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Blaiklock on the Historicity of Jesus
Our daylong discussions ranged over a host of topics. One had to do with the historicity of Jesus. He had recently delivered a sermon in which he had brought the full weight of his classical scholarship to bear on an attempt to prove that Jesus had in fact lived about 2,000 years ago. Most of the congregation was incensed. Why belabor the obvious, the unquestionable presupposition of our faith? But I had been fascinated. And so I took up the question again.
By that time my own little quest for the historical Jesus had yielded a seeming inconsistency in the Gospels' accounts of the date of his birth. Matthew 2:1 said that he was born "in the days of Herod the king." And since Herod had died in 4 B.C., that meant that my old assumption of a birth at the beginning of 1 A.D. had to be wrong.
Worse was to come. For Luke 2:1-2 said that he was born "when Cyrenius [otherwise known as Quirinius] was governor of Syria." But that, so far as I could discover, was in 6 A.D. Blaiklock's proposed solution was to claim that Cyrenius had been governor once before, during the period 6-4 B.C. That seemed good enough at the time, so we moved on to other matters.
Only decades later did I discover the truth.
First, I discovered that Blaiklock's proposed reconciliation of the two Gospel accounts was spurious. Both he and I had failed to take account of Luke 2:1. For there we find that the governorship of Cyrenius during which Jesus was born was concurrent with the period during which Augustus Caesar issued a decree "that all the world should be taxed." But that was during Cyrenius's second term, i.e., during or after 6 A.D. The inconsistency with Matthew 2:1 is every bit as real as I had first thought it to be. So the Gospel accounts certainly can't be relied upon.
Second, I learned that independent historical evidence of Jesus' very existence, let alone his alleged date of birth, simply does not exist. In his book Man or Myth (1983), Blaiklock confessed that "Jesus is authenticated in no other way, outside the gospels, save by Josephus and a sentence in a Roman historian."
But he didn't do justice to the fact that most New Testament scholars regard the passages in Josephus as interpolations originating in the 4th century. Many scholars think that they came from the hand of Bishop Eusebius, who is also suspected of forging a purported letter from Jesus to someone named Abgarus. At all events, the passages were unknown to earlier Christian apologists, such as Origen, who had chided Josephus for not mentioning Jesus.
As for the Roman historian, Tacitus, it should be noted that the "one sentence" Blaiklock refers to was written in the early part of the 2nd century and that, in the view of many scholars, it amounts only to a report of what was being said by Christian missionaries at that time.
Little wonder that when, in Appendix 2 of his book, the good professor gave a list of important dates of the period, he was able to be specific about many other figures, but not about Jesus. 5 B.C., he said, was the year in which Seneca was born. But it was only the "presumed" date of the nativity. And, further betraying his uncertainty, he described 29 A.D. as the "presumed date of the crucifixion." He could confidently give dates of publication for many of the most important writings of the first century, but none for the Gospels.
So when, if at all, did the incarnation occur? The Gospels, full of inconsistencies, absurdities, factual error, and evangelizing propaganda, are historically unreliable. And secular history of the time knows nothing of such a supposedly momentous event, or of others reported in the Gospels. The fact is that Blaiklock didn't know, and neither does anyone else know for certain, when--or even if--God (or the Holy Ghost or Jesus the Christ) visited this insignificant planet of ours (all in order, supposedly, to save a few of the "elect" from his own unseemly vengeance).
Blaiklock on Evil, Free Will, and Responsibility
We spent most of the day, however, on the issues that troubled me most: the problems of moral and natural evil; the problem of hellfire and damnation; the problem of particularity (why God would announce his plan for universal salvation to only a handful of people, at only one time and place); questions about the doctrine of salvation and why God would demand the blood-sacrifice of his son in order to atone for the sins of his creatures; questions about how creatures created without flaw--Satan, Adam and Eve--could fall from grace; why, according to the doctrine of original sin, God would impute sin to all of Adam and Eve's descendants; and so on.
Questions about free will and responsibility predominated. Not only in connection with the doctrine of predestination, but in other contexts as well. It had become clear to me by then that, although there was some sense in which I did in fact sometimes act "of my own free will" and was responsible for the actions I then performed, there was also some "deeper" sense in which I was neither free nor responsible. I couldn't see why the buck should stop with me. After all, I didn't choose who I was going to be: who my parents were, for example, or what kind of soul I had (if I had one). How then could I be ultimately responsible for what I was, and therefore did? It was this deeper sense of both concepts that was threatened by predestination, of course, for--according to that doctrine--it was God who was ultimately responsible for my free acts and for my final fate.
