Inter-Varsity Press

Contents

Introduction

1. The Jesus we thought we knew

2. ‘Scholars are discovering a very different Jesus’

3. ‘Jesus had a fling with Mary Magdalene’

4. ‘Jesus? He’s just a myth’

5. ‘The New Testament manuscripts are unreliable’

6. ‘The New Testament story is incredible’

7. ‘Jesus never really went to the cross’

8. ‘Jesus did not rise from the dead – his tomb has been found!’

9. ‘Jesus did not rise from the dead – there’s no evidence’

10. ‘Nobody thought Jesus divine until the fourth century’

11. ‘The “New” Testament is evil’

12. The real trouble with scepticism about the Jesus story

13. Will the real Jesus stand up?

Taking it further: some useful resources

INTRODUCTION

There is a remarkable and regrettable characteristic in human nature. When we see something noble or beautiful, for a while we admire it, and then we try to pull it down. It is thus with sports stars. So long as they perform well we idolize them. As soon as they show signs of frailty we rubbish them.

The highest standard of life that has ever been shown is that of Jesus Christ. He has won multi-millions to his allegiance. But he has also stirred up the fierce opposition of those who want to drag him in the mire or pull him down to their level. All manner of accusations are made against him, and you meet a sample of them in this book.

Often the best tactic for Christians is to ignore the slights and lies that are levelled against Jesus in films, books, articles and TV programmes. These generally have a short life, and Christians have better things to do than to be endlessly defending Jesus against a raft of calumnies. But every now and again it is time to break silence. It is time to show how ill-placed those lies and accusations are, and to revel afresh in the sheer attractiveness of the person of Jesus.

Lord Hailsham, former Lord Chancellor of the British parliament, put it well in The Door Wherein I Went: ‘The first thing we must learn about him is that we should have been absolutely entranced by his company. Jesus was irresistibly attractive. What they crucified was a young man, vital, full of life and the joy of it, the Lord of life itself, and even more the Lord of laughter, someone so utterly attractive that people followed him for the sheer fun of it. We need to recapture the vision of this glorious and happy man whose mere presence filled his companions with delight. No pale Galilean he, but a veritable Pied Piper of Hamelin who would have the children laughing all around him and squealing with pleasure and joy as he picked them up.’

John Lennon denied that Jesus was God, but was attracted to him – he saw him as ‘probably a very hip guy’. He was fascinated by Franco Zeffirelli’s portrayal in the film, Jesus of Nazareth.

I believe that the recapturing of the truth about Jesus, and the return of society towards the ideals he taught and embodied, is the greatest, perhaps the only hope, for our civilization. For nearly two thousand years the ideals of civility, respect for life, love, truth, honesty, gentleness and purity have been drawn to a large extent from the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. The Christian tradition, coupled, since the fall of Constantinople in ad 1453, with the humanism derived from Greece and Rome, has been the standard for public and private life. Often denied, often abused, it has remained the ideal. But now it is being assailed on every side.

In our postmodern age both truth and morality are at a discount. Violence is everywhere on the increase. There is little respect for person or property. The politicians debate whether more police on the streets or longer sentences will solve it. But of course these expedients are nothing more than band-aid on the wound that has gone so deep into the soul of post-Christian Europe. A ‘New Atheism’ has arisen, even more virulent than the old. Professors like Richard Dawkins and Peter Atkins in Oxford, journalists like Christopher Hitchens, are passionate in their hatred of anything religious, and especially Christianity.

But the opposition to religion as a civilizing influence has cut more deeply still. John Gray, formerly Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics, has written a challenge to his fellow atheists in his book Straw Dogs – Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals. He agrees with them that Christianity is rubbish and the God of the Bible mere superstition, but he chides them for not going far enough.

Humanism, the dominant ideology in the West is, he maintains, simply Christianity in a secular form which has replaced the idea of God’s providence with that of human progress.

Gray writes, ‘Christians understood history as a story of sin and redemption. Humanism is the transformation of this Christian doctrine of salvation into a project of universal emancipation. The idea of progress is the secular version of the Christian belief in providence . . . It rests on the belief that the growth of knowledge and the advance of the species go together – if not now, then in the long run.’

But he emphatically resists this illusion. ‘Knowledge does not make us free. It leaves us as we have always been, prey to every kind of folly.’ He is a rigid Darwinian. Human beings are mere animals – ‘only currents in the drift of genes’. The problem with humanism, as he sees it, is not due to its atheistic and Darwinian roots, but that it has not been true to those roots.

A truly naturalistic view of the world for Gray leaves no room for secular hope. ‘Darwin showed that humans are like other animals; humanists claim they are not. Humanists insist that by using our knowledge we can control our environment and flourish as never before.’ He continues, ‘But if Darwin’s theory of natural selection is true, this is impossible. The human mind serves evolutionary success, not truth. To think otherwise is to resurrect the pre-Darwinian error that humans are different from all other animals.’ The trouble with his fellow atheists is, he maintains, that they have not given up ‘Christianity’s cardinal error – the belief that humans are radically different from all other animals’.

From this depressing premise Gray fearlessly draws a number of conclusions. First, that human history has no meaning or significance. Second, that persons do not matter – they are only animals, after all. Third, that we are not responsible for what we do – ‘the upshot of neuroscientific research is that we cannot be the authors of our acts’. And finally we must abandon the notion of morality, which he sees as an ugly superstition.

