Christianity

Theme 1: Religious figures and sacred texts

Booklet 2 D, E and FTheme 1: Religious figures and sacred texts

Knowledge and understanding of religion and belief

D.

The Bible as a source of wisdom and authority:How the Christian biblical canon was established. Diverse views on the Bible as the word of God:different understandings of inspiration (the objective view of inspiration; the subjective view of inspiration; John Calvin’s doctrine of accommodation)

E.

The early church (in Acts of the Apostles):Its message and format: the kerygmata as presented by C. H. Dodd, with reference to Acts 2:14-39; 3:12-26. The challenges to the kerygmata (with reference to the historical value of the speeches in Acts and the work of Rudolf Bultmann). The adapting of the Christian message to suit the audience.

F.

Two views of Jesus:A comparison of the work of two key scholars, including their views of Jesus with reference to their different methods of studying Jesus:John Dominic Crossan and N. T. Wright.Crossan: Jesus the social revolutionary; using apocryphal gospels; seeing Jesus as a product of his time; what the words of Jesus would have meant in Jesus’ time.Wright: Jesus the true Messiah; critical realism; texts as ‘the articulation of worldviews’; seeks to find the best explanation for the traditions found in the Gospels.

Issues for analysis and evaluation will be drawn from any aspect of the content above, such as:The extent to which the Bible can be regarded as the inspired word of God.Whether the Christian biblical canonical orders are inspired, as opposed to just the texts they contain.The extent to which the kerygmata (within the areas of Acts studied) are of any value for Christians today.Whether the speeches in Acts have any historical value.The validity of using critical realism to understand Jesus.The validity of using apocryphal gospels to understand Jesus

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1 D. The Bible as a source of wisdom and authority: How the Christian biblical canon was established. Diverse views on the Bible as the word of God: different understandings of inspiration (the

objective view of inspiration; the subjective view of inspiration; John Calvin’s doctrine of accommodation)

The authority of the Bible refers to the idea that the Bible is normative for the church in all speech, thought, and practice. In other words, Scripture is the sole and final authority for Christians in all matters of faith and practice.

The Bible is authoritative because its authority has been conferred by God, and this is where all discussion of biblical authority must begin. Thus, Scripture is a divine and human instrument through which God has communicated and revealed his authority. Most Evangelicals go further than this, insisting that the Bible has a genuine authority "as the authentic embodiment of God's self-disclosure... Some, like Karl Barth, allow this authority to be bestowed by God while insisting that the Bible itself is essentially a human document. Others - e.g., Rudolf Bultmann and Paul Tillich - regard the Bible as a fallible collection of religious writings on which the early church arbitrarily imposed an authority that evangelical piety has continued to uphold" (McDonald, p. 153-54)

1. Watch the video (and use booklet 1) http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=How+did+we+get+the+Bible+by+3+Minute+Theology+from+Youtube.mp4&view=detail&mid=020D03905D032A6E16BA020D03905D032A6E16BA&FORM=VIRE

Create a brief visual summary of the books of the Bible

Canon – Greek word meaning ‘rule’ or ‘measuring stick’

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JesusThe Old Testament The New Testament – 27 books

Canon – ‘measuring rod’, ‘rule’ or ‘standard’.

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2. Use this article and the 1d. Power point presentation to complete the table on

‘How the Christian biblical canon was established.’

Topic ExplanationWhy were early Christians persecuted?

Old Testament and the Apocrypha

Early Church – apostles, letters and Justin Martyr

Controversies –Marcion and Montanus

Marcion rejected the Old Testament

Montanus, Prisca and Maximilla focused on the Holy Spirit

The result of these controversies

The five guidelines for accepting books into the New Testament

The Muratorian Fragment

The agreed canon –3rd/ 4th Century

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Diverse views on the Bible as the word of God:

Infallible truth The only means to salvation The principle source of divine revelation Inspired by God but interpreted by the church A resource for Christian living An oppressive text that should be rejected.

The Orthodox Perspective

If (the Bible) must not be regarded as something set up over the Church but as something that lives and is understood with the Church.’ Kalistos Ware, The Orthodox Church

The Bible is inspired by the Holy Spirit

Canon determined by the Church

The Roman Catholic Perspective

Similarities with the Orthodox Church – the Church is a source of Authority

‘One holy catholic and apostolic church’Second Vatican Council:

Bible in the Vernacular – local languages Bible should be read by lay people for purposes of ‘personal devotion.’

‘For all of what has been said about the way of interpreting Scripture is subject finally to the judgement of the Church, which carries out the divine commission and ministry of guarding and interpreting the word of God.’ Dei Verbum, 1965

The Protestant Perspective

Many and varied views on the Bible as the word of God.

Bible is the supreme source of authority

The ‘Word of God’

‘Sola Scriptura’

‘Priesthood of all believers.

The use of the Vernacular

No single right or authoritative interpretation

Atheists and humanists would find much Biblical moral teaching valuable, but would interpret it as being the product of human wisdom and experience, rather than divine revelation. They may also look to events in the lives of important Biblical figures, such as Jesus, for inspiration and education.

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The Bible ‘contains’ the word of GodThe Bible ‘is’ the word of God

3. Diversity of perspectives concerning the status of Biblical authority within Christian communities

http://www.reonline.org.uk/knowing/what-re/atheism/the-bible-and-the-word-of-god/

The Bible reveals the word of God The Bible as sacrament

Different understandings of inspiration

‘Much of the modern confusion about the inspiration of the Bible stems from misconceptions of the

word inspiration itself. The English word inspiration, derived from the Latin word inspiratio, refers to the

“act of breathing in,” specifically, “the drawing of air into the lungs.”’ John F. Walvoord

In the modern word inspiration means a stimulus of the intellect or emotions.

In connection to the Bible inspiration is ‘supernatural divine influence on the prophets, apostles, or

sacred writers, by which they were qualified to communicate truth without error; a supernatural

influence which qualifies men to receive and communicate divine truth’ Webster.

‘As translated in 2 Timothy 3:16 in the Authorized Version the statement is made: “All scripture is given

by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in

righteousness.” Though there has been some debate on the meaning of the phrase “all scripture,” the

preceding verse referring as it does to “the holy scriptures,” gives us an important lead. It makes plain

that verse 16 is not referring to all writings, but rather to those regarded as the Word of God, such as

the Old Testament Scriptures and those portions of the New Testament which had been written at that

time. Such Scriptures are declared to be given by inspiration of God.’ John F. Walvoord

There are several important elements that belong in a proper definition of inspiration: (1) the divine

element—God the Holy Spirit superintended the writers, ensuring the accuracy of the writing; (2) the

human element—human authors wrote according to their individual styles and personalities; (3) the

result of the divine-human authorship is the recording of God’s truth without error; (4) inspiration

extends to the selection of words by the writers; (5) inspiration relates to the original manuscripts.40

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4. Fill in the missing words, check using the 1d. PPP – inspired, individuals, poetry, criticism, differences, interpreted, inerrant, response, guidance

Objective view of inspiration Subjective view of inspiration‘Sometimes there was given a direct and oral revelation to be written down, such as was the case in the giving of the Mosaic law (Ex. 20:1), and such as was the case, in some instances, with other writers (Dan. 9:21-23; Rev. 17:7).’ Simmons

The Bible is God’s direct word and is _______ as there can be no theological, historical or cultural error. They would therefore stay clear of any form of biblical __________. The Bible is dictated as each word was deliberately inspired by God through the Holy Spirit’s __________ of the writers. This view is also referred to as plenary verbal inspiration, it is based on the position that:

a. God is not associated with falsehood or error

b. God has inspired the Biblec. Therefore, there are no falsehood,

contradictions, or errors in the Bible (some fundamentalist thinkers distinguish between the original text of the Bible which is perfect and without error and later copies into which some errors may have crept).

