AW! Epistles
From Russell Odell 1
Abstract
Wednesday, September 06, 2000
You have the most provocative, informative, interesting website I have ever found. My motto is "Unshared knowledge is knowledge wasted". I thank you for sharing your knowledge.
Thank you. It is nice to be appreciated and, although the e-mail we get is predominantly favourable, we do not get vast amounts of it. We are at a narrow seam between Christians who do not want to read the truth, and most ordinary people happy to live secular lives with only a nod toward Christianity when obliged to commit themselves on their religion. That narrow band of people between seem to like what we have to say. We hope that they will discuss it among themselves and spread news of our website as a useful resource.
I received your "AskWhy Update 5" this evening and wish to thank you for sending it to me. I particularly liked the 22 page discourse on Moses and the Exodus from Egypt (that never happened), Your 7 pages of Who Wrote the Hebrew Scriptures? And your 15 pages on poor old King David, the sling-shot king. I am looking forward to reading about the fabulous Miss Esther.
I agitate a few folks when I tell them God never wrote one word of the O.T. and Christ never wrote one word of the N.T. I used to have a very good friend that had a Ph.D. in theology and was very proud of it. When I told him his Ph.D. really meant he had a doctorate in FAITH, he doesn’t know me any more. You win some and you lose some. So be it. By the way, do you know that the Church of England doesn’t believe in the resurrection? I have an article on it if you want it.
Thanks again for you kind words. What you say about your ’friend’ does not surprise me. Christians always want to seem loving, but begin to contradict them and love goes!
Yes, I’d like to have the article. Have you got it in a form you can send by e-mail? If not, send me the reference, and perhaps I can find it myself.
You wrote to send your article THE RESURRECTION AND THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND ©1997 Russell Odell. Many thanks for this and your other article. If you have these on your own webpages, I should be grateful to have a link. If not, I would be happy to put your resurrection piece on my site, perhaps on my "streuth!" (God’s Truth) pages. If it was published, I would also like to quote the publication.
Oddly enough I have just bought the book by Hick that you speak of.
The Resurrection and the Church of England
© 1986 Russell Odell
Why is it necessary for hundreds of Apologetic Writers to write books and make audio and VCR tapes to explain one book—the bible. Why are there so many loopholes in the bible that all these various story books and tapes are necessary? Regardless of their intellectual credentials what they are writing is only their interpretation of the bible and implying what they say is god-sanctioned and not to be questioned.
A Ph.D. in Theology actually means that one has a doctorate in Faith in what one believes. Some believe that Jesus rose from the dead, while others of these learned men say Jesus didn’t. No where in the bible does it tell of anyone actually seeing Jesus raise from the dead. It is the backbone of the Christian faith and yet no one saw it. It only tells that the tomb was found empty. All else is conjecture, stories, illusions, hallucinations that can be summed up as blind faith.
"Did Jesus Rise Bodily? Most Scholars Say No," was the caption of a full page article in the Los Angeles TIMES, Monday, September 5, 1977.
The Rev. John Hick, a Birmingham University theology professor and editor of the book, The Myth of God Incarnate, a collection of essays by seven British theologians says, "Jesus was best understood as ’a man approved by God’ (as he was described in Acts 2:22) for a special role in the divine purpose."
[Acts 2:22 KJV. "Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know.]
The Rev. Hick said at a news conference that virtually all scholars agreed that Jesus had not presented himself as divine although many church members are not aware of this."
Co-author Maurice Wiles, recently the chairman of the Church of England’s doctrine commission, said the Christian Church, "Has never succeeded in offering a consistent or convincing picture" of Jesus as both fully human and fully divine. Some scholars’ assumption is that when Christ was baptized God said, "Thou art my beloved Son; in whom I am well pleased" (Luke 3:22) established the divinity of Jesus. This, of course, is highly questionable because, God would say the same thing of Billy Graham".
The Times story continued with, "For instance, at the nine-school, Catholic and Protestant Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, which has the largest theological faculty in the world, New Testament professor Edward Hobbs said he didn’t know of one school there in which a significant part of the faculty would accept statements that Jesus rose physically from the dead or that Jesus was a divine being."
Hobbs said, "Students come here in the first year, and many of them are shocked and ask why they weren’t told."
Hobbs continued, "The only answer is that many of the clergy are afraid, so they keep quiet about things they learned in seminary."
Reverend Hick’s book did cause a furor of some consequence in Great Britain. Another five theologians rushed to publish a rebuttal, The Truth of God Incarnate.
TIME Magazine was quick to comment on both books by remarking that Reverend Hick’s book was a typical attack "from the Christian left" while the rebuttal book was written by a "blue-ribbon panel" and presents "well-framed academic arguments." This is to imply that the professors who wrote the essays edited by the Reverend Hick’s were inferior in their academic qualifications. The editors of TIME Magazine should have done their homework before implying such blatant assumptions.
The gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John cannot be viewed as biographies of Jesus. There are too many missing important items to be regarded as such. At most, they are narratives written years after the death of Jesus by writers who colored their stories by how they thought of their friend Jesus.
