[Morna] Hooker expresses the kind of skepticism towards the authenticity-criteria that is indicative of most of the contributors. She writes, “Perhaps…the time has come to abandon the whole enterprise of trying to discover the ‘real historical Jesus’” (xiv). Why is she wanting to throw in the towel? A large part of it has to do with the tendency to focus on words and phrases, which ends up being too “cut-and-paste” for good historical study. [Hooker writes,] “As with an expressionist painting, what we need to do is to stand back from it, rather than poring over details, for the closer we get, the less we see the whole” (xv).

This of course is specifically addressing the authenticity criterion for the words of Jesus in the Gospels, but I think the problem touches on more than just that. I’ve been following historical Jesus studies and biblical criticism for several years, at least from a distance in my armchair. It can be exhausting after a while seeing completely contradictory theories posed equally plausibly. The frequently cacophonous and yet somehow still unnervingly self-assured stances of critical scholars, especially when coupled with the clever but fundamentally speculative revisionist reconstructions of NT texts, have disconcerted and discombobulated many people into abandoning all hope for commitment to any understanding of the Jesus laid out by the Gospels. Indeed, it’s no doubt partly responsible for the popularity of the movement defined by the denial of even Jesus’ historical existence, which seems to have been declared guilty by its close association with the Gospels.

An impression gradually emerged that when all is said and done, many of the arguments and reconstructions are interesting, but in order to understand what the Jesus of history was all about we ultimately have to step back and try to grapple with the gist of the accounts, to find the impressions Jesus left on his followers and try to recover why they got those impressions. If we waste our time like some (but not all) text critics have done, pulling each phrase out of context and stitching them all back together like some kidnapper’s ransom note, we’ll never reach the more interesting and, arguably, more attainable goal of seeing the bigger picture.

Making concessions to the very real ambiguities and imperfections of the documents we collectively call the New Testament, we must avoid the inerrantist’s claims of a clear picture of Jesus and his teachings; but we really shouldn’t kid ourselves that we can reach a similar level of clarity through biblical criticism. It sounds as though Keith, Le Donne, et al. are sensibly coming to grips with the necessity of adopting a “fuzzier” view of Jesus’ life and ministry, one that’s more heuristic and less definitive.

Hopefully not quite this fuzzy.

Many of these historians of shadowy antiquity seem to have been trying to approach the data as engineers pulling apart complex math equations rather than as interpreters of what is actually messy literature. Historical criticism and text reception history as we’ve typically seen them over the past century strike me as analogous to trying to describe Rembrandt’s works, themes, and overall artistic character by envisaging the brush strokes that created his works–trying to reconstruct the order in which he laid them to canvas, the source of his brushes, and the composition of his paint. Those theories may be interesting, and not even necessarily wrong, but at the same time, even should they somehow successfully recover the fine details about what Jesus said and didn’t say, I have sincere doubts that those insights will be especially helpful for understanding the artist or his work. The latter in comparison seems to me to be low-hanging fruit.

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And now the day draws nigh when Christ was born;
The day that showed how like to God himself
Man had been made, since God could be revealed
By one that was a man with men, and still
Was one with God the Father; that men might
By drawing nigh to him draw nigh to God,
Who had come near to them in tenderness.

George MacDonald, from Within and Without (1855)

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There are, or there used to be when I was a boy, [those] who, in their reverence for the name of the Most High, would have shown horror at the idea that he could not do anything or everything in a moment as it pleased him, but would not have been shocked at all at the idea that he might not please to give this or that man any help. In their eyes power was a grander thing than love, though it is nowhere said in the Book that God is omnipotence. Such, because they are told that he is omnipotent, call him Omnipotence; when told that he is Love, do not care to argue that he must then be loving? But as to doing what he wills with a word—see what it cost him to redeem the world! He did not find that easy, or to be done in a moment without pain or toil. Yea, awfully omnipotent is God. For he wills, effects and perfects the thing which, because of the bad in us, he has to carry out in suffering and sorrow, his own and his Son’s Evil is a hard thing for God himself to overcome. Yet thoroughly and altogether and triumphantly will he overcome it; and that not by crushing it underfoot—any god of man’s idea could do that!—but by conquest of heart over heart, of life in life, of life over death. Nothing shall be too hard for the God that fears not pain, but will deliver and make true and blessed at his own severest cost.

George MacDonald, from his novel Weighed and Wanting (1882)

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While I used to – and many people I associate with still do – greet the news of a scientific discovery or advancement with the geeky equivalent of a fist pump, a whoop, and a holler, for me nowadays it’s more like how I feel when a close friend’s child poops in the potty for the first time. Sure, I’m duly glad for the child and happy for her parents, and hopeful about the financial boon attending the chance for my friend to start spending less on diaper purchases. But apart from the notable lack of personal investment in their situation, we parents of older kids know that it’s actually rare indeed that a single deposit in the potty makes the child potty-trained–it may be months before she does it again. There’s satisfaction to be enjoyed at the milestone and what it might mean for the future, but it’s usually premature to declare victory.

This reaction of mine is probably just a phase, as I’m just increasingly unnerved by the triumphalistic fanfares of scientism. A pronounced pro-science movement has sadly been necessitated by resistance to science among Fundamentalist and conservative Evangelical Christians, but overcompensation has yielded an overweening, cultish reverence for science, with its most ardent devotees treating every scientific discovery as a nail in God’s coffin. It’s this that’s driving the growth of the New Atheism movement.

