Is the Bible True? (White vs Crossan)

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Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the 2005 Alpha Omega Ministries Debate and Conference.

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I would like to just make a little announcement here before we start anything formal. If you could do this with me, if you can take out your cell phones or pagers, please, and just in the little corner there, put it on either buzz or silent with me.

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We'll all do that together. And please make sure that either they are on buzz, silent, or they are off, please.

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If your phone does vibrate, please do not jump up in the middle of our debate and head to an exit.

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Please wait until we get to a break and then make your way out quietly, please. Also, I'd like to announce we've had several folks that have asked us about the availability of the debate.

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The debate will be available at the Alpha Omega table. If you just sign out one of the forms there, you'll be able to receive that within the next couple of months.

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You'll get it first right hot off the press, edited and so forth. So that'll be available to you right away.

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Also, in the back corner over here at the Sovereign Cruise Table, we have information on next year's conference and debate, which will be in Tampa, Florida, with the title of that debate and conference being

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Pulpit Crimes. So make sure that you pick that up as well. Well, tonight we are here to discuss and to debate, is the

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Orthodox biblical account of Jesus of Nazareth authentic and historically accurate?

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And on the affirmative side of that, I'd like to introduce the director of Alpha Omega Ministries, a

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Christian apologetics organization in Phoenix, Arizona. He is a professor. He's taught Greek systematic theology and various topics in the field of apologetics.

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Well -known author of many titles, including the King James Only Controversy, The Forgotten Trinity, The God Who Justifies, and The Potter's Freedom.

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Would you please welcome Dr. James White. Our guest debater this evening is the former co -chairman of the

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Internationally Known Jesus Seminar. He recently appeared on NBC's Dateline, Peter Jennings' specials on Jesus and Paul, and NPR's Fresh Air.

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He is sought after by the media for his opinion on religious issues of the day, and is the author of numerous books, including his most recent,

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Excavating Jesus Behind the Stones, Behind the Texts, and In Search of Paul, How Jesus' Apostles Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom.

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Would you please welcome with me Dr. John Dominic Crossan. I'd also like to publicly thank

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Dr. Crossan. We've done many of these debates for many years. He's been incredibly easy to work with, and I really do appreciate that.

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Also want to just go ahead, and let's take a look at our debate conference schedule that we have here at the bottom of your sheet on the inside flap.

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I have a few changes to make here. We would like to get you out of here before midnight, so I have a couple of changes.

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First of all, the two 30 -minute opening statements will remain the same. The rebuttal times will be reduced to 15 minutes.

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Cross -examination times will be reduced to 15 minutes across the board, and the closing statements will be lessened to 10 minutes.

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That being said, the audience questions are going to be raised by 10 minutes to 30 minutes. A note about the audience questions.

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When it is time for us to have our audience questions, I would like for those who would like to have a question for Dr.

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White, please line up on this side. This is at the very end of the debate. Those who have a question for Dr.

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Crossan, line up on this side over here. I will then call you one each at a time, alternating in between, to come and stand with me just behind where I will be seated to moderate.

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I will hold your microphone, but let me explain this to you very clearly. This is not a time for you to preach.

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This is not a time for you to engage in debate. This is the time that you ask a question.

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Please, if you can, keep it under 30 seconds and not a rhetorical question, please. During that time, a direct question, please tell us which debater you are making that question to, and then they will have the opportunity to respond to you.

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Without further ado, let me introduce for the first 30 -minute opening statement, Dr. James White.

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Well, good evening. It is indeed a pleasure to be with you this evening. Excellent crowd here, and I really do hope that the

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Lord will bless our time together. I've been looking forward to this experience for quite some time, and I ask that the

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Lord will bless our time together. For nearly 2 ,000 years, the Christian faith has proclaimed to the world the most amazing and astounding message, that God, the creator of all things, the one who spoke by the prophets, the

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God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, had in fact, in the person of his son, entered into his own creation, had lived and walked amongst us, had taught, had healed, and had given his life voluntarily upon the cross of Calvary, and then, three days later, had risen from the dead, triumphant over death, and was coming again to judge the living and the dead.

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It is indeed an amazing claim, something the New Testament writers all acknowledge. As the

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Apostle Paul said, the preaching of a crucified Messiah upon the cross of Calvary is a stumbling block to Jews, and simply foolishness to Greeks.

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And yet, Christians proclaim this message, confident that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation.

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Given that today, men and women profess faith in Jesus Christ as the risen Lord, trusting him as savior on every continent, from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation, there is good reason to continue believing in that message.

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We come here this evening to ask the question, is the orthodox, biblical account of Jesus of Nazareth authentic and historically accurate?

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Since the task falls to me to defend the thesis, it also falls to me to begin the difficult job of definition.

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When I refer to the orthodox, biblical account, I am referring to the fact that until comparatively recent years,

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Christianity as a whole has believed the gospel accounts to be accurately reflecting events which took place between about 4

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B .C. and A .D. 30 or so. The task was always to harmonize these accounts, as one would naturally harmonize multiple accounts of the same historical events found in the testimony of different witnesses.

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But the historicity of the accounts has been a given. The main outlines of the events narrated in the canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are reflected not only in the great creedal statements of the faith, but in the warp and woof of the traditions of the faith as well.

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When we ask if these accounts are authentic, we are asking if we can trust the statements made by the authors of the canonical gospels.

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Immediately, we recognize the fact that these authors were not the equivalent of ancient journalists pretending the detachment of dispassionate observation, neutrally chronicling events seeking to be fair and balanced.

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It is well known and accepted that the gospel writers had a purpose in their writing. Indeed, each, either openly, as in Luke and John, or in other ways, in Matthew and Mark, tell us that they have an agenda, a goal they wish to accomplish in their writing.

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Luke tells us that he has compiled, evidently from multiple sources, an account of the events that birthed the

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Christian movement. He claims to have followed these events closely for some time, and he is using sources that include eyewitnesses, and that the result of his work is an orderly account.

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And yet, it has a purpose, that Theophilus may have certainty concerning the things that he had been taught.

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This would define for us authentic, for surely one does not impart certainty concerning what one has been taught by rewriting history, changing historical events, and engaging in unfounded myth -making.

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But immediately, I must assert that it is one of the major errors of many in our modern day to assume that if you write an account for a theological or spiritual purpose, you must, by definition, engage in historical revisionism.

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One can firmly believe that the facts of history point to a particular conclusion without having to alter and change those facts.

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To say that the gospel accounts are historically accurate is a mouthful indeed.

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This is not a claim that they were written to be mere history. This is not a claim that they are written by modern

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Western standards of journalism. It is a claim, however, that when they narrate for us the events of that awesome and unique event known as the incarnation, life, ministry, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, they do so without having to fabricate the historical nature of these events.

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It is a denial that when the gospel writers placed the saving events of God's work in history, that those who lived at the time, should they have heard the apostles preaching or read their works, would have said, no way,

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I was there, that never happened. The God of the Christian faith is the Lord of time and history, and just as he arranged events in the

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Exodus to have meaning for the following generations, so too he was active in the events of Jesus' life and ministry as well, as the primitive

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Christians prayed so shortly after the Lord's crucifixion and resurrection in Acts 4, 27 -28, for truly in this city, there were gathered together against your holy servant

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Jesus, whom you anointed both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the

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Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your purpose predestined to occur.

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Now surely if God is sovereign in this world, if he is active, desires of revealing his truth and is accomplishing his eternal decree, the idea of historically accurate, authentic records of his mighty work in the ministry of God is hardly a stretch, but it is just here we run full on into the main issues that we must take up the majority of our attention this evening.

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If we can grant, possibly I hope, that both of us tonight are reasonably intelligent individuals looking at the same text, how is it that we come to completely different conclusions?

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I am assuming our audience is fairly well aware of the vast chasm of difference that exists between Dr.

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Crossan and myself on who Jesus was, what he did, what he taught, and what all of that means today.

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I believe Jesus Christ was God incarnate, the unique son of God, the creator, preexistent, the

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God -man who was born of the Virgin Mary, ministered and taught with 12 disciples in Galilee and Judea, healing and even raising the dead, performing signs, miracles, pointing to his person, that he then went purposely to Jerusalem, having taught his disciples that he was going to die and rise again, and he did that very thing, going to the cross of Calvary, dying, buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, and then on that glorious Sunday morning coming forth, physically rising from the dead, existing in the words of N .T.

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Wright, in a transformed physicality, so that he met with his disciples and up to 500 others before ascending back to the presence of his

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Father. Tonight's debate is a clash of fundamentally different worldviews. I believe firmly that only the

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Christian faith provides the necessary prerequisites to explain reality as we experience it, from the depths of man's depravity and sinfulness to his appreciation of the beauty of a sunset or a thunderstorm, to the incredible complexity of life at the molecular level, to the very laws of logic and rationality by which we undertake our debate this evening.

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Without the Christian God, who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ and the Christian Scriptures, all bets are off, so to speak, and we are doomed to subjectivism and mere opinion.

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Only because God has chosen to enter into his own creation redemptively in the divine second person of the

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Trinity can we escape the circle of personal opinion and uncertainty that leaves us wondering if God has truly acted in this world and if we can indeed have peace with the

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God we know is there. Now, while our debate this evening is not necessarily focused upon the existence of the

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Christian God, to ask if the New Testament documents are authentic and historical does, in fact, depend very much upon one's worldview and whether it is consistent with the world

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God himself has created. Only the Christian God can produce the

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Christian Scriptures. If one assumes God either cannot or has not spoken with clarity or acted in history with power and might and holiness and justice, then surely one's answer to the question is already determined, and nothing

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I can say is going to change that. You cannot prove the divine nature of the

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Scriptures to someone who does not believe in a God big enough or caring enough or powerful enough to produce them.

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Of course, I might add in passing, I believe every person here this evening knows that God exists, whether you are suppressing that knowledge or by God's grace have embraced it.

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And so surely there is nothing inconsistent with my worldview and believing in the divine inspiration and historical accuracy of the gospel accounts of the life of the

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Lord Jesus Christ. The gospel writers believed him, the very son of God, and gave their lives as witnesses to him.

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And surely if God is going to enter into his own creation redemptively, he is going to be more than capable of producing divinely inspired and accurate documents.

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Every sort of denial of the accuracy and divine nature of the gospels has been put forth over the centuries, and it is a little odd upon reflection that I would be going first and defending the historical accuracy and authenticity of the gospels.

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Since, of course, we have to know which of the many, many such denials I am supposed to respond to this evening,

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I will allow Dr. Crossan to define his own position. But for the sake of contrast, and so as to provide the context of the conflict this evening,

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I must at least quickly summarize his own position as enunciated in his works.

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Through many hours of reading and listening to Dr. Crossan present his viewpoints, I have been unable to attach a meaningful name to Dr.

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Crossan's view of God. I do not see any evidence that he believes God is active in the world, has a divine decree that he is working out to his own glory, has revealed himself with clarity, engages in miracles, etc.,

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etc. As best as I can determine, he holds to some form of deistic concept. He refers to Trinitarian terms, but does not seemingly confess the meaning of those terms in their historical or creedal forms.

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Surely when he says he confesses Jesus to be divine, he likewise informs us that other people who could do amazing things if they had lived in the first century would have also been considered divine as well.

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That is not quite the same thing as confessing Jesus to be the eternal, preexistent, second person of the

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Trinity. Dr. Crossan believes in what he calls divine consistency. Applied to something miraculous like rising from the dead,

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Dr. Crossan has said, quote, I also presume divine consistency. What God does now is what

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God always did. God intervened no more and no less in the world of the early first century than that of the late 20th century.

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These are presuppositions or if you prefer prejudices, but so of course are the opposite opinions, end quote.

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It is my firm belief, which I intend to defend and illustrate this evening, that the conclusions presented by the

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Jesus Seminar in general and by Dr. Crossan specifically flow inevitably from the presuppositions brought to the text.

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I have my own presuppositions. I presuppose a God who can create man in his image and that he is fully capable of communication with man, that the

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God who could design such a wondrous thing as the DNA molecule and the attendant mechanisms whereby that molecule can store vast amounts of data that is then available to living organisms through the complex process of transcription and protein synthesis is likewise fully capable of guiding and guarding his own revelation of his truth in the scriptures.

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I fully own and confess my presuppositions for I believe them to be presuppositions that the

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Lord Jesus and his apostles bequeathed to me, surely approaching these texts with the starting presupposition that the beliefs of their authors were wrong will impact greatly one's reading of them.

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But Dr. Crossan is open about his presuppositions as well as we just saw. The problem is if we start with the idea that if God isn't doing it today, then he has never done it in the past.

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Are we not beginning with the negation of the Christian view of its own scriptures as a starting point?

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Did any of the biblical writers themselves believe that? Surely not. I have to point out that there is no logical reason to believe that God is not free to act in human history.

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There is no reason to believe that if God does action X in history for his own purposes, say, despoiling the gods of Egypt as a display of his power, that he must keep despoiling the gods of Egypt in each generation the same way forevermore.

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The presupposition of divine consistency as proposed by Dr. Crossan is nothing more as far as I can see than an insistence that God is not free to act in his own creation as he sees fit when he sees fit for his own purposes.

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Another presupposition is found in Dr. Crossan's insistence that the story of Jesus is found in the

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Gospels could not fall into either the category of uniqueness nor impossibility.

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And yet the uniqueness of Christ, his birth, his teachings, his ministry, his purpose in coming, his sacrifice, his resurrection, all these are part and parcel of any fair reading of the

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New Testament documents themselves. Christianity has always proclaimed Christ to be unique.

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So by insisting that Jesus had to be a Mediterranean Jewish peasant with all that means demands a complete mythologizing of major portions of the text itself.

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But again, without any reason outside of the demands of the presupposition brought to the text.

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Why is it impossible that Jesus was as unique as history has always presented him? Dr. Crossan does quote a second century

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Christian apologist, Justin Martyr, in defense of his assertion here, but Justin was far more influenced by Greek philosophy than he was by the

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Christian scriptures. And you can go earlier than Justin to Ignatius or Clement or only a few decades after Justin to Melito of Sardis for all the evidence you could ever want of the already accepted uniqueness of Jesus in the patristic sources.

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I would also like to point out quickly in passing that while savior figures may have been very common with first century pagan religions, the idea of incarnation, death and resurrection in the firmly monotheistic framework of the

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Christian faith is a completely different matter. Just look at the inveterate opposition offered by Muslim scholars and apologists to the very idea of incarnation.

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And you can see just how unique the Christian view of Jesus really is.

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The fact of the matter is there is no reason to read the New Testament documents as revealing anything other than a very unique person in Jesus Christ and to start, as Dr.

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Crossan seems to do, with the idea that Jesus could not have been unique as the son of God, is to determine the outcome of your study long before it has actually begun.

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Dr. Crossan uses the analogy of three searchlights that cross in the sky to represent his methodology.

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And as he has reminded us often, and this is very important, catch this, one's methodology is determined by one's materials and the decisions one has made about their nature.

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These three sources, these searchlights, are cross -cultural study, historical study, and textual study.

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And in my study of his viewpoints, I feel the first two pretty much determine the outcome of the third, functionally anyway.

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For example, we are told that a Mediterranean Jewish peasant would, in those days, most likely be illiterate, based upon cross -cultural and historical study.

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So since Jesus had to be a normal Jewish peasant, he too was illiterate. So when we encounter him writing in the sand or reading the scriptures in the synagogue, these cannot be historically accurate, but must be religious fiction, allegory, and myth.

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And we are then free within the parameters of the presuppositions we have already brought to the text to go searching for some other meaning to these texts.

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The vast majority of Jesus' words and actions in the Gospels are subjected to this a priori treatment, based not upon what these ancient sources say, but upon preconceived views of what

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Jesus could and could not be. We will note the results of this kind of presuppositional overriding of the text of the

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Gospels many times this evening. Next, we will hear this evening about what a Gospel by nature is.

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That is, the Gospel is a message that embodies the work of Christ, is a timeless, unchanging revelation, because of its nature as a divine work, transcends cultural and geographical boundaries.

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It is for all peoples at all times. But when referring to a Gospel, such as the

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Gospel of Mark, we are talking about the recording of the events of the ministry of Christ by one of those early followers chosen in God's providence to provide us with one of those quadri -visual perspectives upon the rich divine work.

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That is, God chose to provide us with more than one Gospel, not because the Gospel had to be amended, updated, or revised, but instead because the subject was so rich and full.

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The Gospel writers do indeed pick and choose what they will relate and what they will not in a relatively brief space.

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And it is quite true that each has his own emphasis, his own audience, his own purpose in writing, and this lies at the foot of the vast majority of differences that exist between the

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Gospel accounts. This will, I trust, be illustrated a number of times this evening, time allowing. But Dr.

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Crossan's definition of Gospel is quite striking and unusual, and in fact, is so basic to his repeated application thereof that we need to note it now, though I am sure he will explain it fully in his time.

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For Dr. Crossan, a Gospel is two things. It is good news, good in someone's perspective anyways, it wasn't good for the

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Romans, at the very least, and it must be news. Now, it is this second claim that it must be news that is quite problematic, for the idea is that it must be news in the sense of being updated, changed, altered by the current author in the current setting in which he finds himself.

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That is, Dr. Crossan makes as part of the very definition the idea of a redactional alteration of the

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Gospel stories so as to fit the message to various contexts, Mark writing to martyrs, for example, and then

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Luke altering Mark for his context, etc., etc. Now, surely at this point we must protest the presuppositional nature of this definition of Gospel.

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By definition, the historicity of the Gospels themselves is denied. There is nothing in the meaning of the word and its

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New Testament usage or understanding that demands the concept of historical alteration, redaction, or amendation.

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The good news that rejoiced the hearts of the disciples when Jesus appeared to them after his resurrection does not have to be altered or changed to rejoice the heart of believers this very day.

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It is the timelessness of the message of what God did in Christ that is fundamentally denied by this definition of Gospel.

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Finally, much will be said this evening about the dating of the Gospels, when they were written, in what order, by whom, and theories of their literary dependence.

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Other sources, such as the theoretical Q Gospel and second -century Gnostic works, at least influenced by Gnosticism, such as the

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Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Peter, are, I truly believe, given significantly more weight a priori in the work of the

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Jesus Seminar in general than the canonical Gospels themselves at times. A certain order is assumed, with the most primitive source being, in Dr.

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Crossan's opinion, the Cross Gospel, which is buried in the second -century Gospel of Peter.

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My esteemed opponent has admitted, if I recall the quote correctly, that his theory at this point has received the equivalent of a scholarly chuckle from the rest of those working in the field.

