Preaching Jesus to Skeptics

Copyright 1997. All rights reserved.

Note: The footnotes for this paper (all 120 of them) have been formatted in a separate document to keep file size down. You can probably use the Back and Forward buttons in your browser to toggle between them. (I didn't have the time to hand code bookmarks for all of them. Sorry!) They are marked in this document with bold blue braces: e.g., {1}, but these are not hypertext links. The original document was prepared with Mac Word 5; I've tried to clean up the "high ASCII" characters, but if you find strange things below [other than the content!], that may be the reason. There are also a few Greek words that use an expensive proprietary Greek font, but not enough to worry about if you don't have it.

This paper does not intend to provide a comprehensive analysis or critique of The Jesus Seminar. Numerous such articles and books have already been written (see the bibliography). Although an overview will be provided, the primary purpose is not rebuttal. I would like to express my appreciation to my colleague, Dr. John Lawlor, for taking time to read and interact with a major portion of this paper.

Outline:

Introduction

Nature of The Jesus Seminar
Leaders of TJS
Summary of the Work of TJS
Goals of TJS
Methodology of TJS

Response to The Jesus Seminar
Academic perspectives
Relationship of faith and history
Relationship to postmodernity
Ministry perspectives

Conclusion

Select Bibliography

Introduction

Each year around Easter there is an outbreak of media attention focused on the radical agenda of The Jesus Seminar (TJS). The individuals who comprise this effort known as TJS have spent the last ten years endeavoring to counter what they consider to be the dangerous popularity of right-wing fundamentalists-literalists who believe that the Bible records an inspired, inerrant, historical record of Jesus of Nazareth. TJS wants equal time in the media arena to argue for a different view of Jesus, one which Christians who accept the Bible as authoritative consider to be "another Jesus."

The popularity of TJS (and the skepticism that it has engendered) can be seen in the quantity of material available on the World Wide Web. A fairly wide-ranging selection of links to that material has been collected on a web page for review.{1} Included are news reports, scholarly studies, popular reactions, and TJS apologetics. At one end of the spectrum are sites that may be described in "net-lingo" as "flames"-reactionary views of the heresies of TJS. At the opposite pole are sites that employ TJS conclusions to argue against Christianity.{2} Some sites argue for TJS methodology and conclusions on a popular level.{3} Others present more careful analyses of the Seminar or scholarly resources on the subject, whether positive, negative, or non-committal.{4}

A source that is still more accessible than the web to many people is the media reporting of TJS that often appears each Easter. Seldom has a year gone by (since TJS began its publicity campaign) that this writer has not been approached by someone in a local church to ask about a TJS-related article in the press. The major news magazines have all carried feature articles in recent years-usually as cover stories.{5} Their attitude towards TJS varies. Some articles describe the Seminar as composed of "maverick scholars,"{6} or "rebel scholars" who engage in "political revisionism" on the "left fringes of contemporary scholarship,"{7} "radical" and "outside the mainstream ... iconoclastic;"{8} others would say "iconoclastic and provocative."{9} Other accounts are more positive, describing such efforts as "a new surge of scholarly energy"-one probably necessary to attain a "clearer, purer vision of Jesus."{10} An attempted objective, neutral position may be found in other articles, reporting positions and statements by both TJS participants as well as their mainline and conservative critics.{11} Most daily newspapers have also carried coverage at some time or another over the past decade, including many of the national papers.{12}

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Nature of The Jesus Seminar

Leaders of TJS

Although there are 70+ "fellows" of the seminar (and close to 200 "participants"), there are only a few key individuals. The co-chairmen of TJS are Robert W. Funk and John Dominic Crossan. In addition, Marcus Borg has become well known.{13}

Funk is best known in scholarly circles for his work translating and editing Blass' grammar.{14} In his early years a revival preacher from rural Texas, Funk has since taught at Harvard (and several other well known schools) and has been the president of the Society of Biblical Literature.{15} He organized TJS in 1985 in an attempt to start a new reformation{16} of Christianity: "to set Jesus free" from "scriptural and creedal prisons." He wants to "reinvent Christianity" (his own words) based on a new view of Jesus, whom he views as "the first stand-up Jewish comic" for whom starting a religion "would have been the farthest thing from his mind."{17}

Crossan, an Irish-born and educated scholar recently retired from DePaul Univ. in Chicago, is a prolific writer.{18} Although formerly a Roman Catholic priest, he has not attended mass regularly since he left the priesthood to marry in 1969. Although he is the co-chair of TJS, his version of Jesus is quite different from Funk's. Crossan views Jesus as a "revolutionary peasant who resisted economic and social tyranny in Roman-occupied Palestine. He was a Jewish Cynic who wandered from town to town, teaching unconventional wisdom and subverting oppressive social customs."{19}

