Circular reasoning has become commonplace in this postmodern world. Since logic and rational thinking have been dismissed, one can now get away with the most obvious of blunders. An episode of Happy Days illustrates well the mechanics of circular reasoning. Fonzie tells the guys that he is dating a girl who is a virgin. At first they accept this claim, but then they wonder how it is that he knows that bit of information. Fonzie replies that she told him so. “She told you?” they query, a little incredulous, but Fonzie is prepared with evidence that cannot be refuted: “Hey! Virgins don’t lie.”
This kind of reasoning is also used in the academic world. All scientists believe in evolution. How do we know that? Evolutionists have told us so. But what about the man who believes in creation? He simply cannot be considered a “real” scientist. Since evolutionists are in the majority, they take upon themselves the prerogative of excluding creationists from serious consideration as scientists.
The same is true in the field of Biblical scholarship. In order to be considered a Biblical “scholar,” one must conform to certain criteria. The most important one of these is to deny that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. All of the others stem from this one. Below are listed a few presuppositions of modern, liberal scholars.
1. The Bible is not the inspired Word of God. It is instead a collection of documents that has been worked over several times. The Old Testament has had a number of editors, and the gospel accounts of Jesus’ life were based on the Q document.
a. Moses did not write the books attributed to him, nor did David write many of the psalms. Different men participated in the composition of this book.
b. The Bible is full of contradictions.
2. Jesus was a mere man–not the Son of God. He did not really do miracles; these were legends that developed after His death.
a. Jesus never claimed to be the Son of God.
b. There is no historical evidence that Jesus ever lived.
Each one of these main points and their corollaries has been refuted time and again. A number of historical, non-Christian sources demonstrate that Jesus lived. Numerous times Jesus claimed to be the Son of God (Mark 14:61-62; John 10:30-37, et al.); His claim of Deity is the reasons He was crucified (John 5:18). No one could read Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John and come to any other conclusion about Jesus. But evidence never gets in the way of liberal “scholars”; after all, since they are the “scholars,” they must be right. Who needs evidence? They are not unlike the Pharisees described in John 9:34: “You were completely born in sins, and are you teaching us?” Notice the absence of a well-reasoned reply. In effect, they told the blind man, “We are the educated spiritually elite. Who are you, you low-brow bozo? You haven’t gone to the schools we have; you donÕt possess the knowledge we have.” In other words, they could not answer the man’s argument. Modern “scholars” cannot deal with Truth, either.
Most important, however, is the fact that the Bible claims inspiration in both the Old and New Testaments (numerous passages such as Num. 23:12; Deut. 4:2; Jer. 1:5; John 14:25-26; 16:12-13; 2 Tim. 3:16-17; 2 Peter 1:20-21, et al.), but these are all ignored by modernists. Furthermore, the fact that their assumptions and theories have been met and refuted over a century ago scarcely slows them down. Like some politicians who spin webs of deceit to cover their misdeeds, liberal “scholars” also go unchallenged because the media adheres to the same presuppositions that they do.
As a case in point, James Carroll wrote an article (whose title is quoted above), and it was published in the Boston Globe on April 18th. [Editor’s note: I do not subscribe to or read all of the publications that are quoted from these pages. Frequnetly, articles are sent in for comment.] As portions of this article are cited, one will see that the presuppositions of liberal “scholars” are reflected throughout. Notice the very first line of the article:
“His blood be on us and on our children?” The Gospel of Matthew puts those words into the mouth of a Jewish crowd calling for the death of Jesus (11A).
Notice that Matthew did not record the facts by inspiration; he “put those words into the mouths of a Jewish crowd.” Immediately, the reader should realize that this article is written by someone who has bought into modernistic thinking rather than someone who respects the integrity of the Scriptures. His third paragraph begins with a similar statement: “Yet the anti-Jewish diatribes of the Gospels continue to be proclaimed, with the Romans declaring Jesus innocent and Jews crying, ‘Crucify him!'” (all quotations are from page 11A). Apparently, it never enters the mind of Mr. Carroll that these events are recorded the way they are because they describe what actually happened. No, such a rationale would take the Bible as inspired and true; so there must be some other explanation.