My own ultimate responsibility for my free acts was also threatened, I thought, by other considerations having little to do with theological doctrine. World War II was raging, and it was all Hitler's fault. Or so we all believed. A curious question haunted me: "What if I had been Hitler?" Then, I thought, I would have done what Hitler had done; and it would all have been my fault. I wasn't asking merely, "What if I'd been born in the same circumstances as Hitler?" Rather it was a question about identity, personal identity in particular: "What if I were identical with Hitler?" He didn't choose his identity--who he was--any more than did I. So was he really at fault for the acts that had flowed from the person he was?
I'm not too sure to this day how to answer the question, or even whether it makes logical sense. It is even more puzzling, perhaps, than the question posed decades later by the philosopher, Thomas Nagel, who asked: "What is it like to be a bat?" But it did set me thinking about how lucky I was that I was in fact Ray Bradley, not Adolph Hitler. Was it just the luck of the draw, as it were? Translating my perplexity, and sense of good fortune, back into the theological context, I felt the force of the saying, "There, but for the grace of God, go I." Was Hitler ultimately responsible? Was anyone--other than God, of course--responsible? Blaiklock said that it was all a mystery for which God would one day reveal the answer.
Hitler's name came up again in connection with the problem of moral evil. I wanted to know why God would permit his creatures, like Hitler, to commit so many morally evil deeds? Blaiklock's answer, in keeping with that of other Christian apologists, then and now, was that God has given us the gift of free will and couldn't take it away without transforming us into zombies.
But surely, I objected, there was a third alternative. God could allow Hitler, for example, to freely choose his policies but then, by means of a timely miracle, ensure that Hitler's intentions were frustrated. Why couldn't he strike him down with a heart attack or ensure that there was a mechanical failure in the aircraft in which he was flying? Why couldn't he intervene in some such way every time anyone formed an evil intent? That wouldn't take away our free will. On the contrary, we'd soon learn not even to try to translate evil thought into evil action. And we would no more be zombies than are the millions of people around the world who are "struck down" by disease or mishap every year.
Blaiklock invoked the biblically spurious belief in free will, again, in order to answer my questions about natural evil: Why did God create a world rife with disease and disaster, fire, flood, famine, and the rest? 'Blame it on the Devil' was Blaiklock's answer. God's original creation, he claimed, was perfect, and God had very correctly surveyed it and said that it was "very good." It was the Devil, Satan, who'd messed it up. God, I was supposed to believe, had given Satan, too, the gift of free will--a gift that he had abused by spoiling God's good work, at our cost.
But that wouldn't do, I objected. Since God was supposed to be all-powerful, he could easily at any time--and preferably sooner rather than later--deprive Satan of his awesome powers, rendering impotent his evil intent. According to the Book of Revelation, God would eventually bind Satan in chains forever. So why didn't God do it now? Why hadn't he done it in the first place, the moment Satan began his evil career? Again, all was mystery.
Blaiklock did his best. But it wasn't good enough. Calling it all a deep mystery simply heightened my desire to penetrate mystery's inner workings by exposing the contradictions and rejecting indefensible doctrines. Only reason could do that. Faith merely locked the door on mystery and tried to hide the key.
At the end of a day that tested my intellectual stamina beyond anything I'd experienced before, he had a simple confession: "Ray, I can't answer your questions. All I can do is ask you to go to the Bible Training Institute Bookroom and buy the following books.... Read and pray." He wrote out a substantial check. I purchased the books, one of them being C.S. Lewis's The Problem of Pain. I read. I prayed. But the heavens were closed.
About 20 years later (in 1965 or 66, as I remember it), Professor Blaiklock and I crossed swords again, but on a more even footing. By then I had been appointed as the Professor and Head of Philosophy at the University of Auckland and was asked to engage my "Uncle Ted" in a series of 10 lunch hour debates. Our final session went on for over 2 hours in the presence of nearly 1,000 students. His eloquence was unmatchable: he was, after all, University Orator. But my arguments were unanswered. In many ways we simply talked passed each other.
The previous year, I'd had a similar series of 10 debates with Professor Val Chapman of the Botany Department, at the end of which I was told that the president of the Student Christian Movement had lost his faith and didn't get it back again until they'd worked on him for 3 weeks. That's why one of the campus chaplains recruited Professor Blaiklock in the hope that he would prove a more worthy opponent--which he did.
Other Milestones on the Way to Apostasy
But back to my teenage years. It is worth mentioning a few other milestones in my attempts to pursue truth wherever it might be found.
The year before my Titirangi talks with Blaiklock, our Fourth Form English and History teacher, Maurice Hutchings, decided that we should learn the art of debating. The topic chosen was "Creation versus Evolution." I volunteered, along with a Seventh-Day Adventist acquaintance, to take up the cudgels on behalf of creation. I began researching all the antievolutionist literature that was heaped on me once my mission was known.