This turns the Bible into propositional truths which can be labelled ‘true’ or ‘false.’ However most literalist groups with an objective view of inspiration will accept that the Bible does not simply contain history-it also contains ___________ and allegory. But where a text can be interpreted as recording history a literalist will always view it as such. Also Bible literature was written 2000 years ago and assumes some of the values of 2000 years ago. Objective Biblical literalists have to decide whether to re-interpret certain statements in the light of today’s commonly held assumptions. This has led to radical ______________ in practice.The way things are in reality.The Bible contains divine truths.

‘It is wicked to doubt that they (the writings of the Apostles and Prophets) are free from all

‘At other times truth was revealed through the writers by such divine quickening and deepening of their own thinking as to enable them toperceive and infallibly record new truth, as seems to have been the case with Paul in much of his epistles.’ Simmons

The subjective view is that the Bible records the experiences of people seriously seeking after God in their own lives, situations and cultures.

They are not __________ and authoritative in themselves and neither are they inerrant. Indeed, a liberal theologian would feel free to make judgements on the practice and attitudes found in the Bible. Therefore they believe that the bible must be ___________ and that it cannot contain facts. However they do believe that it is meaningful and does correspond to an objective reality. Another subjective theory of inspiration was developed by Karl Barth, he believed that Jesus (and not the Bible) was the ‘word of God’.It is the duty of ______________ to weigh what is found in the Bible and apply it, if appropriate, to their own lives as they seek in their path after God.

The essential difference between this view and the last one is that there is no perceived need for a total community response (e.g. the church) to all parts of the Bible.

The assumption is that the individual ___________ is what counts.

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error.’ AugustineBalancing subjective and objective views

Many Anglican and Catholic theologians seek to balance objective and subjective viewpoints: on the one hand, they affirm that god is the author of the Bible, but on the other hand, hat God has worked through unique human authors each with their own style, personality and historical situations. What is important for these theologians is not that the Bible conforms to some view of perfection that can be defined in logical or scientific terms, but that it is ‘true’ when it comes to matters of salvation, faith and morality. As II Timothy 3:16 says , the Bible is ‘useful for teaching . . .and training in righteousness’.

Calvin’s view of accommodation

John Calvin – protestant reformer – 1509-1564

Calvin was not the first theologian to discuss the idea of accommodation, it has a long history from ancient Jewish writers to Augustine.

Accommodation is a theological doctrine or idea. Accommodation means to adapt, fit suit or adjust.

It states that Scripture has accommodated, or made allowances for, the original audience’s language and general level of understanding.

God accommodates Himself to the human capacities of those to whom biblical revelation is given. Calvin stated ‘We must never forget that God is above and beyond our language’. Calvin used the analogy of a nurse using ‘baby talk’ to a young toddler – the nurse could speak in a more sophisticated way, but chooses to communicate in that way to encourage interaction with the child. Calvin also claimed that the human authors chose to write in a way that would be easily intelligible to most of their readers. The authors are adaping the truth so that the common person can understand, for example, in Genesis it refers to two great lights in the sky. This is not scientifically accurate but it is expressing an essential message that is true, as the moon is the light that rules the night sky from the point of view of someone on earth.

‘John Calvin, for instance, flatly affirmed the dictation of the Scripture. Kenneth Kantzer in his discussion on Calvin cites Calvin’s statement that “the Holy Spirit dictated to the prophets and apostles” and Calvin’s description of writers of Scripture as “clerks” and “penmen” as supporting this idea. In his other writings, however, Calvin freely admits the human element. What Calvin was actually affirming was infallibility rather than dictation in the absolute sense.’ John F. Walvoord

5. Research more on Calvin’s view of accommodation and add notes below.

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THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLET.P. SimmonsWe have noted evidence that the Bible is a revelation from God. And we are told in the Bible that God gave the revelation by inspiration. If the Bible is God's revelation, it is right to let it speak for itself concerning its own nature. It is our purpose, then, in this chapter to inquire into the meaning andnature of inspiration, according to the Bible's own testimony. In the course that we are here pursuing we are following reason in its highest sense. It has been shown that reason demands a belief in God's existence. And it has been pointed out, moreover, that it is reasonable to expect a written revelation from God. It is the province of reason, then, in relation to revelation, first of all, to examine the credentials of communications that profess to be a revelation from God. If these credentials are satisfactory, then reason must accept the communications as coming from God; and hence must accept the things presented as being true. "Revelation is the viceroy who first presents his credentials to the provincial assembly, and then presides" (Liebnitz). In the foregoing manner, "reason itself prepares theway for a revelation above reason, and warrants an implicit trust in such revelation when once given" (Strong).Above reason is not against reason. It is only bald rationalism that rejects all it cannot fathom or rationally demonstrate. "The most unreasonable people in the world are those who depend solely upon reason, in the narrow sense" (Strong). Mere reasoning or the exercise of the logical faculty is not all ofreason. Reason, in its broad sense, comprehends the whole of the mind's power to recognize truth. Reason can rightly reject only that which contradicts known facts. And then, to be safe, reason must be "conditioned in its activity by a holy affection and enlightened by the Spirit of God" (Strong). To such reason, the Scriptures present nothing contradictory, although they do make known much beyond the unaided power of man to discover or to comprehend fully.1. THE MEANING OF INSPIRATIONWhen Paul said: "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God" (2 Tim. 3:16), he used the Greek word "theopneustos" for the idea of inspiration. This Greek word is composed of "theos," meaning God, and "pneo," meaning to breathe. The compound word is an adjective meaning literally "breathed of God." Since it is the breath that produces speech, this word provided a very apt and impressive way of saying that the Scripture is the word of God.11. THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN INSPIRATIONHowever, it was only in special cases that the words to be written down were orally dictated to the Scripture writers. In most cases the minds of the writers became the laboratory in which God converted His breath, as it were, into human language. This was not done by a mechanical process. The personality and temperament of the writers were not suspended. These are manifest in the writings. Hence we read from Gaussen: "In maintaining that all Scripture is from God, we are far from thinking that man goes fornothing in it . . . In Scripture all the words are man's, as there, too, all the words are God's. In a certain sense, the Epistle to the Romans is altogether a letter of Paul's and, in a still higher sense, the Epistle to the Romans is altogether a letter of God's" (Theopneustia, a book indorsed highly by C. H. Spurgeon). And so we read also from Manly: "The divine origin and authority of the Word of God is not to be affirmed so as to exclude or impair the reality of the human authorship, and the peculiarities resulting there from. The Bible is God's Word to man, throughout; yet at the same time it is really and thoroughly a man's composition. No attempt should be made-and we shall certainly make none-to set aside or ignore the "human element" of the Scriptures, which is unmistakably apparent on their very face; no

