman sun god Apollo would be laughable if it were not exceedingly blasphemous. A sun god in the form of a snake having sex with a woman has no correspondence whatsoever to a Savior being born of a virgin. Nor are there “dozens of stories” like that of the Virgin Birth as Crossan asserts. Once again he merely makes a dogmatic assertion without providing a defensible basis for it. The truth of the matter is that historical evidence for the veracity of extrabiblical virgin birth stories is nil. It should furthermore stretch even Jennings’s credulity beyond the breaking point to believe that monotheistic Jewish authors such as Matthew and Luke would cloak their narratives in pagan mythology. The eminent historian and scholar Raymond E. Brown explains that the known stories of gods having sex with women have nothing in common with a virgin birth. Says Brown:

Non-Jewish parallels have been found in the figures of world religions (the births of the Buddha, Krishna, and the son of Zoroaster), in Greco-Roman mythology, in the births of the pharaohs (with the god Amun-Ra acting through the father) and in the marvelous births of emperors and philosophers (Augustus, Plato, etc.). But these “parallels” consistently involve a type of hieros gamos where a divine male, in human or other form, impregnates a woman, either through normal sexual intercourse or through some substitute form of penetration. They are not really similar to the non-sexual virginal conception that is at the core of the infancy narratives, a conception where there is no male deity or element to impregnate Mary….So no search for parallels has given us a truly satisfactory explanation of how early Christians happened upon the idea of a virginal conception — unless, of course, that is what really took place.9

Furthermore, Jennings’s statement that “someone in the Gospel of John says that no one knows who his father was and an anti-Christian writer in the second century mentions a rumor that a Roman soldier made Mary pregnant” is completely ad hoc. The statement attributed to the Gospel of John is made out of whole cloth, and lending credence to the slander of an unnamed second-century writer is about as reprehensible as saying that some unnamed source suggested that Jennings used to have sex with little boys before he did his World News Tonight broadcast. Not only would there be no way to falsify such a slanderous statement but also it would sully, with tremendous injustice, the name of a respected broadcaster. This analogy may sound extreme, but I am speaking of a purely hypothetical rumor only leveled against a television journalist, while Jennings and others actually entertain an unsubstantiated accusation against the mother of the holy Incarnate Son of God.

Finally, Jennings clearly blows the cover on his anti-supernatural bias when, after saying that whether Jesus is the Son of God is a matter of faith, he then proceeds to offer offensively naturalistic explanations, such as Mary may have been impregnated by a Roman soldier. I wrote an entire book primarily to demonstrate that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is not based on blind faith but rather is rooted in history and evidence, and that through the resurrection His claim to be the Son of God is vindicated.10 As Dr. Simon Greenleaf, the famous Royall Professor of Law at Harvard and undoubtedly the greatest American authority on common law evidence of the nineteenth century, meticulously documents, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is one of the most well-attested facts of ancient history. Through this and many other infallible proofs we can, indeed, know that Jesus Christ is God.

BETHLEHEM OR BUST

Jesus Seminar fellow Marcus Borg gave one of the more curious suggestions in The Search For Jesus with his claim that Jesus was not born in Bethlehem. The reasoning used to come to this conclusion would be interesting if it were not so insidious. First, the assertion is made that only two Gospels deal with the place of Christ’s birth, and they tell it differently. Luke says Jesus was born in a manger while Matthew says Jesus is born at home. Further, it is argued that there is no record outside the Gospels that Caesar Augustus ordered a worldwide taxation. Moreover, a man was taxed where he worked and women were not even counted. Therefore, Mary and Joseph would not have had to travel to Bethlehem. Finally, it is suggested that people were known by the place where they were born. Since Jesus is known as Jesus of Nazareth, He must have been born there — not Bethlehem.

At times, the statements made in The Search For Jesus are so bizarre that one hardly knows where to begin to refute. Take, for example, Borg’s presumptuous argument that Matthew and Luke provide different (i.e., contradictory) information concerning Christ’s birth in Bethlehem, and, therefore, neither one is to be trusted. In reality, there is nothing in Matthew that contradicts Luke. To present the appearance of a contradiction Borg says that according to Matthew Jesus was “born at home.” Matthew, however, says nothing of the sort — Borg simply fabricates this statement.

Far from being contradictory, the differences between the Gospel accounts are clearly complementary. Luke adds details to Matthew’s account, such as Christ’s birth taking place in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn. Differences between the Gospels not only demonstrate that they did not rely on one another but also add weight to their authenticity. In the words of historian Dr. Paul Barnett, “The differences in the narratives indicate that not only were Matthew and Luke isolated from each other when they wrote, but also that the sources on which they depended were quite separate. Yet from these underlying source strands we have detailed agreement about where Jesus was born, when, to which parents, and the miraculous circumstances of his conception.”11

Furthermore, Jennings’ statement that there is no record outside of the Gospels that Emperor Caesar Augustus ordered a worldwide taxation is not only presumptuous but also patently false. In truth, Caesar Augustus was famous for his census taking — so famous, in fact, that credible historians do not even debate the issue. The Jewish historian Josephus, for example, refers to a Roman taxation of a.d. 6.12 Considering the scope of this taxation, it is logical to assume that it took a long time to complete. It no doubt began with Caesar Augustus about 5 b.c. and was completed approximately a decade later. Luke, a meticulous historian, notes that the census was first completed when Quirinius was governor of Syria.13 In fact, as historian Paul Maier explained during a Bible Answer Man broadcast, “The Romans took 40 years to get a census done in Gaul. For a province 1,500 miles away from Rome in Palestine to take a decade is pretty quick. And since that census would finally come in under Quirinius’s administration, it would be called correctly by Luke his census.”14

Given Luke’s impeccable credentials as a historian, it would have been far more circumspect for Jennings to give him the benefit of the doubt. One need only remember the experience of the brilliant archeologist Sir William Ramsay who set out to disprove Luke’s historical reliability. Through his painstaking Mediterranean archeological trips, he discovered that, one after the other, the historical allusions of Luke proved accurate. If, as Ramsay points out, Luke does not err in referencing a plethora of countries, cities, and islands, there is no reason to doubt him concerning this census.15

Jennings’s assertion that men were taxed where they lived and women didn’t count is also spurious. Maier cites a first-century Roman census in Egypt, in which taxpayers living elsewhere were ordered to return to their homelands for registration.16 Furthermore, a Roman census from Bacchius, Egypt, dated a.d. 119, historically documents that women and children were registered by their husbands or fathers.17

Finally, Borg’s assertion that Jesus was known as Jesus of Nazareth and thus must have been born there instead of in Bethlehem is also dead wrong. Countless counterexamples undermine his hypothesis. For instance, Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 175–195) was probably a native of Smyrna, where as a boy he perhaps studied and taught at Rome before moving to Lyons;18 Lucian of Antioch (c. 240–312) was born at Samosata but completed his education and eventually led the theological schools at Antioch;19 Paul of Constantinople (d. c. 351) was a native of Thessalonica and became bishop of Constantinople.20 These men were born in one place but later moved to another with which their names became associated, as did Jesus, who was born in Bethlehem but lived the vast majority of His life in Nazareth. History shows that in the broader context of people’s lives several factors influence how they may be known.

More importantly, because the Bible says Jesus was born in Bethlehem, we can rest assured that He was born in Bethlehem! While Borg’s scholarship is consistently suspect, the Bible is demonstrably divine rather than human in origin. We therefore should believe the Bible over Borg. Several approaches show the God-breathed nature, and thus utter trustworthiness, of Scripture, one of which, as I alluded to earlier, is through Jesus’ historically verifiable claim to deity and resurrection from the dead in vindication of that claim.21 In the Gospels, Jesus repeatedly validated the Old Testament and guaranteed the veracity of the New Testament.22 Speaking as God, Christ’s pronouncements are true, and, therefore, so is everything the Bible teaches, including all that pertains to His miraculous birth.

ANTI-SEMETIC SLUR OR ANTI-INTELLECTUAL SOPHISTRY?

The anti-intellectual sophistry in The Search for Jesus reached perhaps its climax when Jesus Seminar fellow Funk suggested that Judas might well have been invented as an anti-Semitic slur. According to Funk, the story of Judas’s betrayal of Jesus was “probably a fiction because Judas looks to many of us like the representation of Judaism or the Jews as responsible for His death. If it is a fiction it was one of the most cruel fictions that was ever invented…because of the untold hostility that has persisted between Christians and Jews all down through the centuries.” John Dominic Crossan affirms that these scholars view Judas as the “typical quintessential Jew” because “‘Judas’ meant ‘Jew.’” These comments and their inclusion in the program represent little more than vindictive prejudice itself and may well signify a new low in New Testament studies. Even Crossan sees the flaw: “The trouble is, of course, that that was not the way people in the first century would have heard it, because [Judas] was an ordinary name. There’s a lot of evidence that somebody — I’m deliberately putting this very vaguely — somebody close to Jesus betrayed Him.”

In response it should be emphasized first that, as Crossan admits, Judas was a rather common name. There are several men named Judas in the Gospels, one of whom was a truly devoted disciple of Christ (Luke 6:16), while another wrote the New Testament epistle Jude (see Matt. 13:55; Jude 1). First-century Gospel readers would have hardly taken the name Judas to signify Judaism.

Furthermore, New Testament writers clearly proclaimed that salvation through the Jewish Messiah was given first to the Jewish people and then to the rest of the world (Matt. 15:24; Rom 1:16). Additionally, Peter’s vision followed by Cornelius’s receiving the Holy Spirit (Acts 10) and the subsequent Jerusalem council (Acts 15) clearly demonstrate both the inclusive nature of the church as well as the initial Jewish Christian resistance to Gentile inclusion (see also Gal. 2:11–14). While the early Christians were certainly not anti-Semitic, at least some initially manifested the opposite prejudice!

Far from being anti-Semitic, the New Testament simply records the outworking of redemptive history as foretold by the Jewish prophets who prophesied that one of Christ’s companions would betray Him (Ps. 41:9; John 13:18). As should be obvious to Jennings and the fellows of the Jesus Seminar, there is nothing subtle about the crucifixion narrative. The Jewish Gospel writers explicitly state that it was their leaders who condemned Christ of blasphemy. There would be no motive to fabricate a fictional Judas to represent the quintessential Jew.

Finally, as is obvious to any unbiased person from a scholar to a schoolchild, the New Testament is anything but anti-Semitic. Jesus, the 12 apostles, and the apostle Paul were all Jewish! In fact, Christians proudly refer to their heritage as the Judeo-Christian tradition. In the Book of Hebrews, Christians are reminded of Jews from David to Daniel who are members of the hall of fame of faith. Indeed, Christian children grow up with Jews as their heroes! From their mothers’ knees to Sunday school classes, they are treated to Old Testament stories of great Jewish men and women of faith from Moses to Mary and from Ezekiel to Esther. The Bible goes to great lengths to underscore the fact that when it comes to faith in Christ there is no distinction between Jew and Gentile (Gal. 3:28) and that Jewish people throughout the generations are no more responsible for Christ’s death than anyone else. As Ezekiel put it, “The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son” (Ezek. 18:20). The “cruel fiction” referred to by Funk is not Judas but the notion that Christianity is anti-Semitic. Truly, Jennings and others owe the world an apology for fomenting bigotry and hatred by entertaining the obviously absurd notion that the story of Judas was fabricated because “Judas meant Jew.”

BURIAL OR BUNK?

No doubt the most egregious error in The Search For Jesus is the denial of Christ’s burial and resurrection. In the Practical Apologetics section of this issue (pp. 62–63), I refute the common refrain that the biblical account of death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is a myth borrowed from ancient mystery religions. There is no need to recapitulate that information here, but it is necessary to explode the bunk communicated by the Jesus Seminar regarding Christ’s burial. In a dialogue with Jennings, Crossan contends that the story of Jesus’ burial is based on hope not history: “Was Jesus buried at all?…The purpose of crucifixion was state terrorism and the function was to leave the body on the cross for the carrion, crows, and the prowling dogs. It was not simply that it made you suffer a lot. It meant that you didn’t get buried. That’s what made it one of the supreme Roman penalties. Lack of burial. As I read those stories, I feel terribly sympathetic for the followers of Jesus because I hear hope there, not history.” Obviously, Crossan sets himself apart from “the followers of Jesus.”

Contrary to Crossan’s contention, the account of Christ’s burial is based on history not hope. The late liberal scholar John A. T. Robinson of Cambridge conceded that the burial of Christ “is one of the earliest and best-attested facts about Jesus.”23 This statement is not merely a dogmatic assertion, but rather stands firmly upon sound argumentation.