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It is hardly unfair to note that at this point Dr. Crossan's view, placing a portion of a fragment of an almost unknown source in the position of being earlier and more weighty than the canonical

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Gospels themselves, is quite rightly identified as idiosyncratic. But with reference to the entirety of this portion of the subject,

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I appreciated N .T. Wright's comments in a discussion with Marcus Borg, where after pointing out that the theoretical

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Q Gospel is not nearly as widely accepted outside of the United States, he said, quote,

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We don't know when any of the Gospels were written. We don't know when the Gospels were written. We should all repeat that before breakfast, just like we do not know whether there was a

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Q. Scholars will tell you that they know, but they don't. It is a guess, a hypothesis.

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No, there isn't a consensus. A lot of scholars have said the fact that people repeat a mistake doesn't mean it isn't a mistake, end quote.

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And yet theories concerning the interrelationship and especially the dating of the hypothetical cross

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Gospel in Q together with Mark, Luke, Matthew, and finally with John are absolutely fundamental to Dr.

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Crossan's position, as he himself admits. And yet it is those hypothetical conclusions based upon hypothetical reconstructions based upon presupposed concepts of divine consistency and what could and could not happen in history and what

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Jesus could and could not be like that is at the very heart of the debate this evening. When we examine these texts without those presuppositions, agreeing with their authors and at least allowing for the reality of divine activity, divine revelation, and at least leave open the possibility that the text we are examining might just partake of something outside of the ordinary.

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We find a great deal of reason to view them in a completely different light, place them far closer to the events that they narrate, and we likewise find them to be far more amenable to harmonization as one would naturally expect from multiple sources recording for us the words and deeds of Jesus.

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And so I assert that the presuppositions exercised by the Jesus seminar in general and in particular by Dr. Crossan begin by precluding the viewpoint of Jesus espoused by the authors of the

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Gospels themselves and believed by Christians down through the centuries. If you accept his starting place, this debate is over because no possible evidence could be presented in defense of the thesis.

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There is truly no question on this of this and the part of the Jesus seminar, the co -founder along with Dr. Crossan of the

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Jesus seminar, Robert Funk has written as one of his theses the coming reformation that we need to give

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Jesus a demotion in the introduction of the five Gospels, a publication of the Jesus seminar. We read, quote,

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The Christ of Creed and Dogma, who had been firmly in place in the Middle Ages, can no longer command the ascent of those who have seen the heavens through Galileo's telescope.

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The old deities and demons were swept away from the skies by that remarkable glass.

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Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo have dismantled the mythological abode of the gods and Satan and bequeathed to us secular heavens.

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The same source speaks of the search for the Jesus behind the Christian facade of the

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Christ, and they likewise atomized the New Testament, dividing its witness and setting its authors at odds with one another and themselves by stating, and quite incorrectly for Paul, the

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Christ was to be understood as a dying, rising Lord, symbolized in baptism of the type he knew from the

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Hellenistic mystery religions. In Paul's theological scheme, Jesus, the man, played no essential role, end quote.

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However, might Dr. Crossan escape the clear bias and starting prejudices of Funk and the rest of the

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Jesus seminar? Evidently not, although thankfully, I must say, Dr. Crossan evinces a much gentler approach than does

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Dr. Funk. Yet his conclusions are strikingly similar. But still,

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Dr. Crossan well knows the implications of his method in his conclusion. He has said, quote, I'm absolutely aware that to talk about the historical

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Jesus is to do open heart surgery on Christianity. I am absolutely aware of the implications of faith when

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I'm talking completely about history. And it's time to distinguish between Prozac and religion, between baptism and lobotomy, end quote.

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I will leave the Dr. Crossan to explain to you what he means by the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith.

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His theories concerning revelation and reason, etc. Suffice it to say from my opening statement that I very much disagree with the sharp distinction he presents and the unbreachable wall he erects between history and faith.

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I believe faith is rooted and grounded in God's actions in history and in particular in his revelation in Jesus Christ.

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This may come up in our conclusion and our discussions and interaction. It's hard to say. Fundamentally, the question

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I must ask of Dr. Crossan and of all of us tonight is just this. Given the fact that the text of the

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New Testament documents is unparalleled in its ancient attestation, what reason can be offered for asserting the errancy and historical inaccuracy of the text?

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In my experience, those who argue against the authenticity of the gospel accounts always do so in defense of a preexisting commitment to a particular religious or anti -religious viewpoint.

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Let's face it. The Jesus of the gospels is a challenge to each and every person, for he calls each of us to see ourselves as sinners, alienated from God, under wrath, and he commands us to look to him and to him alone for life.

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Many do not wish to submit to that call. The gospels speak to us of a savior who lays down his life for his sheep, a sacrifice for sin.

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Dr. Crossan has said, moreover, an atonement theology that says God sacrifices his own son in place of humans who need to be punished for their sins might make some

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Christians love Jesus, but it is an obscene picture of God. It is almost heavenly child abuse and may infect our imagination at more earthly levels as well.

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I do not want to express my faith through a theology that pictures God demanding blood sacrifices in order to be reconciled to us.

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How does this presupposition on Dr. Crossan's part influence his reading of the canonical gospels? Likewise, when each of those gospels clearly tells us that the writers believed

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Jesus to be the fulfillment of ancient prophecy, and we know that Dr. Crossan does not believe in divine inspiration so as to allow for such a thing as prophetic knowledge of future events, he is forced to conclude, quote, traditionally,

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Christians have said, see how Christ's passion was foretold by the prophets. Actually, it was the other way around.

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The Hebrew prophets did not predict the events of Jesus's last week. Rather, many of those Christian stories were created to fit the ancient prophecies in order to show that Jesus, despite his execution, was still and always held in the hands of God.

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End quote. Is this the result of the close examination of the text in the light of the intention of their original authors, or is this the result of an overriding presupposition, a bias against the divine nature of the

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Christian scriptures? And finally, when Jesus is seen raising the dead in the gospels and then himself being raised from the dead as well, this requires a

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God who is active in space and time and is able to exercise divine power. Dr. Crossman does not accept this possibility, so we read, quote, in terms of divine consistency,

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I do not think that anyone anywhere at any time, including Jesus, brings dead people back to life.

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End quote. And so I close by noting that not only by taking the text as they stand without gutting them through presupposed rejections of a supernatural worldview, without muting their testimony by enforcement of a preconceived view of their relationship to one another, can we see the unique divine person of Jesus Christ who is pictured in the gospel accounts?

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Once their full orb testimony is diminished to a single stream of redacted, errant human remembrance, we are left with no

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Jesus at all. For one thing is certain, the search for the allegedly historical Jesus, which has always begun with the rejection of the

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Christ of faith as if that Christ is but a mirage, a sham, has only led us to mirror images of the researchers engaged in the fruitless task.

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Indeed, it has been very well said by Luke Timothy Johnson, quote, this brings us to the question, why so many scholars using the same methodology on the same materials have ended with such wildly divergent portraits of Jesus?

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To list only a few that have emerged, Jesus as romantic visionary, Renan, as an eschatological prophet,

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Schweitzer and Wright, as wicked priest from Qumran, Tiring, as husband of Mary Magdalene Spong, as revolutionary zealot,

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S .F .G. Brandon, as agrarian reformer, Yoder, as revitalization movement founder and charismatic,

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Borg, as gay magician, Smith, as cynic sage, Downing, as peasant thaumaturge,

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Crossan, as peasant poet, Bailey, as a guru of oceanic bliss, Mitchell. The common element seems still to be the ideal self -image of the researcher.

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It is this tendency that led T .W. Manson to note sardonically, by their lives of Jesus, ye shall know them, end quote.

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I do not offer you a Jesus who is the mirror image of my idealized viewpoint of myself. The Jesus I present to you is the

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Jesus portrayed in the historic authentic gospel accounts, accounts written and preserved for us by a

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God who is accomplishing his purpose in this world, the God who is free to act in this world as he sees fit in his way and in his time.

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I thank you for your attention and God bless. Thank you, Dr. White. Thank you,

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Dr. White. Dr. Crossan now has 30 minutes for his opening statement. A good debate should be absolute,

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I suppose, opposition. Is the orthodox biblical account of Jesus of Nazareth authentic and historically accurate?

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I should be able to say no to that, because debates should be black and white, and we have just heard

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Dr. White, so I should be Dr. Black. I may disappoint you and myself by being a little

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Dr. Gray, I'm afraid. First of all, there does not exist an orthodox biblical account, singular, an orthodox biblical account of Jesus of Nazareth.

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It just doesn't exist, which is another way of saying it is not the will of God or the inspiration of God in Christian terms.

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Therefore, the question of its authenticity or historicity is not valid.

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That is, such an orthodox biblical account, singular, is neither historically nor inspirationally valid, but then does exist and is what exists authentic and historical.

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My first part, gospel and versions, and this touches on something that Dr.

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White also mentioned. We sometimes speak sloppily and incorrectly. I do it myself lots of times, about the four orthodox biblical or canonical gospels, but for earliest

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Christianity, and I think for all Christianity, there is only one gospel, capital

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G, though you could enunciate it certainly in different languages, different ways. You could say

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Jesus is the Christ, or you could say Jesus Christ is Savior, or you could say above all, not

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Caesar, but Christ is Lord and Savior of the world. One gospel, one

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God, one everything else, and one gospel. What we have in the New Testament are four versions, and I think actually this is more constitutive for me than anything even of my presuppositions, but that may be what a psychiatrist would have to work on.

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There are four versions, four narrative interpretations, four according to's.

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Do the math. The gospel according to Matthew, the gospel according to Mark, the gospel according to Luke, the gospel according to John.

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Early Christians would not have said four gospels. I suspect even sloppily. They might have said the gospel according to Paul as well.

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The principle that I understand in reading those gospels, I honestly don't think this is a presupposition.

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There's no reason I can think of that these four gospels wouldn't be four independent witnesses doing their level best to tell you exactly what happened, like four witnesses maybe in a court of law who've seen something and they're all trying at least to tell you exactly what happened.

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I see no reason why they shouldn't be like that. And in fact, if I were inspiring the gospels, that's the way

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I would have done it. But you know how God is, can never get it right. What's the principle then?

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When I read these gospels, what's the difference between them? In the second century already, some

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Christians were getting nervous about the fact that there were four according to's. Shouldn't there just be one story?

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Because they were also noticing there were differences. The two main possibilities of solving it are the

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Marcion's solution. One gospel. He chose Luke and of course he got rid of the

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Old Testament as well, so he was declared a heretic. But that's one of the classic solutions. If you have four, eliminate three and keep one.

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The other one of course is to harmonize them, a phrase Dr. White used. I was going to say collapse, no.

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Collate them all into one continuous whole. That's the Tatian solution.

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Marcion and Tatian. These are the classic solutions whom we don't like the fact that we have four.

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There's only one Jesus. One Christ. One God. Why do we have four?

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My point of course is not four. My point is more than one. Also though this is not something

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I'm interested particularly in arguing unless we want to tonight. It is the consensus of scholarship as far as I know and despite what

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Bishop Tom Wright says and I don't like to argue with bishops. I got into enough trouble when I was a Roman Catholic monk doing that thing.

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But yes, there is a consensus. That doesn't mean it's right.

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Among scholars, least among all I know that minimally, there is direct dependence between these

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Gospels. In plain language, if they were presented to me as a professor from four students, some of them would be in serious trouble.

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There is copying. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. And I do believe if Matthew got a divine whisper, it was copy

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Mark. Now I consider that to be a conclusion, not a principle, not a presupposition or even a prejudice.

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It could even be a mistake and it could certainly be disqualified tomorrow by some kid kicking open a jar in the

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Libyan desert and coming up with a single Gospel and as soon as we all read it, we say, it's the source of which all of these

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Gospels came. But I have to respect the fact that they are four and that there is a massive consensus of scholarship,

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I can leave aside Hugh or Thomas or Peter, that's not my interest tonight, that Mark is a major source for Matthew and Luke.

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Forget Hugh for the moment. Mark is a major source for Matthew and Luke and it is possible, possible, it's disputed enough, that John may be based on Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

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Now you can dismiss that as just, that's just a scholarly conclusion. What do they know? Well, it's not just a historical conclusion for me.

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If it is true, it has to be the will of God and whether people can understand my understanding of God or not, that of course is their problem.

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So, let me give you an example. When all else fails, read the text. I want to look at two accounts in the

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New Testament of what we call the agony in the garden. We call it that, even though of course

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I'm going to look at it in Mark and John. There is no garden in Mark and no agony in John, but let me compare them to try and understand what they're doing.

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Two different accounts, two different versions, two different according to's of the same event.

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Mark says, Jesus speaking, I'm deeply grieved even to death. Going a little farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed that if it were possible the hour might pass from him.

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Jesus is on the ground. Not so in John. In John's gospel, Judas comes with the soldiers to arrest

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Jesus. In English, we say a band of soldiers in my English text. In Greek, they're a spira.

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That's a cohort. That's 600 troops. One -tenth of a legion at full complement.

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Their captain is Achillearchos, head of a thousand. A military tribune in charge of a regular or even a double cohort.

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They bring out almost the whole defense mechanism of Jerusalem against them.

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What happens? Jesus, knowing all that has happened to him, came forward and asked them, whom are you looking for?

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To which they answered, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus replied, I am he. Judas, who betrayed him, was standing with them.

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When Jesus said to them, I am he, they stepped back and fell to the ground.

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I was watching that movie representation of the gospel of John, which was quite faithful right through to John.

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I was kind of waiting a bit to see if they really wanted to show us that. 600 troops falling to the ground.

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They didn't. They just stepped back slightly. That's a different account. Jesus is on the ground.

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All the troops are on the ground. Mark, John. Move forward to the cup. In Mark, Jesus says,

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Abba, Father, for you all things are possible. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I want, but what you want.

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Jesus, of course, is obedient, but it would be nice if it didn't have to be. Not so in John.

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Jesus speaking. Now my soul is troubled, and what should I say? Father, save me from this hour. No, no.

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It is for this reason that I came to this hour. And in the garden, of course, he tells

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Peter, put your sword back into its sheath. Am I not to drink the cup that the

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Father has given me? In Mark, Jesus begs obediently, of course, for deliverance.

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There's no such reluctance in John. The ground, the cup, the flight. In Mark, when

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Jesus is arrested, quoting, all of them deserted him and fled. All abandoned him. Not so in John.

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After he fell to the ground, Jesus continues, asking the soldiers, whom are you looking for?

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They said, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus answered, I told you that I am he. So if you're looking for me, let these people go.

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Fulfill the word that is spoken. I did not lose a single one of those whom you gave me. Now when

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I look at those two stories, when I look at those two according to, for the same gospel,

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I find that with regard to flight and cup and ground, Jesus is told one way in Mark and one way in John.

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I am quite capable of doing a tation on it. And say, well, he fell to the ground and they fell to the ground.

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He was a little reluctant and then he gave in. And he told them to let him go and they fled.

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I can put it together. I'm really good at that type of stuff. I can harmonize them.

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It's just a question of whether that's the will of God. It's not that these are so discordant that nobody could possibly.

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Of course you can put them together. Or you can do what we really do all the time. We do a martian on it.

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We call it the agony in the garden and ignore the fact that Jesus is in total control in the garden in John.

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They capture him when he's good and ready to go. And even orders them to let his disciples free.

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When I look at that, yes, it is the context that I'm trying to imagine for Mark and the context that I'm trying to imagine for John that dictates for me what is happening.

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Mark, as I understand it, is writing to people who have gone through the horrors of the

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Roman War of 66 to 74. And he is describing Jesus in ways that would make sense to those who have died in agony or watched others dying in agony.

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You could call that an updating. You could call that a making relevant.

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And yes, I do. Because I think that is, I think Dr. White used the term, the nature of gospel.

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The small g. The according to version. The function of the individual gospels is to make the one and only good news, absolutely good news for this group in this time with their problems in this situation.

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I honestly don't know any presuppositions of mine that would make me to expect that. I would have expected one gospel and even if it was somewhat adapted to newer situations,

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I would expect there to be only one of them. That is basic for me. There are four according to's.

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If you ask me are both those stories, by the way, authentic? Are both those stories authentic?

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Mark's and John's. I would say absolutely both are authentic. Are either of them historical?

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I doubt it very much. That is a conclusion. One of them might be in the other.

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What is of importance to me is that both of them, both of them together, show me a

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Jesus who is terribly human. Terribly human. And a Jesus who is terribly divine.

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And both of those are the classic claims of Christianity. A second point.

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Version and parable. There are differences in the gospel.

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If you read them carefully, there are. How is that possible?

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Think of the Good Samaritan for a moment. It's a parable. There is nothing in that story that could not have happened.

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It could be, as it were, the local gossip. Did you hear the one about the Samaritan? But clearly, even if it's historical,

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Jesus takes it up into a parable and uses it as a model to challenge his audience.

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If you find, if you find your enemy in the ditch, would you or would you not share everything you have, medication, transportation, money, with your enemy dying in the ditch?

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If you do, that is loving your neighbor. Whether that story, whether that story is actually historical or whether it's a totally made -up parable that Jesus made up in the spur of the moment,

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I do not see any difference in the message of it. I don't see a difference.

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It's a challenge whether it's historical or parabolical or both at the same time. Do you or do you not want to act like this?

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And I quite understand that most people hearing that would want to say to themselves, let's rather have an argument about whether this is an historical story or not.

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That gets us off the hook magnificently. Could you imagine the audience after Jesus saying that, telling that parable, making a big discussion of it.

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Is that a parable or history? And some argue, well I know that road and there's robbers on it and I know the inn and yeah,

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I've seen a donkey. It must be historical. No, watch how often we are using historical arguments,

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I mean arguments about historicity, to carefully make certain we don't have to do what the story demands whether it is historical or not.

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My thesis is that just as they are parables by Jesus, in other words when

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Jesus wants to speak about the kingdom of God, he goes into fiction. And I presume it doesn't bother anyone in this room that Jesus might make up a story.

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In order to make a theological point, he makes up a story. Obviously that's not a lie of course or a mistake or anything else.

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He makes up a story. I also think, and it comes from reading the

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Gospels, in parallel texts here, I just did it, the Gospels, the four versions of the one

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Gospel, if you will, in parallel texts, that they also make up parables about Jesus.

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They make up parables about Jesus. I don't think I could possibly know that if there were not four versions.

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Let me give you an example then of how I read something. I have not started, you will notice, with my presuppositions.

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They may be there, but I've started with the text. The parable of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes.

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Read the whole story, the entire story first. You know the disciples and Jesus have been all day in a desert place.

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Comes the evening, nobody is starving to death, but the question is going to be, what to do about them?

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The disciples have their solution. Send them away. It's not unreasonable, send them away so they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat.

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That's their solution. Jesus answers them, you give them something to eat.

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So now we have two possibilities, two solutions. And they almost laugh at them. Two hundred denarii, you couldn't do it.

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Now as I read this story, I watch Jesus pulling the disciples, almost kicking and screaming, into the middle of everything he does.

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And usually when Jesus performs a miracle, they are standing there rather like the Greek chorus in admiration.