Borg is the mystic among TJS fellows, drawing upon Buddhist philosophy, psychology, alternative realities, and various forms of pagan mysticism.{20} His studies at Union Seminary (NY) and Oxford first exposed him to the distinction between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith,{21} enabling him to forsake his atheism for Christianity. He now sees Jesus as a "spirit person, subversive sage, social prophet and movement founder."{22}

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Summary of the Work of TJS

The work and conclusions of TJS may be briefly summarized as follows. Since Jesus may not be understood by a na?e reading of the NT documents, it is necessary to employ historical critical methods to determine the truth about Jesus.{23} TJS has worked on two major projects thus far. The first (which has garnered the most attention to date) has been to determine what Jesus really said; the second stage of their study is to determine what Jesus really did. In attempting to identify the original words of Jesus, TJS amassed a listing of all the words attributed to Jesus in the early centuries, including not only the canonical accounts but also various documents traditionally considered apocryphal or pseudepigraphal.{24} All of these were then studied and debated by the fellows of the seminar. Following closure of the debate on each statement a vote was conducted (using colored beads designed primarily for media consumption{25}) and a verdict rendered on a four-level scale. Words that were really spoken by Jesus were identified in red, those that he definitely did not speak were color coded black. Two intermediate levels (pink and gray) were also employed.{26}

The results of this media-oriented balloting are the cause of the uproar over TJS. Why? Primarily because so few words were acknowledged as genuine. Only a fraction of the material considered was graded red. On a book-by-book basis, here is what the five gospels{27} record that Jesus really said: Mark 12:17b; Matthew 5:39, 40, 41, 42a, 44b; 6:9b; 20:1-15; 22:21c; Luke 6:20, 21a, 21b, 27b, 29b, 30a; 10:30-35; 11:2b; 13:20-21, 33; 16:1-8a; 20:25b; John [nothing!]; Thomas 20:2-4; 54; 100:2b.

That they can be listed in only a few lines is, in itself, significant. Even if the full text is given (see figure 1 below), it does not take a great deal of space to record all the original words of the laconic founder of Christianity.{28} How these few verbal scraps could ever spawn a movement that would soon turn the world upside down is a mystery indeed.

Now that TJS has completed their excision of Jesus' words, they are applying their scissors to the record of his deeds. It is almost certain that they will have a similar proportion of what Jesus really did when the results of their study are published.

Figure 1

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Goals of TJS

Why has TJS embarked on this project? What do they hope to accomplish? It is the opinion of TJS that true, historical knowledge of Jesus has been unduly cloistered in academia. Their goal is to popularize the results of historical critical scholarship using the media as their primary tool. In typical fashion, they cite apocryphal literature (rather than biblical texts) to bolster their effort: "The scholars have taken the keys of knowledge and hidden them" (Gospel of Thomas 39:1). They explain that they intend to "find the keys and unlock the doors too long bolted shut by a combination of elitism and technical jargon."{29} To present academic research in intelligible terms is a commendable goal, but there is more to it than that. Funk, the founder of TJS, viewed it as an "ethical necessity" to counter the right-wing televangelists on their own turf: the media.{30} Crossan admits that "there was a deliberate decision to play to the media."{31} Even the media recognizes that the seminar participants "revel in the outrage their views provoke and bask in the limelight created by their own publicity machine."{32}

Why have they felt that an "ethical necessity" compels them to go public? Johnson suggests that it is related to the marginalization of biblical scholarship in contemporary culture. The course pursued by historical critical scholarship has created an ever-widening gap between esoteric ideologies of the academy and the reality and needs of the church (and society). The dissonance that such scholars experience between their narrow specializations and the indifference of the culture to such efforts has provoked some of them to attempt to find some means of confirming their significance in the culture. TJS is one such effort to regain cultural clout and influence.{33} Carson's evaluation in this regard is perceptive.

For all of its scholarly pretension, the Jesus Seminar is not addressing scholars. It is an open grab for the popular mind, for the mass media. Just as conservatives tend to view current events as the evil effects of secular humanism, so radicals line up televangelists, pro-life protesters, denominational disputes, and a growing conservative church as the evil effects of fundamentalism. The Jesus Seminar is not so much a work of scholarship as a tract for the times, an attempt to overthrow a perceived enemy.