First, liberal and conservative New Testament scholars alike agree that the body of Jesus was buried in the private tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. Philosopher and theologian William Lane Craig underscores this fact by noting that, as a member of the Jewish court that condemned Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea is unlikely to be a Christian fiction. The noted New Testament scholar Raymond Brown explains, “Joseph’s being responsible for burying Jesus is ‘very probable,’ since a Christian fictional creation of a Jewish Sanhedrist doing what is right for Jesus is ‘almost inexplicable,’ given the hostility towards the Jewish leaders responsible for Jesus’ death in early Christian writings. In particular, Mark would not have invented Joseph in view of his statements that the whole Sanhedrin voted for Jesus’ condemnation (Mark 14:55, 64; 15:1).”24

Furthermore, no competing burial story exists. Craig points out in Jesus under Fire that “if the burial of Jesus in the tomb by Joseph of Arimathea is legendary, then it is strange that conflicting traditions nowhere appear, even in Jewish polemic. That no remnant of the true story or even a conflicting false one should remain is hard to explain unless the Gospel account is substantially the true account.”25

The account of Jesus’ entombment in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea is substantiated by Mark’s Gospel and is, therefore, far too early to have been the subject of legendary corruption.26 Likewise, Paul substantiates Christ’s burial in a letter to the Corinthian Christians in which he recites an ancient Christian creed dating to within a few years of the crucifixion itself (1 Cor. 15:3–7).27

Finally, as Craig emphasizes, the earliest Jewish response to the resurrection of Jesus Christ presupposes a known tomb that became empty. Instead of denying that the tomb was empty, the antagonists of Christ accused His disciples of stealing the body. Their response to the proclamation, “He has risen — He is risen indeed,” was not “His body is still in the tomb,” or “He was thrown into a shallow grave and eaten by dogs.” Instead, they responded, “His disciples came during the night and stole him away.”28 In the centuries following the Resurrection, the fact that Jesus’ tomb was empty was forwarded by Jesus’ friends and foes alike.29

In short, early Christianity simply could not have survived an identifiable tomb containing the corpse of Christ. The enemies of Christ could easily have put an end to the charade by displaying the body. Perhaps Jesus Seminar cofounder John Dominic Crossan understands that were he to allow for the historicity of Christ’s burial, he would have to allow for the historicity of His resurrection as well.

Much more could be said, but one thing should already be abundantly clear. While Jennings claimed to be a respectful reporter in search of what we can know about the Jesus of history, in reality he spent the better part of two hours peddling his own extreme brand of fundamentalism. Far from providing bare facts backed by evidence, he peddled blind faith biased by emotion. To accept Jennings’ claims on the basis of unsubstantiated rumor would be truly reprehensible.

NOTES

1. In an interview with Lee Strobel, scholar Gregory Boyd stated, “Ironically, [participants in the Jesus Seminar] have their own brand of fundamentalism. They say they have the right way of doing things, period. In the name of diversity, they can actually be quite narrow.” (Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ [Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1998], 114.)

2. The Pentecostals of Alexandria, Louisiana, belong to the United Pentecostal Church International (UPCI), a Oneness denomination that holds to a contemporary version of the ancient heresy known as modalistic Monarchianism. For an excellent discussion and defense of the doctrine of the Trinity in relation to the Oneness view, see Gregory A. Boyd, Oneness Pentecostals and the Trinity (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1992).

3. Gospel of Thomas, 114, in Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels (New York: Macmillan, 1993), 532.

4. See ibid., 8–19. See also James R. White, “The Jesus Seminar and the Gospel of Thomas: Courting the Media at the Cost of Truth,” Christian Research Journal, Winter 1998, available at www.equip.org.

5. See, e.g., Gregory A. Boyd, Cynic Sage or Son of God? (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1995), 133–36.

6. Craig Blomberg in Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998), 33.

7. See, e.g., Matthew 23:35–36, 38; 24:1–2; cf. Mark 13:1–2; Luke 21:5–6; also cf. John 2:18–22. This is an argument from significant silence.

8. Cf. Robert W. Funk, Honest to Jesus (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), 288, 294.

9. Raymond E. Brown, The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus (New York: Paulist Press, 1973), 62, 65.

10. See Hank Hanegraaff, Resurrection (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1999), part one.

11. Paul Barnett, Is the New Testament Reliable? A Look at the Historical Evidence (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press), 119.

12. Antiquities 18.1.1–2.

13. As Dr. Paul Maier explained during the 12 November 1999 Bible Answer Man broadcast, “Quirinius took a census in 6 a.d. rather than at the time of Christmas, and critics say Luke made a bad error here [in Luke 2:2]. We’re not sure that he did. It could be a translation problem. The first reading ideally would be that this is the first census when Quirinius is governor of Syria, in which case we’re ten years off. However, the word protos in Greek can also be translated as follows: This was before that census taken by Quirinius that everyone knew about. That’s one translation. The one I prefer is, ‘This census was first completed when Quirinius was governor of Syria.’”

14. Ibid.

15. See William M. Ramsay, The Bearing of Recent Discovery on the Trustworthiness of the New Testament, rep. ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1953); William M. Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveller and the Roman Citizen (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1962).

16. Paul L. Maier, In the Fullness of Time: A Historian Looks at Christmas, Easter, and the Early Church (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1991), 4–5.

17. Ibid., 4–5.

18. Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. two (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 251; cf. J. D. Douglas, gen. ed., The New International Dictionary of the Christian Church, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1978), 516.

19. Douglas, 607.

20. Ibid., 756.

21. See Hanegraaff, part one.

22. See, e.g., Matthew 5:18; 15:6; Mark 7:8; Luke 24:25–27, 44–47; John 10:35; 14:25–26; 16:13; cf. 15:26–27.

23. John A. T. Robinson, The Human Face of God (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1973), 131, as quoted by William Lane Craig in Paul Copan, ed., Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? A Debate between William Lane Craig and John Dominic Crossan (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1998), 27.

24. William Lane Craig, “Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?” in Michael J. Wilkins and J. P. Moreland, eds., Jesus under Fire (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), 148; see also Raymond E. Brown, Death of the Messiah, vol. 2 (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 1240.

25. Craig, “Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?” in Wilkins and Moreland, 149.

26. Ibid., 147–48; See also William Lane Craig, “Contemporary Scholarship and the Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ,” Truth 1 (1985): 89–95, from the Leadership University Web site at http://www.leaderu.com/truth/1truth22.html. For arguments establishing early dates for the writing of Mark, see John Wenham, Redating Matthew, Mark and Luke (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1992), chaps. 6–8; Boyd, chap. 11.

27. Craig, “Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?” in Wilkins and Moreland, 147; see also Gary Habermas, The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ (Joplin, MS: College Press, 1996), chap. 7.

28. Adapted from Craig, “Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?” in Wilkins and Moreland, 152. See Matthew 28:13.

29. Scholar D. H. van Daalen has noted, “It is extremely difficult to object to the empty tomb on historical grounds; those who deny it do so on the basis of theological or philosophical assumptions”; as quoted in William Lane Craig, “Contemporary Scholarship and the Historical Evidence.”

Naturalistic explanations of Jesus’ resurrection have existed as long as this event has been proclaimed. Several of these alternative approaches even appear in the Gospels themselves. It seems that both past and present skeptics, knowing that Christ’s resurrection lies at the heart of Christianity, have singled it out for special attack. In this article I will first provide historical perspective to this issue and make brief comments regarding the heyday of naturalistic theories in nineteenth-century theology. About 100 years ago, the hallucination hypothesis was the most popular critical position until it passed out of scholarly favor. Based on my recent survey of more than 1,000 publications on the subject of Jesus’ resurrection published between 1975 and the present, I will proceed to document the increased popularity of this hypothesis, focusing chiefly on the views of scholars during the past decade or two. Lastly, I will present a multifaceted critique of these positions, using only data that can be ascertained by critical means, which the vast majority of scholars will accept.1

Naturalistic Approaches since the Nineteenth Century

Publications from the end of the eighteenth through the nineteenth century provide the most examples of naturalistic theories regarding Jesus’ resurrection. In his classic volume documenting studies of the historical Jesus during this period, Albert Schweitzer chronicled many of these approaches. For example, an early attempt by Hermann Reimarus charged that Jesus’ disciples stole His dead body.2 Friedrich Schleiermacher favored the swoon theory, arguing that Jesus never died on the cross.3 David Strauss popularized the hallucination theory,4 and others such as Ernest Renan followed him.5 Otto Pfleiderer and others thought that legends explained much of the data.6

A fascinating subplot is that many liberal scholars refuted competing hypotheses. Schleiermacher and Heinrich Paulus attacked various vision theories.7 Strauss is usually thought to have crushed the swoon thesis with his insightful analysis8 so that few scholars supported it after his critique.9 Even though he preferred the legend thesis, Pfleiderer even admitted that it could not fully explain the data for Jesus’ resurrection.10

During most of the twentieth century, there was comparatively little interest in naturalistic theories against Jesus’ resurrection. Those who rejected the historicity of this event seldom made reference to alternative formulations. After mentioning a lengthy list of critical theories, Raymond Brown indicated in 1967 that the “criticism of today does not follow the paths taken by the criticism of the past. No longer respectable are the crude theories…popular in the past century….Serious scholars pay little attention to these fictional reconstructions.”11

This lull on the part of critical scholars occurred for more than one reason. Interest in many issues regarding the historical Jesus sagged during this period. Near the top of the list of reasons was the failure of naturalistic hypotheses to explain the known data. In other words, the chief reason for rejecting these alternative theories is that the facts refute each one. James D. G. Dunn concluded: “Alternative interpretations of the data fail to provide a more satisfactory explanation.”12 Philosopher Stephen Davis agrees that critics “are unable to come up with a coherent and plausible story that accounts for the evidence at hand. All of the alternative hypotheses with which I am familiar are historically weak; some are so weak that they collapse of their own weight once spelled out….the alternative theories that have been proposed are not only weaker but far weaker at explaining the available historical evidence.”13

Despite these developments, at present there appears to be a limited trend toward rejuvenating some of the older attempts to explain the resurrection on naturalistic grounds. Of these, the most popular recent choice is a thesis that involves the earliest Christians having hallucinatory or other subjective experiences.

The Recent Return of the Hallucination Hypotheses

In my survey of over 1,000 critical publications on the resurrection, more scholars apparently support various naturalistic hypotheses than has been the case in many decades. This phenomenon is not due to any change in the historical landscape. Rather, it is like the old saying — what goes around comes around — as if some scholars simply think it is time for a change.

Of those who now prefer hallucination explanations, however, only a few scholars have pursued this approach in detail, while several other scholars simply mention the possibility of, or preference for, the hallucination thesis.14 We will look at a few of these attempts.

Gerd Lüdemann has recently outlined a case reminiscent of nineteenth-century attempts. He holds that this explanation can be applied to all of the chief participants in the earliest church: the disciples, Paul, the 500, and James, the brother of Jesus.15 Lüdemann asserts that Paul’s use of the term ophthe in 1 Corinthians 15:3ff clearly means that he was speaking of actual sight, of “his own active sensual perception…,” as well as that of the other apostles. So Paul “must have expected the Corinthians to understand the term historically.”16 Lüdemann concludes that hallucinatory visions are required, along with “auditory features” that produced a “stimulus,” “enthusiasm,” “religious intoxication,” and “ecstasy” for Peter. This spread to the other disciples by “an incomparable chain reaction.” Paul, the other apostles, 500 persons, and James all similarly experienced these subjective visions. The appearances were collective, amounting to a “mass ecstasy.”17

Although his approach is quite different at points, Jack Kent also thinks hallucinations explain the claims of the disciples, Paul, and James.18 Kent combines two naturalistic theories to explain the resurrection appearances of Jesus. Jesus’ male and female followers experienced “normal, grief-related hallucinations.” Paul, on the other hand, experienced inward conflict and turbulence because he participated in the death of Stephen and because of his persecution of Christians. As a result, he underwent a “conversion disorder,” a recognized psychiatric malady that accounts for his conversion on the road to Damascus, which included his stumbling and blindness in particular.19 Unlike Lüdemann, however, Kent wishes to avoid collective hallucinations.20

Closer to Kent, Michael Goulder applies a related explanation to the experiences of Peter, Paul, and some of the others.21 Goulder thinks that Peter and Paul experienced what he calls “conversion visions” — hallucinations of various sorts produced during times of great stress, guilt, and self-doubt. The result for these apostles, one of whom

had denied his Lord and another who had persecuted Christians, was a new orientation to life — a transformation leading to “subsequent heroism and martyrdom.”22

One other approach I have dubbed “the illumination theory” should perhaps be mentioned briefly. Several recent scholars prefer a strategy that, while seemingly close to the hallucination thesis, is not quite the same. In general, the idea is that Peter was the first to have some sort of subjective experience or conviction that Jesus was alive. This was later communicated in some sense to Jesus’ other followers, who concluded that Jesus had risen. Critics contend that we cannot now speak about the historical nature of this incident. It is the faith of the early believers that is really of chief importance here, not the nature of the experiences.23 It is often remarked that these experiences were not hallucinations,24 but many of our criticisms below will still apply to this thesis.