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This time they are in the middle. He says to them, how many loaves have you, go and see. I'm using

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Mark. When they found out, they have to go and see. He makes them find out.

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This worries John a little bit as he tells the story, because Jesus should have known all that sort of stuff. Mark has them go and see.

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Then, once again, they are pulled in to the next stage. He ordered them to get all the people to sit down in groups.

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They have to find out how much food is there. They have to set the people down. Then taking the loaves, looked up to heaven, blessed broke the loaves, gave them to the disciples to set before the people.

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Once again, finally as you all know of course, they are called to take up what's left over.

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Now, when I read that, when I read that, it screams at me, parable.

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It screams at me, I'm a parable, dummy. I take it for granted that when

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Mark writes this story, he thinks Jesus could do anything he wants. He could take the stones and turn them into bread.

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He could bring manna down from heaven, but he doesn't do it. What he does in the story is take the food that's there already and when it passes through the hands of Jesus, as divine justice incarnate, there's more than enough food for anyone.

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I think it's a parable, but I think something else is even more important.

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If you want to take this story historically, it actually happened and if you were there in the desert, you would have seen it.

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Or you want to take it parabolically, that is similar to the good Samaritan story, something that Mark, let us say, made up to express

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Jesus' mission identity. Either way you take it, be it as history or as parable, you're going to come out with the same conclusion.

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Namely, that Jesus says it is up to the leadership of the church, if you think of the twelve as the leadership of the church, to take care of poverty in this world, to make certain that everyone has enough food.

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And they don't want that job. They love this teaching all day business, that was just fine. Comes the evening, send them away.

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And Jesus insists, it's your job to feed them and he forces them step by step to participate.

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It is more important for me not to get into a debate on whether that really happened or it is a parable than to make certain that we do it.

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And I do not want to get into a debate like the one after the good Samaritan that gets us off the hook too easily.

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I don't use any other language than parable for it. And I do that deliberately because parable, as we know, is one of the major teaching forms of Jesus and I suspect his disciples and the evangelists picked up the bad habit of fiction from their master.

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One other example, one other example.

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You all know the story of the road to Emmaus. Jesus, after the resurrection, appears, but totally, how should

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I put it, in the guise of a stranger. There's no flashing lights, nothing like Paul on the

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Damascus road. Jesus is simply a stranger. As the story goes on, he gives them an almost graduate course in how to read the scriptures.

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And they concede later that their heart was warmed as he was doing that. Let me hesitate for a second.

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I wonder if I'd ask you all, before I began talking, to imagine in your mind, if you could, run through real fast the story of the

57:02

Emmaus road incident in Luke 24. Just to kind of close your eyes and flash, yeah.

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Would you all have remembered that what I think is the most important line in there is that when they come, the two people, possibly a man and his wife, we don't know, the man is identified male, the female is not identified, presumably his wife in Mediterranean courtesy or chauvinism.

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Jesus is going to pass by when they get to, presumably, their home. They have to invite him in.

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I think that's almost the most important line in there. They have to invite him in. And when they invite him in, of course, he takes the bread and the classic lines, takes, bless, broke, give, and they immediately recognize

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Jesus and he is gone. They don't go looking under the table, behind the chairs.

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It's as if they know immediately that Jesus has come in the guise of the stranger. And you have invited the stranger in to eat in your home and that is

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Jesus. Now, if I take that literally, if I were to take that literally,

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I think I would be well on my way to concluding that Jesus really, the resurrected body of Jesus can take off on any form at once, that he is rather like one of those gods in the ancient

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Greek or Roman mythology who come down from heaven and can put on any guise of body they want.

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Can Jesus really appear literally as a stranger? Do we have to go around watching just in case?

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If I were to invoke divine consistency, maybe Jesus is still doing it as a stranger.

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No, I think it is clear, once again, at least to me, that this screams out to me, parable, dummy.

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I'm a parable. And I don't mean to say, well, they really wanted it literally, but I'm going to take it metaphorically.

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I think that's the way it was written. I think this was written to tell us that Jesus is present,

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Jesus is still present among us when we study the scriptures about him and when we invite the stranger in to eat with us.

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And, of course, it is important that all you get, all you get when you study the scriptures alone is your heart warm.

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It's not nothing. But you don't recognize Jesus until you bring the stranger in to eat.

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Now, I have no doubt whatsoever that I have all sorts of presuppositions. And we could talk about presuppositions tonight.

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But what I have done in my opening statement is to focus on the gospel texts themselves.

01:00:03

Granted, I think Dr. White saved me from talking about myself because he talked about me and I'm going to talk about the

01:00:11

New Testament. You can talk about presuppositions and we can argue presuppositions and he's not going to change me and I'm not going to change him.

01:00:19

We both know that. But we still want to look at the text.

01:00:27

There's four different versions of the gospel. And it is not true.

01:00:33

I think it is simply not true that it is, as it were, four people each trying to tell exactly what happened.

01:00:40

That is not gospel. That might be history. It's not gospel. The gospel is good news.

01:00:47

And yes, it has to be updated.

01:00:53

I've used the term. It might sound a little bit crude. Mark is talking to one community and John is talking to another and so is

01:01:01

Luke and so is Matthew. That's not the way I would have done it. I can't find anywhere in myself a presupposition that tells me that's the way to do it.

01:01:13

Everything I can think of tells me one. Get one account. There is one gospel, capital

01:01:19

G. It should be mirrored in one gospel, small g. In the same way that the

01:01:27

Jewish people thought one God, one temple. Not four temples. That is what

01:01:33

I really want to talk about tonight. Can we face the four different versions?

01:01:41

And can we face even the possibility that there is not four independent versions.

01:01:48

Four independent versions but actually a stream of tradition. What I get from this is that it is never enough simply to tell the historical story.

01:02:01

I am convinced that if Mark had in front of him everything Jesus ever said, everything Jesus ever did,

01:02:08

DVDs and all the rest of it of what he had done, Mark would still have said things like,

01:02:15

Well, that might have been all right, Jesus, to say to those fishers in Galilee, but that doesn't speak to my people now.

01:02:23

And I will rephrase you, Jesus, or if you prefer, your spirit is with me and I will trust that when

01:02:33

I do rephrase you or even when I invent a story about you,

01:02:40

I have still got it right. Still got it authentic. Still got it authentic even when it might not be historical.

01:02:50

Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Croson. Dr. White now has 15 minutes for his rebuttal.

01:03:10

I mentioned in my opening statement that we should at least try to define some of the issues we'd be addressing this evening and that involved quoting

01:03:22

Dr. Croson so that we could understand what the situation is. I would like to recite a section that I alluded to.

01:03:30

Dr. Croson has said, Because materials and decisions about materials lead to the methods, and the methods lead to the results.

01:03:38

If you change the materials, then the method of reconstructing Jesus will be completely different from somebody who judges that Matthew and Luke are copying and changing

01:03:46

Mark and that this happened with written Gospels between 70 and 95 A .D.

01:03:52

If that is the view of the materials, then your methods are going to be different. And so I am simply trying to make sure that everyone here this evening understands exactly what the arguments are and what the conclusions are.

01:04:04

When the conclusions are that Jesus Christ was most probably buried in a shallow grave and uncovered by animals and his body eaten by dogs, that really does impact what the

01:04:17

Christian proclamation is and how we are reading the text of the New Testament themselves. I'd like to look at the texts that were cited because I do want to look at the

01:04:27

New Testament this evening, but I just want to do so in such a way that we all understand the differing approaches that we bring to the examination of the text.

01:04:35

For example, if we look at the presentation that Dr. Croson made in regards to the contrast between Mark and John in regards to the garden and the prayer of Christ and the arrest of Jesus, which in one of his presentations he continues on to then a contrast in between that of the cross in Mark and that of the cross in John.

01:04:58

And the fundamental assertion that is made by Dr. Croson results in the following conclusions.

01:05:05

He says, quote, If you continue that story on to the cross, you find exactly the same pattern going. In Mark, Jesus says,

01:05:12

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He's dying, feeling absolutely abandoned, and some of the bystanders say,

01:05:19

Ha, ha, ha, this is very funny. He's calling on Elijah. Let's give him some wine to keep him alive for a few more minutes to see if Elijah comes very funny.

01:05:26

Now read the exact same scene in John and already you know what it won't say.

01:05:32

First of all, there will be no cry of dereliction. Of course not. This is John. Jesus is in total control in John.

01:05:38

It's almost, I'll skip that part, but there is no suffering that is being presented in regards to the suffering of Jesus.

01:05:45

It's almost like this isn't real. There is no suffering here. So, of course, there is no cry of dereliction. Absolutely what happens is that Jesus, in order to fulfill the scripture, he says,

01:05:55

I thirst, sends them to get a drink, and when he has taken the drink, no mockery or anything like that, he says it is finished and he yields up his spirit.

01:06:01

Here is the conclusion. And so we have two stories. A Jesus who consistently in Mark is totally out of control, dies in agony, horror, feeling of abandonment, and Jesus in John who dies in total control, who sends

01:06:12

Pilate running backwards and forwards like a messenger boy. What do we do with that? Do we kind of amalgamate it and say, well, no, he fell on the ground first and the soldiers fell, so on and so forth, or to pull a tation,

01:06:22

I think is the terminology that was just used. Or do we admit that these are gospels? Mark is telling the good news for people who have died in agony, whose loved ones have died in agony during the terrible war of 66 to 74, when the

01:06:34

Romans certainly did not ask, are you a Christian Jew or a non -Christian Jew before they slaughtered the villages?

01:06:40

So probably this is the horrors of real lethal persecution that Mark's community knows about. What they want is the consolation of knowing that Jesus died feeling just as abandoned, just as betrayed as their people when they died during the war.

01:06:52

So he doesn't want to paint you a pretty picture. But then he says John was written for different people they are probably being discriminated against but not being persecuted at that time.

01:07:01

And so you end up with both of them, in essence, creating stories that are meant to minister to the people at that particular time.

01:07:10

And the use of the term inspiration is to say, well, that's the spirit leading you to do that.

01:07:15

Well, what's the result of that? Well, that today we can do the same thing. And that the gospel becomes what we form it to meet the needs that we perceive today.

01:07:25

And as far as I can understand, in fairly reading what Dr. Crossan says, what that means is the kingdom of God can really only be identified as what would this world be like if Jesus was on the throne and Caesar wasn't?

01:07:37

And it becomes radical egalitarianism and a shared common meal and then we're left to figure out what that means in our society.

01:07:44

All sorts of major themes of the gospel writers and New Testament writers are then lost. The issue of sin, the issue of atonement, the centrality of Jesus Christ, the fact that Jesus Christ is not just the son of God for me, the one

01:07:57

God for Christians, but that he is the only son of God, the only way, the only truth, the only life, and that we are to proclaim that message to others, those things are lost, so much so that Dr.

01:08:10

Crossan has said that he finds it very disagreeable that a Christian would say to anyone else, our story of Jesus is true and your story of Buddha is not true.

01:08:19

That idea is simply lost. And I firmly believe that is exactly what the New Testament writers themselves believed.

01:08:25

Now notice, however, that in Mark 14, verse 42, and I know you don't necessarily have the time to be keeping up, but I would like to hear some pages rustling if you have the opportunity of doing so.

01:08:37

Don't just wait for the DVD. In Mark 14, verse 42, notice

01:08:44

Jesus says, Rise, let us be going. See, my betrayer is at hand. And then in Mark 14, verses 48 -49,

01:08:52

Jesus addresses this group of soldiers. Jesus said to them, Have you come out against me as a robber with swords and clubs to capture me?

01:09:00

Day after day I was with you in the temple teaching and you did not seize me, but let the scriptures be fulfilled. Jesus isn't out of control here.

01:09:08

Jesus is just as in control in Mark as he is in John. It is very easy, and I don't call it pulling a tation, but clearly

01:09:19

John does have other things he wants to communicate within the context in which he's writing. I said that from the beginning.

01:09:25

John is very clearly giving us details that are not found in the Synoptic Gospels. There's no question about that.

01:09:31

But does that mean that to harmonize these events, recognizing the differing purposes of the writers, means that these are simply parables, that they didn't actually take place, and that these details are not there?

01:09:45

That would mean that, for example, the testimony to Jesus' deity found in his use of that phrase, Ego, I, Me, from Anahu, especially in the

01:09:52

Minor Prophets, a name of God, that that testimony of the deity of Christ is gone. It is not there.

01:09:57

And in fact, that would only be the later reflection, 70 years or more removed from the time of Christ, of a later period of time, of a later developed theology, and would have nothing to do with what

01:10:07

Jesus of Nazareth thought of himself. The conclusions from that are rather radical.

01:10:15

And that's why we need to challenge those kinds of things. We know that the story of the

01:10:20

Samaritan is a parable. I don't believe I've ever heard an argument where we missed the point of the parable, the

01:10:28

Samaritan, and what we're to do in regards to enemies, because there was a big argument about whether it was a parable or not.

01:10:35

When you look at the end of the discussion, Jesus goes directly from having presented it right into questioning, who then was the neighbor?

01:10:45

This is an illustration. Answering the question was asked of him, who is my neighbor? And so he tells the story to illustrate who the neighbor is and then makes the application.

01:10:53

It's very clear in its nature. That is not the same as saying that all of the historical discussions of the virgin birth of Christ is actually just simply a parable at the beginning of the story of Jesus.

01:11:04

It's meant to parallel Caesar Augustus, and so on and so forth. And saying that all of the historical events in the ministry of Christ are parables that are told and changed by one author to the next author to the next author under the inspiration of the

01:11:18

Holy Spirit to make it more relevant to a particular audience that we presuppose those particular

01:11:23

Gospels were written to. That makes a tremendous impact in our reading of the text. We looked at the multiplication of the loaves and fishes in John chapter 6, and that it screams out,

01:11:33

I'm a parable dummy. Well, I beg to differ, and maybe

01:11:39

I just can't hear, maybe I'm the dummy. But there's a problem. In John chapter 6, verses 14 and 15,

01:11:46

John himself interprets for us what this is all about, and his interpretation, I'm afraid, is not the interpretation that was just offered.

01:11:54

When you look at how he understands it, when the people saw the sign that he had done, they said, this is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.

01:12:04

Verse 15, perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

01:12:12

Christian scholarship down through the ages has looked at this and recognized there is a tremendous issue regarding the nature of the

01:12:17

Messiah and the expectations that Jews had of the Messiah and that they had a lot of wrong expectations of what the

01:12:24

Messiah was to be about. And Jesus performs signs in the Gospel of John that testify and point to who

01:12:31

He is and why He has come. And in this particular context, He does so, and this fits perfectly in John's narrative right into the next thing, which both

01:12:40

Mark and John record, and that is the walking upon the water. The disciples are disillusioned.

01:12:46

They don't understand why Jesus has not accepted the acclaim of the people. They must have been extremely upset.

01:12:51

I mean, if we want to look at historical settings, can you imagine what it was like to be the apostles that day? To be the disciples, we'll use the more correct term at that particular point in time, as you're passing out the miracle bread.

01:13:02

Can you imagine what they were saying? Can you imagine as they passed the bread and they were saying, yes,

01:13:07

I've been with Jesus for two years now. The name's Andrew, thank you. And they're extremely excited.

01:13:13

I mean, this is wonderful. They are getting in on the ground floor here. And they hear the murmuring.

01:13:19

They can hear the, wow, He'd make a great Messiah. Man, we wouldn't even have to have supply lines for our armies when we overthrow the

01:13:26

Romans because He can just simply make bread out of anything. And wow, let's make Him king. And isn't that exactly what the disciples want?

01:13:34

They want Him to be king because that means they're right up there at the top of the new government. And what does

01:13:40

Jesus do? Send them away. Jesus, don't you hear what they're saying? Send them away.

01:13:47

So they send the crowds away and the disciples are disappointed. Then He sends them away and He doesn't even come with them from the heights of popularity to rowing across the lake in the dark again.

01:14:02

And then Jesus comes to them. It's a reminder of who He is. And then remember in John, what's the very next thing that happens?

01:14:08

Some of those men that saw the sign didn't see. And they're seeking

01:14:14

Jesus and they come across the lake and they find Him in the synagogue at Capernaum and you have that tremendous discourse where Jesus says, you don't get it.

01:14:24

You've come because you want to have your stomachs filled again, but that's not why I did that. I am the bread that has come down out of heaven.

01:14:31

You have a spiritual need for spiritual food. And what happens at the end of John 6? The day before 5 ,000 men who want to make

01:14:40

Him king, at the end of John 6, what do you have? Twelve confused disciples and one of which is a devil.

01:14:48

There is the meaning. There is the application. Signs done openly.

01:14:55

But people who don't know their own spiritual need don't see. They are blind.

01:15:01

They cannot hear. They cannot see. That is not misreading. That is allowing the text itself, not by transporting it out and saying, well,

01:15:09

John's A .D. 100 and Mark's 70, see? And Mark's writing to a different group and we've got the war and we've got

01:15:16

Titus and the Roman legions and 66 through 74 and thousands of people crucified. And so we have to present

01:15:22

Jesus as dying in despondency so that He resonates with that crowd. But because the people

01:15:27

John's writing to weren't under persecution, even though there was a whole lot of persecution going on at that time, I mean,

01:15:33

John himself is an exile, but somehow it's a different context and therefore you see what happens when we presuppose certain things about the nature of these

01:15:42

Gospels, about the nature of the materials, it does determine what our methodologies are going to be.

01:15:50

Mark is consistent as well in this passage. He recognizes that this section reveals the nature of the

01:15:56

Messiah and the Messiah is not going to be what the disciples had expected Him to be. He is going to be a suffering

01:16:03

Messiah, not a conquering king. The road to Emmaus. The road to Emmaus.

01:16:09

We were told that if we took this story literally, Jesus looks like one of the gods who could put on bodies on and off.

01:16:16

The problem is that if we read the resurrection accounts in all of the

01:16:21

Gospels and in fact we take the New Testament as a whole and look at Paul's discussion of the nature of the resurrection body as well, which

01:16:29

I'm sure will be discussed later on, we then see certain passages in the

01:16:34

Gospel of Luke that become very important. For example, it says that He acted as if He would go on.

01:16:42

There was a purpose that He had in doing that so as to bring about a particular response.

01:16:49

And then notice it says that their eyes were opened. You don't have to open someone's eyes unless there has been something keeping them from seeing something for a particular purpose.

01:16:59

And what is really the focus of this section? What do the disciples say once Jesus leaves their presence?

01:17:06

Did not our hearts burn within us as He opened the

01:17:11

Scriptures to us and showed us from Moses and from all the prophets their testimony of Himself?

01:17:20

I simply have to ask Dr. Crossman a question unless I've completely misunderstood what he has said about God and the future and prophecies and things like that.

