Living Lord or Legend. . .

One of the most unfortunate consequences of modern history is the presumption that facts do not decide history and that the facts are not really facts at all but mere suppositions.  We have already lived through the rewriting of history in order to tell history from the perspective of racial minorities or those who were considered oppressed or repressed (homosexuals and trans).  The end result is that history offers but a slant on what might have happened and in this respect history is not quite about the facts but about what we take from the supposed or alleged events.  Certainly this is the way those outside the faith have treated Christ and Christianity.  Whether it is posited in some form of vast conspiracy or blind ignorance, nearly everyone outside the Church and some of those within have come to the conclusion that the facts do not matter.  We can be and are inspired not by facts but by myth, legend, and parable whose truth does not come from their historicity but their belief.  What began in the 1800s in the movement to separate the Jesus of history from the Jesus of Scripture has ended up erasing most of what we thought we ever knew about Jesus and leaving us free to fashion a Savior who fits our need, our wants, and our desires.  The facts or myth is but a framework on which we build our own sense of what is real.

The danger in all of this does not lie with a skeptical world but with Christians who harbor doubts.  The proverbial what it the Gospel is not true and this life is all you have and I wasted mine on trying to be good....  This is not a new doubt nor is it one peculiar to our own age.  Peter's Second Letter addresses the charges already in the first generation or two after Jesus' death and resurrection: “We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty.” (1:16)  The whole premise of Luke’s Gospel shows that he was intent  “to compile a narrative of the events that have been fulfilled among us,” so that “you may realize the certainty of [have confidence in] the teachings you have received [into which you have been catechized].” (Lk 1:1-4)  It is the old saw that Christians and Christianity has had to confront over every age and now it confronts us.  At the same time, we are faced with a crisis of confidence in institutions, narratives, facts, and history that encompasses nearly everything in life.  So when it hits the faith we confess, it contributes to the despair and uncertainty that have become epidemic in our modern era.

It must be noted here that modern doubts have already been confronted with modern authors -- whose works lend credence and give us a high confidence in the veracity of the New Testament books, the history conveyed therein, and the truthfulness of the claims we confess in creed and liturgy every week. I would mention a few of them here:  “Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony,” by Richard Bauckham (Eerdmans, 2006); “The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach,” by Michael R. Licona (InterVarsity, 2010); and “The Historical Jesus of the Gospels,” by Craig S. Keener (Eerdmans, 2012).  If someone wants to hear another side of the great skepticism of those outside the faith and those within who are willing to unhinge faith from fact, these books give us plenty to contradict the tired and worn out charges trotted out new in every generation.  If the New Testament is to be judged as history, it should at least be judged against other historical accounts of the same era.  By that standard, the New Testament shines.  But under it all, we must finally admit that we believe the Gospel, we approach Jesus and the Scriptures from faith to faith, without the need to prove beyond the shadow of anyone's doubt in order to believe, teach, and confess the sacred deposit passed down by the faithful over the centuries.  Our courage is not the result of a preponderance of the evidence but by the Spirit's work to bring us to faith and sustain that faith.  No, we dare not concede anything to the critics but the battle for faith is not fought on the ground of what we can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt but of what God has revealed, which we know by faith, working through the Spirit in the Word to gives us that revelation and impart faith within us.

Christians are not asked to believe a fairy tale.  Fairy tales begin and end apart from reality and promise the fulfillment of our dreams.  The Gospel of God's saving work in Christ begins in history -- indeed, it is the history of the world -- and finds its fulfillment in bestowing upon us what we never dared to dream and what know we did not deserve in the gift of everlasting life.  To get there was not the story of a valiant knight who battled evil but a God who wore our flesh so He could die the death that belonged to us and all so that sin might not have the final word over us.  Every step is rooted and planted in fact and history, every bit as easily attested as the ordinary facts of everyday history.  The problem is not that God's history does not meet muster with ours but that we no longer value history nor believe its record and have turned it all into a personal mythology of choice which fits our preference and need in the moment.  We do not need to be afraid of the assaults of modernity against the historical record of the Bible but neither should we presume that if we tell it just right the Gospel will no longer be a scandal.  The problem with the Gospel is not that it is ahistorical but that it offends our own narrative of human progress, achievement, and virtue.  Sin is what we call it in the Church.  The battle against the history presented in Scripture is nothing less than a rejection of sin and its consequences.  You cannot fix that with a fact.