The real irony is that, in some ways, the Jesus Seminar has itself become a parody of what it rejects. In tone and attitude, in its reductionism and self-confident exclusivism, in its self-righteousness and condescending pronouncements, it is more fundamentalistic than the fundamentalism it eschews.{34}

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Methodology of TJS

To understand TJS and its methodology it is necessary to understand the context of what has been called the "quest for the historical Jesus."{35} An appropriate starting point might be the work of Reimarus, an eighteenth century deist whose unpublished 4,000 page manuscript was very influential on the early quest for the historical Jesus.{36} As popularized by Lessing, the primary thesis was that "the accidental truths of history can never become the proof of necessary truths of reason."{37} In other words, it is not possible to establish truth (about Jesus or anything else) on the basis of history. It is an epistemological problem: how can we know Jesus and what he said? Lessing's problem-his "ugly ditch"-is that no historical truth can be demonstrated.{38} The cleavage between faith and history is, in his own words, "the ugly broad ditch which I cannot get across, however often and however earnestly I have tried to make the leap."{39} Lessing was thus one of the first to drive a wedge between faith and history, producing a rift that has continued to widen throughout the intervening centuries. It would come to be known as the difference between the Jesus of history (largely an unknown, mythical person) and the Christ of faith (the focal point of Christianity-though not particularly or necessarily a person who lived in first century Palestine).{40}

The first quest for the historical Jesus is usually associated with the mid-nineteenth century publication of David Strauss' Das Leben Jesu.{41} His basic thesis was that the Gospels could not be read as straightforward, reliable historical records of what Jesus did and said. The mythic element must be recognized. Truth regarding Jesus comes only by the application of historical critical methods. Although Strauss accepted the basic historical outline of Jesus' life as recorded in the Gospels, he argued that this framework was embellished by the early church's imagination as they came to interpret OT prophecies in light of Jesus. It was the church which created the myths and legends about Jesus that resulted in the gospel portrait of him as a divine Messiah.{42}

The first quest came to an end with the criticisms of Johannes Weiss, William Wrede, and Albert Schweitzer{ }on the one hand and Martin K?ler{43} on the other. The criticisms of Weiss, Wrede, and Schweitzer did not relate to the historical critical methodology employed in the first quest, but to specific conclusions reached by the questers, particularly regarding the message of Jesus. Although the first quest portrayed a non-eschatological Jesus, Weiss, Wrede, and Schweitzer all argued that eschatology was indeed the key to Jesus and his message.{44} That the methodology of the first quest had missed this major theme of Jesus' message cast serious doubts on the method itself.{45}

The second challenge was directed to the method of historical criticism. Martin K?ler's writing attacked the methodology of the first quest (which he viewed as a "blind alley"{46}) in terms of the limits of historical inquiry: there is no certainty.{47} He contended (commendably) that the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith could not be separated; there is only one Jesus. He also argued that faith is not dependent on "Christological dogma" or on historical research. This was his way of rejecting both orthodoxy and negative criticism. He came to be known as a "mediating" theologian,{48} or a defender of a "critical pietism."{49} He was more frequently allied with the "negative" than the "positive" critics of this period, however, since he rejected inspiration and inerrancy, considered the Gospels to be historically unreliable, containing pious legends and involuntary distortions (though trustworthy for faith), and textually uncertain since they were transmitted so carelessly.{50} He rejects an "authoritarian faith" bound to the Bible and argued that faith in a supra-historical revelation of Christ is not based on any authority; one believes because Christ evokes faith.{51}

K?ler's exposition of the limitations of historical criticism was picked up by Bultmann (1884-1976), the most influential twentieth-century NT scholar, and came to characterize Jesus studies in the first half of this century. Based on form criticism and his "criterion of dissimilarity,"{52} Bultmann argued that the gospel records tell more about the Christian communities that produced them (and their antecedent forms) and the Sitz im Leben ("life situation") of those early Christians than they did about Jesus as an historical person. Much of the material was mythological, thus his process of "demythologizing" the Gospels. This was not to remove the myth, but to translate it into myths meaningful to modern people. Historical information about Jesus is therefore minimal in content and not capable of proof, though the Christ of faith is nevertheless still accessible by faith.{53} Largely due to the objections of Weiss, Wrede, and Schweitzer, the methodological critique of K?ler, and to Bultmann's influence, there was little attempt to continue the first quest for the historical Jesus.