01:17:29

I think he's saying that when the New Testament writers say, well see, here's a fulfillment from Jeremiah, Jeremiah had nothing to do with the ministry of Jesus, the life of Jesus.

01:17:38

The Christians were making up that story to fulfill what Jeremiah said. So how could the point of Luke be that their hearts are opened in seeing the prophetic testimony if there is no prophetic testimony to Jesus that actually exists in history itself?

01:17:56

And so we see it is important how we approach these texts in allowing them to speak for themselves and it directly addresses the nature of the text and their truthfulness.

01:18:06

Thank you very much. Thank you Dr. White. Dr. Crossman now has 15 minutes for his rebuttal.

01:18:21

I think it's now exactly clear. We've looked at the same texts and I don't really think the question has been answered.

01:18:31

Why are there multiple Gospels? It does not work to say that these are simply taking the

01:18:39

Jesus tradition and telling them how they remember it. That's not what's going on. And Dr.

01:18:45

White has not told me whether he accepts, not believes, accepts, it's simply a godly consensus, that Mark is a source for Matthew and Luke.

01:18:55

I agree completely with the statement he made and I still would make it. The materials determine the methods, determine the results.

01:19:06

If the materials, if the materials, and here I am depending on 200 years of scholarship.

01:19:12

If it's all wrong, then everything is wrong that depends on it. 200 years of scholarship has,

01:19:20

I'm repeating myself, convinced a lot of people, let me put it that way so we're not counting heads, a lot of people that Mark is a source for Matthew and Luke.

01:19:29

That means you can put them in parallel columns and you can see Matthew changing

01:19:35

Mark. Now I don't use any of nasty language for that. I do not use mistakes or any unfair language.

01:19:43

I think if Matthew was here and you confronted him with that tonight, as I understand it, Matthew would say, well

01:19:48

I too have the spirit. And what Mark says here does not actually work for what my people need.

01:19:57

And Jesus is always alive and good news. I don't know how to get around that. Tom Wright has made it sound very often even in debate or in writing that we can bypass all of that.

01:20:11

These are sort of four independent accounts. If the materials, and this is a scholarly consensus, not an act of faith.

01:20:19

If the materials were, to our conviction, four independent people, as I said in a court of law trying to tell exactly what happened, you'd have to work very differently.

01:20:33

Let me imagine what it would be. Let us say that 200 years has established quite clearly that Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John are four people.

01:20:40

Let us even say, trying not just to tell raw history but to tell why that history is important for the life of the church, let's say.

01:20:47

Supposing there were four independent ones. Then if you were to ask what is the securest matter we have there historically,

01:20:54

I would say when they all agree. But it's not a matter of historical security when they all agree if they have copied from one another.

01:21:04

It really isn't. That is not, to pick up one of Dr. White's words, that you do not trust them.

01:21:12

I trust the Gospels completely to be exactly what they are relevant to their own situation.

01:21:18

And when I read them in their multiplicity, what they do is ask me, alright, these are my master models as it were.

01:21:26

This is the various situations that they had to work with. I may not be able simply to copy what they have today.

01:21:33

I may have different situations they never even thought about. But I know that how is that good news, the

01:21:40

Gospel, going to come alive today as Gospel for us. I cannot leave them aside.

01:21:45

They are the models. They are the master models of our tradition. But it is not enough simply to restate them.

01:21:54

Second point. Also extremely constitutive for me is the background of the

01:22:00

Roman Empire under which all of this is happening. And it's not just a background, it's a matrix.

01:22:06

Let me give an example. This is vitally important for me. At the time of Jesus, back up, before the time of Jesus, and if Jesus had never existed,

01:22:19

Caesar, Caesar Augustus, was called Divine, Son of God, God.

01:22:27

Even in Egypt, God from God, Redeemer, Liberator, Lord, and Savior of the world.

01:22:38

Most of us might think those were particular Christian titles.

01:22:45

Now, when those titles are used of Jesus, they are not being used simply to say, well, these are just ordinary terms.

01:22:52

Everyone has their little Lord. Jesus is just our Lord. They are high treason. They are saying, one of the ways in which

01:23:00

I summarize the Gospel, not Caesar, but Christ is Lord, Son of God, and all of that.

01:23:07

Everything. You cannot act as if all of these titles were invented by Christianity.

01:23:16

They are taking on the imperial rule of Caesar and saying that not this

01:23:21

Caesar, who does rule the world, and who is on all the coins as Divi Filius, Son of God.

01:23:27

No. That's not Son of God. Jesus is Son of God. But each of those represents, as I understand the first century, a statement of faith.

01:23:40

For many people, the act of faith was in Caesar. For many people, the act of faith is still in Caesar.

01:23:48

And for others, a small number then and a large number now, the act of faith is in Jesus.

01:23:57

Where I see it most clearly is in the scene between Jesus and Pilate, which, yeah, you're probably going to figure it.

01:24:10

I think it's a parable. But it's a parable that says the essential thing about Jesus in a few words that it would take a whole theological treatise to unpack.

01:24:21

Jesus says to Pilate, in John's Gospel, my kingdom is not of this world.

01:24:29

Now, if we'd stop there, we could say, well, that means it's about heaven, not earth, or it's about the future, not the present, or it's about the interior life, not exterior politics.

01:24:39

And Jesus sort of blows all that by continuing. If my kingdom was of this world, my followers would be in here using force to get me out.

01:24:51

The kingdom of Caesar is a kingdom of force and violence. The kingdom of Jesus, the kingdom of God, is a kingdom of nonviolence and justice.

01:25:04

When you look at those two great possibilities, those two great visions, either of them demands faith.

01:25:16

So for me, it does not bother me, I may as well confess it, that John, I think,

01:25:23

I actually think, is telling me a parable. Because it's a parable that says clearly delineating the character, the program, the challenge of Jesus, than anything else

01:25:36

I can imagine. It would take maybe a whole theological treatise, as I said, to say the same thing, and then you'd have forgotten it.

01:25:45

Jesus, Pilate, the kingdom of force and violence, which is the normalcy of the civilization we live in even today.

01:25:51

And over here, the kingdom of justice and peace. It's a confrontation between two visions for the world, and either one of them demands faith.

01:26:01

So I'm not worried myself. And if it worries somebody else, I'm sorry. I'm not worried that this might be a parable.

01:26:09

Because it never occurs to me that a parable can carry just as much truth as a piece of history.

01:26:17

If that actually happened, you may remember in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the

01:26:22

Christ, Pilate addresses him in Aramaic and Jesus comes back in good Latin. Let us imagine it actually happened.

01:26:30

What is the truth of it? Kingdom of force versus a kingdom of non -force.

01:26:37

If it's a parable, what's the truth of it? A kingdom of force versus a kingdom of non -force.

01:26:43

Either case, you still have to make a choice in faith. Now, I have not the slightest desire, intention, hope, plan, or deluded possibility that I would change

01:27:00

Dr. White's view of this. I am sure he would say exactly the same thing.

01:27:06

He will not change mine. I do not know any way beyond the assertion that you could actually prove that this is a parable rather than a piece of history.

01:27:18

And it does not really solve it to say, well, then it's a lie. No, it's not a lie. It's a parable. I don't know how you would prove that.

01:27:28

I don't know how you would disprove it. I do know that either way it makes a claim on our existence and the more we want to waste our time on deciding whether it's a history or a parable is precluding us from doing something important when the thugs are taking over the world.

01:27:50

So, yes, we could have the argument. We've been having it for 200 years. I don't want to say nobody's changed their mind.

01:27:57

I'm sure it must have happened. But I want to make certain that the argument of whether this story or that story, this event or that is a parable or a piece of history does not preclude us from drawing the meaning out of it in any case.

01:28:13

And I don't want any debate I'm ever engaged in to be an excuse from the action that Jesus calls us to.

01:28:20

Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Croson. Would you please, with me, thank these two gentlemen for this opening time.

01:28:38

Dr. Croson, given your presuppositions regarding divine consistency and the like, what kind of evidence could possibly exist in antiquity that would prove to you that the events of the

01:28:52

Gospel story, especially miraculous events such as the virgin birth or the resurrection of Christ from the dead, actually took place in a historical context?

01:29:02

In the context of a pre -Enlightenment world, nothing. In the context of a pre -Enlightenment, sorry, am

01:29:09

I echoing? In the context of a pre -Enlightenment world where it is taken for granted that wondrous things can happen, that gods and goddesses can come down from heaven and create divine children, in that context, and granted that's what everyone accepts, the only way

01:29:32

I can understand the claims of any one of them is what it means.

01:29:38

Therefore, when Jesus, when I read these claims about Jesus, for example, what is important for me is when

01:29:45

I read the claims of Jesus from people who believe he could do anything he wanted and has all power, he only does it, for example, to heal.

01:29:55

Yeah, I get that message very clearly. Jesus has the power, for example, if somebody sasses him to make them drop dead.

01:30:06

That would not surprise anyone as a story from the ancient world. Jesus never does that. So, that's what's important to me about the miracles of Jesus.

01:30:15

They're miracles of healing. How you explain them in the ancient world, whether you're dealing with Asclepius or Jesus, is a totally separate issue for me.

01:30:24

I make no difference, though, between Asclepius and Jesus in terms of reality.

01:30:31

But in a post -enlightenment world, which I'm assuming we're talking about this evening, could there be any kind of evidence whatsoever in antiquity that would cause you to believe that God did intervene in the first century in a way that he's not intervening in now, the 21st century?

01:30:49

No. Does that not illustrate the presuppositional character of the conflict?

01:30:55

No, it illustrates my understanding of how God works, which

01:31:00

I will admit is a presupposition. But it's a presupposition based on two things. I did say divine consistency.

01:31:08

And when I read first century texts, if I only read, if I only read the Christian texts,

01:31:14

I would have to say, there is such extraordinary things happening here that never happened in the rest of the world.

01:31:19

But two, if I read it in a first century context, or even in the history of religions context,

01:31:25

I have to see that, no, similar claims have been made, not only about Jesus, but about Caesar in that very same context.

01:31:34

As I said, it's in all the coins. And therefore, no, I don't see anything that would convince me, quite frankly, that Caesar was born of Apollo and a human mother,

01:31:45

Atsia, or that Jesus was literally born of God and the

01:31:50

Virgin Mary. But I see those as radically different claims about the meaning of life.

01:31:58

To accept Caesar as divine is not to accept Jesus as divine. Is it your understanding that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, whoever they would have been, it's my understanding that you wouldn't believe that those were eyewitnesses or anything like that, correct?

01:32:13

I think the word that Luke uses is not eyewitnesses. It is martyrs. It is witnesses.

01:32:19

Luke does talk about witnesses of the word, but we translate as eyewitness. The Greek is martyres, as far as I remember, which is a witness.

01:32:29

But you witness to Jesus. You witness to the truth and authenticity of Jesus by dying for him, not by quoting him, even by quoting him realistically.

01:32:40

But I'm correct in assuming that you don't believe that the Gospels were written by individuals who were actually immediate followers of Jesus.

01:32:48

That's just sort of a clarification question. Yes, yes, yes. I believe it's too strong a word.

01:32:53

It's simply an acceptance of a scholarly position. I could be changed on something like that. So your scholarly position is that the writers of the

01:33:03

Gospels were not eyewitnesses of the event. Is it your position that they likewise held your understanding of the world that you just enunciated, that is that they were presenting

01:33:16

Jesus in a parabolic fashion, that they expected their audience likewise to read everything they were writing as historical fiction, as parables with meanings?

01:33:27

No, I would not say that because in a pre -Enlightenment world the difference between the literal and metaphorical that we are forcing upon it from a post -Enlightenment mode is not valid.

01:33:39

If I could go outside into the Roman world, pick up a coin that says that Caesar is the son of God and say to a

01:33:47

Roman, now do you believe that? I'm sure the Roman, unless he was a Republican, a recalcitrant

01:33:53

Republican, I mean a Roman Republican, not an American Republican, would say, of course.

01:33:59

Now if I said to him, but literally or metaphorically, I'm not sure he would say.

01:34:05

I think what he would say is, really? And I would know that he really did it if I watched him programmatically, functionally, operationally going with the

01:34:17

Roman system. That's what they would mean by it. I think we are imposing a literal metaphorical disjunction on a pre -Enlightenment world that didn't make it.

01:34:29

And therefore my conclusion is that when I read these stories, I cannot say,

01:34:36

I cannot put it this way, you must read them literally or you must read them metaphorically because from a pre -Enlightenment world

01:34:45

I don't know how that distinction operates. But I can say, if you are a

01:34:50

Christian, you must take them operationally, functionally, they must inform your life.

01:35:00

So what I'm asking in essence is, do you not see a major difference between how a monotheistic

01:35:09

Jewish person would have viewed the issues concerning God's incarnation, miracle, etc.,

01:35:19

etc., and what you would find in the pagan first century world? Wouldn't it be just absolutely amazing for a person who gets up in the morning and says,

01:35:28

Sh'mah Yisrael, Yahweh Eloheinu, Yahweh Echad, to then write parable such as the incarnation, which it seems you're saying is so parallel to the pagan religious world,

01:35:42

Augustine, so on and so forth, wouldn't that have been completely opposed to their entire world view themselves?

01:35:49

No, not in that context. Now, be very clear, I've never said it's parallel as if you're talking about a sort of a tandem railroad or something like that.

01:36:01

It's not in parallel to it, it's in high treason against it. They're not saying, and I want this to be very clear, we all have our little lords and Jesus is just our little lord.

01:36:13

And we mentioned Justin before and Justin, martyr, died for saying, well, we all have lords, but ours is the one that really counts and is worth all the others.

01:36:25

So, I don't think that in the Roman world where every silver coin said that Caesar was the son of God, it surprises me.

01:36:34

It surprises me at all that a Jewish person who wanted to say, a Jewish believer in Jesus, who wanted to say, no, not

01:36:42

Caesar, but Jesus, which means not Caesar's program, not

01:36:47

Jesus's program, is what the way the world should be ruled. It doesn't surprise me at all.

01:36:53

And yet, you insist that they then made up stories to illustrate these, and these stories included the virgin birth, and these stories included the miracles, and these stories included raising the dead, and Lazarus, and Jesus's own resurrection.

01:37:11

And when you do that, you always say, for example, I believe I correctly represented you, that uniqueness is not one of the categories in which we can put

01:37:20

Jesus, because of the context of those gods in their culture.

01:37:27

Yes? Let me be very clear what I said. I said, talking about uniqueness,

01:37:33

I said in a pre -Enlightenment culture, nobody could say uniqueness or impossibility about divine beings.

01:37:43

You couldn't do it in the first century in a pre -Enlightenment world. What you could do, and this is exactly what

01:37:49

Justin Martyr does do, he says, when we say Jesus was born of a virgin birth, he mentions it all, we are saying nothing different than what you say about various sons of gods.

01:38:00

You've mentioned Julius Caesar ascended into heaven. And then he says, what's going to get him killed? If I may translate him loosely, are

01:38:09

Jesus' little finger worth all your sons of God put together? That's a statement of absolute superiority.

01:38:16

He cannot say, and he knows he cannot say, in that milieu, Jesus is the only son of God.

01:38:22

He cannot, because it's in all the coins. But he's going to die for saying that basically all of that stuff is not worth

01:38:31

Jesus' little finger. That's superiority. It's not uniqueness. But didn't the

01:38:37

Jews say exactly what you just said you couldn't say when they said their God is the only

01:38:43

God, and therefore if their God becomes incarnate, then that incarnation is unique.

01:38:48

Isn't that just part of the entire world view that they would be writing from? I mean, the Jews said what you just said they couldn't say in light of all these other alleged deities out there.

01:38:58

But isn't Jewish monotheism and the repetition of the Shema a constant rejection of Caesar and the whole existence of these other gods?

01:39:08

Isn't that what made them so repugnant to the people around them? All of that. But that does not stop them in any way.

01:39:15

And I only know this, I think, if you asked me that before, somebody like Matthew, who was a

01:39:20

Jew, at least whoever Matthew is, was certainly a Jew. Or Mark, who certainly was a Jew. Luke, you might be able to debate, was a

01:39:27

God -fearer. John is certainly a Jew. Whoever they were, they don't seem to find it at all impossible to say that the one

01:39:35

God is incarnate in Jesus. And they don't see that as creating two gods.

01:39:42

And actually, in most of the first century Roman world, their problem was somewhat the opposite.

01:39:49

If there are many gods, and Caesar is just one more God, well, big deal.

01:39:54

So their problem was not monotheism, how can that be a God incarnate? It was how does

01:40:01

Jupiter become incarnate in Julius Caesar, or in Caesar Augustus?

01:40:08

And this is unique, as they were trying to make it sound. Just a factual issue here, wouldn't you agree that the presentation of Jesus in patristic sources prior to Justin and after Justin does include issues of absolute uniqueness and does not include parallels to, in other words, differs fundamentally from Justin?

01:40:29

Well, I don't think it does. In one sense, you're quite right to say that Jesus is

01:40:36

Lord and to say Caesar is Lord are fundamentally different things. They're not just parallels. Because to say that Jesus is

01:40:43

Lord, excuse me, to say that Caesar is Lord means that his system, which we saw talking to Pilate, in other words, you rule the world by force and violence.

01:40:51

And the Romans would have said, no, that's the way you do it. That's their system. To say that Caesar is divine means that his mode of running the world by force and violence is the will of the gods, if you will, or the will of Jupiter.

01:41:06

When you say Jesus is divine, we know, simply from his life, that he is a totally different program of God.

01:41:15

So they're not just sort of, well, it could be this, it could be that. I can imagine somebody who talks about Jesus's Lordship within a community and never even mentioning

01:41:26

Caesar. But I am trusting that the empire got it right when

01:41:31

Pilate, for example, executed Jesus but didn't round up all his followers. He knew he was dealing with a non -violent, a non -violent subversive, not like, say,

01:41:43

Barabbas, a violent revolutionary. Wouldn't you agree, though, that historically, when

01:41:48

Christians said Jesus is Lord, they meant much more than merely non -violent radical egalitarianism, but they meant that he has risen from the dead and that he is coming as judge and that his death was salvificant of itself?

01:42:07

Is that not part and parcel of what we see in the New Testament? Yes, but all of those terms, well, risen from the dead,

01:42:15

Caesar was called the savior of the world. That was one of his titles. Now, Julius Caesar had been seen ascending into heaven and that was proved because you could look at a coin and see a meteor, which was his spirit, at least.

01:42:29

I don't think they would ever have claimed his body. He was burned on a funeral pyre. But they would have claimed that we have proof.

01:42:35

It's in all the coins. Somebody saw the meteor streaking up into the sky or whatever meteors do and that was the spirit of Julius Caesar.

01:42:41

Now, I'm not saying, I really am not saying that, oh, they're just saying the same thing. They're saying the opposite.

01:42:48

They're saying, in a way, what happened to Jesus is not what happened to Caesar. What happened to Caesar is not what happened to Jesus.

