Saturday, July 5, 2025

How does this help?

The abundance of armchair quarterbacks for nearly anything and everything is hardly new.  Yet, in most cases, the armchair quarterbacks are passionate precisely because they are cheering on and routing for their team -- in good times and in bad.  They comment because it is their goal to see the team win and follow that victory right to the end.  How odd it is, then, that Christianity has an abundance not simply of amateur theologians who think they know better but a whole slew of academics who likewise seem to insist that they are in a better position to discern truth from error than even those who walked and talked with Jesus!  Indeed, the oddity is more than a curiosity but a paradox.  How can you keep the faith while working so hard to dismantle the foundation on which the faith is built?  Here I am speaking particularly of the commemtators and textual critics who cannot keep themselves from inserting doubt about the texts we have, the possible sources of those texts which are not as claimed, and the nefarious goals of those who they are sure have messed with the text to distort what is real and true.

Elaine Pagels (remember her) is out with another book Miracles and Wonders which purports to answer the question of who Jesus was (note the past tense here for someone she is sure is no longer alive).  Imagine my surprise when her answer is we may never know.  Of course, the reason we may never know is that Pagels does not grant much credibility or truth to the Scriptures which claim to have been written by those who knew Jesus best and who insist He is still alive.  Read this snippet from Amazon trying to sell you the book:

The book reads like a historical mystery, with each chapter addressing a fascinating question and answering it based on the gospels Jesus's followers left behind. Why is Jesus said to have had a virgin birth? Why do we say he rose from the dead? Did his miracles really happen and what did they mean?

The story Pagels tells is thrilling and tense. Not just does Jesus comes to life but his desperate, hunted followers do as well. We realize that some of the most compelling details of Jesus's life are the explanations his disciples created to paper over inconvenient facts. So Jesus wasn't illegitimate, his mother conceived by God; Jesus's body wasn't humiliatingly left to rot and tossed into a common grave—no, he rose from the dead and was seen whole by his followers; Jesus isn't a failed messiah, his kingdom is a metaphor: he lives in us. These necessary fabrications were the very details and promises that electrified their listeners and helped his followers' numbers grow.

In
Miracles and Wonder, Pagels does more than solve a historical mystery. She sheds light on Jesus's enduring power to inspire and attract.

She insists that inconvenient facts papered over the well-meaning by lying disciples are the problem to knowing Jesus.  Surely  the problem is just the opposite.  An 80 something year old woman who has spent a career doubting every word of Scripture and casting aspersions on the integrity of the authors of the New Testament makes Jesus into a novelty but a sham as well.  She well represents others who have likewise spent their lives trying to impugn the Bible, cast doubt upon its facts, and then insist that none of it really matters to who Jesus was or why people are still interested in Him.  Like I said, how can you claim to keep the faith when you dismantle the very foundation on which that faith is built?  Do us all a favor.  Don't buy the book and add to her income.  Don't be a part of her scam. 

1 comment:

Deacon Nicholas said...

May the Lord have mercy on her.