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one should wish to so magnify the divine as to crowd this out, or almost out. This is one of the mistakes which good men have committed.* *The following quotation is very much to the point here: "Sometimes, it may be frankly conceded, zeal for the divine authority and inerrancy of theScriptures may have led to untenable theories and modes of expression, that have rather obscured the truth. To say, e. g., that the writers were mere passive instruments in the hand of the Spirit, or at best amanuenses writing to dictation-to adopt, in other words, the mechanical theory, is unwarrantedand mischievous. It is no part of the doctrine, and has never been generally held" (New Biblical Guide, Urquhart, Vol. 8, Page 175).__________Let both be admitted, recognized, accepted thankfully and rejoicingly, each contributing to make the Bible more completely adapted to human needs as the instrument of divine grace, and the guide for weak and wandering human souls. The word is not of man, as to its source; nor depending on man, as to its authority. It is by and through man as its medium; yet not only simply as the channel along which it runs, like water through a lifeless pipe, but through and by man as the agent voluntarily active "and intelligent in its communication. Both sides of the truth are expressed in the Scriptural language: 'Holy men of God spake as they were moved (borne along) by the Holy Spirit.' (2 Pet. 1:21). The men spoke; the impulse and direction were from God" (The Bible Doctrine of Inspiration). "The Scriptures contain ahuman as well as a divine element, so that while they constitute a body of infallible truth, this truth is shaped in human moulds and adapted to ordinary human intelligence" (Strong).111. INSPIRATION ACCOMPLISHED MIRACULOUSLYThe human element in the Bible does not affect its infallibility, just as the human nature of Christ did not affect His infallibility. Inspiration was accomplished miraculously just as the virgin birth of Christ wasaccomplished miraculously, and just as men are brought to repentance and faith miraculously. Repentance and faith are voluntary acts of the man, yet they are wrought in him by the Holy Spirit. God accomplished the miracle of inspiration by providentially preparing the writers for their work and by sorevealing His truth to them and so enabling, guiding, and superintending them in the recording of it as to give to us through them an exact and complete transmission of all that He was pleased to reveal."Although the Holy Spirit did not select the words for the writers, it is evident that He did select them through the writers" (Bancroft, Elemental Theology).IV. METHODS IN INSPIRATIONThe miraculous element in inspiration, of course, cannot be explained. And we have no desire that man should be able to explain it. But to some extent,at least, we can discern from the Scripture the methods God used ininspiration. A study of the methods used should heighten our appreciation ofinspiration.1) Inspiration Through objective Revelation.Sometimes there was given a direct and oral revelation to be written down, such as was the case in the giving of the Mosaic law (Ex. 20:1), and such as was the case, in some instances, with other writers (Dan. 9:21-23; Rev. 17:7).2) Inspiration Through supernatural Vision.In other cases a supernatural vision was given with or without an interpretation of it, as was the case with John on the Isle of Patmos.3) Inspiration Through Passivity.At other times, when we are given no evidence of an external revelation ofany kind, the writers were so

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consciously and passively moved by the Holy Spirit as to be knowingly ignorant of the full import of what they wrote, as was the case with the prophets when they wrote of Christ (1 Pet. 1:10).4) Inspiration Through Divine Illumination.Sometimes there was given to the writers such divine illumination as to enable them to understand and apply truth contained in former revelations, but not made fully clear by them; as was the case with New Testament writers in interpreting and applying Old Testament Scripture (Acts 1:16,17,20; 2:16-21; Rom. 4:1-3; 10:5-11).5) Inspiration Through God's Direction.In some cases the writers were merely so guided and guarded as to be enabled to record infallibly such historical facts as God was pleased to have them record, whether those facts were personally known to them, obtained from others, or supernaturally revealed. All historical books are examples in point here.6) Inspiration Through Subjective Revelation.At other times truth was revealed through the writers by such divine quickening and deepening of their own thinking as to enable them to perceive and infallibly record new truth, as seems to have been the case with Paul in much of his epistles.Summing it all up, we may say that the process of inspiration consisted of such means and influences as it pleased God to employ, according to the circumstances, in order to give us a divine, complete, and infallible revelation of all religious truth we need during this life. Or with A. H. Strong we may say: "By the inspiration of the Scriptures, we mean that special divine influence upon the minds of the Scripture writers in virtue of which their productions, apart from errors of transcription, and when rightly interpreted, together constitute an infallible and sufficient rule of faith and practice."V. THE EXTENT OF INSPIRATIONIt will be seen that verbal inspiration is implied in what we have said already. But, as also already said, this does not destroy the human element in the Scripture. The Scripture is all the Word of God; yet most of it is also the word of man. The writers differ in temperament, language, and style; and these differences are clearly manifest in their writings; yet their productions are as truly and fully the Word of God as any utterance of Jesus.VI. PROOFS OF VERBAL INSPIRATIONIn proof of the fact that the Bible is inspired in word, and not merely in thought, we call attention to the following evidences:1) Inspired Scripture necessarily involves Verbal Inspiration.We are told that the Scripture is inspired. Scripture consists of written words. Thus we necessarily have verbal inspiration.2) Paul Affirmed that he used Words taught him by the Holy Spirit.In 1 Cor. 2:13, in referring to the things he knew through the Holy Spirit, he said: "Which things we speak, not in the words which man's wisdomteacheth, but which the Holy Spirit teacheth." This is a positive affirmation on the part of Paul that he was not left to himself in the selection of words.*3) Peter Affirmed the Verbal Inspiration of His Own and Other Apostle's Writings.In 2 Pet. 3:1,2, 15,16, Peter puts his own and other apostles writings on a level with the Old Testament Scriptures. And, since Peter believed the Old Testament Scriptures to be verbally inspired (Acts 1:16), it follows, therefore, that he considered__________

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*It is charged by some that in Acts 23:5 and 1 Cor. 7:10,12, Paul admits non inspiration. In Acts 23:5 Paul says concerning the High Priest, "I wist not, brethren, that he was the High Priest." This "may be explained either as the language of indignant irony: 'I would not recognize such a man as HighPriest'; or, more naturally, as an actual confession of personal ignorance and fallibility, which does not affect the inspiration of any of Paul's final teachings or writings" (Strong). Inspiration does not mean that Bible writers were always infallible in judgment or impeccable in life, but that in their capacity of official teachers and spokesmen for God they were preserved from error.In the passages from the first Corinthian epistle, Paul says in the case of one command: "I command, yet not I, but the Lord;" while in the case of other commands he says: "The rest speak I, not the Lord." But notice that at the end of the latter series of exhortations he says: "I think ... I have the Spirit ofGod" (1 Cor. 7:40). "Paul distinguishes, therefore, here ... not between his own and inspired commands, but between those which proceeded from his own (God-inspired) subjectivity, and those which Christ Himself supplied by his objective word" (Meyer, in Loco).__________the writings of himself and those of other apostles as being verbally inspired.**4) Quotations in the New Testament from the Old Testament prove the Verbal Inspiration of New Testament Writers.The Jews had a superstitious regard for the very letter of Scripture. Certainly, then, devout Jews, if left to themselves, would be exceedingly careful to quote Scripture as it is written. But we find in the New Testament about two hundred and sixty-three direct quotations from the Old Testament, and of these, according to Horne, eighty-eight are verbal quotations from the Septuagint; sixty-four are borrowed from it; thirty seven have the same meaning, but different words; sixteen agree more nearly with the Hebrew; and twenty differ from both the Hebrew and the Septuagint. All the New Testament writers, except Luke, were Jews, yet they did not write as Jews. What can account for this if they were not conscious of divine sanction of every word they wrote? Some good examples of quotations from the Old Testament by New Testament writers where new meaning is put into the quotations are found in Rom. 4:6,7, which is a quotation from Psa. 32:1, and Rom. 10:6-8, which is a quotation from Deut. 30:11-14.5) Matthew Affirmed that the Lord spake through the Prophets of the Old Testament. See Revised Version of Matt. 1:22 and 2:15.6) Luke Affirmed that the Lord spake by the Mouth of the Holy Prophets (Luke 1:70).__________** A question may be raised as to Peter's dissimulation at Antioch, where we have a "practical disavowal of his convictions by separating and withdrawing himself from the Gentile Christians (Gal. 2:11-13)" (Strong). "Here was no public teaching, but the influence of private example. But neither in this case, nor in that mentioned above (Acts 23:5), did God suffer the error to be a final one. Through the agency of Paul the Holy Spirit set the matter right" (Strong).__________7) The Writer to the Hebrews affirms the Same Thing. (Heb. 1:1).8) Peter Affirmed that the Holy Spirit spake by the Mouth of David (Acts 1:16).9) Paul's Argument in Gal. 3:16 implies Verbal Inspiration.In this place Paul bases an argument on the singular number of the word "seed" in God's promise to Abraham.10) Old Testament Writers constantly implied and taught the Divine Authority of their Very Words.

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Passages in proof of this are too numerous to need mentioning.11) Fulfilled Prophecy is Proof of Verbal Inspiration. A study of fulfilled prophecy will convince any open-minded person that the prophets were necessarily inspired in the very words they uttered. Otherwisethey could not have foretold something of which they knew very little.12) Jesus Affirmed the Verbal Inspiration of the Scriptures. Jesus said: "The Scripture cannot be broken" (John 10:35), by which He meant that its meaning cannot be loosed nor its truthfulness destroyed.Meaning and truth are dependent upon words for expression. Infallible meaning is impossible without infallible words.