01:42:55

And to find that out, though, you'd have to ask them, what exactly is the different content? Very quickly, since my time is just about up, the term that Luke actually uses is autoptes, which means eyewitness, not martyr.

01:43:10

So, would you like to amend? Yep, if that's the word. Does he use martyrs in there somewhere?

01:43:17

Not in verse two, no. Okay, okay. No, he uses tradition, you know, passed down, but he doesn't use the term martyr.

01:43:26

Okay, now, here's my problem, again. Luke has, Luke, this is a scholarly presupposition.

01:43:34

No, it's not a presupposition. It's a scholarly conclusion that Luke uses Mark. So, Mark is in the night vision.

01:43:42

Sorry. That's okay. All right. Sorry. Good sentence.

01:44:00

I'm working on the presumption that, for me at least, the multiple versions of the

01:44:10

Gospels are really constitutive of the problem we're discussing, whether you take basically or literally.

01:44:19

So, how do you... I'm sorry, did you say take it all literally? Yeah, more or less.

01:44:24

I mean, what I mean is... I don't take it all literally. I recognize the existence of all sorts of parables when

01:44:31

Jesus is telling parables. Yeah, when Jesus is telling parables. Why are there multiple versions?

01:44:37

Why the four Gospels? Yeah, multiple. I don't want to stress four, but more than one. Well, I would go back to what

01:44:44

Luke himself said. Luke recognizes the preexistence of other compilations. Who he's referring to there, we have no way of knowing.

01:44:52

Whether he's referring to Mark or other things that we've never seen, I have no way of knowing.

01:44:58

But he writes his Gospel for his audience specifically as he says, so that his recipient,

01:45:06

Theophilus, may know with certainty what he has been taught. And it seems to me that Mark says the beginning of the

01:45:13

Gospel of Jesus Christ, John in the prologue, lays out his purposes in identifying Jesus as the

01:45:19

Divine Logos, incarnate as the Word. And so you have, I believe, if you're asking why did they individually do so, they clearly had an audience in mind to which they wished to communicate the story of Jesus.

01:45:31

If you're asking the bigger overarching question from a divine perspective, why would God do something like this, as I said in my opening statement,

01:45:40

I think if we went into a number of these synoptic issues or some of the questions that we may have time to get into, by having what we might call quadraphonic stereo, we end up with,

01:45:53

I think, a much richer and deeper presentation of the ministry of the incarnate Son of God.

01:45:58

Obviously, if I believe, like the apostles did, that this is the Logos, the Creator who has entered into his own creation redemptively, then the ministry that was his would just be absolutely incredible in its richness.

01:46:14

And I just simply see from a divine perspective that we are being given that fullness in God's work in history.

01:46:22

Some of the issues that you raise, the dress issue, remember Matthew chapter 10, whether you carry a staff or don't carry a staff.

01:46:32

I look at the fact that if I only have Matthew and Luke, I'm not sure exactly what to do with that, but when you,

01:46:39

I'm sorry, Mark and Luke, but when you have Matthew, Matthew uses a different verb, and I'm referring to Matthew 10, 9, if those of you want to look it up in your

01:46:48

Bible or something like that, sometimes we're going too quickly. He uses a different verb, ketapamai, to acquire, not to bring along, but to actually purchase and to acquire.

01:46:56

When you read the three of them together, they become a harmonious presentation rather than one that I believe, if I'm representing you correctly, you see as reflecting sort of a degradation over time of Jesus' original ideal in regards to the peripatetic nature of the ministry, non -hierarchical, non -centralized,

01:47:21

I think I'm accurately representing you. Because I approach it and I harmonize them,

01:47:27

I do a tation on it, to use your terminology, because of what I believe about the nature of it, that ends up producing a much fuller picture than just simply having one version of it.

01:47:40

And that's just one example. Numerous examples came up in my study of your perspective because it seemed that both yourself and Dr.

01:47:46

Borg would say things like, well, if you take this literally then you miss the parabolic. No, I don't miss the parabolic.

01:47:51

And in fact, in seeing in the multiple views, you end up with a richer perspective on a number of issues, especially in the passion narratives, but also in the straight didactic teaching of Jesus.

01:48:03

Okay. Your metaphor of quadriphany, we're now talking about that second point for me.

01:48:10

I said, if when we had studied these four, they came out pretty much as independent.

01:48:17

That's what's important for me. The dates, I grant the dates are important because if you think that Matthew is using

01:48:24

Mark, you better have Matthew writing later than Mark. So of course, the dates are important. But in one sense, apart from that, it's not the date so much as the relationship.

01:48:35

As I said, it's not an act of faith or anything like that. I don't think it's a presupposition. It's simply having spent about a decade doing it, and I pretty much convinced myself it looks like Mark is a major source for Matthew and Luke, and I think

01:48:50

John has an independent tradition, but he also knows the synoptics. Those are conclusions. All of them are debatable, and I certainly didn't want to spend my life discussing them.

01:49:00

I wanted to get on with it. So they made sense to me, but they did raise an issue of quadriphonic.

01:49:07

I felt like I was, I don't want to put this in any prejudicial language, as if I was an attorney going into a court case with four witnesses, and I find out in the morning just from the court that I only have one witness, and the other three have heard the story from this one.

01:49:23

Now, in that case, of course, that would invalidate the whole process, but my point is that in looking at Mark and Matthew and Luke, following the presupposition or the conclusion that Matthew and Luke are copying from Mark, you're quite right,

01:49:39

I do redactional criticism. I spent most of the 60s doing it, and at the end of that decade,

01:49:44

I was pretty, I was in a monastery in the 60s. I had nothing else to do. I think more, other people had more fun

01:49:50

Well, the fact that it was done in the 60s might say a lot, too, right there, so. There was nothing much else to do in the monastery.

01:49:58

Anyway, at the end of it, I was pretty much convinced that going through Matthew verse by verse and trying to see now, if he is using

01:50:09

Mark, why would he change it? Now, I never came to the conclusion that he's telling lies, he's making mistakes, he's goofing it up, any of that language at all.

01:50:18

I thought eventually he could almost come to the point where you kind of cover Mark in your synopsis, or sorry, cover

01:50:25

Matthew and Luke and see what Mark said and then see, could you guess what Matthew and Luke might do with it?

01:50:31

Very seldom got it right, but I felt that somehow I was seeing Matthew's theology and I was then kind of imagining the audience of Matthew for whom that would be appropriate.

01:50:42

I mean, it was completely a circular argument because I had no other data to do it. So, that's what convinced me, actually, that the process was really of gospel, that you take the story and you make it relevant to a new situation.

01:50:58

It came from that. Even though you're asking me if I could just, in response to that, ask you, though, to do that, and this should look very familiar to you.

01:51:07

Oh, yeah. It may give you nightmares to see it. I didn't mean to scare you with it, but this is, is this the text that you were?

01:51:13

Oh, yeah. Yes, okay. This is what he's referring to, the synopsis, Quatro Eurangelium, in Greek.

01:51:21

You are assuming, I believe, that the nature of Mark and Matthew is such, and you've used this term, maybe you can explain it in light of what you just said, that Matthew has the spirit and the spirit is guiding him in altering even the historical elements of Mark's gospel, and that's because, is it your position that Mark, that Matthew would have recognized the parabolic, non -historical nature of Mark, even at that early, at that point in history?

01:51:53

Is that how you think he would have viewed that? I mean, I've never really thought of it that way.

01:52:00

My suspicion is that it's much more a situation of a pre -Enlightenment world where they're not, or even in an oral tradition, where they're much more free with changing a text.

01:52:12

If I was quoting you, you know, in a writing, I'd go back and find exactly what you said and I'd put in the quotation marks and if I changed a single word,

01:52:19

I'd put dot, dot, dot, and I would have to do it exactly like that. If I can imagine this, when

01:52:25

Matthew, coming out of an oral scribal, sort of a mixture, looks at Mark and rephrases him,

01:52:33

I suspect there are times of which you say, wait a minute, Matthew, you rephrased him. He said, I did not. Which you did.

01:52:40

But that's what it meant. Well, I'm not sure. So I'm not sure he's, well, this is a parable so I can do whatever

01:52:47

I want with it. I don't think he would handle the parables of Jesus in his

01:52:53

Mark and source any differently than he'd handle something in the Passion. This is actually supposed to be your time. I think you were trying to get around to asking me what

01:53:01

I think the relationship of, is that where you were going? Yeah, basically. We took a trip through the 60s to get there, but.

01:53:09

That's all right. That's all right. Yeah, I really want to know. I hate to tell you this, that's when I was born, so.

01:53:19

Sorry about that. I'm doing good for 71. That's right. Okay. Must have been all those years in the monastery.

01:53:26

No, what I'm really probing is my question I wrote down here. Why are there multiple versions?

01:53:32

Now, your answer, that was quadraphonic harmony, which I would find a magnificent answer if there were four independent versions, because that would be marvelous.

01:53:41

You'd be getting four different vectors, and even if they were showing up with some memory lapses or anything like that, I'd take it for granted.

01:53:47

In fact, I'd feel much safer if there were some memory lapses. If they all came out exactly the same, then I would be wondering what on earth we were doing.

01:53:56

I think, though, that you're not giving enough value to the differences, and part of it might be because when those differences were first found in the last 200 years, a lot of these were used as arguments to batter

01:54:09

Christians over the head with. See, you can't even get your story straight. I think the differences are precious, and that you're losing something precious when you kind of let the harmony go together.

01:54:21

Well, let me answer the question first of all. I think it is a theoretical presupposition, and I think you're well aware of the fact that the relationship of Matthew, Mark, and Luke continues to be a source of tremendous debate today in the scholarly community, and certainly when you include with that the witness of the early church, which did not have that perspective of Markan supremacy or Markan priority at that point, and it's not simply even asking the question of the relationship of Mark to Matthew and Luke.

01:54:54

You also have all the issue of Q source materials that go into all of this. As I look at the relationship of these gospels,

01:55:02

Luke specifically says he uses secondary sources, and so I don't have any problem with the fact that he says

01:55:10

I studied these things, I laid these things out, and if he's using other sources, that's fine, that's wonderful.

01:55:18

It seems to me he had connection with Mary in some way, shape, or form that would explain a lot of things that we see in Luke that we don't see in the others, all that kind of stuff, but when

01:55:27

I see synoptic parallels, I think we are losing something.

01:55:34

When, A, we start with certain assumptions, I think they are assumptions about the nature of what Matthew, Mark, and Luke are, what

01:55:41

God can do in choosing these particular ones, I mean, there were other gospels written, and I know that we don't have time this evening to get into the gospel of Peter too much, and things like that, but these are the ones that, from my perspective,

01:55:58

God has preserved. I see divine providence in this. I don't get the feeling from some of the questions that were asked of you just a few months ago in New Orleans that divine providence would be an issue at all for you, that you don't,

01:56:10

I don't think that fits into your parameters, but it does for me, and when I look at the synoptic parallels, and when

01:56:18

I see the three of them together, there are a number of instances where I can't possibly see the idea that, well,

01:56:28

Mark is here, and I think you normally put him in the 70s, and in fact, every explanation

01:56:33

I've ever heard that you've given of why Mark did what Mark did was based upon that assumption.

01:56:39

So you say the dating isn't important, and yet it becomes explanatory as to why, for example, in the presentation you made from Mark in the garden, why

01:56:49

Jesus is out of control. So I don't see that by putting them in different decades that I'm enriched in my understanding of why

01:57:01

Luke records things in a certain way. The parable of, not the parable, well, you may call it a parable, the story of whether it was the centurion who sent either the

01:57:19

Jewish leaders or he himself came. You understand that that may even be in all four gospels, though I personally don't think that John's narrating the same event there.

01:57:27

He uses too much different language. But when I look at that, and I look at these synoptic differences,

01:57:36

I don't see Matthew sitting there with Mark going, that doesn't fit me.

01:57:43

That doesn't fit my people. It doesn't fit my context. Nor Luke doing the same thing.

01:57:49

I see them either telescoping or focusing upon something dependent upon the pacing.

01:57:55

I mean, they couldn't have written, they couldn't write 10 volume works. They had to choose how much detail to go into.

01:58:01

And they chose that basically based upon their audiences that they were writing to. Not, well, here's

01:58:07

Mark and this doesn't work for me. Is that, you used the term an assumption.

01:58:14

I've said repeatedly that that is for me the acceptance, the critical acceptance of a scholarly conclusion.

01:58:22

I think there is much more, much more agreement first, that there is some, some direct relationship between, let us say,

01:58:31

Matthew, Mark and Luke to keep it simple for the moment. And I think it's a very, very massive consensus of scholarship which is probably close to a miracle to have anything like that.

01:58:41

That Mark, that Mark is probably, I'm leaving Q completely out of it. I don't even have to mention

01:58:47

Thomas, Q, or any of the rest of it to make the point. I think there is a scholarly consensus or at least among most of the ones.

01:58:56

Okay. Among most of the ones that I have, that Mark is, is the one. But the other, the other ones are simply different variations on the same thing of dependence.

01:59:06

Kill the annoying noise. There you go. Got it. Sorry. Sorry. Thank you.

01:59:12

Now, who is supposed to be doing what? I'm, now it's my turn to sort of ask questions even though we've sort of been a little bit flexible in that particular.

01:59:20

I'm not properly programmed. Not complaining at all. I have some others that I, I definitely wanted to, to ask of you here.

01:59:30

Dr. Crossman, where do the writers of the gospel ever define the term gospel as you define it?

01:59:36

In particular, where do they insist upon an, an updating emendation reaction concept because unless I, again,

01:59:44

I am just one of the dullest people on the planet, I have heard you raise that issue in at least six or seven different contexts and it seems to be absolutely definitional to your understanding of the nature of these materials and hence your conclusions regarding their historicity or lack of historicity.

02:00:03

So, especially the issue of news has to be new and updated.

02:00:09

Where, where do the writers themselves give you that? Or do they? Well, they certainly don't, don't in any sense like that.

02:00:18

I mean, I don't think anywhere in the gospel somebody says, now this has to be updated. And I don't want to make it prejudicial by making it sound that updated means there's something wrong with it.

02:00:29

What is the essential thing for me in updated is relevance to some different community.

02:00:35

That's the only way I explain to myself the differences I see in the gospels. Now, I realize that when you said date, for example,

02:00:48

I'm fairly certain in so far as I can come to a conclusion that Mark is writing to a persecuted community.

02:00:56

There are some people who think Mark is writing, for example, to a Roman community, community in Rome, I mean, under persecution.

02:01:04

I'm imagining him speaking in the 70s in the throes of the Jewish war. So, the persecuted community and a

02:01:11

Jesus who is extremely consoling to a persecuted community, a

02:01:17

Jesus who is, denied by his foremost disciple, most of that makes sense to me in a persecuted community.

02:01:26

It's secondarily to that to say, okay, now, what persecution are you imagining? Is it, say, in Rome in the end of the first century or under Rome, under Nero?

02:01:37

What are you imagining? That's secondary. In that sense, the date becomes secondarily important.

02:01:42

Persecuted community comes first. What if it was Rome of the 40s? They would have been under, or Rome of the 50s, they would have, certainly, we recognize in Paul, for example, and we know historically that the

02:01:55

Jews were expelled from Rome and it seems to be connected with things that we can read in Paul. What if that's the context of Mark?

02:02:02

Would that not materially impact, especially when you discuss Q sources and the parabolic nature of certain historical issues, wouldn't that impact greatly, that kind of a conclusion that you've come to?

02:02:16

Let me play for a second. I don't think it would, but let me think about it. Supposing, think of it really good when it was under Nero, because we're really certain that there was terrible

02:02:26

Christian persecution under Nero. Supposing this is written in Rome for the people who were persecuted under Nero.

02:02:34

The problem I would have with being convinced of that is that with the importance of Rome, if Mark was their gospel, we'd have heard of it.

02:02:44

I'm thinking now, textually, before, what is it, about 250, when you find the first copy of it. I would expect a little more emphasis.

02:02:52

I would expect maybe first Clement to mention Mark. That's, again, a scholarly conclusion. If somebody showed me tomorrow some really proof that this was written to the people persecuted by Nero, I would simply say, okay, fine.

02:03:08

Two things that confuse me about that. As far as I know, even if we dismiss 7Q5 as even a possibility, as far as I know, the earliest we have manuscript -wise is

02:03:17

John. Oh, yes. John's about 125. And secondly... But Mark is latest.

02:03:25

Right, but... I'm not making any point of that. Right, right. But let me just continue on with this question then.

02:03:32

Given the nature of your three searchlights, the illustration you yourself used, and your belief that when they intersect we have a historically more probable reality,

02:03:41

I guess would be the terminology I would use. Could you comment on how whether these searchlights could ever, in any fashion, trisect, come together, on a divine action of unique character?

02:03:54

Divine action of unique character. In other words, if these three searchlights are what is required for you to have some confidence of a historical event, could they ever, in any way, shape, or form...

02:04:09

And this sort of goes back to the first question, but now I'm being a little more specific. Could they ever trisect on something that would be of a divine, interventive form?

02:04:20

Or is that presuppositionally precluded by the utilization of your methodology? Not by the methodology.

02:04:27

I do not presume that God intervenes in the world. I presume that God is present in the world all the time, and now and then we manage to see it.

02:04:36

What I would accept as, I think your phrase was, a divine... I would imagine

02:04:43

Jesus dying on the cross, as recorded in Luke, and saying, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do, is about the most divine, if I could say, intervention, using your term for the moment, that I could imagine.

02:04:56

If I took it literally that Jesus could come through the walls of a room, my answer would be, good for Jesus.

02:05:04

If he dies on the cross, saying, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do, that's divinity.

02:05:11

But it is not, by definition, something where there is a historical violation of the natural laws that God has created.

02:05:21

God does not do that presupposition. No, it seems to me that God does not violate nature, and that's one of the temptations that Jesus had to undergo in the wilderness, which is parabolic, by the way, that there are certain things that he could do, but he's told not to do.

02:05:37

One of them is not do any miracles for his own convenience, even the perfectly legitimate convenience, surely after 40 days fast, and not to come down from the temple, the pinnacle of the temple, and defy the laws of nature,

02:05:52

I presume, not kill himself. So there's things that everyone seems to believe in the

02:05:57

New Testament that Jesus could do that Jesus does not do. And so, are we fairly clear, have we pretty much established, though, that you would admit that the authors of the

02:06:08

New Testament documents would not share your viewpoint at that point. They would not believe that God cannot and does not enter miraculously into his creation in specific ways that he's not doing in the 21st century.

02:06:25

That's a presupposition. That's a worldview. That's part of your worldview, but it was not a part of their worldview. I'd like to go very cautiously there,

02:06:33

I think, Dr. White. Does God enter into the 21st century?