And all this, if you please, from one who was Professor of European Thought!

Humanism will not save our civilization, based as it is on the assumption that human beings are not special, but are merely animals. Does it not depress you to think that this is how one of the most highly educated human beings in the country evaluates fellow humans – as mere animals, with no morals to restrain them and no hope to sustain? What future has a civilization governed by such assumptions?

Atheism will not save our civilization. Following the philosophy of Nietzsche that might is right, atheist dictators like Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao and Mugabe have liquidated multi-millions of victims in order to impose their will. How current atheists can claim that their creed brings emancipation when it can just as easily lead to mass murder, as it has in the past century on a magisterial scale, simply astonishes me. We shall gain no help from that quarter.

Jean-Paul Sartre described our society as being ‘on a shattered and deserted stage, without a script, director, prompter or audience’ – where everyone improvises their own part. Pretty near the mark, is it not? The humorous film maker Woody Allen observed, ‘More than at any time in history, mankind face a crossroads: one path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to extinction. Let us pray that we may have the wit to choose correctly!’

One of the great prophets of our century has been Alexander Solzhenitsyn. This was his evaluation of what had happened in his homeland, Russia, during his lifetime. ‘If I were asked to formulate as concisely as I could the main cause of the ruinous Revolution which has swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than this: men have forgotten God. That is why all this has happened. And Godlessness is the first step to the gulag.’ Solzhenitsyn had himself spent years in the gulag, and he knew what he was talking about.

There is one direction in which our civilization might look, if it cherishes hopes of a future. The ideal for human life is not beyond us. The ideal has lived. It is, of course, Jesus. He has had greater influence for good than any other person who has ever inhabited this planet. He has transformed the lives and characters of countless millions. It was so in the early church, with the radical change of people like Saul of Tarsus (Paul) and Simon Peter, James the brother of Jesus and Philip the evangelist. It remains so still.

Only today I was reading of the massive life-change in a man called Shane Taylor. For many years he was considered one of the most dangerous prisoners in Britain’s jails. Originally imprisoned for attempted murder, he had his sentence extended for four years when he attacked a prison officer with a broken glass. The incident provoked a riot. He tells of how he was regarded as such a subversive and dangerous influence in the prison that his cell door could not be opened at times unless there were six or seven prison officers in full riot gear present. Taylor stumbled by mistake into an Alpha course, which was being held in the prison. This remarkable introductory course to Christianity in due course led him to trust Jesus Christ, as it has led thousands more.

Hardened criminal though he was, Taylor came to see what Jesus Christ had done for him on the cross, and in due course made his response. He wrote of this experience: ‘I felt like I was in this room where although there was natural light, somebody switched on another light and everything became suddenly clearer than before. It felt as if I’d had an invisible layer covering my eyes and it was rubbed away. In that split second I knew it was real. I knew God existed. I knew Jesus had touched me and that I was going to live for him for ever.’ Needless to say his fellow inmates, his warders and even his mother (when he was released from prison a year later) were very cynical about this supposed change in his life. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating. All of them were ultimately convinced.

This man who had spent most of his adult life in prison, returning time after time upon re-offending, has gone straight, is happily married, is in full employment, and is deeply involved in the life of his local church. His drug dealing, violence, stealing, and swearing are gone. He has made peace with someone he stabbed. He has learnt to forgive. Gradually Christian character has taken root and is growing in him.

I should love him to meet Professor John Gray, whom I quoted earlier. I do not think he would be very impressed by Gray’s position that ‘the upshot of neuroscientific research is that we cannot be the authors of our acts’ or that ‘persons do not matter – they are only animals’. Taylor is well aware of his responsibility and guilt for the actions he perpetrated.

In days gone by he may have thought of men and women as mere animals who did not matter. Now he sees them as made in the image of God and for that reason worthy of respect. Which viewpoint offers more hope for the future of humanity in general and individuals in particular?

Now of course not everyone’s encounter with Christ is like that of Shane Taylor. Though Christ is the way to God there are many paths to Christ. Taylor is just one example of the transforming power of Jesus Christ. And does not society desperately need to get in touch afresh with that divine, life-changing power? Can you see atheism changing a person for the better like that? Can you see prison doing it? On the contrary, most come out of prison worse and more criminal than when they went in – and the statistics prove it. But the glory of the gospel is that Jesus Christ has been making that sort of change to individuals and societies for centuries.

But let us be clear about one thing. It is the full-blooded Jesus of the New Testament, both human and divine, crucified and risen, who brings about this transformation. And he has become subject to enormous scorn and insult in the sceptical, materialistic West. Can you imagine what the Muslim world would have done had Muhammad been attacked and publicly slandered as Jesus has repeatedly been in recent decades? But I am convinced that the calumnies put out against him are lies. They are put forward by people who hate what he stands for and are determined to rubbish him if they can. But they will not withstand critical examination. Of course, not all doubts about Jesus are motivated by arrogance and hatred, and honest doubters will, I hope, find this book illuminating and reassuring.

This book is written in the conviction that the person and teaching of Jesus offers the most realistic hope for human destiny, both personal and collective. That is why, in what follows, I have tried to peel away layers of untruth and misunderstanding that keep many from considering his claims and recognizing his worth. Read on and make up your own mind, for the issues are momentous.