The Case Against the Case For Christ: A New Testament Scholar Refutes the Reverend Lee Strobel by Price Robert M. & Zindler Frank R

Author:Price, Robert M. & Zindler, Frank R. [Price, Robert M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Gospels & Acts, Literature & the Arts, Christianity, Religion, Jesus Christ - Historicity, Biblical Studies, Christology, Jesus Christ - Person and Offices, Christian Theology
ISBN: 9781578840052
Publisher: American Atheist Press
Published: 2014-03-14T04:00:00+00:00

PART TWO

USING JESUS AS A VENTRILOQUIST’S

DUMMY

Chapter Seven

The Identity Crisis

Did Jesus Memorize the Nicene Creed?

Our intrepid reporter next drives off to Kentucky to have his opinions endorsed by Ben Witherington III. He was a classmate of mine at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary back in the days when Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors album was ubiquitous on the radio. In fact, I’ve just gotten up to put that album on the CD player. Now I’m back at my desk and reminiscing — but not about Witherington. I didn’t really know him. We didn’t travel in the same circles. I hung out with co-conspirators who used to issue fake spiritual retreat schedules with designated times for snake-handling and fire-walking, followed by recreation at Paddy’s Disco Pub. We’d circulate phony memos from faculty members speaking in tongues. Stuff like that. He went on to prestigious Cambridge University to study with the esteemed C.F.D. Moule.

Ben Witherington III (or as a form letter from TIME magazine, based on his subscriber’s label, addressed him, “Mr. III”) has written a Talmud’s worth of tomes since then. For all his erudition, though, the ones I’ve read always sound like Campus Crusade for Christ with footnotes. Even if he’s ostensibly writing about something else, say the role of women in the New Testament, the whole damn thing’s about apologetics: why this passage really does go back to Jesus, why that one’s genuine, too.

Well, now you know why Strobel wanted to talk to him for The Case for Christ. And in this chapter, the topic is basically this: how Jesus already believed in the Nicene Creed, even though he never exactly said as much. But remember, these guys are both fundamentalists. They don’t want theology that rests on inference and remains provisional, like adults. No, they have to have it down in black and white — or better, in red, since they believe Jesus said everything a Red Letter Bible depicts him saying. Witherington says, “If he had simply announced, ‘Hi, folks; I’m God,’ that would have been heard as ‘I’m Yahweh,’ because the Jews of his day didn’t have any concept of the Trinity.”270 But Jesus did? Is that it?

I have never seen a more blatant case of circular argumentation. Jesus does not make overt claims to divinity. Okay. Now, one might suppose (and one certainly has no right to do any more than suppose) that he made no such claims to be God271 because he had no such notion about himself. That is why most of us don’t claim to be God, after all. But Witherington is sure that Jesus was being tactfully coy. Because, you see, being a member in good standing of the Blessed Trinity, he already knew about the doctrine of the Trinity. And how does Witherington know Jesus knew this? Well, he had to, because Witherington believes in it as an orthodox Protestant, and Jesus must have been at least as smart as Witherington! Can anyone doubt that evangelical apologists approach scriptural interpretation deductively, as their prior theology

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