timeimmortal

So I was reading up on the whole Jesus myth hypothesis that has been most recently and visible advanced in the movie The God Who Wasn’t There. I’m sure the reader can guess the basic thrust of the hypothesis: that Jesus never existed, and is in fact just the latest cultural religious myth to come along, a latter-day Zeus and little else.

Of course, most Biblical and historical scholars reject the notion that Jesus was merely a mythical figure. That struck me as interesting, because it means in turn that those people who are motivated by something like The God Who Wasn’t There — a show that features contributions from many well-known, high-profile atheists — to do some more digging in regard to this whole issue will eventually stumble upon this fact.

And if there’s one thing secular folk love, it’s the consensus opinion of a field of academic study.

Here’s the rub, though. Let’s take it as accepted that Jesus was not a mythical figure, but that He was in fact a real person about 2,000 years ago. This is by far the majority view, so it’s convenient that it is also the truthful view.

Taking Jesus’ reality as a fact, then it would seem to me that the mystery of faith distills to one fundamental issue: which sources of historical testimony that describe Jesus one accepts or rejects. Most people accept the various Roman records, or the writings of Josephus and others, as factual. So really, the issue can be further distilled:

Either one accepts the Gospels as historical, albeit eye-witness, accounts of the life of Christ, or one does not.

If you’re a Christian, then you accept that the Gospels are — in addition to being powerful, message-communicating texts — eye-witness historical narratives about the life and works of Jesus (as a general rule). If you’re not a Christian, and especially if you’re an atheist, then you reject the Gospels as being such (again, as a general rule).

I realize that I’m over-simplifying a bit, but in a certain sense that’s all the debate between atheist and Christian distills down to. That Jesus existed can, I think, be safely said to be beyond debate. So all that the embrace or rejection of faith in Christ comes down to is whether or not one accepts the historicity of four books that purport to be eye-witness historical narratives about the life and acts of Jesus, who is called Christ.

It’s not a case of one side being more logical or rational, nor is it a case of one side being smarter than the other, nor is it even a case of one side being deluded and the other a collective of people capable of truly free thinking. In the end, it comes down to accepting or rejecting the authenticity of four ancient books.

And if one does a bit more digging, especially if one does a fair bit of research into things like what to expect from multiple eye-witness accounts of the same event, one finds fewer and fewer reasons to doubt that the Gospels are doing anything other than telling the truth. Atheism, then, can be reduced to little more than willful ignorance…which, unsurprisingly, is all it really amounts to.

And for inquiring minds, things like The God Who Wasn’t There are — or should be — gateways to this sort of revelation.

It’s funny, isn’t it, how God will reach out to people by even the most curious means? Or that atheists would become such unwitting aids toward the possibility of more people enjoying the revelation that God was, indeed, “there” after all?

~ by Kenneth on December 17, 2007.