Mr. Carroll would revise history. He has the uncanny ability to read between the lines–not the lines found in the pages of Holy Writ, to be sure; no, they are the lines that he composed out of his own imagination. He rather pompously asserts: “While we can be sure Jesus was crucified by the Romans, many, if not most, of the details around the Gospel rendition of that event are more likely fiction than ‘fact.'” Oh, really? Please tell all of your readers, Mr. Carroll, “Were you there? How do you know what is likely or unlikely to have happened?” Carroll also thinks it is unlikely that Jesus would have been formally tried before Pilate or that there was “a bloodthirsty crowd.” He may likewise think the moon is made of green cheese; we are not impressed.
Mr. Carroll is willing to dismiss the eyewitness testimony of both Matthew and John as to what occurred. Furthermore, Jesus promised Matthew and John that the Holy Spirit would bring to their remembrance “all things” that Jesus said to them. Perhaps Mr. Carroll could explain how it is that a journalist nearly 2,000 years removed from the events has a better grasp of what occurred than two eyewitnesses with fortified memories! All it takes is arrogance to come to such a conclusion. But here is his explanation.
The main reason to dismiss a reading of this story as conflict between Jesus and “the Jews” is the all too obvious–but for Christians, slippery–point that Jesus was himself a Jew. To set Jesus against Israel is to violate who he was.
The first thing the reader should observe is that Mr. Carroll reserves the right to “dismiss” portions of the Scriptures that do not make sense to him. No wonder there is such chaos in the religious world today. God has not revealed truth to which we must adhere; men have composed a religious document that they may play around with as much as they desire. Hence, religion is entirely subjective. It means only what each person thinks it means (which is nonsense). But this type of thinking enables someone to look at one of the most attested facts of history and say, “I don’t think it happened that way.”
So Jesus was a Jew and therefore he would not have been at conflict with the Jews. Has Mr. Carroll ever heard of Joseph being sold by his brothers into slavery? Should we conclude that such a conflict never really occurred because they were brethren? Maybe Joseph just wandered away on his own and made up that story years later. Has he never read of Jeremiah being lowered into the mire at the instigation of his fellow Jews (Jer. 38)? Carroll’s notion that the Jews would not kill one of their own is preposterous.
The last line of the above quotation, in order to be technically correct, should read: “To set Jesus against Israel is to violate who (Carroll erroneously thinks) he was.” In the gospel according to Carroll, Jesus would have never have offended anyone because Jesus did not come to reveal Truth. Undoubtedly, the Lord is perceived as a first-century Rodney King: “C-Can’t we all just get along?”
To take Truth away from Jesus’ mission is to rewrite God’s script. What of His promise that, if we continue in the Word, we shall know the Truth (John 8:31-32)? What of His claim, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6)? What of Jesus’ good confession before Pilate: “For this cause was I born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice” (John 18:37)?
The character of Jesus is revealed in the gospel accounts of His life. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John consistently portray Jesus in the same light. By what authority does someone suggest (without any more knowledge than is presented in these books) that having a conflict with the Jews is not characteristic of Jesus. From whence does this new standard originate, except out of the critic’s imagination? Carroll proceeds to explain further.
Therefore the Christian habit of contrasting the loving God of the New Testament with the wrathful God of the Old Testament, to take a blatant example, is to falsify the meaning of Jesus.