The second quest for the historical Jesus (sometimes referred to as the "new quest") began when a number of Bultmann's students rejected their teacher's pessimism regarding what could be known about Jesus. Particularly influential in the second half of this century have been Ernst K?emann, G?ther Bornkamm, Hans Conzelmann, and Norman Perrin.{54} The thrust of these questers was to discover Jesus through his preaching. The resulting picture of Jesus is that of "an existentialist philosopher whose presence in history was barely discernible behind the kerygma."{55}

The "third quest"{56} is a term that is presently used rather loosely to encompass a very wide range of approaches to the study of Jesus. Brown suggests that the common thread that unites them is an emphasis on the Jewish background of Jesus, not only religiously, but also socially, economically, and politically.{57} TJS represents one part of this quest,{58} though actually only a small, radical fringe of the quest.{59} The principle that they share in common with the previous quests is that all data regarding Jesus is viewed as potentially untrue or mythical and therefore not historically accurate. Their task is then viewed as reconstructing the "real" Jesus by passing judgment on the reliability of the information and piecing together a restored portrait. The "historical Jesus" that results is differentiated from the Christ of faith.

In more specific terms, they assume{60} that the historical Jesus is to be distinguished from the gospel portraits of him. Knowledge of Jesus is based largely on oral tradition of his words (in contrast to his deeds) which is fluid and not very precise. This oral tradition was freely adapted and revised by the disciples as they saw fit to meet particular needs in their ministry. None of the Gospels were written by eye witnesses or based on eye witness testimony. The Gospel of Thomas is a new source of information about Jesus that is both earlier than and independent from the canonical Gospels. John's gospel is the least reliable historically. Only a small portion of the Jesus sayings recorded in all these sources was really spoken by Jesus.

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Response to The Jesus Seminar

Academic perspectives

It is not the purpose of this paper to present a detailed critique of TJS, its methodology, or its conclusions. That has been done adequately elsewhere.{61} Painting with very broad strokes, the issues involved are essentially presuppositional. If the naturalistic assumptions of TJS are granted,{62} then the portrait of Jesus that results will vary only in degree from one study to the next.{63} If, however, scholarship is committed to an open universe,{64} to realism,{65} and to a belief in the reliability of language,{66} then naturalism is not an adequate explanation. If Scripture is inspired and inerrant, and therefore a reliable, divinely-revealed record that is true, then conclusions about Jesus will be vastly different from the naturalistic presuppositions that produce a naturalistic Jesus. They can do nothing else. This is not to insist on an uncritical, anti-intellectual, dogmatic, or narrow view of Jesus. It is a rejection of intellectual autonomy{67} and it does insist that any true view of Jesus must be in subjection to the Word of God as a revealed, authoritative text which is accepted epistemologically as the ultimate authority-an authority that establishes a priori limits for interpretation.{68}

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Relationship of faith and history{69}

Evans makes a good point when he observes that "the theatrics behind the Jesus Seminar may obscure the real problem: Can a person of intellectual integrity continue to take the story of Jesus that the Christian Church has traditionally recounted to be historical in its main outlines?"{70} This question arises repeatedly in discussions of all stages of the quest for the historical Jesus and deserves more specific comment. What is the relationship between faith and history? It is common to hear appeals to the necessity of distinguishing between the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith. This discontinuity is often employed by those who use historical-critical methods that result in skepticism regarding either the historicity of Jesus or at least of a substantial amount of biblical material regarding him. Bifurcating Jesus enables them to maintain what they consider historical objectivity and methodological consistency and yet at the same time continue to claim the name Christian.{71} Other approaches to the question of faith and history focus on demonstrating the historicity of Jesus and the sayings ascribed to him as a means of proving the validity of Christianity.{72} This is the methodological antonym of historical criticism for in this case the results of the study are what prove the truth of Christianity. Neither of these approaches are biblical.{73}

It should be said first that "an authentic link between Jesus of Nazareth and the exalted Christ is in fact theologically indispensable for Christianity.... For good or ill, the creed and credibility of Christianity remain irrevocably bound up with the person of Jesus of Nazareth."{74} Without an historical Jesus who is also the Christ of faith there is no basis for Christianity. This is because faith must have an object. If there is no object that is or can be known, then there can be no faith.{75} This is not to say that Christian faith must be based on historical investigation-on the results of historical-critical scholarship. That is a quite different matter altogether.{76} The limitations, however, are the limitations of historical knowledge and method, not limitations of the Christian faith.