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AO2 The extent to which the Bible can be regarded as the inspired word of God.

6. The idea that the words of the Bible are inspired by God may be briefly summarized as follows:

This is the claim of the classical text (2 Timothy 3:16).

It is the emphatic testimony of Paul that he spoke in “Words … taught by the Spirit” (1 Corinthians 2:13).

It is evident from the repeated formula, “It is written.”

Jesus said that which was written in the whole Old Testament spoke of Him (Luke 24:27, 44; John 5:39; Hebrews 10:7).

The New Testament constantly equates the Word of God with the Scripture (writings of the Old Testament, cf. Matthew 21:42; Romans 15:4; 2 Peter 3:16).

Jesus indicated that not even the smallest part of a Hebrew word or letter could be broken (Matthew 5:8).

The New Testament refers to the written record as the “oracles of God” (Romans 3:2; Hebrews 5:12).

Occasionally the writers were even told to “diminish not a word” (Jeremiah 26:2, AV). John even pronounced an anathema upon all who would add to or subtract from the “words of the prophecy of this book” (Revelation 22:18, 19).

The Bible cannot be regarded as the inspired word of God

The Bible has been copied and translated so many time and we do not have an original manuscript, therefore the Bibles we see today do not contain the inspired word of God.

"Of what value is the verbal inspiration of the original manuscripts of Scripture, since we donot have these original manuscripts, and since the great majority of people must depend upon translations of the original languages, which translations cannot be held to be infallible." Challenge identified by Simmons (who then rejected the challenge).

The two genealogies of Jesus are held to be contradictory, as are the stories of Jesus’ birth and early life. For these genealogies see Matt. 1 and Luke 3 and booklet 1.

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7. Whether the Christian biblical canonical orders are inspired, as opposed to just the texts they contain.

Christian biblical canonical orders were inspired The Biblical canonical texts were inspired

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Whether the Christian biblical canonical orders are inspired, as opposed to just the texts they contain.

Christian biblical canonical orders are ... .

If they were inspired then they would have been . . .

Some Christians claim the biblical texts . . .

Many Christians maintain that biblical canonical order was not created by the church or by human construction, but rather by God Himself. They claim he preserved and presented each book of the canon. The church simply accepted the canon that had already been established.

However, it can be argued that the church developed the canon following a pattern identified by Keith Ward, that shares much in common with the creation of other holy books . .

However, ancient remains of the Bible, referred to as the _________________________. show that the list of canonical books of the New Testament was already in place in . . . .

Also, the Old Testament wasn’t finalised until after the creation of the Christian Church and therefore, it can be explained as a human response to a perceived threat to Judaism rather than . . .

The view that the Christian canonical orders were inspired has been supported by the Orthodox Church, Wares stated that. . .

Also, in Timothy St Paul said ‘All scripture is given by inspiration of God’, this could be interpreted to mean that the canonical order was inspired God.

However, the level of ongoing debate about which books of the Bible are canonical suggests that it is just the texts that are inspired . . .

In conclusion,

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1 EThe early church (in Acts of the Apostles):

I. Its message and format: the kerygmata as presented by C. H. Dodd, with reference to Acts 2:14-39; 3:12-26.

II. The challenges to the kerygmata (with reference to the historical value of the speeches in Acts and the work of Rudolf Bultmann).

III. The adapting of the Christian message to suit the audience.

Introduction to Acts of the Apostles

The Acts of the Apostles is the earliest account we have of the spread of Christianity during the first century CE; (the equally important Pauline epistles are earlier, but are not historical accounts). There is a general consensus that the book was written by Luke, the author of the third gospel, probably before CE 70, no more than some forty years after the crucifixion of Jesus. Its Prologue (1:1-14) is addressed, as is Luke’s Gospel, to someone called Theophilus, and connects with the last chapter of the gospel, which ends with Jesus blessing the disciples as he ascended into heaven (compare Luke 24:50-52 with Acts 1:8-9).

Acts 1:1 to 6:7 is an account of the Christian community that came into being in Jerusalem following the events of the first Christian Pentecost, which are described in 2:1-13. The word Pentecost is the Greek word for ‘fifty’. The Jewish festival of Pentecost was held on the fiftieth day after Passover. For Christians, it has a special significance as the birthday of the Christian church. In Luke 24:49, Jesus instructs the disciples to stay in Jerusalem ‘until you have been clothed with power from on high’. At Pentecost, the power of the Holy Spirit descends upon them, and the Christian church is born.

I. Its message and format: the kerygmata as presented by C. H. Dodd, with reference to Acts 2:14-39; 3:12-26.

Kerygma is a Greek word which means "proclamation, announcement, preaching." Kerygmata being the plural form of kerygma. The kerygma is the preaching of the message of Christianity This was distinct from the teaching which focused on moral and ethical instruction.

During the mid-twentieth century, when the literary genre of the NT gospels was under debate, scholars like C. H. Dodd and Rudolf Bultmann suggested that the gospels were of a genre unique in the ancient world. They called this genre kerygma and described it as a later development of preaching, having taken a literary form.

‘The New Testament writers draw a clear distinction between preaching and teaching. The distinction is

preserved alike in Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypse, and must be considered characteristic of early

Christian usage in general. Teaching (didaskein) is in a large majority of cases ethical instruction.2 . . .

Preaching, on the other hand, is the public proclamation of Christianity to the non-Christian world. The

verb keryssein properly means "to proclaim." . . . Much of our preaching in Church at the present day

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would not have been recognized by the early Christians as kerygma. It is teaching, or exhortation

(paraklesis), or it is what they called homilia, that is, the more or less informal discussion of various

aspects of Christian life and thought, addressed to a congregation already established in the faith.

A main theme of the kerygmata of the early church was the belief that Jesus fulfilled the promises of

the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) through his life, works, death, and resurrection.

The aim of the kerygma was to proclaim the key facts of the gospel to those who had never heard them

before. It followed a particular pattern:

Old Testament prophecies have been fulfilled; the Messianic Age has come.

This has happened through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

He was born of the house of David, and died for the salvation of humankind. He was buried, but

resurrected on the third day, according to the Scriptures.

He ascended to heaven and sits on the right hand of God.

God’s Holy Spirit has been poured out on the Church so that it is now the sign of Christ’s power and glory.

He will come again to be mankind’s Judge and Saviour.

Therefore, all are called to repent and be baptized in his name.

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9. What is the pattern of the kerygma?

Acts 2:14-39 (NIV) Peter Addresses the Crowd

14 Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: “Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. 15 These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! 16 No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:

17 “‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people.Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.18 Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.19 I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke.20 The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord.21 And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’[a]

22 “Fellow Israelites, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. 23 This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men,[b] put him to death by nailing him to the cross. 24 But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him. 25 David said about him:

“‘I saw the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.26 Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest in hope,27 because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, you will not let your holy one see decay.28 You have made known to me the paths of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence.’[c]

29 “Fellow Israelites, I can tell you confidently that the patriarch David died and was buried, and his tomb is here to this day. 30 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. 31 Seeing what was to come, he spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, that he was not abandoned to the realm of the dead, nor did his body see decay. 32 God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it. 33 Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear. 34 For David did not ascend to heaven, and yet he said,

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Notes and explanations

16. Joel – Old Testament prophet – the disciples were fulfilling this prophecy

17-18. Promising experiences of God

22. There is also an emphasis on Jesus as miracle worker – for example, Peter draws attention to Jesus’ “miracles and wonders and signs”

15. This was after the arrival of the Holy Spirit – the disciples were speaking in tongues

Notes

25. Focus on prophecy - Jesus fulfilled the promises of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament)

“‘The Lord said to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand35 until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.”’[d]

36 “Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.”

37 When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”

38 Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.”

