Tag: Resurrection

03May

Deniers!

I recall the term “denier” originally being applied pejoratively to those who minimize or outright disbelieve the horrors of the Holocaust—the genocide of Jews in Europe under the Nazi regime during World War II. Holocaust denial is associated with racist ideologies, and expressing such denial generally pushes one to the fringes of society. Deniers face (and rightly so) anger, public shame, and ostracism, and depending on the locale, may also find themselves in violation of law. French historian Robert Faurisson was prosecuted, and fined under the Gayssot Act in 1991, and subsequently was removed from his academic post. (He is not totally devoid of public support—In 2012 he was awarded for his “courage” by Iranian president Ahmedinejad, himself a “denier”).

The “denier” label, with emotional power borrowed from Holocaust denial, has been used more recently against skeptics of the current scientific consensus on “global warming” (or “climate change”). The top few “hits” from a search engine will pull such titles as “The Depravity of Climate-change Denial” (The New York Times), “What Deniers of Climate Change and Racism Share” (The Atlantic). As this is a political issue of much controversy, I’ll merely note this as a phenomenon and move on.

(As an aside, I think that there exists a lot of denial about the atrocities of global Communism, and that would be a worthy target of activism. Unfortunately, those controlling the organs of culture right now are more often ideologically aligned with Communism than opposed to it).

Every Easter, another kind of denial rears its ugly head among those who claim to be followers of Christ. A recent New York Times column by Nicholas Kristof has me thinking about this issue again with respect to the bodily resurrection of Jesus, celebrated by Christians around the globe during Easter. No less a personage than the president of New York’s famed Union Theological Seminary, Dr. Serene Jones, was pressed about her views on the subject. She made it clear that she is in fact on the correct side of climate change, but about the physical resurrection of Jesus, she is a “denier”:

When you look in the Gospels, the stories are all over the place. There’s no resurrection story in Mark, just an empty tomb. Those who claim to know whether or not it happened are kidding themselves. But that empty tomb symbolizes that the ultimate love in our lives cannot be crucified and killed.

She expressed doubt regarding other miracles, called the virgin birth “bizarre”, and questioned whether there is an afterlife (“I don’t know! There may be something; there may be nothing.”). Regarding the God of the Bible, she opines,

God is beyond our knowing, not a being or an essence or an object. But I don’t worship an all-powerful, all-controlling omnipotent, omniscient being. That is a fabrication of Roman juridical theory and Greek mythology. That’s not the God of Easter. The God of Easter is vulnerable and is connected to the world in profound ways that don’t involve manipulating the world but constantly inviting us into love, justice, mercy.

In a critique, Dr. Albert Mohler, president of another famous Protestant seminary, the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, takes Dr. Jones to task. “Let’s be clear. She is teaching a religion here – but that religion is not Christianity.”

Many of our leaders and academics are quite squeamish about the idea of an actual resurrection. They are somehow able to affirm the words of the old creeds in their churches on Sunday, “I believe in the resurrection of the dead,” with two fingers crossed behind their backs.

Perhaps Christianity could borrow the secular world’s approach, and address its own problem with progressives and skeptics, who have ravaged churches and seminaries from within. One significant fracture point would be the resurrection of Jesus. We could name names, and create lists of “Resurrection deniers.”

Applying the term “denial” would even be biblical. The apostle Paul warned Timothy in his second letter that the “last days” will bring to ascendance all manner of wicked and unsavory people, “having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.” (2 Timothy 3:5)

I don’t foresee an organized effort by traditionalists to recapture the faith from tepid nonbelieving leaders. They may not even need to bother. As vibrant orthodox Christianity grows ever stronger, this other milquetoast and eviscerated version of religion is simply evaporating. Once glorious Protestant churches are in a demographic death spiral, as they somehow fail to be energized by the progressive theologians’ message that “love in our lives can’t be crucified” (but of course death is the end of you).

Still, I think many in the pews would welcome the return of orthodox Christianity back into the historic houses of worship. I would.