It might be asked if faith could be placed in a concept rather than in a tangible object. In light of the biblical "pisteuvein oJti..." ("to believe that..."), faith in a concept is a legitimate formulation, but the object of faith would still have to be true in order for this to be designated faith in any biblical sense. Since the biblical claim is that Jesus was a real, historical person who did certain things and was a certain kind of person, as an object of faith these claims must be true or Christianity is invalidated. The only real alternative is a system in which faith in Jesus is no different from faith in Santa Claus.{77}

The biblical claim is that Christianity is based on the specific historical events of the incarnation and the cross.{78} These are presented in Scripture as the essential foundations of Christianity and humanity's relationship to God. If these events are only mythical (as Bultmann and many others argue), then several problems emerge. First, the cross work of Jesus becomes nonessential for salvation (since the "work" is not an actual historical event but only mythic). Salvation is therefore not based on what God has done-it becomes an anthropocentric rather than a theocentric redemption. Second, sin is de-emphasized. Rather than profound depravity, people are viewed optimistically as essentially good. But "the traditional understanding of the incarnational narrative implies that there is a real gulf between God and humans, and that in becoming incarnate God actually steps across this gulf and becomes one of us."{79} Denying the historicity of these events transmogrifies Christianity into a radically different shape-so different that it ceases to be Christian.

A related issue in all of this is the matter of "historical certitude" that is often discounted by the Jesus questers. In these discussions that expression needs to be understood as referring to conclusions based on the non-revelatory, naturalistic historical study of the quest. In this regard, the claim of only probable truth is consistent with the presuppositions that produce it. In addition, "critical historiography" can say nothing regarding the meaning of an event precisely because its methodological presuppositions exclude any interpretation. To interpret the significance of these matters, revelation and narrative are needed, indeed, revelatory narrative{80} is necessary to understand the why-the significance of the events. The Bible is, to a large extent, a record of what God has done throughout history and an interpretation of that work. That fact in itself argues strongly that Christianity must be committed to history.{81}

Nor does historical probability (understood as "non-revelatory, naturalistic historical probability") say anything about the reality of the events so described.{82} Because such evidence is not possible for some events does not mean that they are not real events. It means only that the naturalistic historian cannot accord them any degree of probability on the basis of his historical model and presuppositions. This assumption is known as historicism: the "restriction of reality to what can be demonstrated inside the closed continuum of cause and effect by analogical reason"{83} "The real Jesus" in the context of TJS refers only to an historically reconstructed Jesus who is not "real" in any sense of that term (except, perhaps, as a "real" product of scholarly imagination).{84}

The relationship of faith and history should also be viewed from the perspective of exegesis and authority. Without an objective authority/basis for faith, belief becomes an autonomous, existential, unsharable exercise of personal subjectivity.{85} Christianity has always been a "religion of the book." The Bible has been the basis of creed and practice. Although there have been many false paths labeled "Christian" that have led away from that foundation, it has always been the authority of Scripture that has been employed to judge such attempts unorthodox. The quality and accuracy of biblical exegesis has also varied, but only an historical perspective enables any sort of qualitative judgment in that regard. This is due to the historical and cultural rootedness of Scripture. As Ziesler has pointed out, "for Christians the revelation of God was given definitively at a certain time in history, in a certain culture, and in a certain place. To understand that revelation properly, therefore, it is unavoidable to attempt to understand it 'as it was then, there, and for those people' before we can clearly say what it is now, here, and for us."{86} Apart from this historical, grammatical, cultural perspective, faith has no basis. The only alternatives are the solipsistic vagaries of existentialism, pietism, or mysticism-all of which are more amenable to the ethos of postmodernity than that of biblical Christianity.

Perhaps the faith-history question should be phrased (to use what has become a set phrase in twentieth-century Christology): "Do we do Christology from above or from below?"{87} That is, do we begin with revelation or with the quest for the historical Jesus? From a biblical viewpoint, the answer should be obvious.

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Relationship to postmodernity

Is TJS a manifestation of postmodernity? The initial impression of this writer was that TJS was merely one more evidence of the world view known by the currently-popular buzz-word, postmodernity.{88} Although there are some parallels, it would appear that TJS is more properly viewed as the ultimate shape of modern Christology. The appropriate background is modernity, not postmodernity.{89} Carson describes these two approaches to Christology. "Modernism still believed in the objectivity of knowledge, and that the human mind can uncover such knowledge. In its most optimistic form, modernism held that ultimately knowledge would revolutionize the world, squeeze God to the periphery or perhaps abandon him to his own devices, and build an edifice of glorious knowledge to the great God Science."{90} This seems closer to the tenor of TJS than the more pessimistic (epistemologically) views of postmodernity. At a later point in his book, Carson, though not naming TJS, presents the contrast as follows:

Contemporary Christologies that break from the central tradition of the church may be broken down into two kinds, admittedly sometimes overlapping. In the one kind, the writer seeks to bring to readers some fresh interpretation of what really happened, of who the historical Jesus really is, of how we should think of Christian origins. The assumption is that people have got it wrong, at least in part and perhaps fundamentally, and this writing will begin to sort it out and put matters to right. The task is judged interesting and important for its own sake. In the other kind, the explicit assumption is philosophical pluralism, or some variation of it, and then the writer asks what kind of Christology would be necessary, or what kind of changes would have to be introduced into traditional Christology, in order to fit the 'given' of that pluralism."{91}

The first kind of Christology that Carson summarizes is the Christology of modernity-and TJS; the second is the Christology of postmodernity. There is a final authority and a truth claim to be found in TJS. As they search for the real Jesus, their ultimate authority is the historical critical method.{92} Although some TJS members may be pluralists, the seminar does not present this reconstructed Jesus as one system of truth among many equally valid (even if contradictory) approaches to knowing God. Their concern appears to be demonstrating a few shreds of historical fact about Jesus rather than presenting any form of truth that is to be believed in the modern world.{93}

The point at which TJS seems to approximate most closely the concerns of postmodernity is in their methodology which evidences a deconstructionist-type approach. Even here, however, the parallel is more apparent than real. Deconstructionism views textual meaning as arbitrary; indeed, meaning is quite independent from the text. They thus consider it proper hermeneutical method to abstract bits and pieces from a given text and place them into the interpreter's own framework to create new meaning.{94} Although the patchwork efforts of TJS appear similar in some regards, it is done, not deconstructively, but form-critically. TJS is attempting to recreate the original Sitz im Leben of the texts in which they see the church creating the gospel record. Deconstructionists would have no regard for the original life setting of the texts.

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Ministry perspectives

There are two broad theological reasons for the open reception given to TJS by some. One relates to the culture of our postmodern society. It is not politically correct to pronounce any proffered system "wrong."{95} Evans suggests that there are five components at this level that make non-historical approaches to Jesus attractive to many people: the appeal of an optimistic anthropology, the abolition of authority, the psychologizing of culture, the embracement of pluralism, and the appeal of the east.{96}

A second, related reason that TJS has found a favorable reception in some areas (and a lack of substantive objections in others) is that theology no longer has the place in society that it once had. Even in evangelical (indeed, fundamental) circles today theology is out and praxis is in. "Being practical now substitutes for being theological, for there is little left to theology except practice."{97} In these circumstances, there is little that can be said about TJS other than, "I read the texts differently," "My experience is that...," "I don't like it," or, "It disrupts what I have always believed." Too few people in the pew (and far fewer than should be the case in the pulpit as well) respond on any other level. The dearth of exegetical, theological, substantive content renders many popular responses to the radical claims of TJS rather anemic.{98} Substantive objections have come from some evangelical writers{99} as well as from critical scholars.{100} The critical scholars do not replace TJS's laconic, anemic Jesus with an orthodox view,{101} but they do critique the methodology of TJS at a rigorous level.

Responding to TJS (and similar concerns) in a local church ministry must not be viewed as a list of "three easy steps" to solve the problem. Just as TJS did not appear overnight but is the culmination of centuries of progressive methodological skepticism, so the reply must be couched in a long-term perspective. Although it may be useful to present a series of studies on TJS in the local church, the more realistic treatment will involve a long-term series of inoculations. These immunizations must address underlying philosophical issues and provide a broad perspective on related issues. They will usually not be phrased in technical terminology (that is a matter for the Seminary classroom and the pastor's study), but Joe and Sally Christian must understand the basic issues at their level. Several basic perspectives should be evaluated.

In the first place, God must be central in ministry. He is the one character who is conspicuously absent from many TJS discussions. There is much talk of Jesus, his humanity, and his place in the ancient world. There is not much discussion of God (either of Jesus as God or of God the Father). Piper observes that God will not usually be included on a list of the "perceived needs" of modern people, but that this is their greatest need. "Our people," he says, "are starving for God." He argues that "the vision of a great God is the linchpin in the life of the church, both in pastoral care and missionary outreach. Our people need to hear God-entranced preaching. They need someone, at least once a week, to lift up his voice and magnify the supremacy of God. They need to behold the whole panorama of his excellencies."{102} Yet in the world of postmodern values, God has become weightless-unimportant to our world. This is surely true in secular society, but it is true in Bible-believing, Bible-preaching churches as well. "The traditional doctrine of God remains entirely intact while its saliency vanishes. The doctrine is believed, defended, affirmed liturgically, and in every other way held to be inviolable-but it no longer has the power to shape and to summon that it has had in previous ages."{103} The cure, not just for the neglect of God fostered by TJS, but for the malise of God is not less preaching about him, but more preaching that exalts his supremacy.