Footnotes:

1. Acts 2:21 Joel 2:28-322. Acts 2:23 Or of those not having the law (that is, Gentiles)3. Acts 2:28 Psalm 16:8-11 (see Septuagint) 4. Acts 2:35 Psalm 110:1

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10. What is the central preaching/kerygma found in Acts 2:14-39?

God had shown them, through the signs and wonders that Jesus did among them, that he was the Messiah. E.g.

Nevertheless, they were responsible for his crucifixion and death. How?

However, God had raised him from the dead, as prophesied in Psalm 16:10.

David, the reputed author of the psalms, had died; the resurrection of Jesus proves that he is greater than David. Why is this significant?

The apostles are witnesses to the resurrection, for they had seen the risen Jesus.

All this proves that God has made this Jesus whom the Jews crucified both Lord and Messiah.

Acts 3:12-26 (NIV) (following the healing by Peter and John of the lame man at the Temple’s Beautiful Gate. The crowd follows the apostles to Solomon’s Portico. Peter seizes the chance to preach.)

12 When Peter saw this, he said to them: “Fellow Israelites, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk? 13 The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus. You handed him over to be killed, and you disowned him before Pilate, though he had decided to let him go. 14 You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. 15 You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this. 16 By faith in the name of Jesus, this man whom you see and know was made strong. It is Jesus’ name and the faith that comes through him that has completely healed him, as you can all see.

17 “Now, fellow Israelites, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders. 18 But this is how God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, saying that his Messiah would suffer. 19 Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, 20 and that he may send the Messiah, who has been appointed for you—even Jesus. 21 Heaven must receive him until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets. 22 For Moses said, ‘The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you must listen to everything he tells you. 23 Anyone who does not listen to him will be completely cut off from their people.’[a]

24 “Indeed, beginning with Samuel, all the prophets who have spoken have foretold these days. 25 And you are heirs of the prophets and of the covenant God made with your fathers. He said to Abraham, ‘Through your offspring all peoples on earth will be blessed.’[b] 26 When God raised up his servant, he sent him first to you to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways.”

Footnotes:

1. Acts 3:23 Deut. 18:15,18,192. Acts 3:25 Gen. 22:18; 26:4

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Notes and explanations – What is the Kerygma?

Peter makes the following points:

• The healing was not accomplished through the apostles’ own power; this was God glorifying his servant, Jesus, whom the Jews had rejected and killed.• God had raised him from the dead, and the apostles were witnesses to this.• It is through faith in Jesus’ name that the lame man was healed.• The Jews acted in ignorance, but God had indicated through his prophets that the Messiah would suffer, and this had been fulfilled.• The Jews were the prophets’ descendants, inheritors of God’s promise to Abraham that his children would be blessed.

II. The challenges to the kerygmata (with reference to the historical value of the speeches in Acts and the work of Rudolf Bultmann).

Are the sermons in Acts authentic/ have historical value? The Book of Acts contains eight speeches given by Peter and nine given by Paul. Some commentators have suggested that these speeches were never made by the apostles, but that they are the inventions of Luke, the author of Acts and therefore would have limited historical value.Luke-Acts was probably written in the 80s CE, up to 40-50 years after the events reported. Luke (if this is indeed the author) was a Gentile, not a Jewish Christian. Therefore, he was not present at some or any of the events he is reporting – certainly not the events of Acts 2 and 3.

The following points support this suggestion:• Luke was writing at a time when it was common practice among historians to compose speeches and attribute them to others. Very often they used such speeches to air their own views, with little respect for the alleged speakers or the circumstances in which the speeches were allegedly made.• The speeches do not match their narrative contexts, e.g. in Acts 21:27-30 Paul is accused by some Jews of bringing a Gentile into the Temple. He responds (Acts 22:1-21) not by trying to prove his innocence, but with a speech describing his biographical background and his conversion.• The speeches make Peter and Paul sound too similar. In fact, all the missionary speeches in Acts have a uniform structure:(i) a direct address to the listeners;(ii) a call for attention;(iii) a quotation from scripture;(iv) a proclamation of the life of Jesus;(v) a scriptural proof of his messiahship;(vi) a call to repentance.

The ‘voice’ of Paul does not match the voice of Paul found in his letters 9that most scholars agree were written by him), the voice is more characteristic of Luke- Acts.• The supposed audience would not have understood some elements in the speeches, e.g. in Acts 26:10, Paul calls Christians ‘the saints’. This is perfectly understandable to the reader but would have been unintelligible to Agrippa, who was the supposed listener. This shows that the intended audience for the speeches in Acts were not the persons mentioned in the narrative but the reader of the book.

In summary - Luke may here and there have made use of transmitted material, he composed these speeches himself, and that they have no historical core or content, but must be regarded as literary products similar to those in Greek historical writing

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11. How can we challenge to the kerygmata of Acts?

The following points defend the historical accuracy and value of the speeches:

Many scholars strongly disagree with the assumption that there is no historical value in Acts. First, this book was never questioned as a historical document by the early church. Since the book reports on public events known to many, you would think that if these were seriously misrepresented, there would have been an outcry from others who knew of different traditions. The opposite is the case. Luke’s reporting is not questioned; the book is affirmed by the Muratorian Canon, Tertullian, Origen and others.• We have evidence that Luke accompanied Paul on some of his missionary journeys, and that he was with him when he made his speeches in Athens (Acts 17); Ephesus (Acts 20), and Jerusalem (Acts 22), and when he defended himself before Agrippa (Acts 24-25). Since Luke was a close companion of Paul, it is quite possible that he had first-hand knowledge of Paul’s speeches.• The speeches make extensive allusion to the Old Testament Scriptures, which does not reflect Luke's usual literary style.• The speeches are only summaries (see Acts 2:40, ‘and he testified with many other arguments’), but those made by both Peter and Paul use similar words and show similar ideas to those in their epistles; e.g. Peter’s speeches(i) In Acts 2:23 Peter speaks of ‘the definite plan and foreknowledge of God’. I Peter 1:2 contains the phrase ‘destined by God’. (KJV has ‘according to the foreknowledge of God’; Greek prognosis = ‘foreknowledge’).(ii) Acts 3:6 quotes Peter as saying: ‘I have no silver or gold’. In I Peter 1:18, we have the phrase: ‘not with perishable things like silver or gold’.(iii) In Acts 10:42, Peter speaks of Jesus, ‘the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead’. In 1 Peter 4:5 he writes of ‘him who stands ready to judge the living and the dead’. Paul’s speeches(iv) In Acts 13:39, when preaching in Antioch, Paul states, ‘by this Jesus everyone who believes is set free from all those sins from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses’. This doctrine of justification is common in all his epistles.

Dodd has examined the kerygma in Acts and St Paul’s letters and believes they contain the same elements: fulfilment of prophecy, and that his life, death, resurrection and future coming are all key elements of the Christian faith, just as they are also presented in the book of Acts. In addition to this, Dodd does not doubt that the author of Acts is a careful historian.

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12. How can we defend the kerygmata (with reference to the historical value of the speeches in Acts).

Bultmann’s challenge to the kerygmata (with reference to the historical value of the speeches in Acts).

Rudolf Bultmann is one of the most influential theologians and biblical scholars of the twentieth century. He is perhaps best remembered for his call to demythologize the New Testament so that the Christian Gospel might be separated from its mythological trappings. Yet, a simple summary of demythologization often fails to appreciate Bultmann’s positive intent. Bultmann’s project is best seen as plotting out a middle course between nineteenth-century German theological liberalism and Karl Barth’s subsequent critique of that movement. Bultmann wanted, with Barth, to proclaim the saving act of God in Christ, yet without providing unnecessary stumbling blocks to the modern listener. (based on an article by Josh Reeves, 2005)

For Bultmann, the “real content” (sache) of the gospel proclamation about Jesus is closely bound to the pre-scientific cosmologies of the ancient Jewish and Greek world. For instance, Jesus is said to have ascended into heaven because it was thought to sit, literally, above the earth. Bultmann argues that the modern Christian cannot be expected to take this mythical world seriously, and so “there is nothing to do but to demythologize it” (Bultmann 1984, 9).