Critiques of the Hallucination Hypotheses

While recent hallucination theories reveal some differences among them, there are more similarities. We will begin our critiques by evaluating the possibility of group hallucinations. Next, we will look at the conversion disorder thesis proposed by Kent and Goulder. Then we will examine additional problems with these subjective explanations of Jesus’ resurrection.

Collective Hallucinations

One of the central issues in this entire discussion concerns whether a group of people can witness the same hallucination. Most psychologists dispute that possibility. A rare attempt suggesting that collective hallucinations are possible, without any application to Jesus’ resurrection, is made by Leonard Zusne and Warren Jones. They point to phenomena such as claimed sightings of the Virgin Mary and other accompanying reports from groups of people. In cases such as these, “expectation” and “emotional excitement” are “a prerequisite for collective hallucinations.” In such groups, we see the “emotional contagion that so often takes place in crowds moved by strong emotions.…”25

The idea of collective hallucinations, however, is highly problematic on several grounds:

1. The chief examples of “collective hallucinations” provided by Zusne and Jones were religious group experiences such as with Marian apparitions. These examples simply beg the question whether such experiences could possibly be objective, or even supernatural, at least in some sense. In other words, why must a naturalistic, subjective explanation be assumed?26 This approach seems to rule out the apparitions in an a priori manner, before the data are considered.

2. Furthermore, the collective hallucination thesis is unfalsifiable. It could be applied to purely natural, group sightings, simply calling them group hallucinations, too. Concerning this thesis, crucial epistemic criteria seem to be missing. It can be used to explain (away) almost any unusual occurrence. How do we determine normal occurrences from group hallucinations?

3. Even if it could be established that groups of people experienced hallucinations, it does not mean that these experiences were therefore collective. If, as most psychologists assert, hallucinations are private, individual events, then how could groups share exactly the same subjective visual perception? Rather, it is much more likely that the phenomena in question are either illusions — perceptual misinterpretations of actual realities27 — or individual hallucinations.

Moreover, the most serious problems result from comparing this thesis to the New Testament accounts of Jesus’ resurrection appearances. Here, the explanatory power of this hypothesis is severely challenged, since much of the data not only differs from, but actually contradicts, the necessary conditions for “collective hallucinations.”

4. For instance (more examples will follow below), Zusne and Jones argue that “expectation” and “emotional excitement” are “prerequisites” before such group experiences can occur. In fact, expectation “plays the coordinating role”;28 but these necessary elements contradict the emotional state of the early witnesses of Jesus’ resurrection appearances. The early believers were confronted with the utter reality of the recent and unexpected death of their best friend, whom they had hoped would rescue Israel. As those events unfolded in a whirlwind of incidents that included Jesus’ physical beatings, crucifixion, and seeming abandonment, the normal response would have been fear, disillusionment, and depression. To suppose that these believers exhibited “expectation” and “emotional excitement” in the face of these stark circumstances would require responses on their part that would scarcely be exhibited at a funeral! All indications are that Jesus’ disciples exhibited the very opposite emotions from what Zusne and Jones assert as being necessary for such hallucinations.

By comparison, the disciples’ experience was totally unlike those cases where pilgrims expressly traveled long distances, exuberantly gathering with the explicit desire to see something special, as in the Marian cases. There would seem to be extremely meager grounds for comparison here with Jesus’ disciples.29

Many other crucial problems plague the thesis of group hallucinations, and we will pursue several more below. For now, we repeat that Zusne and Jones never even attempt to apply their approach to Jesus’ resurrection. Rather, they incredibly close their examination with the admission that group hallucinations have a “dubious status” because it is not possible to ascertain whether these individuals were actually hallucinating!30

Conversion Disorder

Kent has suggested that Paul experienced a “conversion disorder,” a psychological condition characterized by such physical symptoms as blindness or paralysis in the absence of specific neurological or medical causes. This was brought about by his inner turbulence, conflict, doubt, and guilt. Goulder agrees about Paul, but adds that Peter and others, including perhaps James, were also suffering from the same problem.

Again, when we align their hypotheses with the known facts, multiple problems with their interpretation emerge:

1. Initially, only Paul is known to have manifested any such symptoms. Goulder’s inclusion of the others is not factually grounded.

2. The psychological profile provided for conversion disorder also strongly opposes an application to Paul, James, or Peter. It most frequently occurs in women (up to five times more often), adolescents and young adults, less-educated persons, people with low I.Q.s or low socioeconomic status, and combat personnel.31 Not a single characteristic applies to Paul and it would be difficult to prove them for the other two apostles.

3. A major problem is that no evidence exists to posit the preconditions for such a disorder from what we know about Paul, and about James in particular. Critics agree that James was an unbeliever during Jesus’ earthly ministry (John 7:5; cf. Mark 3:21). We have no indication that James experienced the slightest inner conflict, doubt, or guilt concerning his previous rejection of Jesus’ teachings. Paul’s skepticism is even better known, since he persecuted early Christians (1 Cor. 15:9; Gal. 1:13, 23). We do not know of any guilt on Paul’s part either, for he considered his actions to have been both zealous and faultless (Phil. 3:4-6). In short, there is no indication of any prior desire for conversion by either of these men. To suppose otherwise is groundless. Paul and James are thus exceptionally poor candidates for this disorder.

4 and 5. Here, we have two separate critiques, due to very different sets of circumstances. While the same cannot be said of Peter, there is no indication that either James or Paul longed to see Jesus. Their unbelief is a poor basis for producing hallucinations! James the skeptic and Paul the persecutor are exceptionally tough obstacles for the hallucination thesis. To say otherwise is mere conjecture apart from historical data. Not only are these two individuals poor candidates for hallucination, but we need both visual and auditory hallucinations, which stretches the case even further. These two phenomena are relatively uncommon occurrences.32 These two apostles, therefore, fail to qualify for the disorder in the first place, and even apart from this malady, they were additionally not predisposed to experience hallucinations.

6. Neither does this hypothesis normally account for what would otherwise be considered delusions of grandeur — in this case, the apostles’ belief that God had imparted to them a global message that others must accept. It is unlikely that other delusions were involved here, occurring at precisely the same time. So the case is further weakened in that the thesis fails to explain all of the known data.

Charging that these apostles were victims of conversion disorder simply does not fit the facts. It is clearly an over-reliance on a hypothesis apart from the data, a theory not anchored to reality. It would be highly improbable for all of the necessary factors to converge simultaneously. Like the charge of mass hallucinations, it spawns more difficulties than it tries to solve.

Additional Problems

Many other issues remain regarding the hallucination hypothesis:

1. Even individual hallucinations are questionable for believers who felt despair at the unexpected death of Jesus just hours before. Their hopes and dreams had suddenly been dashed. Extreme grief, not exuberance, would have been their normal response.

2. The wide variety of times and places that Jesus appeared, along with the differing mindsets of the witnesses, is another formidable obstacle. The accounts of men and women, hard-headed and soft-hearted alike, all believing that they saw Jesus, both indoors and outdoors, provide an insurmountable barrier for hallucinations. The odds that each person would be in precisely the proper and same frame of mind to experience a hallucination, even individually, decrease exponentially.33

3. Generally, hallucinations do not transform lives. Studies indicate that even those who do hallucinate often disavow the experiences when others present have not seen the same thing.34 Critics acknowledge that Jesus’ disciples were transformed even to the point of being willing to die for their faith. No early text reports that any of them ever recanted. It is highly unlikely that this quality of conviction came about through false sensory perceptions without anyone rejecting it later.

4. If the appearances were hallucinations, then opponents should have located Jesus’ body safely and securely in His grave just outside the city of Jerusalem. That body would undoubtedly be a rather large disclaimer to the disciples’ efforts to preach that Jesus was raised! Because the hallucination hypotheses do not even address the historical arguments for the empty tomb, another naturalistic thesis is required in order to do so.

Still more issues weaken the hallucination hypothesis. While they are perhaps not as weighty, they nevertheless count:

5. Why did the hallucinations stop after 40 days? Why didn’t they continue to spread to other believers, just as the other hallucinations had?

6. The resurrection was the disciples’ central teaching, and we usually take extra care with what is closest to our hearts. This is what drove Paul to check out the nature of the gospel data with other key disciples on at least two occasions to make sure he was preaching the truth (Gal. 1:18–19; 2:1–10). He found that they were also speaking of Jesus’ appearances to them (1 Cor. 15:11).

7. What about the natural human tendency to touch? Would not one of them ever discover, even in a single instance, that his or her best friend, seemingly standing perhaps just a few feet away, was not really there?

8. The resurrection of a contemporary individual contradicted general Jewish theology, which held to a corporate resurrection at the end of time. So Jesus’ resurrection did not fit normal Jewish expectations, and most of the witnesses to Jesus’ bodily resurrection were Jewish.

9. Finally, hallucinations of the extended sort required by this naturalistic theory are rare phenomena, chiefly occurring in circumstances that militate against Jesus’ disciples being the recipients.35

“HE IS RISEN, INDEED”

To sum up, after a century-long hiatus, a limited trend toward the reformulation of naturalistic approaches to Jesus’ resurrection has recently emerged. The hallucination and related subjective hypotheses are again the most popular among these approaches, as they were at the close of the nineteenth century. We have seen that these strategies have failed to explain the known, critically ascertained data on several fronts. Giving a total of 19 reasons, we have concluded that they fall far short in their attempt to provide an alternative to the New Testament proclamation. Clinical psychologist Gary Collins summarizes a few of the issues: “Hallucinations are individual occurrences. By their very nature only one person can see a given hallucination at a time. They certainly are not something which can be seen by a group of people….Since an hallucination exists only in this subjective, personal sense, it is obvious that others cannot witness it.”36

In fact, the problems with this thesis are so serious that these recent critics “would have to go against much of the current psychiatric and psychological data about the nature of hallucinations.”37 These approaches are therefore at odds with current scientific knowledge on this subject. To apply the hallucination and similar subjective theses to Jesus’ resurrection appearances is erroneous across several disciplines and at many points. These subjective theories fail just as thoroughly as did those of 100 years ago to undermine the proclamation on which Christian faith has stood firm for 2,000 years: Christ is risen. He is risen, indeed!

Gary R. Habermas (Ph.D., Michigan State University) is Distinguished Professor of Apologetics and Philosophy at Liberty University, Lynchburg, VA. Of his 21 books, nine are on the subject of Jesus’ resurrection.

Notes

1 This is what I have termed “the minimal facts method,” which argues primarily from data that are multiply attested on strongly evidential grounds. Almost all scholars who research this subject accept these data. For an outline of this method, see Gary R. Habermas, “Evidential Apologetics,” Five Views on Apologetics, ed. Steven Cowan (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 99–120, 186–90.

2 Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede, trans. W. Montgomery (New York: Macmillan, 1906, 1968), 21–22; other examples are found on pp. 21–22, 43, 47, 53–55, 60, 83, 162–67, 170, 187, 210–14.

3 Schweitzer, 64; Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, trans. H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart, 2 vols. (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), 417–21.

4 David Strauss, A New Life of Jesus, 2d ed., 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Williams and Norgate, 1879), vol. 1, 412–40.

5 Ernest Renan, Vie de Jesus (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1861), 355–56.

6 Otto Pfleiderer, Early Christian Conception of Christ: Its Significance and Value in the History of Religion (London: Williams and Norgate, 1905), chap. 4.

7 Schleiermacher, 420; Schweitzer, 53–55.

8 Strauss, 408–12.

9 Schweitzer lists no convinced proponents of the swoon theory after 1838, three years after the initial publication of Strauss’s critique.

10 Pfleiderer, 157–58.

11 Raymond Brown, “The Resurrection and Biblical Criticism,” Commonweal, 24 November 1967, 233.

12 James Dunn, The Evidence for Jesus (Louisville: Westminster, 1985), 76.

13 Stephen Davis, “Is Belief in the Resurrection Rational? A Response to Michael Martin,” Philo 2 (Spring–Summer 1999): 57–58.

14 Some of these are Dan Cohn-Sherbok, “The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish View,” Resurrection Reconsidered, ed. Gavin D’Costa (Oxford: Oneworld, 1996), 197; John Barclay, “The Resurrection in Contemporary New Testament Scholarship,” in D’Costa, 25–26; Michael Grant, Saint Paul: The Man (Glasgow: William Collins Sons, 1976), 108; M. Lloyd Davies and T. A. Lloyd Davies, “Resurrection or Resuscitation?” Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of London 25 (April 1991): 168; Antony Flew in Gary R.

15 Gerd Lüdemann’s best known works are: The Resurrection of Jesus: History, Experience, Theology, trans. John Bowden (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994); a more popular rendition was written in collaboration with Alf Ozen, What Really Happened to Jesus: A Historical Approach to the Resurrection, trans. John Bowden (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1995).

