Galen Watson became a friend of mine after he provided a review copy of his novel, The Psalter. It’s a five-star thriller, reviewed here so don’t miss it!

Galen recently posted a bit of his research about where scholarship stands on the issue of whether Jesus existed as a flesh-and-blood person. I often find people attracted to the shock value of mythicists claiming that Jesus is a complete fabrication, so I thought I would share Galen’s post, just to let you all know where scholarship on the topic really stands.

*********

“Virtually all modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed.” –Wikipedia on The Historicity of Jesus. That’s simply a fact, undisputed by reputable scholars. Argue what you may with opinions, anecdotes or undistinguished sources, but it is a fact that virtually all reputable scholars and historians (atheist and Christian) agree that the person of Jesus existed.

“Today nearly all historians, whether Christians or not, accept that Jesus existed”. –Professor Graham Stanton, King’s College London and Cambridge University

“He certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees”. –Bart Ehrman, James A. Gray Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

“There are those who argue that Jesus is a figment of the Church’s imagination, that there never was a Jesus at all. I have to say that I do not know any respectable critical scholar who says that anymore.” Richard A. Burridge, Dean of King’s College London and Professor of Biblical Interpretation.

Theories of non-existence of Jesus are “a thoroughly dead thesis” –James GD Dunn, Lightfoot Professor of Divinity in the Department of Theology at the University of Durham.

“In recent years, ‘no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus’ or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary.” in Jesus: An Historian’s Review of the Gospels by Michael Grant 2004 ISBN 1898799881 page 200

Phil was asked to answer this question: “Jesus forgave people of their sins before he died. How could he do this if he actually had to die in order to save us from sin?”

//For many years, I sat in church quietly wondering why God’s forgiveness was based on the idea that awful violence had to be inflicted upon Jesus in order for God to save us from sin. I was never comfortable with this idea, but I feared voicing my questions would make my Christian friends think I was a hell-bound heretic.

It was only when I went to seminary that I learned this wasn’t the only way to view Jesus’ death, and I’m glad to say I no longer believe Jesus had to die in order to save us from sin.

As it turns out, the idea that Jesus had to die on the cross in order for God to forgive our sins took nearly a thousand years to develop, and numerous theologians have pointed to its problematic implications. Chief among these concerns are questions related to God’s power and God’s character. In terms of God’s power, why is it necessary for God to sacrifice God’s Son in order to grant forgiveness? Is there, as Frederiek Depoortere says, “some higher authority or necessity above God with whom God has to comply in doing this”?

In terms of God’s character, can’t such a belief make God out to be “a perverse subject who plays obscene games with humanity and His own Son,” like the narcissistic governess from Patricia Highsmith’s Heroine who sets the family house on fire in order to be able to prove her devotion to the family by bravely saving the children from the raging flames?

Instead, my Christian faith is grounded in the affirmation that God’s love is unconditional, which leads me to believe that God’s forgiveness is unconditional as well. All of which means that Jesus’ unconditional forgiveness—offered before he died—is one of the things that makes him most Godlike!

After pointing out that God is portrayed as less interventionist in the New Testament than in the Old, and has since become even more abstract, the question is asked whether this is a good thing or a bad thing?

//This question reveals two worldviews that bastardize the gospel, giving birth to cheap imitations. And as Ammon Henacy reminded us, “When choosing the lesser of two evils we must not forget they are both evil.” The two evils are following:

[1] God is elsewhere. This would explain the amount of evil, injustice, misery, and war in the world. God created all, but took some time off afterward, holidaying somewhere nicer, maybe by a celestial pool, while we suffer. The founders of the United States believed in a form of this called Deism. In this worldview, Jesus might be the deity popping back, seeing everything has gone to crap and then saying, “Believe in me and I’ll take you elsewhere, too.” The early church called this heresy “Gnosticism.” In this worldview, God is abstract because God is a secret “get-out-of-creation-free” card.

The other popular option that equally lacks revolutionary energy and impulse of the scriptures is that God is not far off because:

[2] God is everything. Now, if you’ve grown up in a worldview in which God is always absent, where spirituality has nothing to do with creation, and where your body was always seen as bad, this might sound like a better option. Sometimes called “pantheism,” it leaves us with no cosmic critique of the evil of injustice while affirming the goodness and sacredness of creation. Wars, empires, and violence in creation are all just a part of “God/Gaia/the Divine.” Jesus just shows up to “enlighten us.”

God is redeemer is the biblical vision that, in nuanced and elegant ways, radically affirms the goodness of the web of creation while providing an equally radical critique of all violence and injustice that has colonized it as an alien force. As Creating, Sustaining and Redeeming, the Trinity is dynamically involved in history and has acted decisively in the Incarnation, to heal the brokenness we all know, with the wholeness we sometimes feel. This will not leave us with “abstract ideas” but with an invitation to action, for by grace we can be part of God’s “intervention” of the Kingdom.