Demythologizing was not a new idea in German theological scholarship. Protestant liberals in nineteenth-century Germany had offered a similar critique, yet in Bultmann’s opinion they had failed. In attempting to purge the New Testament of outdated thinking, they had eliminated the kerygma, a Greek word which Bultmann identifies with “the message of God’s decisive act in Christ” (Bultmann 1984, 12). For Adolf Harnack and other German liberals, the significance of Jesus lay only in his moral teachings. Following Karl Barth, Bultmann argued that “[t]he New Testament talks about an event through which God has brought about our salvation. It does not proclaim Jesus primarily as a teacher…” (Bultmann 1984, 13).

Despite Bultmann’s acceptance of Barth’s critique of liberalism, he was certainly not a Barthian. He could not follow Barth’s strict acceptance of the biblical text, myth and all. Barth himself addressed their differences in the preface to the third edition of his Epistle to the Romans:

[Bultmann] asks me to think and write WITH Paul, to follow him into the vast unfamiliarity of his Jewish, Popular-Christian, Hellenistic conceptions; and then suddenly, when the whole becomes too hopelessly bizarre, I am to turn round and write ‘critically’ ABOUT him and against him—as though, when all is strange, this or that is to be regarded as especially outrageous (Barth 1933, 18).

But Bultmann was not simply asking Barth to challenge Paul; he took for granted that such challenging is unavoidable. How can persons living in a modern scientific society accept a mythical world picture as true? Furthermore, while Barth’s approach might be faithful to the letter of the text, for Bultmann it was not faithful to the kerygma, to which the text is supposed to bear witness. Faith that accepts the worldview of the New Testament (or even the modern worldview of science) “has not grasped the hiddenness and transcendence of divine action and…seeks God’s act in the sphere of what is worldly” (Bultmann 1984, 122). Thus, Bultmann did not see demythologization as something one might choose to do in

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13. Why did Bultmann believe the Bible should be demythologised? Read the whole page

order to preach to scientific Westerners, but rather as an opportunity to reflect on the nature of faith itself.

The Method of Demythologization

Having examined Bultmann’s case for the need to demythologize, let us see how he actually goes about doing it. It is important to understand that demythologizing is not simply “updating” the cosmology of the New Testament so that it might align with modern physics. Bultmann is not interested in how any particular scientific theory relates to the New Testament, but rather in what science tells him about the world, namely, that supernatural powers cannot interrupt the laws of cause and effect. From this perspective, any reference to supernatural acts has mistakenly objectified the transcendent into the immanent (Bultmann 1984, 99). If one is to understand the “true intention of the myth,” one will have to translate the biblical accounts into language that reveals how human existence is “grounded in and limited by a transcendent, unworldly power” but that does not violate our scientific worldview.

In order for Bultmann to accurately translate the mythical language of the Bible, he must rely heavily on a philosophy that deals “scientifically” with human existence rather than with natural science (Bultmann 1969, 324). Bultmann says, “What is involved here, is not only the criticism that proceeds from the world picture of natural science, but also—and even more so—the criticism that grows out of our self-understanding as modern persons” (Bultmann 1984, 5). Because Bultmann thinks that we cannot say that God acts in the physical world without mistakenly “objectifying” God (that is, treating God like any other human object), the interpretive task is to question what the text is saying about human existence. Theology, for Bultmann, is intimately tied to anthropology. On this point he follows his teacher, Wilhelm Herrmann, for whom it was not possible to “say of God how he is in himself but only what he does to us” (Bultmann 1984, 99).

For Bultmann, the philosophy that best understands human existence is the existentialism of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Or rather, “…Heidegger’s existentialist analysis of human existence seems to be only a profane philosophical presentation of the New Testament view of who we are…” (Bultmann 1984, 23). Bultmann rejects the charge that he is translating the kerygma into an alien philosophical framework, for Heidegger’s philosophy “all by itself” has discovered the New Testament message about the human condition. In Bultmann’s presentation of Heidegger’s philosophy, humans are “ever in the moment of decision between the past and future,” which we can accept responsibility for and live out “authentically” or “lose ourselves” to the variety of outside pressures that try to deny our freedom (Bultmann 1984, 23). For Bultmann the Christian gospel is that God has liberated humanity from “our factual fallenness in the world” so that we can live authentically as human beings (Bultmann 1984, 26).

Consider a few examples of demythologization. Bultmann rejects any supernatural account of Adam’s original sin, and instead locates sin in the human refusal to accept the gift of authentic existence (Bultmann 1984, 29). Likewise, living life “according to the Spirit” does not refer to any supernatural influence, but describes “a genuine human life” that lives out “of what is invisible and non disposable and, therefore, surrender[s] all self-contrived security” (Bultmann 1984, 17). The judgment of God to which Scripture refers, “is not a cosmic event that is still to happen but is the fact that Jesus has come into the world and issued the call to faith” (Bultmann 1984, 19). And the significance of Jesus is not to be found in his supposed placating of a wrathful God but in the fact that through him “our authentic life becomes a possibility in fact for us only when we are freed from ourselves” (Bultmann 1984, 30). Bultmann recognizes that not all of the New Testament can be translated in this way (Bultmann himself focuses mostly on John and Paul), but he thinks this is a necessary sacrifice if the kerygmatic message is to be clarified.

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To many, this theological method seems strange. Does such radical historical criticism not cut one off from the object of the church’s proclamation, Jesus Christ? Does not Bultmann think that history, and in particular the historical Jesus, is important to Christianity? Bultmann’s answer is clearly, “No.” He argues that the historical Jesus is of limited value; we can only say that Jesus was a historical person who died on the cross. Even this can be dangerous, for historical thinking can mislead one into presuming “that this historical presentation is the knowledge which reveals the object of faith” (Bultmann 1984, 122). For Bultmann, the Jesus of history is mute. Any attempt to base Christianity on him must fail.

Why then does Bultmann find the Christian kerygma so compelling? How does one come to believe in the cross as the event of salvation? Bultmann argues, “Here there seems to be only one answer: because it is proclaimed as such, because it is proclaimed together with the resurrection. Christ the crucified and risen encounters us in the word of proclamation, and nowhere else. And faith in this word is the true faith of Easter” (Bultmann 1984, 39). God does not reveal himself in the documents of history which are limited by their historical context; instead the Word of God is to be identified with what meets us in the proclamation of Jesus Christ. Thus, there is something inherently mysterious in the Word of God, for there is no way to “objectify” it by putting it human language, even if that language is found in Scripture. Christian theologians can “abandon absolutely the search for the proof of the Word of proclamation, either external proof or proof within ourselves (in ‘experiences’)” (Bultmann 1969, 138).

Here the radical nature of Bultmann’s theological program becomes clear. Bultmann’s critics wanted him to answer “how I rescue myself from the situation created by my critical radicalism; how much I can still save from the fire… (Bultmann 1969, 132).” He responds by saying that the Word of God is not something that human effort can save. “I calmly let the fire burn, for I see that what is consumed is only the fanciful portraits of Life-of-Jesus theology, and that means nothing other than ‘Christ after the flesh’” (Bultmann 1969, 132). Like a good Lutheran theologian, Bultmann argues that just as human effort cannot justify one’s self before God, human effort cannot secure the basis for our belief in God.

 

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14. Write your own summary of Bultmann’s challenge to the kerygmata (with reference to the historical value of the speeches in Acts).

Evaluation

What should one make of Bultmann’s theological proposal? Positively, it must be said that he deals directly with the problem of faith in the modern era. He was able to combine a thoroughly naturalistic account of the world with the accounts of the Christian Gospel that witness to the “Living God” who actively calls men and women through Jesus to a redeemed life. But the enduring problem for modern theology generally is that these accounts do not fit neatly together, which makes Bultmann an easy target for criticism.