16 Lüdemann, The Resurrection of Jesus, 50, 37; cf. What Really Happened to Jesus, 103.

17 Lüdemann, The Resurrection of Jesus, 106–7, 174–75.

18 Jack Kent, The Psychological Origins of the Resurrection Myth (London: Open Gate, 1999).

19 Ibid., 6–11, 49–61, 85–90.

20 Ibid., 89–90.

21 Michael Goulder, “The Baseless Fabric of a Vision,” in D’Costa, 48–61; a briefer version was published as part of a debate with James Dunn in Resurrection, ed. G. N. Stanton and S. Barton (London: SPCK, 1994), 58–68.

22 Goulder, 48–52. Incidentally, Goulder argues that the disciples, especially regarding Jesus’ appearances to groups, experienced “collective delusions.” These are significantly different from subjective hallucinations in that they pertain to the misapprehension of actual, physical objects (52–55).

23 Similar views are held by: Willi Marxsen, Jesus and Easter: Did God Raise the Historical Jesus from the Dead? (Nashville: Abingdon, 1990), 65–74; Willi Marxsen, The Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, trans. Margaret Kohl (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1968), especially chaps. 3–4; Don Cupitt, Christ and the Hiddenness of God (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971), 143, 165–67; Thomas Sheehan, The First Coming: How the Kingdom of God Became Christianity (New York: Random House, 1986), 95–118; John Shelby Spong, Resurrection: Myth or Reality? (San Francisco: HarperSan Francisco, 1994), 255–60; John Shelby Spong, The Easter Moment (San Francisco: HarperSan Francisco, 1987), especially 39–68.

24 Spong, The Easter Moment, 196; Sheehan, 262-63, n. 38; cf. Marxsen, Jesus and Easter, 71–74.

25 Leonard Zusne and Warren Jones, Anomalistic Psychology: A Study of Extraordinary Phenomena of Behavior and Experience (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1982), 135–36.

26 For a number of critical observations and responses to such phenomena, see Elliot Miller and Kenneth R. Samples, The Cult of the Virgin: Catholic Mariology and the Apparitions of Mary (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992), esp. chaps. 11–14 and appendix A.

27 Here, Zusne and Jones repeatedly refer to collective hallucinations, even though they conclude, conversely, that these groups may be seeing actual phenomena. So the “final answer to these questions has not been obtained yet” (135–36)!

28 Ibid., 135.

29 The rejoinder could be made that perhaps a few individuals hallucinated individually, thereby inducing excitement in the others, preparing them for hallucinations. From our critique below, a multifaceted response could be fashioned. I would suggest especially critiques 4–5 in the next section regarding the cases of Paul and James, which would be highly problematic for this view both because of the initial skepticism and the later conversions of these apostles, plus critiques 2–8 in the “Additional Problems” section below.

30 Ibid., 136; cf. 134–35. For the more common assessment against group hallucinations, see Phillip Wiebe, Visions of Jesus: Direct Encounters from the New Testament to Today (New York: Oxford, 1997), 210; J. P. Brady, “The Veridicality of Hypnotic, Visual Hallucinations,” Origins and Mechanisms of Hallucinations, ed. Wolfram Keup (New York: Plenum, 1970), 181; Weston La Barre, “Anthropological Perspectives on Hallucinations and Hallucinogens,” Hallucinations: Behavior, Experience and Theory, ed. R. K. Siegel and L. J. West (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1975), 9–10.

31 Harold Kaplan, Benjamin Sadock, and Jack Grebb, Synopsis of Psychiatry, 7th ed. (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1994), 621.

32 Ibid., 621–22. I am also indebted to clinical psychologist Gary Sibcy, Ph.D., for these last two responses.

33 S. J. Segal, “Imagery and Reality: Can They Be Distinguished?” in Keup, 103–13. Zusne and Jones also note that even if people hallucinated in groups, not everyone would have these same experiences (135).

34 Segal, 103. This observation is also corroborated in an unpublished study of hallucinations by Shea Lambert, “Hallucinations and the Post Death Appearances of Jesus,” 20 September 2000, 2–5, 8–9.

35 For many details, see Wiebe, 199–200, 207–11; Kaplan, Sadock, and Grebb, 621. To repeat an earlier point, many of the objections throughout this essay also apply to what I have termed “the illumination theory.”

36 Gary Collins, Ph.D., personal communication, 21 February 1977.

37 Ibid.

Jesus was a “peasant Jewish Cynic,” who never thought of Himself as the Jewish Messiah, much less the Son of God or the Savior of the world. This is the view held by John Dominic Crossan of the Jesus Seminar, reputed to be one of the world’s leading experts on the historical study of Jesus.¹ According to Crossan and others who share his view, Jesus was simply an itinerant preacher who taught that the kingdom of God had to do with how the world would be run if God sat on Caesar’s throne. Jesus’ ministry had nothing to do with helping people find God, salvation, or heaven.

In the past 10 years, Crossan has written numerous books and articles about Jesus2 and has appeared in several videos,3 debates,4 and teleconferences.⁵ He has also appeared on numerous television programs including the ABC prime-time special entitled, “The Search for Jesus,” Discovery Channel’s “Jesus: The Complete Story,” and the PBS Frontline program, “From Jesus to Christ.”6 If the members of your church or class have not been exposed to Crossan’s teachings, it is likely that they will be.

Because Crossan’s view of Jesus is so different from the historic Christian view of the Jesus of the Gospels, we need to be prepared to give a response to church members, students, and those to whom we witness who have been exposed to Crossan’s “scholarship.”

CROSSAN’S OTHER GOSPELS

Since the New Testament Gospels are clear about who Jesus is, we might begin by asking how Crossan arrived at such dramatically different conclusions. At the risk of oversimplifying Crossan’s approach, he virtually ignores most of the material in the Gospels and relies instead on other sources he thinks were written before the Gospels. He calls these “first strata” sources. To qualify as a first strata source, the document had to be written between a.d. 30 and 60. Because Crossan dates the New Testament Gospels from the a.d. 70s to 90s, none of them qualifies as a first strata source.

Crossan’s sources include actual documents such as the Egerton Gospel,⁷ Papyrus Vindobonensis 2325,⁸ Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1224,⁹ the Gospel of the Hebrews,¹⁰ and the Gospel of Thomas.¹¹ Crossan usually doesn’t bother to mention that the vast majority of scholars believe that these documents, which in some cases are only short scraps of text, were written in the second century a.d. or later — long after the New Testament Gospels!

Other sources Crossan relies on are merely hypothetical — that is, they are based entirely on speculations. These include the Miracles Collection,¹² the Apocalyptic Scenario,¹³ and the so-called Cross Gospel.¹⁴ The Cross Gospel, for example, comes from the Gospel of Peter, which is a second-century apocryphal gospel. Crossan contends that the writer of the Gospel of Peter had copied from an earlier source. He pulls some verses out of the Gospel of Peter and claims that he has recovered that earlier source, which he calls the “Cross Gospel.” Crossan then proclaims that this Cross Gospel was written before the canonical Gospels. Few scholars agree on either count, and without supporting evidence Crossan’s Cross Gospel remains a merely hypothetical source.

The discerning Bible student will remember that the apostle Paul wrote most of his letters (epistles) between a.d. 30 and 60, which would qualify them as first strata sources. Since Crossan includes 1 Thessalonians, Galatians, 1 Corinthians, and Romans in his first strata sources, and since these letters clearly present Jesus as the Messiah, Savior, and Son of God, one might wonder on what basis Crossan denies these truths about Jesus.

The reason is that Crossan’s primary criteria for determining historical reliability is multiple indepen­dent attestation. This means that something must be attested to in more than one independent source in order for it to be considered reliable historical evidence. The criteria of multiple independent attestation is actually a valid, fact-finding method. It is what journalists do when they verify their information in more than one source before printing it; since Paul wrote all four letters, however, they count as only one source.

We might assume, therefore, that Paul is the only one of Crossan’s first strata sources that presents Jesus as Messiah, Savior, and Son of God. We would be wrong.

MESSIAH

Jesus is said to be the Messiah not only in the four Pauline letters Crossan considers genuine — Galatians, 1 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians, and Romans — but also in two other first strata sources as well. The Gospel of the Hebrews, one of Crossan’s first strata sources (not to be confused with the New Testament book of Hebrews) explicitly calls Jesus the Christ or Messiah several times and speaks of Him as the One who reigns forever.¹⁵ Another first strata source is the Cross Gospel, which says that Jesus was mocked by being crowned with thorns and hailed as the king of Israel.

In Jesus’ day, anyone who challenged Herod as a rival king was most likely viewed as a would-be messiah. This is a fact that Crossan himself seems to admit. In his book, The Historical Jesus, Crossan discusses five men from the first century a.d. whom he recognizes as would-be messiahs.¹⁶ His source for this information is Josephus, a first-century Jewish historian who wrote between a.d. 70 and 90. Josephus did not explicitly call any of these five men a messiah, but Crossan considers them would-be messiahs because each of them had aspirations to royalty.

While Crossan acknowledges five first-century men as would-be messiahs, he does so on the basis of only one source, Josephus, who does not even qualify as a first strata source. Crossan denies, on the other hand, that Jesus thought of Himself as the Messiah even though three of Crossan’s own first strata sources identify Jesus as Messiah.

SAVIOR

Paul called Jesus’ death a sacrifice of atonement¹⁷ and likened it to the sacrifice of the Passover lamb.¹⁸ Paul said that for those who have faith in Jesus,¹⁹ His death results in redemption^,20 justification,²¹ recon­ciliation,²² salvation,²³ eternal life,²⁴ removal of condemnation,²⁵ and rescue from the coming wrath.²⁶ The Christian might believe that Paul’s word is sufficient evidence to show that Jesus was known by His earliest followers as Savior, but in Crossan’s methodology there must be two or more independent sources to confirm this fact — and again, there are.

The second source is the Cross Gospel, which says one of the men being crucified with Jesus called Jesus the “savior of men.”²⁷ A possible third source is the Gospel of Thomas 82, which quotes Jesus as saying he “who is far from me is far from the kingdom.” Entrance into the kingdom, according to this passage, was dependent on having a relationship with Jesus.

Three of Crossan’s earliest sources, therefore, seem to present Jesus as the Jewish Savior, and according to one of these sources, Jesus believed this to be true about Himself. In first-century Jewish society there was only one true Savior and that was God.

INCARNATION / DEITY

The fact that three of Crossan’s first strata sources present Jesus as the One who brings salvation — something only God could do — raises the question of whether these sources also proclaim Jesus as the incarnation of God. The answer is yes.

First, not only did Paul claim that all things exist through Jesus, but he also called Jesus the Son of God²⁸ and the Lord of Glory.²⁹ He even applied Joel 2:32 directly to Jesus, though in its original context it referred to God.³⁰ In addition, many scholars believe Romans 9:5 in the original Greek directly calls Jesus God.³¹

Second, the Gospel of the Hebrews clearly teaches the preexistence and incarnation of Jesus, calling Him the first-begotten Son who reigns forever^.32 According to the Gospel of the Hebrews, “When Christ wished to come upon earth to men,” God entrusted Him to the angel Michael, who came into the world as Mary.³³ While this is a rather fanciful way of portraying Jesus’ incarnation, the point is that the Gospel of the Hebrews clearly teaches that Jesus is the incarnation of God.

Finally, hints of Jesus’ incarnation are in Crossan’s Miracles Collection and in the Gospel of Thomas. According to the Gospel of Thomas 77, Jesus said that it is from Him that all came forth. The passage is open to interpretation, but it sounds strikingly similar to 1 Corinthians 8:6, in which Paul said there is “one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist” (NRSV).³⁴ In Crossan’s Miracles Collection, Jesus is charged with blasphemy, and even Crossan acknowledges that being “equal to God is implicitly present in the accusation of blasphemy from Mark 2:7,” which is part of Crossan’s Miracles Collection.³⁵ It appears, therefore, that three or four of Crossan’s first strata sources assert that Jesus was the incarnation of God.

CROSSAN’S OTHER JESUS

Nothing in this article should be construed as lending support to Crossan’s creation of sources out of whole cloth, such as the Cross Gospel, the Apocalyptic Scenario, or the Miracles Collection. The purpose of this article is to show that even if all of Crossan’s first strata sources really were written earlier than the New Testament Gospels, and even if we accepted only data that could be attested in two or more sources, nevertheless, the Jesus we find in these sources is radically different from the Jesus Crossan proclaims. Crossan proclaims Jesus as a “peasant Jewish Cynic” who preached a message of egalitarianism and did not think of Himself as the Messiah, much less as someone who was equal with God Crossan’s first strata sources, however, actually paint a picture of Jesus as the Jewish Messiah, Savior, and incarnation of God. When believers, therefore, see Crossan denying the historic Christian view of Jesus in his books, articles, and television appearances, they need not be concerned that new sources or research methods have undermined their faith.

