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120 Things ABC CBS CNN FOX and NBC Won't Tell You" Cont..
17. Jesus thought His death was significant and necessary for dealing with the sin problem in the world.
Ankerberg: Did Jesus really say at the Passover ceremony, where he had communion "This is my body"? That seems to be in contention. Is there any reason for that contention?
Witherington: Well, of course, the reason is that, if he said something like that he must have had some kind of atonement theology that referred to the salvific significance of his own death, and you know, there are various scholars who want to avoid that conclusion. But the truth of the matter is that even if you left all the Gospels out of the account, we still have Paul, a witness from 20 some years after Jesus died saying, "Well, this is what was said." And not only does he say this in 1 Corinthians 11, he says this is the tradition he received from the earliest Christians. Now it seems to me straining credulity to the breaking point to say, "Okay, we know that Paul affirms that ‘this is my body, this is my blood’ stuff. We know that Paul says that he received it from earlier Christians, but he couldn’t have received it from the eyewitnesses who were there with Jesus on the night in which he was betrayed. He must have received it from Christians who kind of ‘theologized’ about Jesus somewhere along the line, but they weren’t really in touch with Peter, James and John and those sort of folks. Now that argument is just straining credulity to the breaking point. The truth of the matter is that Jesus is the one that said this. The earliest disciples picked it up and remembered it as a sacred tradition because he was changing the Passover ritual. The thing that they had memorized since they were children suddenly had a new and different significance, because he’s now talking about himself, his body and his blood being the symbolic things that bring about the exodus, the redemption, the Passover of all human kind. For sure they were going to remember how he changed that ritual. And the earliest Christians transmitted this as a sacred tradition that we now call the Lord’s Supper.
Ankerberg: If you have the Jesus Seminar saying one of the criteria for authenticity is multiple attestation, now you have multiple attestation, but that doesn’t do it, does it.
Witherington: Exactly. And this is special pleading. I mean, if you are going to set up the ground rules in certain ways, and say, okay, we’re looking for multiple attestation as one of the criteria that John Dominic Crossan really insists on. I mean he’s, in his famous book The Historical Jesus this was one of the biggest selling books on Jesus in our whole era, he says, "I’m gonna stick with double attestation, multiple attestation." And so, on that criterion he says, okay, I really like the parable of the good Samaritan, but it only appears in Luke and therefore we are not going to argue it’s an authentic word of Jesus.
Now you see, you can’t have it both ways. If you are going to say this is the ultimate litmus test, this is the criteria that we’re going to use to determine authenticity, multiple attestation, yes, it’s true that "this is my body, this is my blood" is attested in Paul, attested in the synoptic Gospels, these are two independent sources, we all agree on that, but no, Jesus didn’t say it. Well, you know that’s trying to have it both ways, and it’s just not a fair deal at all.
18.
There are rules to interpretation. But you don’t get to make up your own.
Ankerberg: Okay, let’s talk about the methodologies here, because, what are the rules to interpretation, then?
Witherington: Well, a historian, a critical historian, is a person who needs to sift all his sources, whether it’s biblical sources, non-biblical sources, you come at your task as an honest historian and say, I understand that doing history is a matter of good probability. I mean, doing history is not like doing an experiment in a scientific laboratory, where you can have almost air tight certainty that if you repeat these exact conditions with this exact experiment, its going to come out with this result. History is not like that. History is messy. The most that a person that’s a historian can come up with is either a good probability that a person did say or do this, or a good probability that he didn’t, or maybe just a possibility either way. I mean, that’s the most a historian can deal with. So when you’re actually dealing with the historical substance of the Gospels, nobody can prove with airtight certainty using a limited historical methodology, that it is 100 % certain this person said or did this or 100% uncertain. It’s always going to be somewhere in between. And this is because of the limits of our methodology and also the limits of our evidence. That’s how historiography is done.
