The problem is not that Paul never mentions Jesus Christ. He does so frequently, although curiously enough he never once speaks of him as “Jesus of Nazareth.” Nazareth makes no appearance whatever. What is puzzling is that Paul makes no firm biographical references to Jesus. The bulk of what is said about Jesus in the four Gospels has to do with two categories of activity: his miracles and his teachings. But with a silence that scholars such as G. Bornkamm have described as “astonishing,” Paul makes no direct references to either of these. Miracles were widely regarded in the Judaism of that time as expected accompaniments of any would-be valid claim to Messianic authenticity. Jesus purportedly performed dozens of them, but Paul says not a word in this regard. The silence over Jesus’s teachings is perhaps even more surprising since Paul’s letters are filled with moral admonitions, often upon subjects where Jesus reportedly had much to say himself. Surely Paul’s arguments would have been enormously strengthened if he had been able to quote from the Master. But, quite surprisingly, he does not.
One instance of this discrepancy has always leaped out at me as particularly glaring, and I have yet to read a persuasive conservative response to the dilemma it poses. What I have in mind is a very moving passage in Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. It is in chapter 8, one of my favourite chapters in this, his most famous letter. Speaking of prayer, the Apostle makes the quite startling statement in verse 26: “For we know not what we should pray for as we ought . . .” Here, if anywhere, if it really was an accepted tradition based on historical fact and he knew about it, is the place one would expect him to quote or in some way refer to the Lord’s Prayer. After all, remember that in the Gospels Jesus is said in Matthew 6:9 to have introduced the prayer with the words: “Pray then like this . . .” He is responding to a direct request from his disciples: “Lord, teach us how to pray.” But Paul nowhere cites this prayer in whole or in part! This is little short of astounding.
The British scholar George A. Wells, who has written seven books on the mythical nature of the New Testament’s portrayal of Jesus, sifts the relevant Pauline materials extremely finely. He finds it particularly revealing that when it comes to the Crucifixion—which is so basic to Paul’s thinking about Jesus—there is no mention of significant historical details of any kind. In Did Jesus Exist? Wells states: “Even when he [Paul] writes of Jesus’s death in I Corinthians 2:8 he says nothing of Pilate, or of Jerusalem, but declares Jesus was crucified at the instigation of wicked angels—‘the rulers of this age.’” The truth is that when it comes to when Jesus is supposed to have died on the Cross, or indeed when he was supposed to have entered upon his human phase of existence in the first place, Paul is incredibly vague to the point of hopelessness. The distinguished New Testament scholar Ernst Kasemann finds that this scantiness of witness concerning concrete circumstances of the Crucifixion, where Paul’s theology “is so deeply engaged, is positively shocking.” Of course, like Horus of Egypt and all the other man-gods of antiquity, Jesus is said to have been “born of a woman.” Because he was allegedly fulfilling Jewish prophecies, Paul also can say he was “born of the seed of David” and “born under the law,” but this is not historical evidence at all. There were many centuries between David’s time and Jesus’s, but Paul tells us nothing that indicates in which one of them Jesus’s life was believed to have taken place. What is more, Paul never mentions the virgin birth or empty tomb! In short, Paul’s Christ was a spiritual or mystical Christ, not a man of flesh and blood at all.
There is so much that could be added, but that would take yet another volume. Let me conclude by saying that for me the most powerful argument of all against the view that Jesus was a historical person—and not what literary critic Harold Bloom has named “a theological God” specifically constructed by the early Church—is this: the amazingly varied theologies (Christologies) of Jesus Christ in the pages of the New Testament itself. There are at least six or seven opposing pictures of who he was assumed to be. To quote Kasemann once more, if he had truly lived, early Christian literature would not “show nearly everywhere churchly and theological conflicts and fierce quarrels between opponents” who disagreed “radically” as to “what kind of person he was.”
Having read the attempted explanations of the critics, I want to stress two things:
1. The position on the non-historicity of Jesus taken in The Pagan Christ and now held by an increasing number of scholars has never been given credible rebuttal; and
2. It is impossible to convince those who have already decided never to alter their opinions come what may. With the great majority of rank-and-file Christians, as well as most of their clergy, this seems to be the case. Some of the latter, including those who really should know better, have told me frankly that they have not read The Pagan Christ for fear of “upsetting my beliefs.” So much for the promise that the Holy Spirit will guide us “into all truth.”
* The Wilderness World of John Muir by Edwin Teale, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1976, p. xix.
10
CAN
CHRISTIANITY BE
BORN AGAIN?
IN HIS BOOK Modern Man in Search of a Soul, Carl Jung emphasized that one should never simply dismiss divergent views and opinions, however unpleasant or wrong-headed they may seem. Neither does it matter if these differ radically from the more widely accepted ideas or traditions of majority communities or groups. “Such opinions could never arise—much less secure a following—if they did not correspond to some special disposition, some fundamental psychic experience that is more or less prevalent,” Jung wrote. Such flat rejection, he argued, means one is directly doing “violence” to the data that alone hold the key to what is happening around us in our time. It means turning one’s back on part of the only material from which we must work to make sense of our own lives and the lives of those around us.
The depth and power of this insight really hits home when you look at a contemporary development that has shocked and shaken persons of all religious backgrounds in our time. A militant atheism has emerged as a major opponent of religious belief and faith in every part of the Western world. While books trumpeting atheistic positions have taken over the bestseller lists and their authors preach their positions in the media, the campaign is having an effect and is as deep as it is widespread today in our culture. The numbers of those telling pollsters and census takers that they are themselves either agnostic/atheistic or “of no religion” are a fast-burgeoning statistic in every developed country in the world, even in the still highly religious United States. This reality has been and continues to be well documented by others, so it’s not necessary to go into further detail here.
But since the growth of atheism and of general unbelief in matters of religion is an empirical fact, the challenging question, of course, is why is it happening? There are many sources for every river, but one usually takes precedence over all the rest. That is true here. The major reason for the growth and spread of a flood of atheism at this hour is that much of the God-talk we hear can’t be believed in by growing numbers of people because it has become utterly unbelievable. Human reason and common sense have their limits, and they have now been strained to the breaking point for millions who once owed loyalty to a denomination or Church or other religious affiliation. The message is loud and clear for spiritual leaders: those who are joining the ranks of non-believers do so because the tenets, creeds and language of religion today too often defy comprehension. They are not accepted and believed because they are for the most part unacceptable and unbelievable. They belong to another time, another place. As Harvey Cox, Dean of Divinity Emeritus at Harvard, argues in his 2009 bestseller The Future of Faith, the age of creedal allegiances is over.
I want to be very clear here: none of this means that the atheists