NOTES

1. John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991).

2. “Adventure Story,” Bible Review 16, 5 (2000): 27; “Blessed Plot: A Reply to N. T. Wright’s Review of ‘The Birth of Christianity,’” Scottish Journal of Theology 53, 1 (2000): 92; “The Challenge of Christmas: Two Views,” Christian Century 110, 36 (1993): 1270; “Commentary and History,” Journal of Religion 75, 2 (1995): 247; “Earliest Christianity in Counterfactual Focus,” Biblical Interpretation 8, 1–2 (2000): 92–112; “The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant,” Christian Century 108, 37 (1991): 1194; “A Tale of Two Gods,” Christian Century 110, 36 (1993): 1270; “What Victory? What God? A Review Debate with N. T. Wright on ‘Jesus a Victory of God,’” Scottish Journal of Theology 50, 3 (1997): 345; “Why Christians Must Search for the Historical Jesus,” Bible Review 12 (1996): 34–39, 42–45.

3. A Death in Jerusalem (Sonoma, CA: Polebridge Press, 1996); Faces on Faith: An Interview with John Dominic Crossan (Nashville: EcuFilm, 1995); Faith and Reason (Shreveport, LA: D. L. Dykes, Jr. Foundation, 1997); The Historical Jesus and Earliest Christianity (Louisville, KY: Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, 1996); The Historical Jesus Lecture (Duluth, MN: University of Minnesota at Duluth, 1995); Jesus and the Kingdom: Peasants and Scribes in Earliest Christianity (New York: Parish of Trinity Church, 1996); Jesus the Peasant (Topeka, KS: Washburn University, 1993); Westar Institute and the Jesus Seminar Present John Dominic Crossan: Jesus, a Revolutionary Biography (Sonoma, CA: Polebridge Press, 1994).

4. See Paul Copan, ed., Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? A Debate between William Lane Craig and John Dominic Crossan (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999).

5. Jesus @ 2000 (New York: Episcopal Cathedral Teleconferencing Network, 1996); The Jesus Summit: The Historical Jesus and Contemporary Faith (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1994).

6. “The Search for Jesus” (ABC News Special, 2000); “From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians” (Frontline, Public Broadcasting System, 1998); “Jesus: The Complete Story” (Discovery Channel, 1998).

7. The Egerton Gospel, or Papyrus Egerton 2 as it is usually known, is a papyrus document discovered in 1935, consisting of two full leaves and a part of a third. Much of the content is parallel with the Gospel of John. It is usually dated between a.d. 150 and 200. See Wilhelm Schneemelcher, ed., New Testament Apocrypha, vol. 1 (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1991), 96.

8. Discovered in 1885, this papyrus leaf is also known as the Fayyum Fragment. It consists of only a few lines dealing with the prediction of Peter’s betrayal of Jesus. Schneemelcher comments that “the brevity of the fragment forbids sure statements of any kind.…” (Schneemelcher, 102.)

9. “The remains of a papyrus book, the writing of which points to the beginning of the 4th century.…” (Schneemelcher, 100.)

10. The Gospel of the Hebrews was probably written in the first half of the second century and is known from quotations by Cyril of Jerusalem, Jerome, Origen, and Clement of Alexandria.

11. Crossan proposes two editorial strata to the Gospel of Thomas. The first strata, which he dates to ad 50, consists of passages that have parallels with the canonical gospels. The second strata consists of everything else. (Crossan, Historical, 427.) The fourth-century church historian, Eusebius, listed the Gospel of Thomas as being rejected by the church. For an excellent summary of the issues, see John Meier, A Marginal Jew, vol. 1 (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 139. Meier, one of the world’s leading experts on the historical study of Jesus, argues for a second-century date for the Gospel of Thomas.

12. The Miracles Collection is a reconstruction of a hypothetical source for the miracles in Mark 2, 6, and 8; John 5, 6, 9, and 11; and the Secret Gospel of Mark. (Crossan, Historical, 429.)

13. The Apocalyptic Scenario is a hypothetical document, which, according to Crossan, “is a common apocalyptic source behind both Did. 16:3–8 and Matt. 24:10–12, 30a.…” (Crossan, Historical, 429.)

14. According to Crossan, the Cross Gospel is now embedded in The Gospel of Peter. It consists of Peter 1:1–2; 2:5b–6:22; 7:25; 8:28–9:34; 9:35–10:42; and 11:45–49. (Crossan, Historical, 429.) The Gospel of Peter was mentioned in early Christian writing, including Eusebius, who lists it among those works not recognized by the church. Schneemelcher suggests a date of the middle of the second century a.d. (Schneemelcher, 217–21.)

15. Schneemelcher, 177.

16. Judas in Galilee, Simon in Perea, Athronges in Judea, Manahem son (or grandson) of Judas the Galilean, and Simon son of Gioras. (Crossan, Historical, 200–204.)

17. Rom. 3:21–26.

18. 1 Cor. 5:7.

19. Rom. 3:22–30; Gal. 2:16–20; 3:2–29.

20. Gal. 3:13–14.

21. Rom. 4:25; 5:16, 18.

22. Rom. 4:24–25; 5:1, 6, 8, 10; 6:9; 7:4.

23. Rom. 10:13, 17; 1 Cor. 1:18, 23–24, 30.

24. Rom. 2:7; 5:21; 6:23.

25. Rom. 8:1.

26. Rom. 5:9; 1 Thess. 1:10.

27. Cross Gospel 4:13. While the word “savior” in a first-century context could refer to one who was to deliver the Jews from the Romans, it is hard to imagine that a man being crucified by the Romans would refer to a fellow crucifixion victim as a deliverer from the Romans. It is more likely that the writer of the Cross Gospel is providing independent attestation to the idea of Jesus as the Savior in the full Pauline sense of the word.

28. Rom. 1:9; 8:3, 29, 31–32; 1 Cor. 1:9; Gal. 1:15–16; 4:4–5; 1 Thess. 3:13.

29. 1 Cor. 2:8.

30. Joel 2:32; Rom. 10:13.

31. E.g., Murray Harris, Jesus as God: The New Testament Use of Theos in Reference to Jesus (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992), 143–72. See also the English Standard Version and the New Living Translation.

32. Schneemelcher, 177.

33. Gospel of the Hebrews, as quoted by Cyril of Jerusalem (Schneemelcher, 177).

34. It is also, of course, strikingly similar to Col. 1:15–17, which teaches that through Jesus all things were created and in Him all things hold together. Crossan attributes Colossians to a disciple of Paul and places it in his second strata. (Crossan, Historical, 430.)

35. See Crossan, Historical, 324.

A glance at the ancient text reproduced above immediately tells the reader that the author knew little, if anything, of biblical teaching concerning the roles of men and women, and of the fact that both men and women were created in the image of God. Such false teaching comes plainly from Gnostic sources that vilified the body and exalted the spirit, and in the process often denigrated the feminine and exalted the masculine. The early church struggled long and hard against Gnosticism, which constantly threatened her. As early as Paul’s epistle to the Colossians, we find a strong warning against “proto–Gnosticism,” telling us that Christ cannot be placed in any position other than that of Creator (Col. 1:15–18; 2:8–9).

Anyone who thinks Gnosticism no longer has proponents should be advised that the truth is just the opposite. In fact, if the self–aggrandizing press releases of the Jesus Seminar are to be believed, the consensus of scholarship now believes that documents thoroughly influenced by Gnosticism, such as the Gospel of Thomas, from which the above citation is taken, are far more reflective of the actual teachings of Jesus Christ than the “canonical Gospels” familiar to most Christians — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

The Jesus Seminar is a small group of extremely liberal scholars.² Yet they seem to have a lock on the major media outlets so that their pronouncements are taken as the final word by major magazines, newspapers, and public broadcasting programs. As a result, headlines proclaiming that scholars have “discovered” that Jesus never said He’d return (so He won’t), and the like, are common fare. What is worse, this kind of material finds its way into the college classroom as the “assured results of critical scholarship,” and young Christians are faced with the specter of this imposing group of Bible scholars condemning their faith in a risen Savior as mere myth.

The leaders of the Jesus Seminar confidently proclaim themselves to be the standard bearers of the scholarly consensus. While they are, in reality, far away from the vast majority of biblical scholars, they vigorously deny their own marginality by proclaiming that everyone else is marginal.

In 1989 this writer attempted to dialogue with Dr. Robert Funk on a radio program in Phoenix, Arizona, concerning the Jesus Seminar’s conclusion that Jesus never intended to return. Funk was painfully clear that such men as F. F. Bruce and Leon Morris are “fringe scholars” whose opinions have been rejected by “the guild.”³ I pointed out that when one defines who is and who is not a scholar, it’s quite easy to say “all scholars agree with us.” All one has to do is say, “Everyone who disagrees with me is not a scholar.” Sadly, most in the mainstream media never challenge the easy and grandiose claims of the leaders of the Jesus Seminar.

With the release of The Five Gospels in 1993, the Jesus Seminar helped propel the second–century Gospel of Thomas into the forefront of media attention. For all intents and purposes, the Jesus Seminar has “canonized” this “Gospel,” known primarily from a Coptic translation found in Egypt at Nag Hammadi in late 1945 (though fragments of Thomas, written in Greek, had been discovered years earlier). In fact, it is quite clear that the scholars of the Seminar consider the Gospel of Thomas far more reliable and important than the Gospel of John, and probably more than Matthew and Luke’s Gospels as well, as far as being useful in “reconstructing” the words of the “historical Jesus.” Using their color coding method of determining Jesus’ real words, the Gospel of Thomas allegedly provides more of the authentic Jesus than does the entire Gospel of John.

That these scholars are unfairly biased toward the importance of Thomas can hardly be denied.

The large majority of scholars date The Gospel of Thomas to the middle of the second century. The reason is obvious. The religious beliefs and concepts that came into vogue after the New Testament period deeply influenced this work. Strange, esoteric doctrines and beliefs appear throughout Thomas. These teachings are not only directly contradictory to the teachings of the canonical Gospels, but they also point to a date for the production of the work well into the century after Christ. Here is a sampling of interesting statements attributed to Jesus in The Gospel of Thomas:

“When you see one who was not born of woman, fall on your faces and worship. That one is your Father” (15).

“If the flesh came into being because of spirit, that is a marvel, but if spirit came into being because of the body, that is a marvel of marvels. Yet I marvel at how this great wealth has come to dwell in this poverty” (29:1–3).

“Where there are three deities, they are divine. Where there are two or one, I am with that one” (30).

“Congratulations to those who are alone and chosen, for you will find the [Father’s] domain. For you have come from it, and will return there again….If they say to you, ‘Where have you come from?’ say to them, ‘We have come from the light, from the place where the light came into being by itself, established [itself], and appeared in their image.’ If they say to you, ‘Is it you?’ say, ‘We are its children, and we are the chosen of the living Father.’ If they ask you, ‘What is the evidence of your Father in you?’ say to them, ‘It is motion and rest’” (49–50:1–3).

“I am the light that is over all things. I am all: from me all came forth, and to me all attained. Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there” (77:1–3).

“How miserable is the body that depends on a body, and how miserable is the soul that depends on these two” (87).

“Whoever drinks from my mouth will become like me; I myself shall become that person, and the hidden things will be revealed to him” (108).

“Damn the flesh that depends on the soul. Damn the soul that depends on the flesh” (112).

The thorough influence of Gnostic concepts is found throughout these passages. Yet, despite this, the Jesus Seminar is willing only to say that Thomas reflects an “incipient gnosticism.” Admitting how thoroughly the work is soaked in Gnostic thought would place Thomas far into the second century and would show to the unbiased observer that the canonical Gospels are far superior to Thomas on any meaningful historical basis.

In addition to the plain influence of a developed Gnostic world view, the Gospel of Thomas also shows deep familiarity with the canonical Gospels, freely drawing from them. These two factors together obviously make Thomas a late and secondary work.

So why has the Jesus Seminar made such an issue of Thomas? The answer goes to the very heart of what the Jesus Seminar is all about: the re-creation of the Christian faith in a mold more pleasing to the leaders of the group (Robert Funk in particular). Funk’s dislike of confessional, historical Christian belief is easily documented in his writings. Dedicating The Five Gospels to Galileo, Thomas Jefferson (“who took scissors and paste to the gospels”), and David Strauss hardly leaves one in doubt of the viewpoint of the editors.

But to reconstruct Christianity, they need to get rid of the main thing standing in their way: the church, replete with its doctrines and creeds, including, above all, an orthodox view of Christ. Hence, no matter how little notice is given by the media, the Jesus Seminar is on a crusade to undercut, in the name of self–defined scholarship, the authority of Scripture and the historicity of the very founder of the faith, Jesus Christ. The results of their “research” are all determined from the start. The Jesus proclaimed by Christians around the world never existed. There is no risen Christ, no resurrection, no coming kingdom. This is the “gospel” of the Jesus Seminar, and any piece of information usable, including a second–century Gnostic “Gospel” attributed to Thomas, is fair game.