02:06:40

Yes, because all around us we see the absence of God. We saw pretty well in the 20th century.

02:06:47

I don't think God ever intervenes. God is ever present in the world for me as divine justice.

02:06:54

What is an action of God? You used that term. I prefer the term presence. Okay, so we see him present in bringing about justice, but not in the way that the

02:07:06

New Testament writers picture virgin birth, resurrection, raising the dead, miracles, any of those types of things.

02:07:12

Yes, of course, but not taken literally. Okay. We're back, I realize, at the same foundation. Right. Would it be possible in any fashion in your worldview for prophecy to exist, specifically for God to reveal future events?

02:07:28

If not, does this not predetermine your view regarding Christians making up the fulfillments of Old Testament prophecies, especially in regards to the

02:07:36

Passion Week, as you have mentioned? My understanding of prophecy is not that the prophets of Israel were saying various statements that nobody understood until suddenly they were clear in Jesus.

02:07:52

They were talking about a hope, no, a faith that God someday in the future is going to clean up the mess of this world.

02:08:02

Now, it's fairly unspecified. They were talking about in those days, in days to come.

02:08:09

It's open. It is not as if they're all talking about Jesus and nobody knew about it until Jesus came.

02:08:15

When Jesus did, those who believed in Jesus said, that was about our

02:08:21

Jesus. Those who did not believe in Jesus said, no, it isn't. So there could not be any specific element to prophecy about the price of the betrayal of Jesus, the parting of his garments, the

02:08:40

Messianic Psalm 22 or 110 or Isaiah.

02:08:46

All those, are they happenstance or is it just simply that the New Testament writers looked at them and said, we're going to fulfill these by saying that this is what happened in the crucifixion of Jesus.

02:08:58

I wouldn't describe it that way because that makes it sound as if they're doing something sort of meretricious.

02:09:05

What they are seeing is there's a whole history before Jesus ever appears on this earth of other

02:09:12

Jews who have died as martyrs, who have died on Roman crosses before him. There are whole

02:09:17

Psalms of the righteous ones suffering and pleading with God. They're all there. When those first Christians are trying to describe the death of Jesus, they are not reading, as I understand, proof texts because many of them are implicit.

02:09:32

If you didn't even know that they are referring of dividing the garments, the gall and vinegar, all of that, if you didn't really know that, you would simply say, well, they're just describing what happened.

02:09:44

Soldiers do that sort of thing. They divide garments and it's perfectly reasonable. If you have been praying those as your prayers, like Jews have, you realize that what is happening is that the suffering of Jesus is not being actually described literally, but as the summation and climax of all the suffering of the righteous ones who have gone before him.

02:10:05

He is their climax. So it will eventually become a proof text, by the way. They will eventually start saying, and that fulfills.

02:10:12

And then the final, horrible conclusion will be when certain of the fathers say, how can you be so stupid?

02:10:19

Can't you see? It says here and it's fulfilled here. I don't think that's the way it was happening.

02:10:24

It was happening in the opposite way. They were describing the death of Jesus in terms of the death of all the martyrs, especially who had gone before him.

02:10:32

I understand that's how you read it. My question was really, is it not a... basically asking, is it even possible that there could have been specific prophecy of the life of Jesus?

02:10:46

Do you believe that God could prophesy 700 years before Christ or at least anything about what

02:10:52

Christ was going to be? Does he have that kind of power and purpose in this world or is that just not a possibility at all?

02:11:01

I would prefer to understand God by what God does rather than what God could do.

02:11:07

I would not enter into what God could do because I haven't the faintest idea what God could do. Okay, then did

02:11:14

God include that level of specificity in regards to those prophetic utterances so that the writers themselves did not have to just be ransacking this, looking for things to draw parallels to, but instead, as John puts it, when

02:11:31

Jesus is raised from the dead, they remember what he said about the temple and, oh, now we see what that meant or when they see what happened during the

02:11:38

Passion Week, they see these fulfillments from Zechariah and they see these fulfillments from this altar. Why do we have to read these as they creating fulfillment rather than Jesus actually providing fulfillment?

02:11:52

What is the reason for that? They certainly didn't take that perspective, did they?

02:11:57

How could they have argued with the Jews if they actually believed, no, don't understand, we just made this up.

02:12:05

They argue very well with the Jews as long as they get to write the texts. They always win the argument,

02:12:10

I notice. But, for example, if I was a good Pharisaic Jew and knew my Old Testament just as well as they did,

02:12:17

I would say, okay, now let's look at all of this other stuff over here from the Torah that's not in those texts of the prophets.

02:12:23

How is that being fulfilled in your Jesus? And that is why many of his own Jews, his own fellow

02:12:28

Jews, said, no, we don't see it at all. The arguments were there.

02:12:35

They could see specifically, surely, that certain texts fitted very well with Jesus but all sorts of other things seemed to be left out from their point of view.

02:12:44

Doesn't Luke record for us, and I'm not sure what your view of Acts is, but doesn't Luke record for us that very interaction on the part of Paul on a pretty consistent basis?

02:12:56

Certainly, Paul didn't view the fulfillment of prophecy the way you do, did he? I mean, he even said the reason that they rejected was not because they had better arguments.

02:13:07

Romans 9 gives a very different reason for why they reject Jesus as the Messiah. But, as I see it, their understanding of prophetic fulfillment is not the way,

02:13:18

I would say, I think you are taking it, that there's scattered among all the Old Testament, there are, count the numbers you want, 25, 30, 40, 50 texts out of a whole vast literature that refer to Jesus.

02:13:32

Actually, in an open argument, you know, where a Christian Jew and a non -Christian Jew were arguing about that,

02:13:39

I think the Christian Jew is going to lose it on that one because it's a small number of texts, it applies to Jesus, but there's a whole lot of other things.

02:13:48

So, do you think Paul lost those debates he had and that, therefore, the passage you brought up on the

02:13:57

Emmaus Road was more wishful thinking? Because, is that not the substance of the Emmaus Road situation?

02:14:02

Our hearts burned within us as he opened up to us all of the Tanakh, Moses' Law and Prophets.

02:14:08

Is that just wishful thinking? No, I would never use that type of language. What I would say is this, is that yes, he did lose the argument.

02:14:17

Most of Judaism did not accept the Christian option. They went eventually with a different option.

02:14:22

So, yes, he lost the argument. I would love to follow up, but I can't.

02:14:29

Is it tolerable? Am I supposed to be asking questions now? We've got 15 more minutes.

02:14:34

And I concede my first question is for you to follow up and then I get back to it, okay? Let's mess this thing up a bit.

02:14:42

Well, when you say he lost the argument, are you saying he lost the argument on the facts of what those texts were actually saying, or are you assuming that his purpose in the argument was to bring about the conversion of every single

02:14:58

Jew and that he felt that just simply argument alone was enough to bring about their conversion? That's where I would read

02:15:04

Paul in a very different way in that perspective. And my question was, did he lose the argument because he didn't have a decent argument, that Jesus didn't fulfill these passages?

02:15:14

That's what I was trying to ask. No, I'm sorry. No, he has a very good argument for Christian faith. I think

02:15:20

Paul would have known that even if he's arguing with a fellow Jew, that it's not a question of argument that's going to really solve it.

02:15:29

It does require an act of faith. That yes, I can see all of those, too, coming to completion in Jesus.

02:15:37

But I understand that a Jewish brother or sister doesn't see it. Now, am

02:15:42

I supposed to be asking this? All right. I don't know if I have any left. Let me see.

02:15:53

Let me get back to presuppositions. I haven't really thought this out. I think the presuppositions that are important for me in terms of talking about God is that I don't understand

02:16:13

God as intervening. I think of God as He's always present.

02:16:22

Now, I'm supposed to be asking you. Go ahead. That's all right. This is the direction

02:16:28

I'd want to go anyways. Why would you think of intervention, which kind of gives me the idea that God seems to be absent otherwise?

02:16:36

No, that's certainly not what I mean by intervention at all. I do believe that God is present in all of His creation.

02:16:44

In fact, I believe very firmly that God is the creator of all things, created time itself, and that He is sovereign over events in time.

02:16:52

That's why God has all knowledge of future events. I'm not sure if you believe that God has knowledge of all future events or not.

02:16:58

I really don't. I've not been able to determine that. I've been trying to listen, but maybe it's just simply the topics

02:17:03

I've heard you speaking on that has not been able to give me that information. But I believe that He does because of His sovereign decree.

02:17:09

And when I speak of intervention, I'm speaking of the very historical events, let's use tonight's debate as the example, of the

02:17:17

Gospels themselves, such as miracles. That is, things that testify as the signs in John 6.

02:17:27

He did this sign that demonstrated who He was. These were signs. Lazarus, the wedding at Cana of Galilee, and the wine.

02:17:35

These were signs that involved at times the violation of the natural order of things, but they did so for a specific purpose.

02:17:44

I don't believe that God is about doing that on every single day because He's already provided His testimony as to who

02:17:50

His Son was and the uniqueness of His Son, especially by raising Him from the dead. Intervention doesn't mean

02:17:56

He's on vacation. He is present in His creation at all times, but He has chosen at specific times to enter into that creation in a miraculous fashion as testimony to Christ and, of course, ultimately, the greatest invasion, the

02:18:12

Incarnation. Because I believe what John says. I believe that the one who walked the shores of Galilee was my

02:18:19

Creator. I believe that as I sit here, every beat of my heart and every breath of my mouth comes from His hand and that He has eternally existed and will eternally exist.

02:18:29

And that has to impact my daily life. You didn't have the opportunity of attending the conference we're doing.

02:18:36

Last night we prayed for you a lot. I hope that's a good thing. But one of the things that we mentioned, even this morning, was the fact that if our faith in the

02:18:48

Word of God is going to have any meaning, it must impact our daily life, how we live under the

02:18:54

Lordship of Christ. And so that's just part and parcel of how I understand. And I think

02:19:01

I could argue pretty persuasively that my viewpoint of God is the same as the Apostle Paul's.

02:19:06

And I think it's the same as John's. I look at John 6 and the Capernaum discourse with the unbelievers and what

02:19:14

Jesus does there. Perfectly harmonious. That's one of the beauties I see, Dr. Cross, in the

02:19:19

Word of God is the harmony that exists between these writers. And I can only explain that in that the

02:19:26

Spirit that speaks through them is not causing them to change the historical realities or to say, that doesn't work to use your language for my people, but it brings about a perfect harmony between them, even though they may use different terms to express it.

02:19:39

I just don't understand trying to see them or having to see them as being in contradiction to one another or in redactionary relationship to one another.

02:19:49

Okay. For example, though, if you imagine three people looking at the crucifixion, the

02:19:58

Roman soldier, acting out of Roman faith, probably says, well, that's one more subversive out of the way.

02:20:08

A non -Christian Jew might look at exactly the same phenomenon, look at the same data, whatever, and say, another one of our poor martyrs.

02:20:17

Nothing more. And the Christian looks at the salvific death of the Son of God. Those are three people looking at the same historical phenomenon, if you will.

02:20:30

Each of those is making an act of faith, as far as I'm concerned. The Roman does not lack faith. He has Roman faith.

02:20:35

He doesn't have Christian faith. If you were, say, debating with all, debating with the two of those, how would you persuade them?

02:20:48

You'd have to persuade them out of their faith into another faith. And that I understand completely. That's what

02:20:53

Paul has to do because millions of people do believe Caesar is Son of God. Well, a number of things.

02:21:00

First of all, given the assumptions that you have made concerning the materials,

02:21:05

I would have no materials with which to work to convince them of anything, to be perfectly honest with you. And if you recall, and I hate to bring this up in the middle of the debate because people don't have the context, but I think one of the most significant things

02:21:18

I listened to in the many, many hours where I was studying your perspective and seeking to understand it was a fellow from,

02:21:25

I think it was Alabama or Arkansas in March of this year who asked you a question during the question -answer period.

02:21:31

He had a very thick accent and there was some chuckling about how thick his southern accent was, especially in light of the

02:21:38

British accent and the Irish accent that were responding to him. And he asked you a question and he said, so what you're saying is someone in the first century, whether they chose to follow the

02:21:51

Roman religion, the Gnostic religion or the Christian religion, it was all arbitrary.

02:21:57

There's nothing factual that demonstrates that one is true and one is not.

02:22:02

And you said, I wish I could prove it to you but that's what faith is all about. And you even said, the

02:22:09

Roman religion might have won out. Maybe Gnosticism might have won out. They didn't. It almost sounded like they could have, theoretically, from your viewpoint.

02:22:17

I don't know. I don't know. But you see, from my perspective, I would do what the gospel writers do.

02:22:24

They don't just put Jesus on a cross. They let him explain who he is before he ever gets there.

02:22:30

And they let him by his actions and by his words, which you believe are parables written later to minister to a particular audience in a particular situation.

02:22:43

I believe that they are transcendent. I believe that they are exactly what Jesus said and did and that the reason that they can apply to every person at every time in every generation is because of the fact that they are divine in nature.

02:22:58

The gospel isn't limited in that way. No matter where our technology takes us, that gospel is still going to speak to the fundamental need of the sinful heart of the human being.

02:23:09

And that's why it doesn't have to be updated because our sinful hearts can't be updated. We can't download any patches for depravity.

02:23:16

It is simply the way... I know you're an Apple guy, okay? And so you're on a different plane there.

02:23:26

But obviously, I think I'm speaking in accordance with the apostles themselves.

02:23:32

Human need has remained the same constantly. And it is a need that is internal.

02:23:38

It is a need that is alienation from God. It's sin. And so the

02:23:43

Jesus, you know, you say, how could you convince them? I'd go back and tell them about the person who's up on that cross.

02:23:51

What he said and what he did. And as the apostle Paul believed, he recognized that that message to certain

02:23:59

Jews was what? Moronos. Foolishness. But do you not think, going back to your...

02:24:04

Scandalon, I'm sorry. I'm still asking. Yes, I'm sorry. No, no, I'm trying to remember what I'm supposed to be doing.

02:24:12

You kind of shocked me when you said that the depravity of the human heart has not been upgraded.

02:24:18

I think the 20th century is the worst century in the history of the world that I know of.

02:24:25

We are getting better and better at evil. I really think we are. The worst day of the

02:24:30

Roman Empire's slaughter had to stop at sunset because it was dark and they couldn't hold the sword after so much blood.

02:24:38

Yeah, I do think that the depravity is getting worse and worse and that the gospel has to be,

02:24:44

I didn't want to say updated, upgraded, applied is a simple word. Maybe I will even withdraw the upgraded and say but Matthew, Mark, Luke are applying the one gospel, the only gospel to their situation.

02:24:58

Now, applied means a freedom that I would not have imagined unless I could see it in the texts and you cannot see it in the texts because it strikes you rather that they are harmonious.

02:25:11

But the problem is that freedom results in not the application of the one gospel to each generation but a reforming of that gospel into something that is very different.

02:25:26

I don't believe, obviously, that the gospel can be defined down to radical egalitarianism, divine justice, and common shared meal because what is missing as far as I can see is the constant emphasis of the gospel writers themselves upon the issue of sin.

02:25:46

Wait a second, wait a second. But divine justice is primarily against, if I could use that phrase, human injustice which

02:25:56

I've noticed you've been using and I would do the same. Sin, like Paul would, as a singular, that is alienation from God.

02:26:04

So I do find that divine justice speaks directly, intractably, to our sin,

02:26:13

S -I -N, the big S, the big hamartia, which is human injustice, the refusal to accept something which is there since the first account of creation in Genesis, that God is just and the world belongs to God.

02:26:27

And while I would see that as a part of sin, that does not bring into its focus idolatry.

02:26:36

It does not bring into its focus sexual sin, which is a rejection of God's right to define who we are as individuals.

02:26:44

It does not bring into the realm the wrath of God against sin. It does not bring into it our pride, our arrogance.

02:26:51

There's much more to hamartia than social justice. There is the personal concept of that and the necessity, and this is where we, where I'm not going to ask you where did you abandon this, because I don't know,

02:27:09

I even, believe it or not, I even read your autobiography just to have an idea because one of the questions in my mind was, if you've looked at my bio, you know that I've done about 36 debates against Roman Catholic apologists.

02:27:24

And something tells me you'd probably, these days, would probably agree with most of what I had to say, especially on the historical stuff, interestingly enough.

02:27:32

My question was, in looking at John Dominic Crossan, and a number of the people in this audience will tell you that I think last night or this morning,

02:27:41

I looked out at them and I said, the man I'll be debating tonight is at least 20

02:27:47

IQ points above anyone I've ever debated before. Tremendous speaker and a tremendous writer. Anybody who can write an autobiography about a biblical scholar and make it a page turner is a pretty bright guy.

02:27:58

All right? So I have a hard time, so my question, the reason

02:28:03

I was looking at your story, this concept of wrath against sin is a part of what

02:28:11

I assumed would be your upbringing. And it's a part of Roman Catholicism. It's not a part any longer of the theology that I hear you enunciating in regards to who

02:28:21

Jesus was, what the proclamation of the kingdom of God. It's all become the social justice, because the issue of atonement and sacrifice is missing.

02:28:30

Am I not correct? No. Let me hold you on social justice. You do know, because you've been reading so much of me that...

02:28:38

Does that scare you, sir? No. No. No, I think it shows me your good taste.

02:28:54

But when you told me you were doing it on a bicycle, I have great admiration. No. I very deliberately have avoided the term social justice, very much, because I think the term that the

02:29:12

Bible would use and the prophets would use, but for two reasons. One is that they always speak of divine justice, which is transcendental, which is rougher stuff than anything we imagine in social justice.

02:29:21

And we could do a lot more social justice to make clear that. Just that divine justice is much, much rougher.

02:29:28

And I also use it as an aside, because I don't want somebody to use social justice to exempt them from ecclesiastical justice, if you see what

02:29:36

I mean, being a Roman Catholic. So divine justice, I am utterly convinced that the world belongs to God and that God is just and that we can do whatever we want with it, but it will not work any other way.

02:29:52

Okay. No, that's basically it. Okay. Now, who's supposed to be doing what?

02:29:59

We are going to take... Well, let's continue on. We have 10 -minute closing statements, beginning with Dr.

02:30:06

White. Thank you very much.

02:30:16

I truly am very thankful for the cross -examination period that just took place.

02:30:23

First of all, this is my 57th moderated public debate, and very rarely has there been,

02:30:32

I think, as revelational, an exchange where there was no acrimony, where there was an ability to address the issues in the way that they needed to be addressed, and I think that was tremendously useful.