Leander Keck of Atlanders Candler School of Theology thinks, "There is a growing consensus that many of the statements of Jesus are not to be regarded as literal statements of what Jesus said, but highly sophisticated restatements in which the gospel writers try to convey Jesus’ meaning. Stories were told in the service of worship and faith."
On October 27, 1984, my local paper The Hemet News, carried a story out of London by the Associated Press that was startling, calling Bishop Call’s Resurrection a ’Conjuring Trick With Bones’. He did not explain what he meant by that statement, but added, "Unless you believe God raised up Jesus, there is no need to believe in Christianity."
It told of Dr. David Jenkins, 59, a former theology professor, who made a pre-recorded commentary for the BBC’s Religious Affairs saying he did not believe in the Virgin Birth of Christ nor in his resurrection.
Jenkins, whose appointment as Bishop of Durham, makes him the fourth most senior cleric in the Church of England to express such views. His appointment as Bishop, stirred angry reaction amongst other priests and the laity of the Church.
However, the Archbishop of York, the Most Rev. John Habgood, went ahead with Jenkins’ consecration despite a 12,500 signature petition signed by priests and laity demanding that the consecration service be called off.
The Hemet News reported, "At the time of his consecration, one of the organizers of the protest, the Rev. David Holloway said, ’The Church has been, and is, deeply divided because someone has been appointed who appears to be denying… absolutely fundamental beliefs of Christianity’.
"Jenkins was chosen as Bishop of Durham by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Robert Runcie, leader of the 65-million member of the worldwide Anglican communion. Queen Elizabeth II of England is the secular head of the Church of Britain."
As for the bible stories themselves concerning the resurrected Jesus appearing to his disciples, some scholars refer to them as Easter Visions, or dramatic imagery seen through the eyes of faith.
The Rev. John Burke, executive director (1977) of The Word of God Institute, a Catholic organization devoted partly to that task, said he did not know of "any credible biblical scholar who would hold for a bodily resurrection."
The TIMES story told of theologian Robert McAfee Brown of Union Theological Seminary, New York, recently urged the "Churches not to concern themselves with questions from nonbelievers but with those from the poor and downtrodden.
"In groups I have been affiliated with we were hard pressed to accept a bodily resurrection. No Scripture gives an account of anyone seeing Jesus rise from the dead. It is an assumption you must believe by faith."
The contradictory reporting of the four Gospel writers doesn’t help to clear up the matter. Matthew (28:1-6) tells when the women came to the tomb of Christ, there was a great earthquake and an angel descended from heaven and rolled back the stone door of the tomb. The angel said to the women, "He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay."
Mark (16:1-6) tells a different story. There was no great earthquake. The women were wondering how they were going to open the tomb to anoint Christ’s body with their spices as was the custom. As they approached the tomb, imagine their surprise to find that the stone door had already been rolled away. As no one was around they went inside and saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment who said to them, "Be not affrighted: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him." No further mention is made of who this young man was.
Luke (24:1-8) has another version. The women arrived at the tomb and found it opened. No one was around so they went in and noticed the body of Christ was not there. Suddenly, two men appeared in shining garments. One of them spoke saying, "Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee, saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again."
We must remember that Luke never saw Christ therefore, Luke could only write about what he heard or was told by Paul, his mentor. Paul often spoke of Luke as "the beloved physician".
The Gospel story as written by John, the beloved disciple, makes no mention of the virgin birth of Christ; nothing about his boyhood; the transfiguration nor of Christ’s ascension. This is very odd indeed, but many bible scholars have many stories that, according to their interpretation, this should not be regarded as unusual. I think it is most unusual.
The average Sunday church member is not aware that such drastic differences of theological thinking exists. No leader of his flock will call it to their attention. When people begin to ask such questions and seek determinedly for a plausible answer, membership may become wobbly. The less said about the dissension in the church’s hierarchy, the better.
When I use to go to the Baptist Church, I was told Jesus had to come into this world through a human as that was part of God’s plan for the world. As we know, the Virgin Mary was the mother of Christ. The Spirit of the Son of God was to inherit a human body and be subjected to the vices of the human race to prove he could live without sin.
At the time of His crucifixion, as told in Luke (23:46) when Christ commended His spirit to God and gave up the ghost, the human body the spirit left was of no further use. It had served its purpose. This is the story that was preached to me.
The problem thickens, to my way of understanding. Why was it necessary for the spirit of Christ to return an enter this dead mortal body after he had commended his spirit to God on the cross? Of what use was this dead mortal body? This conflicts with what I was taught in church and I think this is a very weak part of the whole story.
If we are to believe the Gospels, Christ’s spirit returned to his crucified mortal body. Was Christ mortal again? He must have been because we can read in John (20:25-29) where Thomas would not believe Christ arose from the dead unless he could put his finger in the nail holes of Christ’s hands. This Thomas was able to do. He could feel the flesh and the bone and the nail holes in the flesh. This not only defies the logic of what we are taught about spirits in Church, it defies common sense.
It is confusing to learn the hierarchy of the Christian Church believes opposite to what they teach the lay members of the Church. It makes the Easter Sunrise Services a mockery. The Christian Faith is based on the resurrection of Christ. If there was no resurrection, is there Christianity?