What should the believer do when faced with a person who finds in the Jesus Seminar the epitome of “serious biblical scholarship” (the very phrase used by none other than the atheist magazine, Free Inquiry)? We dare not treat them as they treat us. That is, since the Jesus Seminar simply defines conservative scholarship out of existence, do we just return the favor? Or do we arm ourselves with the facts and engage their outrageous claims and conclusions on the battlefield of meaningful debate? It is plain they will not engage us in full public view, for they already have the media on their side, and they know they cannot win such an engagement anyway. But this does not relieve us from the duty of “speaking the truth in love” (Eph. 4:15). We need to instruct our young people concerning the methods and errors of such “scholarship” and assure them that they are not wrong in their faith despite being told they are “out of step” with such “developments.” They need to know they can respond in a meaningful way to the claims of these groups and truly “give the reason” (1 Pet. 3:15) for the hope that is within them.

NOTES

¹Thomas 114:1–3, cited from The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus, ed. Robert W. Funk and Roy W. Hoover (San Francisco: HarperSan Francisco, 1993). The translation provided is modestly and characteristically named The Scholar’s Version. All citations of Thomas in this article are from the S.V. The reason for the variation in how the citations are listed in this review is that some of the sections have verse breaks, but most do not.²For a discussion of the Jesus Seminar and the scholars involved, see Craig L. Blomberg, “The Seventy-Four ‘Scholars’: Who Does the Jesus Seminar Really Speak For?” Christian Research Journal, Fall 1994, 32-38. For a more recent response, see Luke Timothy Johnson, The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels (San Francisco: HarperSan Francisco, 1996).³This fascinating interview, which included Dr. Funk’s insistence that “fundamentalists” are on a “witch hunt” and wish to reinstate the “Inquisition” so that they can “kill” true scholars, ended with Dr. Funk telling the hosts and the guests (including myself) to “go to hell” and hanging up on us. This tape (#419) is available from Alpha and Omega Ministries through our web page at http://www.aomin.org, or at P.O. Box 37106, Phoenix, AZ 85069.

The Jesus Seminar is a panel of New Testament scholars whose chairman is Dr. Robert Funk, professor of religious studies at the University of Montana. Over the next five or six years the panel will evaluate the approximately 500 sayings attributed to Jesus.

Through a voting procedure which involves dropping col­ored pegs into a ballot box, the Seminar participants hope to make the common opinion of the scholarly community clear. They seek to answer the question, “which savings of Jesus are authentic?” The projected final product of the Seminar partici­pants’ labor will be a New Testament with Jesus’ “authentic” sayings printed in red ink, those of which there is some question in pink, those which are held in serious doubt in gray, and those which the panel determines are definitely not the words of Jesus in black.

The Seminar participants see themselves as a much-needed voice to “correct” the conserva­tive bent in many a lay person’s (and, in fact, church leader’s) theology. Robert Funk reflects the basic perspective of the panel when he states that “to learn that the Jesus of the Gospel of John is a figment of the evangelist’s pious imagination or that Paul is not the author of the Pastoral Epistles goes down poorly with ecclesiastical officials, who are more concerned with membership and the collection plate with the his­torical truth” (San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle, 9 March 1986).

How did the Seminar come about? How justified are its con­clusions? And did the evangelists really put words into Jesus’ mouth that He never actually said? To answer these questions, let us take a brief look at the history of New Testament studies as it pertains to the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), the presuppositions of the Seminar participants, and some weaknesses in their ap­proach.

The Beginning of New Testament Criticism

The science of New Testament criticism is relatively new. Criti­cal study of the New Testament books (e.g., questions of author­ship, date, etc.) was not totally absent among early students of the Bible, but New Testament criticism really came into its own in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

In the early nineteenth century, rationalism, the dominant philosophy of the day, began invading New Testament scholar­ly circles. The New Testament was approached with an anti-­supernatural bias, and man’s reason became the final judge of its authenticity and authority.

Source Criticism

It was during this time that schools influenced by this ra­tionalism turned their attention to the “Synoptic Problem” (i.e., the difficulty of accounting for the many similarities as well as differences evident between the first three Gospels). The effort to solve the Synoptic Problem through theorizing about source documents for these Gospels is known as Source Criticism.

To date, there is no universally accepted solution to the Synop­tic Problem. However the “Two Source Theory” is widely ac­cepted (even by some conserva­tive scholars) Basically, this theory suggests that Mark was the first Gospel written, and that Matthew and Luke drew on Mark and a document called “Q” (probably from Quelle, German for “source”) in writing their Gospels. The Two Source Theory has several weaknesses, including a lack of manuscript evidence for any such Q document.

Form Criticism

Source Criticism concentrated on studying the use of certain written documents purportedly behind the Gospels. However, it gave little concern to the origin of such sources. Questions event­ually arose regarding what pre­ceded these written sources.

Form Criticism (Formge­schicbte), accepting some form of Source Criticism theory, at­tempted to explain how the oral tradition was preserved, circu­lated and, finally, formalized.

The Form Critics’ task was to analyze the “form” of various units of oral tradition and clas­sify them. Potentially a useful literary discipline, in the hands of such early Form Critics as Mar­tin Dibelius and Rudolph Bult­mann, it became a process of evaluating the historical validity of the identified units of oral tradition, And the presupposi­tions they introduced have re­sulted in the trends which we see today.

Form Criticism begins with the legitimate assumption that various oral reports about Jesus’ words and deeds circulated freely after His death. It then proceeds to argue that as these stories were retold, they were modified and embellished (and in some cases even created) by the Christian community to meet specific immediate needs. Both Dibelius and Bultmann em­braced philosophies that al1owed them to categorize many such stories as “myth” or “legend”— creations of the church — thereby denying their historical basis.

Historie versus Geschichte

For Bultmann and many others who have followed in his foot­steps, there are two types of history. “Historie” consists of the external and verifiable — real space-time events; this is objec­tive history “Geschichte” con­sists of events that are conceived to be true in mind or heart; it is internal and nonverifiable and constitutes “faith” or subjective history. There is no need for Geschichte to be based in His­torie: “This distinction permits the assertion that something (say the resurrection of Jesus) is “true” [i.e.: geschichte] which is not “true” in the sense of history as-fact [i.e., historie]…” (Richard Soulen, Handbook of Biblical Criticism, 79).

Hence, for the Form Critic, underneath the Gospel record there is a Jesus of History (Historie). However, after His death, the reports of His life and teaching circulated, were modified, and finally accepted, creating a Christ of faith (Geschichte).

The task before the Form Critic is to “demythologize” the New Testament — to work from the Christ of faith to arrive at the Jesus of history. This is the Form Critic’s “Quest for the Historical Jesus” — to supposedly find the fact behind the story created by the church.

Redaction Criticism

Similar to the way Form Criti­cism grew out of apparent short­comings in Source Criticism, so Redaction Criticism grew up in the 1950s our of apparent short­comings in Form Criticism. The Form Critic, with his emphasis on the creative community, could offer no adequate explanation for the individual characteristics of the Synoptics. With Form Criticism, the evangelists were merely collators of the forms as found in the sources.

Redaction Criticism (Redak­tiongescbichte) suggests that these distinctives are attributable to the evangelists. According to Redaction Criticism, the evan­gelists were not merely collators of oral tradition — they were authors/editors (“redactors”) in their own right. Supposedly they took the various forms available to them from the sources at hand and arranged, modified, and altered them, even, in some cases, going so far as to create material in writing their Gospels. All this was done with a specific theological purpose in mind. Hence, the evangelists are seen primarily as theologians and not historians, and it is assumed that their theological views rendered impossible their serving as good historians.

Summing it Up

Thus, beginning with an anti-supernatural, rationalistic base, the Source Critic attempts to identify the sources for the Synoptic Gospels. The Form Critic then explains how such sources grew out of the creative oral traditions concerning Jesus. Then the Redaction Critic explains how the evangelists put it all together, altering and creating along the way in order to fit their theo­logical biases.

For one schooled along these lines of thought, the procedure for studying a biblical passage might well develop according to the following pattern. First, the “Gospel tradition” would be dis­tinguished from its editorial framework. Then, each unit of the traditional material would be classified according to a par­ticular form thought to fit the life situation of the early church. This would be followed by a stripping away of the alleged embellishments added to the basic tradition, Finally, judg­ment would be passed on the “stripped-down” traditions re­garding their historicity and authenticity.

The Seminar’s Perspective

It is clear from the Jesus Semi­nar’s proceedings, and com­ments made by its participants, that the Seminar follows in the pattern of New Testament criti­cism just described. For example, the Salem Statesman-Journal (5 April 1986) reports:

In trying to determine the pre­cise words of Jesus, the scholars [participating In the Seminar] con­sider the ancient culture and how the part under consideration fits into the flow of His teaching, Funk said.

The Great Commission, for example, has Christ ordering disci­ples to preach to the entire world and establish church institutions. Funk said scholars doubt that Jesus had a world view, and they say He had no interest in starting a church. The quotation was probably added later to Christ’s words, he said….

The idea that He was the savior of the world “was a fantasy created by the church” he said. Scholars of today look at such concepts as the Virgin Birth as “something not to be taken seriously or even argued about,” he said.

Even In these brief comments, Robert Funk’s presuppositions are clear. For him, the Jesus of the Bible is not the Jesus of His­tory. And, rejecting the Jesus of the Scriptures, he espouses a Jesus of his own creation.

This rejection of the biblical portrait of Jesus is reflected in all the Seminar’s work. In the first full voting session held in the fall of 1985, “the participants deem[ed] that more than half of the Jesus sayings in the Ser­mon on the Mount were put on his lips by Gospel authors or members of the early church” (Los Angeles Times 12 February 1986). In fact, at least nine of the Seminar participants do not feel anything recorded in the Gos­pels reflects what Jesus Himself said.

Thoughts In Response

Traditionally, the orthodox church has held that the Bible tells us what Jesus said and did. Although not an exhaustive record of His life (John 20:30), the Jesus of the Bible is the accept­ed Jesus of history.

Both the Scriptures and his­tory affirm that there were many eyewitnesses to the life of Jesus. These eyewitnesses, both pro-Christian (e.g., Acts 2:32) and anti-Christian (e.g., Acts 2:22), were alive at the time the oral tradition was forming and the written sources were supposedly prepared. It is inconceivable that the “creative believing community” with the help of the “theo­logically biased” evangelists could have successfully fabri­cated a “tradition” about Jesus that did not fit the historic facts. The hundreds of eyewitnesses would hardly have accepted such a fabrication.

Also, for the Jesus Seminar scenario to be workable, the early Christian community would have needed to lack a genuine interest in sound his­torical information about Jesus. Yet, even the Seminar partici­pants desire historically sound and reliable information about Jesus (so they say). Why hold that the earliest Christians had less interest in preserving an ac­curate historical record of their Lord? Could the many who gave their lives do so for a Jesus of their own imagination?

The Jesus Seminar scholars also question the accuracy of the evangelists. They assume that because the Gospel writers were theologically informed and concerned they could not have written accurate history and, in­stead, resorted to manipulating and creating information to suit their own views. But, the Sem­inar participants are themselves theologically informed and con­cerned. How is it that they are capable of writing and evaluat­ing objectively if the evangelists were incapable?

Perhaps the greatest internal flaw in the Seminar’s work has to do with its subject’s nature. Ultimately, the Seminar partici­pants reject portions of the Gos­pels as “nontypical” of Jesus, not on the basis of external evidence but merely their own subjective opinion concerning what He must have been like. Rejecting the Gospels as unreliable, they construct an imaginary Jesus and then measure the biblical por­trait by their own corrupt standard.

As noted earlier, Funk states that Jesus had no interest in start­ing a church and that He was definitely not the savior of the world. Seeing that such views are not the views expressed in the extant historical material (i.e., the Gospels), where do Funk and his associates get such a view? It is, in the final analysis, personal bias; a “guess” mas­querading as “truth” with the support of slanted “scholarship.”

The fruit of the Jesus Seminar is the natural product of a dis­eased tree. With roots in rationalism, a tree afflicted with the errors of Form and Redaction Criticism has produced corrupt fruit. The assumptions and ap­proach of the Seminar are both internally and biblically flawed.

In the final analysis, the work being done by the Seminar scholars is no different than the efforts of others who have gone before: “For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God, or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools…” (Rom. 1:21-22).

A common refrain sung by those determined to demolish the biblical Jesus in the court of public opinion is that His death, burial, and resurrection are myths borrowed from ancient pagan mystery religions. Once reverberating primarily through the bastions of private academia, this refrain is now also commonly heard in public arenas. A classic case in point is the following conversation between ABC News’s Peter Jennings and Jesus Seminar fellow Marvin Meyer:

Peter Jennings: Some scholars think the resurrection stories were borrowed from eastern pagan cults popular throughout the Roman world at the time, called mystery religions.

Professor Marvin Meyer: The conviction was in the mysteries that there is death and resurrection, just as crops go into the ground and die and come back again for a new season in a wonderful kind of way. So also in human life we go through a kind of death and resurrection.

Peter Jennings: Now hold it. You’re saying that the mystery cults had an influence on the Jesus story because people who wrote the Jesus story took an earlier story and passed it on via Jesus?