02:30:48

As you are reviewing this in the future on DVD or something like that, I would roll back and do that one a second time before rolling through the closing credits, shall we say, because we just heard,

02:31:00

I think, some extremely important discussion, and I think we are seeing that as I began,

02:31:08

I truly believe, and let me give some autobiographical information here. When we sought to first arrange this debate, my experience with the

02:31:20

Jesus Seminar had not been an overly positive one. As some of you know, in 1989, as a seminary student,

02:31:27

I had been asked by a local radio station to interact with Dr. Robert Funk on the fact that the

02:31:33

Jesus Seminar had just decided Jesus had never said he was coming back, so he's not. That's a rather bald way of putting it, no pun intended, but at that time,

02:31:44

I wasn't bald, so that doesn't really count, but in the course of that conversation,

02:31:50

I was informed that men like F .F. Bruce and Dr. Leon Morris were fringe scholars, and eventually, we were told to go to hell and hung up upon, and I sort of assumed, sadly, that that was representative.

02:32:05

As I began to study the works of my opponent this evening, I was immediately struck by the fact that not only did he take a very different approach in manner and in speech, but that the issue was going to be one that required a discussion of our starting points.

02:32:27

Our starting points, as I saw, determined everything that followed from that point.

02:32:33

Everything, every difference, as we illustrated briefly during the rebuttal period, and it would be so useful to be able to do this on an expanded basis, but to take, for example,

02:32:43

Dr. Crossan's major work in this subject, The Historical Jesus, The Life of a

02:32:49

Mediterranean Jewish Peasant, and to work through it and to look at various synoptic issues that are raised.

02:32:55

I briefly mentioned, for example, what the disciples were to take with them when they went out on their journeys, and the significance that Dr.

02:33:04

Crossan reads in those passages and where it comes from. It would be so useful for us to spend time doing what we did with Mark and John, what we did with the feeding of the 5 ,000, and going into the text and my saying, see,

02:33:18

Jesus isn't out of control in Mark. That contrast is missing this element and that element, and going to the text and seeing exactly how that works, that would be extremely useful, but I recognize that in a debate like this, to recognize how someone could study with almost no interruption at all in a monastery in the 1960s, even so, the

02:33:44

Gospels in the original languages and come to not only conclusions that are completely different than my own, but I think

02:33:54

Dr. Crossan would admit totally different than those of the communion in which he was a part when he undertook that study, and I don't believe that,

02:34:04

I certainly saw no evidence that he went into his theological education or into those studies with a preconception of these issues, certainly had no reason to find as a conclusion that Jesus' body is buried in a shallow grave where he has no reason to believe in the

02:34:22

Joseph of Arimathea. All of those things, he comes to some very important conclusions that are radically different where I come from.

02:34:31

How does he get there? I'm reading the same Greek text he's reading. How do you get there?

02:34:38

What explains such a radical difference? Now, I do believe that on the part of many in the

02:34:46

Jesus Seminar, that is an overriding presupposition and it is a part of the exact purpose of the existence of the organization itself is to give us, in the words of Robert Funk, a more credible

02:34:57

Jesus because he finds the Jesus of the New Testament incredible and that means he won't believe in that Jesus.

02:35:05

But you see, as I read the New Testament, I recognize that there's nothing new in that. The Apostle Paul said that the proclamation of a crucified

02:35:14

Messiah is a scandalon to the Jew. And to the

02:35:19

Greek, it is morinos, it is foolishness. Nothing's really changed there.

02:35:26

Yeah, we've learned to use our technology. We use computers now to express our depravity. And that means we can do it faster.

02:35:35

We can do it to more people and all the rest of that stuff. But that doesn't change the depravity of the heart of man.

02:35:42

And the fact that that's what needs to be changed and the only way to change that is to bring about peace between man and God and the only way that I understand from the

02:35:51

Scriptures that I can have peace with God is by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and that results in my justification.

02:35:58

That's not a legal fiction. That's a reality. And how do I have that justification?

02:36:05

Because the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and as Paul said, he was raised for our justification. If he was not raised, and I'm sorry,

02:36:11

I do not believe, and this is starting to touch on a debate that is yet to come, but I do not believe that the apostles believed that Jesus was raised simply in the sense that his continuing presence with them meant that they were continuing his paradigm, his kingdom, his radical egalitarianism and shared broken bread.

02:36:32

That's not what resurrection meant. And I don't believe that that's consistent with their proclamation. He was raised from the dead for our justification.

02:36:41

If Jesus Christ be not raised, we are yet in our sins. There is no reconciliation with God. I see no reason in the

02:36:48

New Testament to believe anything other than that. And I do not see any reason to embrace the worldview and presuppositions that leads one to look at these and go, well, they can't be harmonious in the sense that they're talking about miracles and things we know don't happen today.

02:37:09

Well, folks, there's something absolutely amazing about the Christian proclamation that Jesus Christ, in a monotheistic

02:37:18

Jewish context, not in the pagan context of Rome, smack dab within the one culture that said to the rest of the world, our

02:37:27

God is the only God. Your gods don't exist. And they were hated for that.

02:37:33

They were called atheists for that by the Romans. Because they were saying, no God. That is, your

02:37:39

God isn't a God. Right in the middle of that context you have, the

02:37:44

Word became Sark's flesh. And folks, the

02:37:51

Incarnation is an incredible proclamation.

02:37:57

And if God isn't going to accompany that amazing act with others along the way,

02:38:03

I don't know when He's going to do anything at all. I'm not saying God was absent. What I'm saying is, in a special and unique way, as Paul put it in the fullness of time,

02:38:13

Jesus Christ entered into His own creation. Now, there's going to be some pretty amazing things when

02:38:23

God Himself enters into His own creation. And I recognize that's an amazing proclamation for a lot of folks.

02:38:29

How can you believe something like that? Well, you know what? Dr. Crossan would make a good

02:38:37

Calvinist. I said you would make a good

02:38:45

Calvinist. I didn't say you are a good Calvinist. He would make a good

02:38:51

Calvinist. Do you know why? Did you hear the question he asked? How could you convince them? What does a

02:38:57

Calvinist say? I can't. Not because the history isn't true, but because there is something inside the heart that is still in rebellion against His Creator, against His Lord, and that rebellion has to be taken out.

02:39:14

The prophets, what's the illustration they used? Take out a heart of stone, give a heart of flesh.

02:39:20

That's what Calvinists believe. And I happen to be one of that dreaded breed. And the reason that there are men and women from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation, language, educational level, who this day embrace

02:39:36

Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior is because God is still in the business of drawing

02:39:41

His people unto Himself and Christ's sheep continue to hear His voice. Now, you've come here this evening.

02:39:50

I have just a few seconds left. You've come here this evening. As you leave, after hearing all the audience questions, you've heard the best that Dr.

02:39:58

Crossan has and the best that I have. You have a responsibility. You have a responsibility to deal with the information you've heard this evening.

02:40:08

Don't let this evening pass without you making an important decision about who Jesus Christ is to you as well.

02:40:16

Thank you and God bless. Thank you,

02:40:23

Dr. White. Dr. Crossan now has 10 minutes for his closing arguments. Dr.

02:40:32

White and I have different constituencies. We talk to different people most of the time.

02:40:38

I talk to many people who have told me they have left Christianity, left

02:40:44

Christianity, left the church, because they can't believe X happened literally.

02:40:50

Let me put it that way. They can't believe Jesus walked on the waters, let's say. Whatever. I wish

02:40:57

I could simply dismiss that as the depravity of the human heart. It is much more like being trapped in a post -enlightenment world.

02:41:07

As I read a pre -enlightenment world, and I am trying to understand a pre -enlightenment world because I'm absolutely convinced it doesn't think the way

02:41:15

I do. In a pre -enlightenment world, wonderful things can happen. The only question is, why should

02:41:22

I care about your wonderful thing rather than somebody else's? If Paul was arguing, say, about the resurrection of Christ, he could, of course, he could, of course, have somebody say to him, not that couldn't happen, but I don't believe yours happened.

02:41:38

They couldn't say impossibility. I've said that before. I suppose they could say it. You can always pull that.

02:41:45

But they really don't. They really don't. What they are saying is, why should

02:41:51

I care about that? They want to know, and it's a bit crude to say, what's in it for me. Now, when

02:41:56

I talk to people who have abandoned Christianity because they can't believe that Jesus walked on the water, and I know they're not just making up an excuse to get out of something more intransigent.

02:42:08

I ask them to go back and read that text. Read the whole thing. I know it's a desperate thing to mention, but when all else fails, read the text.

02:42:17

It doesn't simply say Jesus walked on the waters. It really doesn't. It says, I think you alluded to it, he sends them off in the boat by themselves, and when they're off in the boat by themselves, they're getting nowhere fast.

02:42:30

And Jesus comes out, not necessarily to help them, comes out, as it were, for a morning walk on the waters. They, again, have to cry out to him to get him into the boat.

02:42:38

It's somewhat similar to the Emmaus one. They have to cry out to get into the boat. When he's in the boat, all is well.

02:42:45

Now, I would say to them, all right, take it literally.

02:42:51

Take it literally, which they will not do, and I don't. What does it mean? It means that Jesus ran a literal exercise to train them that they better get him in the boat.

02:43:06

I take it metaphorically. I think it's a parable. By that I mean, I think they intended it to be a parable.

02:43:13

Could I prove that? I don't think so. Because in the pre -enlightenment world of the first century, there's all sorts of things

02:43:20

I cannot prove whether they were taken literally or metaphorically. I cannot tell you whether the millions of silver denarii that said that Caesar was the son of God, I can't tell you how many people, what percentage took it literally, what percentage took it metaphorically, but I can tell you that millions took it operationally, seriously, programmatically, functionally, that what it really meant is we're getting with the

02:43:49

Roman system. And that therefore, I plead with them, whether you take it literally or you take it metaphorically, please ask, could the meaning be the same?

02:44:03

Now I'm not saying, it doesn't make any difference if you take it literally, I'm saying that I think when you're reading a first century pre -enlightenment text, there is no way you can tell which way they are taking it themselves because they have not asked that question.

02:44:17

If you ask them, is it literal, they probably will give you, it's real. It's real.

02:44:24

It's changing our existence, that makes it real. How can it not be real? You start acting this way and reality changes.

02:44:32

So, with the constituency I'm talking to all the time, I don't want the perfectly valid debate, if you want to have it, of whether you think this is a parable or history.

02:44:43

I don't want to make that the reason why people will not move towards meaning, let alone they believe

02:44:49

Christianity. That's what's important to me. I am not saying, it doesn't matter any difference what you believe in, it's what you do.

02:44:58

I'm not saying that. I'm saying that whether you believe in it literally or you believe it metaphorically should not be the most important thing you think about.

02:45:07

You should also ask, if you take it literally, if you take it metaphorically, what does it mean? That is for me what is most important, because we have more serious things to do than debate, literal and metaphorical.

02:45:22

Now, I was asked at the break, could Jesus just be a parable? Could the whole thing be a parable?

02:45:28

No. No. I've never suggested that. I'm absolutely certain as a historian that I can say certain things about Jesus and that they are vital things, not just he existed.

02:45:39

That Jesus said, the stunningly original statement, that the kingdom of God is not near, imminent, soon, tomorrow, or anything else.

02:45:48

It has already arrived and you're called to participate in it. Which nobody had said before.

02:45:56

That it's not coming soon, but it has arrived. And if you said, excuse me Jesus, if we don't participate, will it function by itself?

02:46:04

I think Jesus would have said, no. We are dealing with something where God is demanding collaboration with us.

02:46:12

That had not been said before. So, what is important for me is

02:46:17

I'm quite willing to debate the difference between my presuppositions, whether I think this is a parable, whether I think this is historical.

02:46:24

But I've not the slightest doubt that Jesus is not a parable, because what is at stake for me, incarnation is about a life.

02:46:32

If it was simply a parable, then we'd have a magnificent fiction about what might be.

02:46:38

And it might be still quite true, but you could always say it can't be done. But since Jesus can live this life, then it can be done.

02:46:47

So no, I'm not saying that Jesus is a parable. I am saying that when

02:46:53

Jesus makes parables about the kingdom of God, he set up a pattern, and when the evangelists talk about Jesus, there's a huge number in there of what

02:47:01

I think are parables. Again, finally, I would simply plead, we have very serious things to do, and I would hope that the two wings, the two sides of Christianity, whatever you call them, liberals, progressives, whatever terms you use, literalists, contextualists, whatever term you use that isn't too offensive to the other side,

02:47:29

I would like to ask, would it be possible to consider that the mystical body of Christ might have a left side and a right side, and much though the left side might not like the right side, now the right side, the left side, could it be possible that we might be able to cooperate because we have very, very serious business to do together?

02:47:53

That is my hope, and that is what I would pray for tonight, and that's what I would hope you would do as well.

02:47:59

Thank you very much. Thank you, Dr. Croson. Yes, would you thank, with me, these two gentlemen for the debate tonight.

02:48:15

What will happen then as we go through the question time, I will hold the microphone.

02:48:21

Please, again, this is not an opportunity. Someone with a question for Dr. Wyatt? But please, this is not a time.

02:48:32

This is not a time for debate, again, and this is also not a time for you to preach.

02:48:38

So this is a time for you to ask a question. Dr. Croson will answer, and then

02:48:45

Dr. Wyatt will have about 30 seconds to be able to respond to that, and vice versa.

02:48:54

And vice versa, okay? If there is a question that is asked to Dr. Wyatt, he will respond, then

02:49:00

Dr. Croson will have about 30 seconds to respond as well. We're going to just go for feel here a little bit.

02:49:07

Yes, we'll try to limit our answers after the question to one minute if possible. Okay, and we can get into some more questions.

02:49:14

Well, let me start first with a question for Dr. Croson. Come on over. Come on over to here so we can hear.

02:49:27

Dr. Croson, I was curious how it is that your method is not inherently self -contradictory when you assert that the historical gospels, or rather the gospels and every other subsequent account of Christ do not necessarily have historical accuracy or truth as a theory of correspondence because they're trying to make the gospel relevant to their culture.

02:49:51

When your very claim that that's what's going on seems to be a pretty serious attempt to make the gospel relevant to our culture, which happens to be post -modern and doesn't believe in any absolute truth, in which case you've undercut your very claim from the beginning as a result.

02:50:09

Okay, gotcha, gotcha. Because basically, truth, as far as I'm concerned, can be contained just as much in a parable as in a piece of history elevated to a parable.

02:50:23

Otherwise, it's just data. The Good Samaritan parable is absolutely true to me.

02:50:28

It's absolutely authentic. It's a clear challenge. What will I do if I find my enemy in the ditch?

02:50:34

Will I share everything with him? The answer to that from Jesus is, yes, if I'm a

02:50:40

Christian. That's truth. I have no idea that you cannot find truth from God in a parable.

02:50:50

The best thing I could say about post -modernism is get over it.

02:50:58

I appreciate that view of post -modernism. I happen to share it. I think one of the key issues is we can...

02:51:07

Okay, the parable of the Good Samaritan, exactly. But to turn the historical events, the crucifixion, the resurrection, the parable, is to change the very proclamation of the early church and of the

02:51:20

New Testament that Jesus Christ's resurrection is the guarantee of our own resurrection and our life after this.

02:51:28

That changes the entirety of the faith itself from my understanding. Okay. Question for Dr.

02:51:35

Croson. Oh, Dr. White. It's sort of a two -part question.

02:51:43

But if Jesus is divine or deity, why would he pray to God?

02:51:51

And in light of the fact that he did pray, what would you say is at the heart of or the essence of the prayer life of Jesus?

02:52:01

Well, to answer the first question, Jesus Christ was not simply God. He was the

02:52:07

God -man. He was God and man, not 50 -50, but fully each.

02:52:13

And obviously if God becomes incarnate in the person of his son, it's the second person of the Trinity who is incarnated, he's not going to be an atheist.

02:52:22

He is going to be one who has communion with his father. He is going to obey his father's commands and his father's law.

02:52:27

And so there is going to, as there was an intimate communion between the father and son, as John 17, 3 -5 tells us, before the incarnation, that is naturally going to continue.

02:52:38

The essence of his prayer life, as we see it in the New Testament, and as we see it in his prayer in John chapter 17, is one of perfect communion and uninterrupted, sinless fellowship with the father, which gives us a sense of what is in store for us in the future when we are redeemed and we are released from the things that mar our communion with God the father, and which

02:53:03

I certainly believe will be the case in the future, in an afterlife, after this life, when we are redeemed and are in the presence of God through Jesus Christ.

02:53:15

One striking thing about the prayer of Jesus is how seldom he prays when he heals.

02:53:24

He, at least, should be polite enough to look up to heaven regularly. But the point is that he is the incarnation of the kingdom of God.

02:53:32

I mean, he sends his own companions out to do the same as he is doing. He forgets to tell them, as it were, remember to pray now before you heal somebody.

02:53:40

They do it all the time in the Acts of the Apostles. If you are in the kingdom of God, as far as Jesus is concerned, you are in union with God, which is primary prayer.

02:53:50

And therefore, you do not have to say, remember to pray. Question for Dr.

02:53:56

Crossan. Dr. Crossan, tonight we have kind of danced around presuppositions.

02:54:02

And I just had a question for you about one of your presuppositions based on something I heard Dr. White say. Essentially, I think the quote was correct, too, when you said something about the atonement of Christ and the fact that it is basically divine child abuse.

02:54:17

And it seems to be that, for you, the idea that Christ would be put to death, that he would be killed according to the plan of God in order to atone for our sin is basically divine child abuse.

02:54:28

It seems like you find a problem with that. I am wondering, by what standard is that a problem for you?

02:54:36

Basically, if this is what the Bible tells, then by what standard can we judge that somehow that is incorrect and that that is the wrong thing for God to do?

02:54:46

I have no problem with the sacrificial language of the Bible, but I don't think the sacrificial language of the

02:54:53

Bible is substitutionary. Nobody in the ancient world who took it for granted that you had a blood sacrifice of an animal, for example, ever thought that the animal substituted for you.

02:55:04

In other words, I should be killed, God, but please take it out in the sheep. That's not the idea.

02:55:11

The sheep is given to God. It comes back to you as a sacrifice made sacred, and you eat with your

02:55:18

God. We have added substitution into sacrifice, and it wasn't there in the beginning.

02:55:25

Sacrifice was somebody, talking of a human being, who gave up their life. Jesus would have known.

02:55:31

It did not require divine foreknowledge after John the Baptist. What he was doing was probably going to get him killed as a martyr, to put it minimally.

02:55:40

The only question was Antipas in Galilee or Pilate in Judea, Jerusalem. Jesus knew he was going to get killed, of course, and he did it.

02:55:48

He did what he had to do, and he was martyred. I'm just putting that on the minimal level.

02:55:55

That's a sacrifice. It is not a substitution. I'm separating sacrifice and substitution.

02:56:02

I don't see any necessity to do substitutionary atonement or vicarious satisfaction to understand the

02:56:08

New Testament. Yet, substitution is a part of the most primitive level of tradition in the

02:56:15

New Testament, as you see in 1 Corinthians 15, when the Apostle Paul records what seems to be an early creedal statement of the church, that Christ died hupere, in our place, and that that concept is clearly in Romans, it's clearly in all of Paul's writings, it's clearly in John, and only by placing them at a much later point in time and, in essence, just saying, well, that was beginning to develop at that time, but it wasn't there at the beginning.