Biblicists find his radical criticism of the New Testament excessive. While it might be admitted that history itself cannot prove faith, this does not mean history is irrelevant. If the early Christians, as Bultmann repeatedly claimed, drew heavily on the Gnostic redeemer myths (a view which many New Testament scholars today discount), why should we think Jesus’ life was different from that of any other human being? What if the post-Easter church has so radically altered the message of the Christ of faith, that it bears no resemblance to the Christ of history? Would this not cast doubt upon the entire New Testament message, a message that is explicitly rooted in historical events? Thus, it seems that Bultmann’s method lets Christianity off the historical hook. Doubts about the New Testament’s history cannot but lead to doubts about the New Testament’s message. Moreover, what would prevent people of other religions from making the claim that God authenticates their historically dubious claims?

A similar criticism has been offered by Protestant liberals. Why demythologize all of the New Testament, only to stop arbitrarily at the claim that Jesus is in some way uniquely used by God? Is this not also a supernatural claim that can be translated, without remainder, into anthropological terms? Trying to escape this question by appealing mysteriously to the Word of God in proclamation seems simply to be a fideistic move, in that it asserts what cannot possibly be disproven.

Questions also arise regarding Bultmann’s account of science. While it is apparent that a scientistic viewpoint denies the possibility of supernatural intervention, it is not clear that any particular scientific theory does so. Indeed, this is a highly debated topic in the contemporary science-and-religion literature. Much of this literature argues that a non-interventionist account of divine action is possible, if one is so theologically inclined. Thus, many theologians would question whether Bultmann has conceded too much to a mechanistic, scientific worldview.

But even if one opts with Bultmann for a purely naturalistic account of the world, he was clearly overly optimistic to think that there could be a “scientific understanding of human existence” (Bultmann 1969, 324). The complexities of human life raise insuperable problems for any explanations of human “existence” or even personality, which is why academic psychology has increasingly moved to more biologically-based paradigms such as cognitive science. As a result, it seems doubtful that there could ever be an adequate translation of Christian scripture into anthropological terms. While Bultmann had hoped to anchor the Christian gospel in a secure existentialist framework, in fact this framework secured its irrelevance as soon as Heidegger’s philosophy became dated. The failure of Bultmann’s theological program partly explains the emphasis on narrative among recent theologians, for they assert that New Testament accounts cannot be reduced to more basic philosophical, theological or anthropological propositions. (based on an article by Josh Reeves, 2005)

BibliographyBarth, K. (1933). The Epistle to the Romans. New York, Oxford University Press.

Bultmann, R. (1969). Faith and Understanding. Philadelphia, Fortress Press.36

15. Support for Bultmann Bultmann’s challenge to the kerygmata

Opposition to Bultmann

He deals with the problem of faith in the modern era

If he doubts the New Testament history he should also doubt the New Testament ________

Bultmann does not demythologise the whole Bible – he leaves in the idea that . . .

Science

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III. The adapting of the Christian message to suit the audience.

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AO2

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16. The extent to which the kerygmata (within the areas of Acts studied) are of any value for Christians today.

The kerygmata (within the areas of Acts studied) has value for Christians today.

The kerygmata (within the areas of Acts studied) has no value for Christians today.

Has value as is the inspired word of God – Timothy ‘God breathed’

Value – God can break the laws of nature – omnipotent

Can work today

Demythologising the Bible makes it acceptable to modern Christians

Not historically accurate e

Not compatible with science – Jesus’ miracles e.g.

Not compatible with contemporary society

A demythologised Bible is worthless

Conclusion

Value for believers . . .

Based on interpretation . . .

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17. Whether the speeches in Acts have any historical value.

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The speeches in Acts have historical value. The speeches in Acts do not have historical value.Bultmann

Conclusion

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1 F Two views of Jesus:A comparison of the work of two key scholars, including their views of Jesus with reference to their different methods of studying Jesus:John Dominic Crossan and N. T. Wright.Crossan: Jesus the social revolutionary; using apocryphal gospels; seeing Jesus as a product of his time; what the words of Jesus would have meant in Jesus’ time.Wright: Jesus the true Messiah; critical realism; texts as ‘the articulation of worldviews’; seeks to find the best explanation for the traditions found in the Gospels.

AO2 Issues

The validity of using critical realism to understand Jesus.

The validity of using apocryphal gospels to understand Jesus

Summary

The final section within this theme introduces candidates to the work of John Dominic Crossan andN.T. Wright and their respective views of Jesus. While both are historians, Crossan and Wright differon the conclusions they draw from the New Testament sources. This topic should build onthe work undertaken in section 1B.

Wright – we have already studied his views on resurrection

Crossan

Wright presents Jesus as the true Messiah. Candidates should be introduced to Wright’s historical defence of traditional Christian beliefs about Jesus and his emphasis on the Jewish context of Jesus. Wright’s method for historical research is called critical realism. While it is not possible to have unmediated access to historical reality we are not confined to our own experiences. It is possible to have provisional knowledge of the past through texts and traditions, but these perspectives are always mediated via particular worldviews (perspectives which make sense of the world). Candidates should understand Wright’s method as rejecting a false choice between subjectivity and objectivity, seeking to find the best explanation for the traditions found in the Gospels.Wright is considered to represent ‘an academic conservative theology’ Wilcockson

Crossan presents Jesus as the social revolutionary and draws on contemporary Jewish authors like Josephus. He sees Palestine at the time of Jesus as being a period of social turmoil and protest and Jesus is depicted as a social and political reformer. Crossan uses apocryphal gospels and sees Jesus as a product of his time, interpreting the words of Jesus in terms of what they would have meant in Jesus’ time

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Wright Jesus the true Messiah; critical realism; texts as ‘the articulation of worldviews’; seeks to find the best explanation for the traditions found in the Gospels.

N.T.Wright: worldviews make a difference

A worldview is a set of assumptions that uses story and symbols to answer basic questions such as who are we? When are we? What’s wrong with the world? What’s the solution?

It is the lens through which an entire culture looks at the world. We might dismiss world views from the past, but our dismissal could be part of our worldview.

Wright believes humans today have been influenced by the enlightenment world view that states we get knowledge from our senses, if a statement can’t be verified with sense perception it is meaningless (Link to Religious Language). One problem with this worldview is that it separates history and faith. Faith becomes personal and history has no meaning. Too many Christians accept this worldview and keep their faith to themselves.

The worldview behind the New Testament

The New Testament worldview is very different to this, it contains belief in a God who cares about the world and a God who made a covenant with His people. The New Testament worldview does not separate history, faith, politics and spirituality. So the modern Christian who believes and accepts Jesus as a spiritual figure who speaks privately to them is distorting the worldview from the time.‘History, then, prevents faith becoming fantasy. Faith prevents history becoming mere antiquarianism.’ Wright

Critical Realism: the idea that there are real objects beyond ourselves but that we know these objects through our own point of view or standpoint, which biases our experience of them.

Wright identifies the positivism of the modern worldview. Positivism is the idea that you can have positive knowledge of the world as long as it is verified by sense experience. This view is also called naïve realism as it is optimistic and thinks we can use raw data to gain sufficient knowledge. He also refers to phenomenalism, the idea that anything we think is knowledge is only knowledge of our sense data.

Wright combines insights from each of these views. Critical realism accepts that things can be known as something different from ourselves (realism) but recognises that the only way we can know something is from our own point of view. We bring our own biases to anything we know, the conditioning of our psychological, historical, sociological, and political context. We therefore need to be critical about the objectivity of our point of view.

How do we know the truth?

1. Identify that our world view precedes facts. We bring biases to each situation. 2. Instead of rejecting other points of view we should accept there could be a truth beyond

our viewpoint 3. There is no such thing as a completely neutral detached observer.4. We need to enter a dialogue with the ‘other’ point of view- This might lead to our story being confirmed, modified or abandoned5. History is a process of ‘hypothesis –verification’ and we need to enter the process.

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Wright’s view of JesusTo know the truth faith needs to meet facts of history.