Professor Marvin Meyer: I believe so. One of the greatest difficulties that early Christians had if they were going to cope with the reality of the crucifixion of Jesus is what do you do with that? I mean, how do you keep the movement going? How do you have some hope in the face of this kind of shameful and horrible death? And one of the things I believe that early Christians did is they took the model of the mystery religions; they took that story and retold that story as the story of Jesus.1

Within days of this television conversation, calls, letters and e-mails began arriving at the offices of the Christian Research Institute. Christians worldwide wanted to know how to respond to such prime time propaganda. Initially, we referred people to an article by Dr. Ronald Nash featured in the Christian Research Journal.2 As requests for information continued to flood into CRI’s offices, however, I realized the need for an easy-to-remember response. I’ve thus organized Nash’s scholarly material around the memorable acronym F-A-L-S-E.

“F” in the acronym FALSE represents the fallacy of false cause. As Nash aptly notes, “Arguments offered to ‘prove’ a Christian dependence on the mysteries illustrate the logical fallacy of false cause. This fallacy is committed whenever someone reasons that just because two things exist side by side, one of them must have caused the other. As we all should know, mere coincidence does not prove causal connection. Nor does similarity prove dependence.”3 Far from being dependent on mystery religions, Christianity can be correctly traced back to the life of a real flesh and bone person named Jesus4 as well as to Old Testament Judaism. By way of illustration, the Lord’s Supper initiated by Christ has its historical roots firmly planted in the Jewish rite of Passover.

“A” will serve to remind you of alleged similarities. A prevailing myth widely circulated is that the similarities between Christianity and the mystery religions are striking. Purveyors of this mythology employ biblical language and then go to great lengths to concoct commonalities. Take, for example, the alleged similarities between Christianity and the cult of Isis. The god Osiris is supposedly murdered by his brother and buried in the Nile. The goddess Isis recovers the cadaver, only to lose it once again to her brother-in-law who cuts the body into fourteen pieces and scatters them around the world. After finding the parts, Isis “baptizes” each piece in the Nile River and Osiris is “resurrected.” Alleged similarities as well as the terminology used to communicate them are greatly exaggerated. Parallels between the “resurrection” of Osiris and the resurrection of Christ are an obvious stretch. Likewise, Nash notes that “the fate of Osiris’s coffin in the Nile is as relevant to baptism as the sinking of Atlantis.”5 Sadly for the mysteries, this is as good as it gets. As Nash elaborates in his book The Gospel And The Greeks,6 other parallels cited by liberal scholars are even more far-fetched.

“L” represents liberal revisionism. Suffice it to say that liberal scholars are frequently guilty of employing historical revisionism in an effort to parallel Christianity with the mystery religions. Take, for example, Mithraism, in which Mithra was deemed to be a powerful mediator between humanity and the forces of darkness. As Nash observes, “The flowering of Mithraism occurred after the close of the New Testament canon, much too late for it to have influenced anything that appears in the New Testament. Moreover, no monuments for the cult can be dated earlier than A.D. 90–100, and even this dating requires us to make some exceedingly generous assumptions. Chronological difficulties, then, make the possibility of Mithraic influence on early Christianity extremely improbable.”7 Additionally, as Bruce Metzger explains, “It must not be uncritically assumed that the Mysteries always influenced Christianity, for it is not only possible but probable that in certain cases, the influence moved in the opposite direction.”8

“S” will serve to remind us of syncretism. The mystery religions were syncretistic in that adherents not only worshipped various pagan deities but also frequently embraced aspects of competing mystery religions while continuing to worship within their own cultic constructs. Not so in Christianity. Converts to Christ singularly placed their faith in the One who said, “I am the way and the truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Says J. Gresham Machen, “A man could become initiated into the mysteries of Isis or Mithras without at all giving up his former beliefs; but if he were to be received into the Church, according to the preaching of Paul, he must forsake all other Saviors for the Lord Jesus Christ….Amid the prevailing syncretism of the Greco-Roman world, the religion of Paul, with the religion of Israel, stands absolutely alone.”9

“E” represents esotericism. The mystery religions reduced reality to a personal experience of enlightenment. Through secret ceremonies initiates experienced an esoteric transformation of consciousness that led them to believe that they were entering into a higher realm of reality. While followers of Christ were committed to essential Christian doctrines, devotees of the mysteries worked themselves into altered states of consciousness. They were committed to the notion that experience is a better teacher than words. In fact, the reason mystery religions are so named is that they directly involve secret esoteric practices and initiation rites. Far from being rooted in history and evidence, the mysteries reveled in hype and emotionalism.

Please remember that it is not enough to use the acronym F-A-L-S-E to explode the myth that the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ are pagan myths borrowed from mystery religions. Apologetics — the defense of the faith — has a dual purpose. On the one hand, it involves pre-evangelism. We should thus pray that God uses our well-reasoned answers as an opportunity to share the good news that Jesus can become more real to people like Jennings and the fellows of the Jesus Seminar than the very flesh upon their bones. On the other hand, apologetics involves postevangelism. During an age in which Jesus is being demeaned in both private academia and the public arena, knowing how to defend his historicity serves to strengthen our faith.

–Hank Hanegraaff

NOTES

1. Peter Jennings Reporting: The Search for Jesus, ABC News, 26 June 2000.

2. Ronald Nash, “Was the New Testament Influenced by Pagan Religions?” Christian Research Journal, Winter 1994, 8–15, retrieved from www.equip.org, 3 August 2000.

3. Ibid., 14.

4. For a defense of the historicity of Jesus’ death and bodily resurrection, see Hank Hanegraaff, Resurrection (Dallas: Word Publishing, 2000).

5. Nash., 11.

6. Ronald H. Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks (Richardson, TX: Probe Books, 1992).

7. Nash, “Was the New Testament Influenced by Pagan Religions?” 12–13. Remember that the belief in the deity and bodily resurrection of Jesus can be traced through purely historical analysis to within just a few years of Jesus’ death in the early 30s A.D. (see Hanegraaff, 38–43).

8. Bruce M. Metzger, Historical and Literary Studies: Pagan, Jewish, and Christian (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968), 11; as quoted in Nash, “Was the New Testament Influenced by Pagan Religions?” 15.

9. J. Gresham Machen, The Origin of Paul’s Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1925), 234–35; as quoted in Nash, “Was the New Testament Influenced by Pagan Religions?” 14.

THE BURIAL OF JESUS- An Exception?
Skeptics frequently point out that the Romans typically threw those they crucified in shallow unmarked graves. Well while that’s true, it doesn’t necessarily follow that crucifixion victims were always buried in this manner. The fact is, most crucifixion victims were runaway slaves, rebels, the people that the Romans considered to be the riff raf of society. Obviously, they weren’t about to pay for fancy burials for people like this! And of course, in most cases, their families and friends were poor or imprisoned and couldn’t pay the price of a major league funeral either. But Jesus clearly didn’t fit the mold of the common criminal. Far from being a petty thief, he was turning the world upside down by the brilliance of his words, not to mention the dramatics of his deeds.

THE BURIAL OF JESUS- Joseph of Arimathea
For me it’s not at all hard to imagine that he attracted some pretty substantial people — people like Joseph of Arimathea. And by the way, it’s a fact that skeptics frequently claim that Joseph of Arimathea was never involved in Christ’s death and burial at all. However this is simply untrue. Not only do all four Gospels affirm this fact, but in addition even the most minute details that support his burial dovetail nicely with the archaeological evidence. Of course that happens to be because the narratives just happen to be based on genuine historical events.

THE BURIAL OF JESUS- Conclusion
The evidence is indeed overwhelming! Jesus was buried in a rock tomb and he was buried by Joseph of Arimathea. In fact, with every turn of the archaeologists spade the skeptics increasingly are forced to grasp at straws. Not only is the evidence that he was buried in a rock tomb incontrovertible, but the evidence for his resurrection is incontrovertible as well. On The Burial of Jesus, that’s the CRI Perspective. I’m Hank Hanegraaff.

JESUS OF NAZARETH- Jesus the Historical Figure
It needs to be clearly understood that Jesus Christ is, in fact, an historical figure. According to the New Testament, Jesus was born in the city of Bethlehem in Judea. He was born during the reign of Caesar Augustus, and he was, of course, put to death by the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate. Each of the 27 books of the New Testament mention Him, and, of course, they refer to him in a historical context. In fact, most of the New Testament writers actually claim to be eyewitnesses of His life, death, and resurrection. The Apostle John, for example, gave empirical testimony about his encounters with Jesus when he said, “We’ve heard Him, we have seen Him with our eyes, and we touched Him with our hands…” (1 John 1:1) That, of course, is exactly what we’re proclaiming to you. The New Testament Gospels are not legendary, they are straight forward historical accounts of Christs’ life.

JESUS OF NAZARETH- Attested to by Distinguished Historians
Now, in addition to all of this, the biblical data is attested to by such distinguished Roman and Jewish historians as Josephus, Tacitus, Secundus, and a host of others. All of these historians mention that Jesus was a real person who lived during the first century. Many were also conversant with the basic facts of His life, death, and His claims of His resurrection.

JESUS OF NAZARETH- Beyond Dispute
Jesus’ historical existence is beyond dispute. In fact, the Encyclopaedia Britannica commits over 20,000 words to Jesus, and says with respect to his historicity that it wasn’t until the end of the 18th Century that it was disputed for the very 1st time — and that on inadequate grounds. Without his physical existence, without his death and resurrection, we have no hope either in this life or the life to come. The whole idea that Christ was a myth is itself a myth.On the historicity of Jesus Christ, that’s the CRI Perspective. I’m Hank Hanegraaff.

THE DEITY OF CHRIST- Evidence
The New Testament records Jesus Christ’s direct claims to deity. In John 8:58, He claims to be Yahweh, the same one who spoke to Moses at the burning bush. The Jews certainly understood this as a claim to deity because they immediately grabbed stones and tried to stone him for blasphemy. In Mark 14:61, Jesus claims to be the Messiah and expresses the prerogatives of deity.

THE DEITY OF CHRIST- More Evidence
There are many other examples that could be cited including indirect claims to deity. For example, He receives worship (Matt. 4:10; 28:17), which is an action reserved for God alone. He forgives sin (Mark 2:1-12), another prerogative of God alone. He performs miracles, claims to be equal with Yahweh (John 5:17-18), and is ultimately crucified for the charge of blasphemy. Jesus claimed to be none other than God — in human flesh. And no other great world religious leader ever claimed to be God. But are there good reasons for accepting these claims?

THE DEITY OF CHRIST- Conclusion
Well, Jesus had some pretty good credentials to back up His claims. First and foremost, Jesus fulfills dozens of very specific messianic prophecies which were written hundreds of years before His birth. Then, of course, Jesus has had an incredible influence upon human history. No one has impacted the world for good like He has. And perhaps most significant of all, the New Testament records in great detail Christ’s resurrection from the dead. The apostles were even willing to die for this claim that Jesus appeared to them again and again over 40 days — not to mention the empty tomb and over 500 people who saw the resurrected Christ (1 Cor. 15:6). And remember, the Roman and Jewish authorities are unable to refute the resurrection. The apostles claimed to have seen, heard, and touched the risen Christ. He even ate with them. The New Testament records over 12 different appearances. When considered with an open mind, the evidence for the resurrection is indeed compelling. Jesus Christ claimed to be God, and there is good reasons for accepting His claim. On Christ’s claims to deity, that’s the CRI Perspective. I’m Hank Hanegraaff.

KENOSIS OF CHRIST- Fully God and Fully Man?
While historic Christianity has always affirmed that Jesus Christ was both fully God and fully man, some have argued that in order for Jesus to have been truly human He must have divested Himself of certain divine attributes. In fact, those who affirm this very novel view nearly always appeal to Philippians 2:5-7. Which, by the way, says, “Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but he emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.” The words “emptied Himself” are interpreted by a growing number of people today to mean that Christ actually laid aside certain divine attributes. But is this correct? Well as a matter of fact, it’s not.

KENOSIS OF CHRIST- Proof in Scripture
To say that Jesus surrendered even one divine attribute is to say that Jesus is less than God, and therefore not God at all! See, if God is deprived of even one attribute, then He is not fully deity. Of course references to his deity abound in Scripture (John 1:1; 20:28; Rom. 9:5; Col. 2:9; Tit. 2:13; Heb. 1:8). And by the way, this is not only affirmed by the Bible, it’s clearly affirmed by the creeds.

KENOSIS OF CHRIST- Veiled His Glory
Of course the question is asked: If Jesus didn’t give up His deity, then what did Christ empty Himself of? Well the context indicates very clearly that Jesus veiled His glory as a sign of his humility. He voluntarily makes Himself of no reputation. He sets aside His high position and waves His divine prerogatives because He loves us. But while Christ surrenders His divine glory, he does not surrender His divine attributes.On Christ being 100 percent God as well as 100 percent man, that’s the CRI Perspective. I’m Hank Hanegraaff.