02:56:41

Can you say it was not there at the beginning? I don't see any evidence it was not very primitive. A question for Dr.

02:56:47

White. Throughout the debate,

02:56:53

I heard references to pre -Enlightenment this and Enlightenment that.

02:57:01

I'm ignorant about that. I never heard an explanation. It was just, like, stated like a given, that everybody knew what it was.

02:57:08

What is the Enlightenment? Was that a reference to the Renaissance or something and a type of thought?

02:57:16

And if so, is that kind of assumed that it kind of was opposed to Biblical Christianity, that type of thinking?

02:57:29

And if so, I didn't hear any challenge to that. In other words, what was enlightening about the

02:57:38

Enlightenment? Well, a lot of people would argue there wasn't a whole lot enlightening about the

02:57:44

Enlightenment at that point, but I'll let Dr. Croson, since it's his phrase that he was using repeatedly, to have a little extra time on this if you'd like to specifically give his usage of it, because it was not a usage that I used.

02:57:57

But generally, when that terminology is being used, sir, it is referring to that movement in philosophy and in worldview connected with the concept of what people today, what post -moderns call modernism and the scientific worldview, the concept of man being able to examine and know what takes place by natural processes over simply a supernaturalistic worldview.

02:58:25

It's really a simplistic use of a term. It's used out of convenience, but it refers to a major movement primarily in Western European thinking in regards to the rise of modernism and those things that are based upon a scientific viewpoint of things.

02:58:41

I'll let Dr. Croson define his usage of that term because it was one that he used all the time, especially in regards to the view of the miraculous.

02:58:49

I agree with that. That's more or less exactly what I would have said. I think what was there before the

02:58:54

Enlightenment, however, was that Christianity, which was basically almost Roman Catholicism and Eastern Christianity, had presumed that they could give you the answer on everything.

02:59:05

Everything. They actually couldn't. They were wrong on certain things, most things that weren't that important in one sense.

02:59:12

There was a reaction at the Enlightenment that everything could be explained by science or reason or something like that.

02:59:17

It went from one extreme to the other. I think what we are doing is staggering, tottering back towards some kind of a balance between them.

02:59:28

If fantasy, as I've said before, does not take over both science and religion in the meantime. Question for Dr.

02:59:35

Croson? Dr. Croson, we have this account in the

02:59:43

Synoptic Gospels of the rich young ruler. Lots are going on in that account, lots of different things, but particularly we have six of the

02:59:51

Ten Commandments repeated. One of those is, do not bear false witness.

02:59:58

Do not lie, per se, but do not bear false witness. In other words, I guess, don't say something about someone that's not true when you witness about them.

03:00:09

So, you have these parabolizing evangelists.

03:00:15

Were they breaking their own rules by repeating this? Or by, and I sense,

03:00:23

I understand it, bearing false witness by making parables about a real person? Okay, I think

03:00:28

I've got it. In the general world in which the evangelists lived, it was part of all the rhetorical training that anyone would have.

03:00:38

There's a general. He's going to lead his troops into battle. Prepare a speech. And you'd have to learn how to give the proper speech that a general should give going into battle.

03:00:49

Tacitus one time gives a speech, a brilliant speech, on the side of the Scotch rebels against the

03:00:57

Romans, and an equally brilliant one for the Romans against the Scotch. Equally devastating. You say, no person could make it.

03:01:03

Yes, sure they could. When Luke, for example, let us imagine for the moment that Luke makes up the statement of Jesus on the cross,

03:01:11

Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. I can absolutely trust Luke, trained that way, that this is as far as he can tell us.

03:01:20

The best way he knows to summarize the dying words of Jesus. It's if Luke says, of all

03:01:26

I know about Jesus, and if I don't know, let me say that for the moment, what he said, what would his last words be?

03:01:32

They'd be, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. That is perfectly valid, authentic, basic training in Greek and Roman rhetorical schools.

03:01:43

It's not a lie, it's not a mistake, and I have to trust him that he sums up Jesus correctly, and I do.

03:01:50

I do, but I don't think actually that Jesus said that on the cross. I'm not certain anyone on the cross does much talking.

03:01:57

But actually, it's not bearing false witness. It's bearing the most accurate witness possible.

03:02:03

It's like everyone in this room was asked to write out, you can make it up, what do you think the last words of Jesus were?

03:02:09

Now you can't copy from the Gospels. What do you think personally the last words of Jesus were? How would you summarize

03:02:15

Jesus' life? It would be authentic, I hope, if we're Christians. So, no, it would not be false witness.

03:02:22

Absolutely not. Now would anyone think it was even their opponents in the pagan world?

03:02:30

Of course, I see no evidence that the writers of the Gospels were acting as Greek, those writing

03:02:36

Greek rhetoric and engaging in that kind of activity. In fact, Luke himself, to use that passage, even though it happens to be a rather major textual variant, there's a good reason to believe that that wasn't original on a textual basis.

03:02:48

Let's say that it is. In that context, we have a man writing who himself says that he is writing to Theophilus so that he may know with certainty the things he's been taught.

03:02:58

You don't communicate certainty to someone by saying, well, what I'm actually doing is I'm rhetorically making these up.

03:03:05

Even though that's accepted in other contexts, there's nothing in the Gospel text that tells me that's what he's doing.

03:03:11

I have to assume that based upon, I believe, other presuppositions that I bring to the text. Question for Dr.

03:03:16

Wright? I'm here because of a book that I read by this gentleman here.

03:03:25

Which book was that? Oh, sorry. I can't remember the name, but Jesus Fact, The Fact of Jesus, something like that.

03:03:35

Who was Jesus? Huh? Who was Jesus? I'm not sure. Okay. But let me get back.

03:03:42

Now, it almost changed the course of my faith, but it didn't. And my question is, why are you here?

03:03:49

Are you here because of a debate or that something that the other side says might change the course of a

03:03:58

Christian person's walk? You said you prayed for this gentleman. You're concerned about him.

03:04:05

Are you here for the debate or maybe to help somebody out here?

03:04:12

Well, the debate to me is helping somebody out here. That is, this is the 57th time

03:04:18

I've done this. And this is the first time in this particular context, the first time that Dr.

03:04:24

Cross and I have ever met. But the reason that we all do this, Mr. O 'Fallon does this and Mr. Pearson, we all do this, first and foremost, is out of a love of the

03:04:33

Gospel and a love of the truth as we understand it as it's found in Scripture. We believe that when God's truth is proclaimed,

03:04:39

God's Spirit blesses that proclamation to the hearts of His people and that we are commanded to give a reason for the hope that's within us, yet with gentleness and reverence.

03:04:48

And so, though we are coming from completely different perspectives, you haven't seen any fisticuffs up here, you haven't seen any insults up here.

03:04:55

There may be some people who are disappointed by that, but that's how we do things and that's why we're a small ministry and others are a lot larger than us.

03:05:03

But we honestly believe, we honestly believe that by recording these things and making them available that years down the road,

03:05:11

God can use that to bless other individuals. Don't get me wrong, as much as amiable as our relationship has been up here, obviously, the conclusions we come to are very, very different.

03:05:25

And Dr. Cross and I do not believe he has any illusions about the fact that what he believes is very much a negation of what

03:05:32

I feel is absolutely central to the proclamation of the gospel. And so, I'm not playing nicey -nicey post -modernist up here.

03:05:38

I believe that I can respect him as a man and say he's an extremely intelligent man and at the same time say to follow what he's saying in regards to the resurrection of Christ, in regards to the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ, is extremely dangerous.

03:05:51

And I say that openly, but I say that hopefully without having then to add to that and the

03:05:57

Scots will always beat the Irish. I don't have to say that, see. I don't have to add that in just as a dig, see.

03:06:04

I hope you hear where I'm coming from that. And so, we can honestly just simply trust the spirit of God along those lines.

03:06:12

But you have to remember that the Romans had to retreat before the Scots but they were so scared of the

03:06:17

Irish they never even attacked them. Actually, they said they could take

03:06:25

Ireland and it wouldn't lead you, but who wants it? I think that is very, very important.

03:06:33

There is profound disagreement. I would still want to ask, as I said, where there might be consensus on what we might do about it from different points of view.

03:06:41

But I think it would be bearing false witness to Jesus if we came up here pugilistically.

03:06:50

I think it would be bearing false witness to Jesus. If you speak for Jesus, whatever way you're seeing

03:06:56

Jesus, and you haven't somehow absorbed the spirit of Jesus, then it will show up.

03:07:03

And I think that is important. It is important that the disagreements be laid out honestly, clearly, with no phony letting on.

03:07:13

But it would be false witness to Jesus if either Dr. White or myself came out here fighting.

03:07:20

Sorry if that disappoints anyone. Question for Dr. Cross. I'm sorry.

03:07:29

Yeah. You asked

03:07:38

Mr. White the question, why the independent accounts of the

03:07:44

Gospels? And I assume that he answered that question. Assuming that, about 20 years ago

03:07:51

I stood in line like this at a Walter Martin conference and heard a question asked, and it was about the road to Emmaus account.

03:08:01

And I feel like you did not answer that question that James White brought up about the fact that the eyes were opened of the two individuals, man or woman or two men, however.

03:08:17

And the point, as you like to say, what does that mean, seems to mean to me that Jesus did truly, in fact, rise from the dead bodily.

03:08:32

When their eyes were opened, maybe when he handed them bread they saw the scars in his hands or something like that.

03:08:38

So what I'm asking you is, will you answer the question that he brought up, what about that, their eyes were opened, does that prove that he rose from the dead bodily?

03:08:55

Not in that story. Not in that story, in the Emmaus story, because that's not the function of the story as I see it, but of course it's already there in Luke before that.

03:09:04

The understanding of the story that I have is that you only know Jesus when you bring the stranger into your house and recognize

03:09:12

Jesus in the stranger whom you've invited in to share your meal. The study of the scriptures will warm your heart, and that's very important.

03:09:20

But it's not, it doesn't open your eyes. So what I see that is intended to say is that you have to bring the stranger into your house or you will not have

03:09:29

Jesus in your home. That's not, it's not saying anything about the resurrection in that story.

03:09:35

It's already said in that chapter 24 before and after. We will continue to shine the light in the darkness here.

03:09:45

Obviously as I look at Luke as I brought up, what he himself says is their own comment in regards to the appearance of Jesus is, did not our hearts burn within us when he opened the scriptures to us?

03:09:58

And what was he doing? He was demonstrating the prophetic fulfillment of who he was and that prediction that pointed to him.

03:10:08

And so I simply let the text itself, the authors themselves, recognize and tell us what it is they're trying to communicate.

03:10:16

A question for Dr. White. I preface my question by saying

03:10:23

I do believe in the literal word of God. But I would really like to have your reaction to something that Dr.

03:10:28

Cross ended with. And I find I hear it a lot today but how I'm going to interpret it is whether or not we believe scripture is literal or we believe it's a story.

03:10:41

As long as we get the ultimate meaning, that's all that matters. So I would like to hear your reaction if you had a chance to speak after that in terms of,

03:10:50

I know what the ultimate meaning is, but what do you, how would you interpret throughout your study what Dr. Crossman's feeling is with what the ultimate meaning of scripture is?

03:11:00

I appreciate even the 60 seconds to comment on that because I do not believe that the meaning of those scriptures can be communicated outside of their reality.

03:11:12

Only by assuming that they're all parables can we come to that kind of a conclusion that well, as long as you get the point.

03:11:20

The problem is if it didn't happen in history, the point becomes whatever you want to make it. The point becomes very subjective.

03:11:26

That's why I brought up initially this idea that this methodology has led to all sorts of different views of who

03:11:32

Jesus is. And when that leads you to a Jesus who does not substitutionarily bear in his body the wrath of God against sin, you're not going to take sin as importantly as Jesus did.

03:11:45

And the Christian message has always been that faith is focused not in what I feel

03:11:51

Jesus is to me, but in who Jesus truly was. That's why, that's what can bind the body together is the fact that we have that revelation from God that's historically true.

03:12:02

It's historically sound. If we don't have that, there's nothing that actually binds us together other than our volunteerism and saying, you know what,

03:12:09

I'm going to let Jesus mean something to me. It may not be what he means to you. That's not the unity of the body of Christ and that's not what the proclamation of faith is in the

03:12:18

New Testament. I see no evidence of that. In John's Gospel, Jesus said, in my

03:12:24

Father's house there's many rooms. I think there are differences among Christians before we got into anything tonight.

03:12:31

They've been there from the very beginning. The question is, can we Christians, despite our differences, unite to do something important in the world?

03:12:41

Not because our differences are irrelevant, but we can go on arguing about our differences if we had nothing else to do and the world was doing just fine, then that would be a marvelous luxury.

03:12:51

What I'm saying is, we have differences. They're important. Are there any common meanings that we might be able to take out into the world?

03:13:00

That's my question. A question for Dr. Crosson. How much time do we have?

03:13:09

Five minutes? Five minutes. Five minutes. Dr. Crosson, I've been trying to figure out what you actually believe about purpose in life and I didn't hear it stated here at all.

03:13:18

So my question is, do you believe you need to be saved from anything? If so, what is it?

03:13:24

And how is it done? If not, if you're just here to live your life and then you just die and that's it, why haven't you killed yourself already?

03:13:33

As you pointed out, this world is getting worse, evil -wise, and you've suffered probably worse and all that, so why wouldn't you have ended your life to avoid that?

03:13:45

Never even occurred to me actually to think about that. No, I think it's quite clear that since I am a

03:13:56

Christian, maybe not the type that other people are, but that's all right. I can tolerate their difference if they can tolerate mine.

03:14:03

I think the world has been getting steadily worse in the last 2 ,000 years because our capacity for violence has been growing exponentially.

03:14:12

Not because we're getting more evil, I think we're just about as good and bad as we've always been, but our toys are getting more dangerous.

03:14:21

So I think that Christianity is one of the great forces. It's not the only one, and it has its own problems, but it is one of the great forces for good in the world when it has not been an awful force for evil in the world.

03:14:38

But I'm still convinced that we got a warning 2 ,000 years ago that we better take seriously.

03:14:44

Well, Dr. Cross, I think this really illustrates one of the most important things for me is that when you say, can we get together?

03:14:52

From my perspective, the only thing that can change this world is to change the human heart. The only thing that can change the human heart is the gospel of Jesus Christ, and that gospel, by definition, by apostolic definition, involves the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ for the removal of the wrath of God against the sin of mankind.

03:15:13

And I see the statement that you're making and the perspective that you're making closing the door on changing this world because without that gospel, we can't change the hearts of those who have their fingers on the buttons of those nasty toys.

03:15:31

And so I see the gospel as the power of God, and that's what motivates us to do the type of debate that we're doing this evening.

03:15:39

Okay, a question for Dr. White. We're going to take two more questions. I'm sorry. We've got to cut it off sometime, and these guys, and especially

03:15:46

Dr. Cross, comes from the East Coast, so it's about 2 o 'clock in the morning. Dr.

03:15:53

White, throughout the debate, one of the things that was coming in my mind, over and over again, was that it seems like you guys have different definitions of what a parable is.

03:16:05

So I don't know if this is just an impression that I'm having. So I guess the question I would ask is, what is a parable, and what is the purpose of a parable?

03:16:15

And let me follow that by saying that it seems like sometimes Jesus uses parables to confuse people, and Dr.

03:16:23

Cross is saying that sometimes gospel writers are writing in this parabolic language to make it relevant.

03:16:31

So my question is, the sections that Dr. Cross says is parable, is that consistent with your understanding of what a parable is?

03:16:40

I think the primary difference we have is in how we recognize parable. I think that you can recognize parable by certain literary means and methodologies, the introduction, the nature of the story, the function that it has, and that's exactly what you don't have in so much of the historical narrative of the gospels themselves.

03:17:02

That's why I see no reason to take those stories as parable, and you're exactly right.

03:17:07

Jesus clearly did use parable to hide the message from those who stood in opposition to it, and that would be a very different use of the concept of parable.

03:17:20

So I don't know that we're defining it differently. I think what we're doing is we have a disagreement as to how you recognize what is and what is not parable, and I don't see any of the marks of parable that clearly are in the gospels when we're talking about the historical events of Jesus's life where the gospel writers go out of their way to place it within historical context that people could have easily demonstrated never actually happened and that are constituently a part of the definition of the gospel message.

03:17:50

Yes, and I would agree with that. It's really a divergence in recognition. I'm not certain there's any way you can say absolutely this shows up as a parable.

03:18:00

I don't think so. Last question for Dr. Krasom. I'm really thankful for a great debate.

03:18:11

I'm glad that it's happening in Seattle so I don't have to go anywhere. In your closing statement you said and you mentioned that in your opening statement also that we should pretty much ask ourselves a question, what does it mean after all?

03:18:28

Rather than was it historical, was it literal, or was it factual? But wouldn't you agree with me that exactly how we look at it, that's going to change the whole question what it means, especially if we look at serious issues such as resurrection, incarnation, judgment of God.

03:18:50

So what I'm trying to ask you, wouldn't you agree with me that it will radically change my opinion how

03:18:59

I will look at things after asking my question what it means? Because if it is historical, I will come to radically different conclusions of all these parables, not actually parables, but the real events that took place, versus that if I really take it literal.

03:19:15

I will have to come, would you agree with me that I will really come to different conclusions? No, I wouldn't agree with you to be honest with you.

03:19:26

There are scholars I know who read everything in the gospel literally and don't believe a word of it.

03:19:33

But they take it literally. So my question again is not that it would make no difference whatsoever,

03:19:41

I'm not saying that. I am asking, granted that this difference is here, that it's been around for 200 years, that it doesn't look to me like it's going away, though people may shift from one to the other,

03:19:50

I know that. I want to know, can we say, this is one issue between us, it doesn't look like we're going to really change one another on it.

03:20:01

And could we ask, what is the meaning of it in terms of action in this world?

03:20:08

Jesus tells us, not enough to say, Lord, Lord, you got to do it. So I want to know, is there any agreement about meaning that might give us a basis for action in the world?

03:20:17

That is my question. In conclusion, I would say that the issue is not what it means to me.

03:20:25

The issue is, has it had the same meaning all along that we can then trust the Holy Spirit of God to apply in each and every generation, in each and every culture, in each and every language, making the gospel something that can change this world, or are we stuck with a gospel that is a matter of personal opinion and each person is allowed to construct

03:20:43

Jesus based upon what he will or will not see in the text and accept in the text. That's the difference that I see in the final analysis.

03:20:53

And with that, thank you so much for coming and being a part of this tonight. Once again, will you thank these two gentlemen for the time that they've put into this.