Related to the need to reaffirm the centrality of God is its converse: to restore a biblical view of humanity. It is the contemporary emphasis (at least in the West) on the individual and his or her needs that has elbowed God out of the way. Consumerism is not only a driving force in American society, it is too often the driving force in the church as God is viewed as the Great Provider of My Needs. But as Wells points out, our need is "to convert our understanding of ourselves as consumers of inner experiences and things religious to an understanding of ourselves as moral knowers and actors."{104} This is not easy to accomplish because it goes against the grain of everything contemporary culture teaches. Yet this is what must be undone. Only when the mind is remade in a biblical mold will God's awesome character extend beyond a bumpersticker.

The second area that needs attention relates to how people can know God. The Word, by which God is known, must be central in every church ministry. It is too easy to assume that this is automatically the case in fundamental churches, but appearances are sometimes deceptive. It is easy to give lip service to Scripture without an integral biblical core of ministry philosophy. In such cases biblical authority is claimed, but at a superficial level. The fa?de has no depth or substance. In this regard, Johnson's observations of fundamentalism as an outsider are a stinging rebuke of many churches.

The actual use of the Bible in conservative groups, however, is sometimes puzzling. Anyone who has spent many hours (as I have) in fascination at televangelists' practicing their unique combination of religion and marketing knows that such preachers actually do very little real interpretation of Scripture. In this context, the Bible is less a text to be read than a talisman to be invoked. The fundamentalists' claim to take the literal meaning of the New Testament seriously is controverted by their neglect of any careful or sustained reading.

What they take seriously are claims about the authority of the Scripture: its divine inspiration, its inerrancy, its holiness. But as a source of meaning, the text is rarely engaged. When texts are used at all, they are lifted atomistically from their contexts as adornment for a sermon or lesson that has not in any fashion actually derived from the text. Such a method (if it can be called such) of using the New Testament enables fundamentalists to make claims about inerrancy and noncontradiction in the Gospels, because they have never actually engaged the texts in a way that would enable some basic critical issues to emerge.{105}

The Word is not central when preaching employs the biblical text merely as a pretext to say what the preacher wants to say rather than being an exposition of the message that God intended in the passage. The Word is not central when the pastor's study of the text is hurriedly based on a second-hand English text and a homiletical commentary, ignoring, scoffing, or minimizing a mastery of the biblical languages and the use of the technical tools of the trade.{106} When sermons focus on anthropocentric conerns (issues of self and its needs) rather than on theocentric ones, and when the content does not differ significantly from talks at social clubs, the Word is not central.{107} When the pastor spends more time caring for administrative or relational matters than he does studying and proclaiming the Word, the Word is not central. When church services become experience-centered performances in which every part is engineered to produce the desired response or feel rather than focusing on the exposition of the Word and the exaltation of God, the Word is not central.{108}

Third, Christians must understand the doctrines of Scripture (particularly revelation, inspiration, inerrancy, authority), God (truth, sovereignty, providence, creation), Christology (incarnation, deity, humanity) and man (origin, sin, noetics).{109} These areas, however, cannot be handled simply as abstract, topical sermons. They must be textually based (expository), related to the Bible's narrative framework,{110} and relevant (set in a consistent world view and related to specific issues/situations).{111} The preacher dare no longer assume that his audience knows anything significant regarding the Bible.{112} As Carson puts it, "the Bible as a whole document tells a story, and, properly used, that story can serve as a metanarrative that shapes our grasp of the entire Christian faith. In my view it is increasingly important to spell this out to Christians and non-Christians alike-to Christians to ground them in Scripture, and to non-Christians, as part of our proclamation of the gospel. The ignorance of basic Scripture is so disturbing in our day that Christian preaching that does not seek to remedy the lack is simply irresponsible."{113}

Fourth, when that preaching (or one-on-one conversation) relates directly to proclaiming the gospel message of forgiveness, the lessons of TJS are worth remembering. First, apologetics dare not be existential{114} nor evidential. Note that TJS argues evidentially by denying the evidence and then arguing apologetically backwards that the church has therefore been wrong about Jesus because the evidence doesn't support the orthodox picture of Jesus. The solution is not to accept their method and show how it is wrong (though that could be done), but by challenging their fundamental presuppositions regarding authority. Presentation of the gospel should not be based on personal testimony of what God has done for the individual (though that may be included along the way). Instead ground your authority on the Scripture as the self-authenticating revelation from God and do not be ashamed to begin on that basis. Authority is not popular in the postmodern ethos, but despite such reactions by sinful people, it is still the power of the Word of God that changes lives, not existential experience. Although there should be sensitivity to the perspectives of a lost world in order to communicate clearly to them, the Word of God must dictate method and message, not unregenerate culture.