Though Jesus spoke with the authority of God, His actions hammered home this truth with even greater impact. Turning to John chapter five, we find Jesus being criticized for healing an invalid during the Sabbath (John 5:16-18), a sacred day set aside from all work to commemorate God’s act of creation. Now Jesus justified His actions reasoning that God the Father was also at work, even on the Sabbath day, thereby claiming for Himself a prerogative reserved solely for God. Only if Jesus is God can we say that He in no wise violated God’s law regarding the Sabbath.

In another instance Jesus forgave the sins of a paralytic man — to which the “teachers of the law” rightly asked, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” Jesus answered by reemphasizing His authority to forgive sins, and then proved it by healing the man (Mark 2:1-12; cf. Matt. 9:1-8; Luke 5:17-26). Jesus again claimed for Himself a prerogative reserved solely for God. Only if Jesus is God could He have actually forgiven sins the way He did.

Moreover, numerous individuals worshiped Jesus Christ (Matt. 2:11; 14:33; Luke 24:52). Considering the stern commands given by God to worship Him alone, we might conclude that Jesus attempted to correct such “misdirected” worship. But, no! We find, instead, Jesus openly welcoming people’s praises — praises belonging exclusively to God.

Where do we go to from here? Well, as one Christian scholar put it: “You can shut [Jesus] up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God,” (John 20:28-29.). You can’t, however, deny that Jesus claimed to be God. He has not left that option open to us. The real question is, “Whose words are you going to trust — Jesus’ or the cults?” Decide wisely, your destiny depends on it.

On Christ’s claim to be God, that’s the CRI Perspective. I’m Hank Hanegraaff.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION

For more information on this topic, please consult our Web site at www.equip.org; write to us at P. O. Box 8500, Charlotte, NC 28271-8500; or contact us using the other information listed above.

We also recommend the book Jesus, Divine Messiah: The New and Old Testament Witness by Robert L. Reymond (B912/$29.99). This resource is available through CRI.

To verify current prices and/or shipping and handling information, to place a credit card order, or to receive a free copy of our resource listing, please call our resource center toll-free at (888)7000-CRI.

In the ancient times, a name had a great significance and was deemed “virtually equivalent to whoever or whatever it bore.” Thus, when Jesus paralleled His own name with that of God’s, or when He applied to Himself the names and images associated with God, we can reasonably conclude that Jesus was, in fact, claiming to be God.

We find, for example, in the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20), that Jesus placed His name as the Son on equal footing with the Father, who is God (v. 19). This passage also reveals certain attributes of the Son like omnipotence (v. 18; cf. Jer. 32:17, 27), and omnipresence, which can apply only to someone who is God (v. 20; cf. Matt. 18:20; Ps. 139:7-12; Jer. 23:24). Furthermore, in claiming to be the only one who knows God (Matt. 11:27), Jesus implicitly admitted to being omniscient since the Father, of course, is Himself omniscient.

Jesus also took for Himself several Old Testament metaphors reserved solely for God. He sometimes applied them directly to Himself, as in the case of the title the Good Shepherd (John 10:11, 14; cf. Gen. 49:24; Ps. 23). On other occasions, Jesus took an indirect approach, referring to Himself in the parables as the Sower, the Bridegroom, the Vineyard Owner, and, in fact, the King—each of which can be traced back to Old Testament references to God.

But of these titles, none angered the religious officials of His day as when Jesus said of Himself, “I AM,” thus asserting to be eternal in words echoing those of YHWH (John 8:58; cf. Ex. 3:14). Jesus’ claim to be God in this instance was so clear and unmistakable that those who considered His assertion false, in fact blasphemous, tried to stone Him to death immediately (John 8:59; cf. Lev. 24:13-16).

By His own admission, Jesus undeniably claimed to be God. And He bolstered His pronouncements with actions, which we’ll look at…in the next CRI Perspective. I’m Hank Hanegraaff.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION

For more information on this topic, please consult our Web site at www.equip.org; write to us at P. O. Box 8500, Charlotte, NC 28271-8500; or contact us using the other information listed above.

We also recommend the book Jesus, Divine Messiah: The New and Old Testament Witness by Robert L. Reymond (B912/$29.99). This resource is available through CRI.

To verify current prices and/or shipping and handling information, to place a credit card order, or to receive a free copy of our resource listing, please call our resource center toll-free at (888)7000-CRI.

THE SON OF MAN- Origin of the Title
Looking at the Bible, we find that Jesus referred to Himself as the Son of Man no less than 82 times. This title comes from Daniel 7, which speaks of a figure, Israel personified, who will rule over the nations of the earth for all time. In that passage, we read that the Son of Man “was given authority, glory and even sovereign power” — things that God alone, the One who said, “I will not give my glory to another” (Isa. 42:8; 48:11) — can hold and exercise.

THE SON OF MAN- The Son of Man will be worshipped
Furthermore, we find that “all peoples, and all nations and men of every language will worship” the Son of Man, which would only make sense if the Son of Man is none other than God Himself. God sternly forbids the worship of anyone or anything other than Himself. We can thereby conclude that Jesus, in calling Himself the Son of Man, was indeed claiming to be God.

THE SON OF MAN- God’s Infinite Knowledge
Jesus reinforces this conclusion each time He claims to be unique, the Son of God, the only One Who knows God the Father. Consider this: if God’s depth of knowledge and understanding is infinite, Who but God alone can fully grasp it? Yet Jesus says He knows.

THE SON OF MAN- Blasphemy or Truth?
The Jews tried to stone Him because in “calling God His own Father, Jesus was making Himself equal with God” (John 5:18). To this charge, Jesus merely replied that “All are to honor the Son just as they honor the Father.” In other words, Jesus claimed the honor due Him is equivalent to the honor due God.  Such a statement is sheer blasphemy unless Jesus was, in fact, God.

THE SON OF MAN- Conclusion
We’ve only scratched the surface in this segment, so I want you to be sure and tune in to the next two Perspectives — we will continue to explore how Jesus claimed that He was, in fact, God. That’s the CRI Perspective. I’m Hank Hanegraaff.

DID JESUS CLAIM TO BE GOD- Customized Passage
When people challenge Christians to prove that Jesus said He was God, they typically expect to be shown a “customized” passage from the Bible, quickly rejecting any passage cited that isn’t phrased exactly the way they want it to be. Approaching the question with this kind of an attitude can only lead to erroneous conclusions.

DID JESUS CLAIM TO BE GOD- Did He?
What needs to be determined is whether Jesus did, in fact, claim to be God in terms understandable to that particular era and to that particular geographical region, and not necessarily to ours.

DID JESUS CLAIM TO BE GOD- Misunderstanding the Message
Besides, to expect Jesus to boldly and brazenly proclaim that He was God is to misunderstand altogether His very character and His mission as the Messiah. After all, would a man of perfect humility and servitude, a man who came to glorify His Father in heaven, be true to this task if He focused attention on Himself rather than pointing to the Father? Of course not!

DID JESUS CLAIM TO BE GOD- God the Father?
Such an unqualified declaration might also have led the Jewish people to conclude falsely that Jesus was claiming to be God the Father.  Jesus avoided this type of confusion by revealing His identity in a very precise, concise, and careful manner.

DID JESUS CLAIM TO BE GOD- Actions to Back Up the Words
It has often been said that actions speak much louder than words. And in the following three Perspectives, we’re going to see just how Jesus Christ of Nazareth attested to His own deity. Let us, however, remember Christ’s own words when He said, “I did not speak of my own accord, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it” (John 8:28).

DID JESUS CLAIM TO BE GOD- Conclusion
This is Hank Hanegraaff inviting you to stay tuned for Part 3 of the CRI Perspective series on the Deity of the Lord Jesus Christ.

IS JESUS REALLY GOD- Who was Jesus?
Never in history was there a time when the actual existence of Jesus Christ fell into serious doubt. The most common disagreement found in contemporary circles concerns not whether a person named Jesus actually lived, but rather who this Jesus really was.

IS JESUS REALLY GOD- Human, Definitely.  Divine?
Jesus was the kind of a person who took people out of their comfort zones and constantly challenged their thinking — especially when He spoke about Himself and His mission. And while most people readily affirm the humanity of Jesus Christ, many are reluctant to admit His deity.

IS JESUS REALLY GOD- Differing Opinions
Consider what some groups have to say about Him. Members of such assemblies as the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, The Unification Church, and The Way International explicitly deny that Jesus is truly God. Various New Age and occult groups regard Jesus merely as an enlightened mystic. Still others revere Him as a prophet of God, but only one who stands in a long line of peers. And, of course, there are those who see Jesus as simply a great moral teacher.

IS JESUS REALLY GOD- The Orthodox Position
Over against all of these views is the orthodox Christian position that Jesus Christ was God in human form. And if you as a Christian can demonstrate that Jesus Christ is God, the followers of these other views would be forced to choose either their group’s teachings or the very Word of Jesus Christ Himself—one or the other, but certainly not both. During the upcoming CRI Perspectives, I intend to prove that Jesus did, in fact, claim to be God. In doing so, we hope to steer people from counterfeit Christs so that they may direct their devotion to the real Jesus (2 Cor. 11:3-4). That’s the CRI Perspective. I’m Hank Hanegraaff.

THE INCARNATION OF CHRIST- What is the Incarnation?
The term incarnation is of Latin origin, and it means “becoming in flesh.” While the word incarnation is not contained within Scripture, the doctrine of the Incarnation certainly does convey scriptural truth. The Christian doctrine of the Incarnation teaches that the Eternal Word, the second person of the Trinity, without diminishing His deity took upon Himself a fully human nature. Specifically, this doctrine implies that a full and undiminished divine nature as well as a full and perfect human nature were united in the historical person of Jesus of Nazareth. According to the Bible, Jesus Christ is God the Son, in human flesh.

THE INCARNATION OF CHRIST- The Foundation of Christian Doctrine
Since Jesus Christ is the center of Christian doctrine and truth, His identity is of surpassing importance. It follows therefore that the doctrine of the Incarnation which reveals His identity is the foundation on which all of Christian doctrine is built. This is clearly seen when you take some time to analyze the central tenets of the historic Christian faith. For example, God’s existence: without the Incarnation, talking about or knowing God personally is mere speculation. The Trinity: the other two members of the Trinity (Father and Holy Spirit) are only really understood and appreciated in light of the person and nature of Christ. Atonement: only Jesus Christ, who is the God-man, is able to reconcile a holy God with sinful humanity. Resurrection: a bodily resurrection which conquers death is only possible for the God-man. Justification: our state before God rests totally in our faith (personal trust) in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

THE INCARNATION OF CHRIST- Conclusion
The doctrine of the Incarnation touches and affects virtually every single area of Christian theology. Needless to say, if you are going to change or distort the identity of Christ, you are also going to destroy the very essence of the Christian faith.On the Incarnation, that’s the CRI Perspective. I’m Hank Hanegraaff.

NEW TESTAMENT CHRISTOLOGY- Who do you say I am?
Jesus consistently drew attention to the question of His own identity. For example he asked his own disciples, “But what about you?”… “Who do you say I am?” (Matt. 16:15). The Bible unequivocally presents Jesus as the long awaited Messiah of Israel, the Savior of lost humanity. But these titles only take on true significance in light of the astounding revelation of his own identity. Scripture reveals Jesus of Nazareth to be none other than God in human flesh (John 1:1, 14).

NEW TESTAMENT CHRISTOLOGY- Deity and Humanity
The Scriptures reveal that Jesus Christ existed in eternity as God the Son; that He was begotten, not made; that He was, in fact, God incarnate. (Isa. 9:6; Mic. 5:2; John 17:5). The Latin term incarnation actually means “becoming in flesh.” This eternally divine person, without diminishing His deity, took upon himself a truly human nature. Christs’ deity is seen in His personal claims to be equal with God (John 5:17-18; 8:58). But also, because He performed miracles, forgave sin, and raised Himself from the dead — thus demonstrating that he was, in fact, God. At the same time, Scripture depicts Jesus as fully human. The fact that he experienced birth, growth, development, and ultimately death actually bore eloquent testimony to his humanity (Luke 2:40-52; 22:63; Heb. 5:8).

NEW TESTAMENT CHRISTOLOGY- Theanthropos
To be precise, Jesus Christ was and is the theanthropos — the God Man. The Bible clearly teaches that Jesus was both fully God and fully man. He was one in substance (homoousios) with the Father in regard to His divine nature, and one in substance with humanity in regard to His human nature. The two natures were perfectly united in the one person of Jesus Christ. To quote the Creed of Chalcedon, the Lord Jesus Christ is “one person in two natures, unmixed, unchanged, undivided, inseparable.” And remember, every single cult and world religion compromises the deity of Christ. So don’t be fooled — you must believe in the real Jesus not a counterfeit Christ.

NEW TESTAMENT CHRISTOLOGY- Conclusion
On the identity of Jesus, that’s the CRI Perspective. I’m Hank Hanegraaff.