Dear Friends,
We have finally, finally got a dusting of snow. It has been a strange winter here in Big Sky Country. The other day it was 61 degrees—in February!—and I enjoyed whiling away the afternoon on my back deck with a fire (61 is still chilly when the sun disappears behind a cloud), a book, and some pleasing pipe tobacco.
We thought we were doomed way back in October, when we got a very unseasonal 20 inches dumped on us. We braced ourselves for an Arctic winter, and then… not a snowflake until February. I suppose we will now make up our entire annual precipitation in the next couple of months. It was nice while it lasted.
Conformed To Our Image
The other day I was doing some teaching on what is known as “historical-critical” biblical scholarship and the various attempts to discover the “historical” Jesus. As opposed to, you know, the “Jesus” presented to us in our Bibles.
There are myriad problems with historical critical approaches, and it is not my purpose to bore you by fully exploring them here. There are many, many assumptions built into the method. For example, the assumption that God doesn’t really have anything to do with human affairs—doesn’t intervene, doesn’t providentially govern, and certainly doesn’t speak. Start with that (Enlightenment) premise, and your “historical” research is going to turn up pretty predictable results. Whatever you find, you are most certainly not going to discover a Jesus who is God incarnate, literally intervening in human affairs, ruling and governing, and speaking God’s final revelatory word (Heb. 1:2). You’ve ruled all that out before you even started.
Of course, the Bible doesn’t share those worldview assumptions and presents us with Jesus as God incarnate, intervening in human affairs, and speaking revelatory words and doing revelatory deeds. This presents a challenge for the modern person. The task of the critical scholar is to somehow get behind or back of all the superstitious mumbo-jumbo to find out what really happened. We know, we just know, that the writers of the Gospel accounts cannot possibly have been interested in what really happened because they seem to believe things that are so obviously wrong. I mean, everybody now knows that a man cannot walk on water or turn water into wine. You’d be surprised at the numbers of scholars who don’t notice that those simpletons way back when also knew these things were impossible: that’s why they were amazed.
What actually happens when you approach these ancient texts with this kind of built-in presuppositional skepticism and you disregard the details that you find fantastical or that don’t mesh with your personal sensibilities is not the discovery of the “historical” Jesus. You get out of it exactly, no more and no less, what you yourself put into it. You’ve “discovered” a construct—or rather, a “re-constructed” Jesus that fits the parameters you’ve set at the beginning. And some of those parameters kick out some pretty entertaining products.
You get Jesus the Great Moral Teacher. Jesus the Community Organizer. Jesus the First Century Ghandi. Jesus the Misguided End Times Prophet. Jesus the Communist Revolutionary. Jesus the Bohemian. Jesus the LGBT Liberator. Jesus the Wealth-Redistributing Socialist.
These are not pictures of Jesus. They are mirror-images of the self-interested people doing the reconstructing. The Bible’s plan of salvation is that we would be “conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn of many brothers” (Rom. 8:29). We moderns want it precisely the other way around: to conform Jesus to our likeness. We want him to affirm and rubber-stamp our agendas. This is just blindingly obvious when you see how picky and choosy we are: the same person who complains about bringing “religion” into politics will happily cite Jesus when they are talking about friendly public policy topics like immigration, poverty, and tax rates.
Sometimes our response to historical-critical scholarship is to downplay the details and seek refuge in broad generalities. It’s the message that matters, or the moral teachings, or the “spiritual” content, and so forth. That is a colossal mistake. It cedes the entire enterprise of history to those who unashamedly pick and choose, reorganize, and reconstruct the details to fit a preconceived result. The answer must be more attention to textual details, not less.
Back to Jesus the Wealth-Redistributing Socialist. Jerry Bowyer has a written an immensely valuable new book, The Maker Versus The Takers: What Jesus Really Said About Social Justice & Economics. Jerry is an economist by day, but he moonlights as a very careful, first-rate biblical scholar. He loves the details, and he unearths some pretty staggering ones when it comes to Jesus’ teaching on wealth. No, Jesus was not a redistributionist. No, Jesus did not condemn wealth. He condemned the sinful and unjust acquisition of wealth—most notably, ill-gotten gain through cozy and corrupt relationships with the State. On the other hand, Jesus was all about the entrepreneur, investment, and economic growth. I know. It sounds like Jerry is just doing the very thing I was just warning about: “discovering” Jesus, Champion of The Free Enterprise System. The difference? Jerry doesn’t try to “get behind” the text, but rather pays close attention to it, following where it goes, not where he’s already planned it to go.
Really, order the book and read Jerry’s scintillating argument in full.
In the meantime, David Bahnsen had Jerry on as a guest at his new National Review podcast, Capital Record, and it is a must-listen. I listened twice. And I might listen a third time. It is an occasion of great gratitude to listen to two very serious, very competent Christians talk in detail about Jesus and the gospels on a platform that reaches far beyond the niche evangelical confines usually reserved for such people. It’s a conversation of such high quality that I imagine a great many non-Christians might suddenly pick up their Bibles. [Note to Self. Re: Future Newsletter Topic. Evangelism by professional competence and expertise.]
And that would be a welcome thing, because by picking up the book one discovers the true historical Jesus, the one who will not be remade in the image of fashionable fads. He’s the King, who saves us from our sin and misery and lavishes us with gifts. Sometimes even monetary ones.
Miscellany
This is a good time to recommend Peter Williams’s supremely accessible book, Can We Trust The Gospels? It’s just terrific.
I know I picked on John Kerry, “Envoy For Climate” last week. The guy is… on a roll. It’s okay to chuckle.
I’m sure you are all aware that I happen to be a really big fan of Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse. If you don’t like that, I apologize for the content in the next two items. I’m kidding. I don’t apologize. I normally try to keep politicians in perspective and avoid cults of personality, but when he says pithy, one minute works of rhetorical and substantive art, it’s very difficult to resist becoming a bandwagon boy. I’m sure he’ll disappoint me someday. But today is not that day.
Also, the Nebraska Republican Party is planning to censure the good Senator for his vote to impeach President Trump. His reply is what I call political leadership:
Have a great weekend! I have no Super Bowl predictions for you. I adore Patrick Mahomes and will not be surprised if he leads the Chiefs to victory, but this year I’ve got to root for the old guy. Tom Brady is the greatest of all time, and I would love to see him put an exclamation point on it, this time winning with a new team and without Coach Bill Belichick.
Thankfully, Super Bowl Sunday means that baseball season is nigh! And my Minnesota Twins have signed the best defensive shortstop in baseball. I could watch this on a loop all day long.
Always look forward to Square Inch!! Listening to Capital Record now! Thanks for recommendation. DD