So what a historian is going to say is, well there’s a very good probability that Jesus said, "this is my body, this is my blood." You know, all the evidence that we have—multiple attestation, using other criteria—suggests that this is an authentic word of Jesus. Well, that’s the most that you could get about it. Now that doesn’t mean that it’s uncertain. It just means that the methodology is not omniscient enough to produce certainty. This methodology can never produce certainty about ancient historical events.
Ankerberg: Talk about, then, probability, because if something is probable, I think that even in a court of law you have no certainty in terms of a court case, you have reasonable doubt and so on. What does probability mean? When you see all of these sources, does that mean you finally get to 51 % and you’re tipping over toward the line of this conclusion? Is that what probability means?
Witherington: Well, you could say that probability is a little bit like faith. When you have faith, faith is distinguished from absolute knowledge in this regard, that there is a foundation for faith, there is evidences for faith, there’s good reasons to believe, but there is also that element in faith that goes beyond what just a pure analyzing of the evidence would suggest. You know, you’re going perhaps in the same direction, hopefully, as the evidence, but you’re going beyond it. The certainty of faith comes through one’s encounter with God. It doesn’t come through having an omniscient knowledge of an ancient subject matter. There is a foundation to that faith in knowledge and events that happened in the past, but the certainty that one has, a conviction of things believed, an absolute profound trust in things not seen, that comes from an encounter with God, not just an encounter with ancient historical sources. And so we’ve got this combination of things going on, we’re dealing with evidence as historians, and we have to be satisfied with the fact that we’re not going to produce airtight certainty on things on the basis of historical methodology.
But that doesn’t mean that our faith has no foundation. Our faith has a very strong foundation, but it’s a dual foundation. It’s partly through intellectual inquiry, and it’s partly through personal encounter with God.
Ankerberg: Yes, I think it would come out that if we found out that there was evidence let’s say that Jesus committed adultery, would that change what we believe?
Witherington: Of course. If there was profound evidence, and there was a high probability that Jesus had shot Pontius Pilate, or he’d killed his mother, or something like that, then of course, as an honest person, if you believe the Bible is the truth, then you have to be honest about the truth. If there were profound and compelling evidence that there was a high degree of probability that Jesus did something like you suggested, then of course, it would have to change the way we believe in Jesus. Absolutely. Our faith, the Christian faith, is founded on historical facts and events. It’s not just a philosophy of life. It’s not just a faith in faith.
19.
We can tell you that Jesus is the Son of God. And we have evidence to back up our faith.
Ankerberg: Peter Jennings said, "We cannot tell you whether or not Jesus is the son of God. This is a matter of faith. But it’s only a matter of faith, and it seems like the historical evidence is left by the side." Another place he talks about the fact that, people of faith, it’s fine for them to have their faith and their experience. Okay? But it’s almost likened to a fellow that would believe in flying saucers. It doesn’t matter whether they exist or not, as long as he’s happy. Okay? That’s not what Christians are saying, is it?
Witherington: No. The Christian faith, as I said, is grounded in objective reality and an objective body of historical knowledge. That’s the foundation of faith, and if the foundation is shaken, if you could actually show with high probability that Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, then we need to close up shop and be honest enough to say there’s no reason to carry on with this. And so, no, that’s certainly not the case.
What bothers me about Peter Jennings’ statement about that is first of all, we do have good strong historical evidence that Jesus prayed to God as "Abba" Father, and we have multiply attested pieces of evidence that he saw himself in some sense as God’s special or unique son.
Ankerberg: Tell the people what "Abba" means.
Witherington: Well, Abba means "father." It’s not quite like the familiar term "daddy," but it means "father dearest." It implies an intimate relationship with one’s heavenly parent. And Jesus believed he had that unique kind of relationship which made him in some unique and special sense "the Son of God." And there’s plenty of evidence for this. It’s in the Synoptics and the Gospel of John, it’s in the Pauline letters. It’s all over the New Testament. It’s one of the most characteristic things that’s predicated of Jesus, that he was the son of God. |