Fifth, do no attempt to "proof-text" a presentation of the gospel (or any other doctrine) with a pastiche of truth from all over the Bible.{115} That is what TJS does-with devastating results. To do so employs the same pasticco methodology and is subject to the same criticisms: constructing a subjective picture of the gospel according to a predetermined framework. That a Christian's framework happens to be orthodox may save them from misleading people as to who Jesus is, but it can be easily by-passed methodologically. Even if it is not, it presents the gospel to people in a non-revelatory framework that misses much of the impact by extracting the message from the storyline that provides its significance. God may choose to bless despite the message being wrenched from its revelatory context (and indeed he often has), but that does not justify the method. Far better to follow the biblical narrative and set the message in its proper context, especially in a postmodern society that no longer has much (if any) knowledge of that framework. Methods that may have worked in past years (and that may still have some degree of "success" in some areas) will become increasingly unproductive in the years to come.{116}

Finally, there must be consistency between doctrine professed and praxis employed. Inconsistency between biblical perspectives and local church programs causes immeasurable harm in the long term. Santa Claus and the Easter bunny have no place in church programs.{117} Far too often "programs" are adopted with little consideration of their theological implications (praxis over doctrine!). As one illustration, a fundamental church which attempts to raise money for a building program by buying into a program developed in another ecclesiastical context is doomed for disappointment.{118} There must be theological and methodological consistency in local church ministries.

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Conclusion

"If the history of life-of-Jesus research teaches us anything, it is that the latest historical reconstruction of Jesus rarely proves very enduring."{119} "Nothing is as fleeting as many of the latest trends in New Testament scholarship, including studies of the historical Jesus.... The historical Jesus and the Jesus that can be reconstructed by the historical-critical method are not one and the same. More to the point, the Jesus that is reconstructed by an idiosyncratic use of the historical-critical method or is based on reducing the field of focus to a few passages may have only minimal connections with the real Jesus."{120} If it were not for the periodic media splash, TJS could be safely ignored as simply another ephemeral convulsion of a fringe of historical criticism. But until it passes, or until the media tire of colored beads, those in ministry will need to be aware of the issues involved. Even after this bout has worn itself out, the underlying issues will continue to exist, suggesting that the ministry response proposed in this essay will be relevant to other issues as well.

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Select Bibliography

Many additional works are cited in the text of the paper. The following are the key works that interact with TJS and the issues raised by their methodology or the contemporary cultural setting in which the issues must be addressed.

Boyd, Gregory A. Cynic Sage or Son of God? Recovering the Real Jesus in an Age of Revisionist Replies. Wheaton: Victor Books, 1995.

Brown, Colin. "Historical Jesus, Quest of." In Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels. Edited by Joel Green, Scot McKnight, and I. Howard Marshall, 326-27. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1992. [Cited as DJG.]

Carson, D. A. "Five Gospels, No Christ." Christianity Today, 25 April 1994, 30-33.

________. The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996.

Clark, Gordon H. Historiography: Secular and Religious. 2d ed. Jefferson, MD: Trinity Foundation, 1994.

Erickson, Millard. The Word Became Flesh: A Contemporary Incarnational Christology. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1991.

Evans, C. Stephan. The Historical Christ and the Jesus of Faith: The Incarnational Narrative as History. Oxford: Clarendon, 1996.

Johnson, Luke Timothy. The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996.

Krentz, Edgar. The Historical-Critical Method. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975.

Marsden, George. The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship. New York : Oxford University Press, 1996.

Meier, John. A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus. 2 vols. New York: Doubleday, 1991-94.

Netland, Harold A. Dissonant Voices: Religious Pluralism and the Question of Truth. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991.

Noll, Mark. Between Faith and Criticism. 2d ed. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1986.

Piper, John. The Supremacy of God in Preaching. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1990.

Smith, Barry D. "The Historical-Critical Method, Jesus Research, and the Christian Scholar." Trinity Journal 15 ns (1994): 201-20.

Wells, David. God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994.

________. No Place for Truth: Or, Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology? Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993.

Wilkins, Michael J. and J. P. Moreland, ed. Jesus Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents the Historical Jesus. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995.

Witherington, Ben, III. The Jesus Quest: The Third Search for the Jew of Nazareth. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995.

Notes for this document

Bibliography of Web Sites re. The Jesus Seminar

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