Sources:

Kristof, Nicholas, April 20, 2019. “Opinion: Reverend, You Say the Virgin Birth Is ‘a Bizarre Claim’?”, New York Times, available online at https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/opinion/sunday/christian-easter-serene-jones.amp.html

Albert Mohler, April 22, 2019, “A Tale of Two Religions: Liberal Theology Without Illusions”. Online at https://albertmohler.com/2019/04/22/a-tale-of-two-religions-liberal-theology-without-illusions

28Apr

How the Resurrection of Jesus transforms our view of the Bible

Like most, I find the Bible to be a difficult book. I don’t merely mean that it is a lengthy collection of writings, and therefore a task for which I have trouble finding time. Nor do I mean that it is riddled with sometimes arcane or obscure terminology. Nor that it is full of challenging passages. Nor that original meanings sometimes get lost in translation.

More than this, it is tempting to approach the texts with 21st century assumptions. We tend to presume a naturalistic view of life that excludes the miraculous. We tend to fall into a fallacious and prideful assumption of moral and intellectual progress–that recent thinkers are smarter than those from antiquity, and our current values are superior to theirs. In short, we tend to look down our noses at our predecessors and their writings. We judge them from within our own parochial biases.

Within liberal Protestantism exists a large “fifth column”, a herd of skeptical critics who are currently inhabiting influential seats of power on church councils and in seminaries. These lend a veneer of authority to support a dismissive approach to understanding the Bible.

As one who reads widely, who has been through the rigors of higher education, who values scholarship, and whose work bastes me in scientific data on an ongoing basis, I am also particularly vulnerable. Doubt is my main demon–doubt, and perhaps pride. There are times when my own skepticism rises up against me. For me, I must retreat to my “touchstones” of faith, the greatest of which is the Resurrection of Jesus. The Resurrection is the claim that splits Christian believers from all other people examining these mysteries. I’m convinced that this miracle is no fable but actually true.

That a historical Jesus, a teacher, existed in 1st century Palestine and died on a cross is not controversial–this is not a point for which lengthy arguments are needed. But how do we know he didn’t stay dead?

  1. There is the mystery of the empty tomb. Much more could be said about this.
  2. We have eyewitness testimony, in the form of the 4 Gospels, and furthermore Paul the Apostle lists some of those who encountered the post-resurrection Jesus in 1 Corinthians 15:5-8.
  3. From this same passage, written probably in the year 55 (merely 22 years after Jesus’ death), Paul refers to an older tradition. Taking this idea of an older tradition, along with the great song to Christ (the “kenosis hymn”) of Philippians 2:5-11, we have evidence that before Paul was writing his letters, within a few short years after the crucifixion, Jesus was being revered as God in human form by a sizable number of people.
  4. These people were Jews, who by their history and religious faith would have been almost the last people on earth in any era of history, to have embraced such an idea.
  5. We have the evidence of changed lives: Jesus’ disciples were transformed from cowering in fear after the crucifixion, to boldly proclaiming the Gospel, even to their own gruesome martyrdoms.
  6. For me, one of the more persuasive arguments is that Jesus’ own earthly brother, James, came to believe in him after seeing him in his resurrected body. If I made a claim to my own divinity, the last person who would probably believe me is my own brother, because we grew up together.

Other arguments can be made, but I will defer for now.

If the resurrection is really true, then we can handle other parts of the Bible that are difficult. Once we grasp the miracle of miracles, then the other recorded miraculous events are not a significant intellectual problem, including the parting of the Red Sea by Moses, and the fish story of Jonah. We can handle the purity codes of the ancient Hebrews. We can draw meaning from the story of the Garden of Eden. We can handle all the parts of the Bible that are difficult for us to grasp in a post-enlightenment era. If the resurrection is true then we can have faith that those narratives were collected for us for a good reason.

If Jesus really came back from death, then we must transform how we look at the ancient texts he held sacred. We no longer judge the Bible by our standards but rather let the Bible judge us by its standards.