We cannot be sure to what Christian habit he refers, but the Bible does not portray the God of the Old Testament as wrathful and the God of the New as loving. God is love–under both covenants. The plan for redemption, which demonstrates God’s love (John 3:16), began in Genesis 3:15 with the first prophecy concerning “the seed of woman.” In Genesis 22:18 God told Abraham that in his seed would all the nations of the earth be blessed. The universal covenant for all mankind, which Jesus would die to bring into effect (Heb. 9:16-17), was already planned. That plan involves paying the price for man’s sins. Those who reject Jesus’ sacrifice will be punished throughout eternity, according to the Lord’s own teaching (Matt. 25:41, 46). God’s grace and love have always been in evidence, as has been His justice. He did not suddenly change His character. In Malachi 3:6 God says, “I am the Lord: I do not change.” In the New Testament we find the same teaching: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variation or shadow of turning” (James 1:17).
In fact, this false dichotomy concerning the nature of God is an idea born of Modernism. What gall–to accuse Christians of holding a doctrine invented by Modernists and then take us to task for believing it–when we have never accepted the notion in the first place! How could things become any more convoluted?
Even though Carroll was not there, he knows how this “false account of Jesus’ trial and crucifixion” got in the Bible: they were “imagined renditions of various prophecies.” The one question that the reader of a liberal writer should continually ask is, “Proof?” They never offer it. Carroll goes through a lengthy explanation of what occurred and when, though he offers not one shred of evidence for any of it. He assigns dates to the Gospel accounts after A.D. 70 though he could not prove such if his life depended on it. He quotes “the scholar Jon D. Levenson,” who undoubtedly shares Carroll’s presuppositions (otherwise he would not be a “scholar”), as saying that Paul never associated the Jews with the death of Jesus. Some time these “scholars” ought to read the Bible instead of each other’s gibberish. Consider what Paul about the Jews:
For you also suffered the same things from your own countrymen, just as they did from the Jews, who killed both the Lord Jesus and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they do not please God and are contrary to all men, forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they may be saved, so as always to fill up the measure of their sins; but wrath has come upon them to the uttermost (1 Thess. 2:14b-16).
Now what was it the “scholars” said again?
So what was the purpose of writing this article? All of this hypothetical claptrap was set forth in an effort to keep Christians from hating Jews. The reader probably was unaware that he or she was prejudiced against Jews or that there was still hatred of them for what they did to Jesus nearly 2000 years ago. But in this “politically correct” society, anyone who believes what the Scriptures teach concerning the death of Christ at the demand of His own people MUST be prejudiced, full of hatred, and very likely a neo-Nazi. If such conclusions appear to be absurd, remember that liberals do not think logically, and they assume no one else does, either.
The Bible plainly teaches that the Jews of Jesus’ generation insisted that He be crucified, but His apostles were Jewish, the church in Jerusalem consisted of Jews; why would anyone have any hostility for the Jews today? Those people are long gone, and the desire for Christ’s blood to be on them and their children was fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem in A. D. 70. God’s people throughout the period of the Law of Moses were alternately good and bad, depending on the period of history under discussion. But even in those times, not all were bad, nor were all good. It is silly to suppose that, because we recognize the truths recorded in the Scriptures, we are somehow bigoted against Jews and desirous of their extinction.
The fact is that sin is responsible for the death of Christ on the cross–“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). Jesus died for our sins. Sin put Him on the cross. We have all sinned. We are all guilty of His death. The Jews are no more guilty than the Romans who actually crucified Him. The Romans are no more guilty than the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Russians, or the Americans. In Christ all nations of the world can find forgiveness and be blessed. We agree with Mr. Carroll that Jews (or any other people) should not be despised and persecuted today, but we are not willing to sacrifice the integrity of the Bible to make this point.
After all, why is prejudice wrong? Why ought we to love all people? The answer is that this is the doctrine of God. But if the Scriptures are full of inaccuracies, perhaps the message of love is one of them, and we should all join militia groups that preach hatred. Fortunately, we do not have to depend on the “scholars.”
*Send comments or questions concerning this article to Gary Summers. Please refer to this article as: “‘SCHOLARLY’ EXPLANATIONS (4/30/00).”
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