I’m always looking for ways to mitigate this overreaction and to integrate a healthy appreciation for science into a similarly cautious confidence in Christian theology. So when I read this recent (now two-month old) article by James K. A. (aka Jamie) Smith in Christianity Today, “What Galileo’s Telescope Can’t See,” I was happy it added some things to the discussion worth thinking about.

Our sensibility (following the late Robert Webber) should be an “ancient-future” one: The church will find gifts to help it think through postmodern challenges by retrieving the wisdom of ancient Christians. The goal is not to simply repeat ancient formulations while sticking our heads in the sand; rather, the contemporary church—and contemporary Christian scholars—can learn much from the habits of mind that characterized church fathers like Athanasius and Augustine.

The main thrust is that when believers encounter challenging scientific evidence, they shouldn’t close their eyes, cover their ears, and shout their existing theological constructs at the top of the lungs. Rather, we should look to the example of the historical church and learn to “foster the Christian imagination to underwrite more creative approaches.” Smith cites councils such as Chalcedon as having delivered cleverly and creatively derived theological resolutions to science/religion conflicts. The danger Smith is trying to put his finger on more or less amounts to what happens when you pit science and religion opposite one another in a fact fight, in a fashion typical of Western Christianity. He’s arguing that “creative” ways of retooling and upholding earlier agreed-upon beliefs to account for scientific revelations are needed to help heal the science/religion divide.

But I want to shift this a bit: the contentious science/religion divide is only superficially attributable to science offering answers that our theologies have yet to account for. Coming up with clever and henceforth authoritative rationalizations to make sure new data is consistent with what we already believe doesn’t seem all that different from “sticking our heads in the sand” while refusing to admit that this is what we’re doing. This is not a sufficient answer; we must dig a bit further down.

The deeper cause for the rift is trying to use either science or religion as a skeleton key to unlock the answers to both practical and more existential questions. Gould’s NOMA principle is rejected no less by Evangelical Christians than it is by atheists like Jerry Coyne with his fierce denunciation of “accomodationism”. Now, I’m not talking about the dubious apologetic claim about “different kinds of knowing”; I’m referring to “different kinds of questions” which we answer in the most practical ways we can considering the intractability of epistemological indeterminacy. Too many people talk about a “war between science and religion” and in so doing confuse the essentially incidental conflicts between specific scientific data and particular religious beliefs with the more fundamental question of whether science and religion can in theory coexist without falling all over each other trying to better answer the same questions. It’s not, “How do my truth claims need to make way for competing truth claims?” but, “Which kinds of observations are the most useful for which aspects of our lives?”

Science and Religion are portrayed to be in harmony in the Tiffany window “Education” (1890). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I view discovery of more accurate understandings of our physical universe as a (literal) godsend that should if anything highlight that our dependence cannot be on fallible, ever-changing intellectual assumptions, but can only rest on the basis of our faith, which is God Himself. I see the Church, the Bible, and other forms of tradition as candles that serve as guides that focus our life-efforts by teaching us to reject rationalist/positivist pat answers to encounter the meaning of our God-filled universe in the ways of our ancient forebears. Philosophically, scientific inquiry and religious belief stand much more often back-to-back than face-to-face; the latter stance is usually the result either of religion trying to answer (or dismiss) “how” or science trying to answer (or dismiss) “why”.

I’m not trying to draw too sharp a distinction between “how” and “why” questions: we’re not looking at two different objects, but merely describing the object differently. As Christians we cannot help believe that God is – somehow – a fundamental part of the “how”, and atheists must be forgiven for believing that a material-only universe must generate its own answers to “why”. What needs to be avoided are the turf wars that result from either side caustically belittling the answer the other side gives from within its own area of expertise. We need more theistic and atheistic representatives to agree to avoid flaunting the boundary line.

Unfortunately, the necessary commitment to letting science’s tentative answers to “how the universe works” questions override our forbears’ answers to those questions is dependent on a much less rigid system of doctrines and a much less hegemonic role of influence over our doctrines coming from the historical theological community than much of Western Christianity will tolerate. But Christianity has never been about giving definitive answers to “how the universe works”, nor even all that much about the “how God works in our universe” question. Christianity supplies us with meaning by instructing us “how to live in God.”

When we find scientific data that steps on our theology’s toes, we have to realize that our theology may well have been camped out on the wrong side of the boundary and withdraw gracefully. But we should also be on the lookout and be willing to hold the line when proponents of scientism make invalid claims to our inheritance. There is much work that can be done from within the demilitarized zone.

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Then again, as the power that brings about a making-up for any wrong done by man to man, I believe in the atonement. Who that believes in Jesus does not long to atone to his brother for the injury he has done him? What repentant child, feeling he has wronged his father, does not desire to make atonement? Who is the mover, the causer, the persuader, the creator of the repentance, of the passion that restores fourfold?—Jesus, our propitiation, our atonement. He is the head and leader, the prince of the atonement. He could not do it without us, but he leads us up to the Father’s knee: he makes us make atonement. Learning Christ, we are not only sorry for what we have done wrong, we not only turn from it and hate it, but we become able to serve both God and man with an infinitely high and true service, a soul-service. We are able to offer our whole being to God to whom by deepest right it belongs. Have I injured anyone? With him to aid my justice, new risen with him from the dead, shall I not make good amends? Have I failed in love to my neighbour? Shall I not now love him with an infinitely better love than was possible to me before? That I will and can make atonement, thanks be to him who is my atonement, making me at one with God and my fellows!

George MacDonald (from his sermon “Justice”, published in Unspoken Sermons, Series 3, 1889)

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