Christians shouldn’t develop ideas that are not supported by historical sources. On the other hand we shouldn’t assume that history will disprove Christian claims.

When Wright enters into a historical study of Jesus he finds these points significant:

- Jesus was a Jewish prophet announcing the Kingdom of God. Jesus’ Jewish context should be the starting point of any historical study of Jesus. According to Wright Jesus was a initiating a movement, not a wandering preacher or philosopher.

- Eschatological expectation. The Jewish worldview at the time of Jesus was waiting for the Kingdom of God and they believed it was immanent.

- Messiah. Jesus acted and spoke in a way to show he believed he was the Messiah, the one in whom God would accomplish his decisive purpose.

- A Messiah who gave his life. The idea of Messiah in Judaism using referred to a victorious figure, so his death showed many Jews that Jesus wasn’t the Messiah. However, Wright claimed Jesus reinterpreted the meaning of Messiah as he rejected violent revolutionary behaviour (the Zealots) and he drew upon Jewish traditions about God using the suffering of his people to bring about redemption. Wright believes that Jesus began to think of his own death as a part of his messianic task.

The interesting thing about Christianity for Wright is that there is actually a Christianity! All the other movements around messiahs of Jesus’ era ended with the figure’s death. This did not happen with Jesus. This means that the reinterpreted messiahship that included dying for sins was an idea that caught on. Jesus’ resurrection confirmed for his followers that he was the true Messiah. Furthermore, the writers of the Gospels were convinced that these events were historical events: Isreal’s God was acting in history through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Due to the intention of writers to present history in a public context, and because of the compelling nature of the claims themselves, wer should take the Gospel’s seriously.

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Messiah – anointed one, a figure who is expected to unite the Jews and save them from their oppressors, ushering in an era of peace.

Crossan “Jesus is clearly the Davidic Messiah, that figure expected within certain circles of Judaism as the hope of the future, a figure as magnificent in general promise as he is unclear in precise detail” (Crossan 19).

Jesus the social revolutionary

1. What is a social revolutionary? You might need to research this.

2. How can Jesus be viewed as a social revolutionary?

3. Can you add supporting evidence for this view?

4. Can you think of any reasons why a Christian might reject this view?

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Jesus, finding his own voice, began to speak of God not as imminent apocalypse but as present healing. To those first followers from the peasant villages of Lower Galilee who asked how to repay his exorcisms and cures, he gave a simple answer, simple, that is, to understand but hard as death itself to undertake. You are healed healers, he said, so take the Kingdom to others, for I am not its patron and you are not its brokers. It is, was, and always will be available to any who want it. Dress as I do, like a beggar, but do not beg. Bring a miracle and request a table. Those you heal must accept you into their homes.

That ecstatic vision and social program sought to rebuild a society upwards from its grass-roots but on principles of religious and economic egalitarianism, with free healing brought directly to the peasant homes and free sharing of whatever they had in return. The deliberate conjunction of magic and meal, miracle and table, free compassion and open commensality, was a challenge launched not just on the level of Judaism's strictest purity regulations, or even on that of the Mediterranean's patriarchal combination of honor and shame, patronage and clientage, but at the most basic level of civilization's eternal inclination to draw lines, invoke boundaries, establish hierarchies, and maintain discriminations. It did not invite a political revolution but envisaged a social one at the imagination's most dangerous depths. No importance was given to distinctions of Gentile and Jew, female and male, slave and free, poor and rich. Those distinctions were hardly even attacked in theory, they were simply ignored in practice. Crossan

A Mediterranean peasantCrossan compared what we know about Jesus, with what we know about the different aspects of nearby meditarranean cultures: cross-cultural anthropology. This would help us to understand Jesus’ lifestyle: his relations with women, the importance of the farming economy, the kind of ethnic diversity he would come in contact with, the impact of taxation systems on people’s lives.

Understanding Jesus in the context of a near-eastern meditarranean culture paints a picture of Jesus as a Mediterranean peasant. His work as a carpenter, put him in the class of “artisans” – someone with a stable, but low income, who would have found it difficult to get by. Relationships in his society are governed by ideas of honour and shame. In order to advance in society, you needed a rich patron to support you. You would expect your family to support you and share in your activities. Women had a clearly demarcated role within the household, and relations between men and women were governed by custom and religion.

A Meditarranean Jewish peasantJews were expected to follow the Laws of the Hebrew Scriptures in matters of diet, health, cleanliness, relationships, work and leisure. People with contagious diseases were excluded for the sake of the health of the community. Sinners were rejected from the Temple worship. Dietary laws included prohibitions on certain foods, as well as table customs – washing cutlery, washing hands up to the elbow. Relations with women were socially controlled: only certain women (sisters, mothers, wives) could speak to men in private, let alone touch them.

A subject of the Roman EmpireCrossan considered the evidence of many documents relating to the Roman occupation, to try and understand what life under Roman rule was like. He had to evaluate his sources critically, as most would probably have been written from the point of view of the elite in society.

Crossan emphasized that Jesus, in growing up, would already have experienced the might of the Roman Empire – two rebellions of Jews against the Romans had taken place while he was in his teens. Their bodies would have been displayed on crosses as a spectacle for public shame, and to remind everyone of Roman power. Similarly, the function of scourging (whipping) was not so much to inflict pain and suffering, but to reduce resistance, so that when the person was led to crucifixion, they would be passive and quiet. Pilate would have sentenced Jesus to death, for resisting the Roman state, in his claim that God had another kind of rule in mind. So to understand Jesus, we need to know that in his preaching and actions, Jesus was consciously and intentionally resisting the Roman power, and knew how that would end. This shows he was a political revolutionary, who mocked the Roman power into inflicting the very punishment that he claimed to be standing up for, and so showed his power.

Unfortunately, Crossan believes that the Empire’s model of power and authority infected the Jesus movement, and it lost its egalitarianism. The Church chose leaders to exert authority over others, and Jesus’ open table fellowship became a closed Eucharist, ruled over by approved authority, which ended up being exclusively male - when the Emperor Constantine in C4th made Christianity the religion of the Empire.

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Using apocryphal gospels

The New Testament apocrypha are a number of writings by early Christians that give accounts of Jesus and his teachings, the nature of God, or the teachings of his apostles and of their lives. Some of these writings have been cited as scripture by early Christians, but since the fifth century a widespread consensus has emerged limiting the New Testament to the 27 books of the modern canon.[][2] Thus Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Protestant churches generally do not view these New Testament apocrypha as part of the Bible.[2] (Wikipedia)

The general term is usually applied to the books that were considered by the church as useful, but not divinely inspired.

Non-canonical gospels

Other documents entitled "gospels" came into existence in the second and third Christian centuries. The Church Fathers insisted that these ‘gospels’ contained distortions of the recognised canonical gospels, but some modern scholars, such as Crossan, do not.

‘An example of a document discovered outside the four canonical gospels is the Gospel of Thomas which was found at Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt in the winter of 1945 and is, in the view of many scholars, completely independent of the canonical gospels. It is also most strikingly different from them, especially in its format. It identifies itself, at the end, as a gospel, but it is a collection of the sayings of Jesus given without any compositional order and lacking deeds, miracles, crucifixion or resurrection stories, and especially any overall narratival or biographical framework. The existence of such other gospels means that the canonical foursome is a spectrum of approved interpretation forming a strong central vision which was later able to render apocryphal, hidden, or censored any other gospels too far off its right or left wing.’ Crossan

5. What does apocryphal mean?

6. What are the apocryphal gospels?

7. How have they been used by Crossan to create an image of Jesus?

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Seeing Jesus as a product of his time

8. What is mean by the phrase ‘produce of his time?

9. What does it mean to see Jesus a product of his time?

What the words of Jesus would have meant in Jesus’ time.

"A lot of people in the first century thought Jesus was saying something so important that they were willing to die for it. If people finish with my books and now see why Pilate executed him and why people died for him, then I've done my job." Crossan

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