Which "Real" Jesus?

Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Franklin, and the Early American Roots of the Current Debate

Bateman

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2008
• eBook ISBN: 9781498275064
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

_ Are the gospels reliable accounts of Jesus?_ Did Jesus claim to be God?_ Was Jesus bodily raised from the dead?_ Is Jesus the only way to salvation?_ Are Christianity and Islam basically the same?_ Were the Founding Fathers orthodox Christians?Christians in America are routinely confronted with news of archaeological discoveries or new scholarship claiming to present the real Jesus. These challenges have a long tradition in America and can be traced to some of the best-known founders of our nation. In pre-Revolutionary America, the formidable Jonathan Edwards directly confronted the challenge, providing an enduring model for Christians today who desire to articulate and defend the historic, orthodox doctrine of Christ. While Edwards sought to prove the historic Jesus, Benjamin Franklin attempted to improve on the original, offering a Jesus of more practical use to his social and civic purposes. Franklin's approach, inspired by Deist thinkers and refined by Thomas Jefferson, has found new life in the advocates of the Jesus Seminar and of other alternative Christianities. Even the ambassadors of strident atheism-Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris-are resurrecting Deist arguments in their best-selling books. These skeptics notably follow the Deist tactic of using the rise of Islam to undermine the uniqueness of Jesus. As a result, there is a widespread erosion of confidence among professing Christians in the supremacy of Jesus Christ. Which Real Jesus? reveals that these new views of the real Jesus are, in fact, old news.

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Introduction

And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.

—Paul the Apostle1

With apologies to the ladies, one is inclined to paraphrase an old saying: ‘There are only three things not worth running for—a bus, a woman,and a reported disclosure of the real Jesus; if you wait a little while, another will come along.’

—Richard John Neuhaus2

The covers of the bestselling magazines in America routinely announce the breathtaking news of a revised Jesus. Recent discoveries and groundbreaking scholarship threaten to set aside traditional, orthodox3 Christianity and give us a new and improved view of its founder. Competing groups claim to have found the “real Jesus,” and because they are all so different, they cannot all be right. Which “real Jesus” shall we choose?

Jesus knew that his followers would encounter innumerable cases of identity theft. “Many will come in my name,” he warned them, “claiming, ‘I am he,’ and will deceive many.”4 Jesus’s questions to his disciples still ring with relevance: “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”5 Jesus did not want his disciples to get their Jesuses confused. From the beginning, they preached Jesus in a way to avoid confusion. Someone might ask them, “Which Jesus are you talking about?” “God has raised this Jesus to life,” Peter proclaimed at Pentecost, “God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.”6 Paul was equally clear in Thessalonica where he was “explaining and proving that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead. ‘This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Christ.’”7 Which Jesus? This Jesus!

The apostles warned the early church about religious leaders who would replace the original with an alternative. When the Corinthian church took pride in their uncritical, man-pleasing tolerance, the Apostle Paul was not favorably impressed. “For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached,” exhorted Paul, “or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different Gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough.”8

Across America, even in many churches that once held the line on orthodoxy, Jesus is being dethroned, deconstructed, revised, and replaced with alternative Jesuses. Of course, each rival group claims to have in their possession the “real Jesus.” As a result, many Christians are losing confidence in the uniqueness and supremacy of Jesus Christ.

But we should not be alarmed. Every generation tries to improve Jesus by making him less than he claimed to be and more like they want him to be. This impulse folds neatly into the growing popularity of religious pluralism and the rather old idea that “all the religions are basically the same.” The more we can make Jesus like the rest of us, the less demands he can make on our lives. What makes Jesus so different, after all? And what is so distinctive about Christianity that sets it apart from other religions? These are fair questions and Christians ought to be prepared to answer them.

As it turns out, we are not in new territory. The new views of the real Jesus are old news. Christians in America have faced these challenges before. In the years immediately before and after the founding of the United States, the possibility of a new and improved Jesus was a hot issue. Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin contemplated the real identity of Jesus decades before the signing of the Declaration of Independence. And several influential Founding Fathers gave serious thought to the question, Which Jesus is the real Jesus? This is a book about the early American roots of the current debate on the real Jesus. The questions being raised in the eighteenth century are startlingly relevant today:

• Are the Gospels reliable accounts of Jesus?

• Did Jesus claim to be God?

• Was Jesus bodily raised from the dead?

• Is Jesus the only way to heaven?

• Are Christianity and Islam basically the same?

• Were the Founding Fathers orthodox Christians?

• What did Jesus say about faith and politics?

You may be curious about Jesus, and find yourself drawn to him, but you also stumble over legitimate questions like these. I have struggled with these questions myself through the years, and this book is largely the product of my own quest for some answers. If my answers do not satisfy you, that does not mean there are no answers. Throughout this book, I will refer you to many people who are authorities in this field if you want more information.

If this book helps any reader know, love, obey, and exalt Jesus Christ, my purpose in writing will have been accomplished. Secondarily, but importantly, if any reader grows in appreciation for the remarkable contribution of Jonathan Edwards, not only to our understanding of the real Jesus but to the history of America, I will be a happier man. Jonathan Edwards is widely viewed as America’s greatest theologian and philosopher. But he was a local pastor, not a college or seminary professor, and he took seriously his duty to prepare his congregation—people who spent their weekdays running businesses, selling products, building houses, teaching school, growing crops, administering government, and raising children—to “contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints.”9 He had high expectations of lay people to understand the issues and engage the culture for Jesus’s sake. Today’s pastors can do no less, and this book is my earnest attempt to follow the example of Jonathan Edwards.

1. Colossians 1:18.

2. Neuhaus, “While We’re At It,” 65.

3. In this book, I will use the word orthodox in its common sense of something established or traditional, thus referring to the historic, traditional, apostolic Christian faith. It should not be confused with the word Orthodox, referring to the eastern branch of the Christian family.

4. Mark 13:6.

5. Luke 9:18–20.

6. Acts 2:32, 36. Italics mine.

7. Acts 17:3. Italics mine.

8. 2 Corinthians 11:4.

9. Jude 3.

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Jesus in America, 1758

Our willingness to hear the voices of Frankl...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Jesus in America, 1758
• Chapter 3: Playing the Scholar Card
• Chapter 4: Gospels: “They Ridicule the Story about Jesus”
• Chapter 5: God: “If Not, the Greatest Imposter”
• Chapter 6: Grave: “The Grand Evidence”
• Chapter 7: Grace: “A Free Gift”
• Chapter 8: Islam as a Deist Argument
• Chapter 9: Growth: “By Such Weapons as These”
• Chapter 10: Conclusion
• Appendix
• Bibliography