The Evolution Debate
Some three weeks later, the debate occurred. That night I had to report on its outcome to my parents. They detected my reluctance to elaborate on the simple statement that we had won by a vote or two. Only under pressure did I confess that, in spite of winning, I could no longer believe that for which I had argued.
In my view, the antievolutionist literature that I'd read was full of spurious arguments against crude caricatures of what evolutionists had actually said. And I'd thought that the opposition's arguments for evolutionary theory were pretty convincing. Besides, I pointed out, there was a difference between believing in creation (that the universe owed its existence to a creator-god) and believing in creationism (that the world was created in the way depicted in Genesis, complete with species that reproduced only "according to their kind").
My parents were outraged. I was, they said, "possessed by the Devil." No assurances to the contrary had any calming effect. I finished up spending most of a frosty night shivering in a concrete shelter among the sheep in the crater of Mt. Albert. But I never did recant.
Christian Crusaders
Then a year later, in 1945, the very same teacher, Maurice Hutchings, spotted me wearing my Christian Crusader badge. He asked me if I knew much of the history of the Crusades and suggested that I might want to find out more. I did the research. And I threw away my badge.
Buddhism
The following year, when I was in the Sixth Form, I won an essay competition and selected The Life of the Buddha as my prize. The ethics of Siddhartha Gautama Buddha, I discovered, had anticipated most of the much-vaunted Sermon on the Mount, by about 6 centuries. And Siddhartha himself came across as rather more wise and virtuous than Jesus. I couldn't buy into the doctrine of samara, the wheel of reincarnation. But the idea of karma, the fruits of one's actions (in this world at least), made sense. And his notion of nirvana, a state of nothingness where there are neither sensations nor ideas, and in which all personal identity is lost, seemed both more plausible and more pleasant than the Christian prospect of an eternity in Heaven, for a few, or in Hell, for most.
I did flirt with Madame Blatavsky's Theosophy--one of Buddhism's 19th-century spin-offs--for a month or so, but rapidly came to the conclusion that it was mainly mumbo-jumbo.
By the time I was 17, attending Auckland Teachers College by day while commencing a part-time degree at the university by night, I'd pretty much given up on Christianity and all other forms of revealed religion.
Deism
Yet I thought for a while that some form of deism might be defensible, deism being the belief in some sort of Supreme Being who created the world and then left it to its own devices. I tried out the standard philosophical arguments--the cosmological argument, the teleological argument, and the ontological argument--in the senior sermonette contest at a Bible Class camp in Orewa. I tied for first place with one of the students from the Baptist Theological College but was criticized for being "less evangelical" than my rival. Actually, I was surprised at having been ranked so high, for the arguments I'd propounded had seemed to me unsound despite my best attempts to give them a positive spin. That was the last time I really thought I might find a rational basis for belief in any sort of religion: theism, or even deism.
Nevertheless, I did preserve--for a while--the liberal Christian idea that the Jesus myth was worth preserving for the moral values it enshrined. But then the doctrine of hellfire got to me again, and I came to the same conclusion as Mark Twain. As he had put it, "the palm for malignity must be granted to Jesus, the inventor of hell..."
As for agnosticism, that seemed to me a refuge for the timid and spineless, for those who couldn't see, or wouldn't face up to, the implications of the fact that they were atheists, not agnostics, about Santa Claus. So, by the age of 18, I was an atheist about all gods and other creatures of imagination, myth, and superstition. First, a self-avowed "atheist"; then, a bit later, an unabashed one. No longer in fear of the Devil, I saw no need to cower before that unfashionable word.
Postscript
Given what I've told you of my story so far, you could be forgiven for supposing that my struggles to free myself from the bondage of Baptist beliefs occurred in an atmosphere of sweetness and light. How about the darker side that we normally associate with the term "fundamentalism"? Condemnation of films, dancing, immodest clothing, lipstick, alcohol, and the like? Prohibitions against work--even homework--on the Lord's Day? Blasphemy charges? Book-burnings? Beating those who dared to differ? Sad to say, I experienced all these at the hands of those who most sincerely sought to save my soul from perdition: my parents.
The book-burnings occurred when my biology teacher, Peter Ohms, lent me a textbook outlining evolutionary theory and a novel depicting St. Paul as a misogynist who occasionally sought relief in the warm flesh of a woman of the night. Both books disappeared mysteriously from my shelves. It was only when questioned that my parents revealed the fate of both. They had been thrown into a bonfire along with "other garbage." My teacher was magnanimous. But that didn't erase my shame and outrage.
The beatings, in particular, left their mark on me--not least in a broken nose inflicted after the Evolution debate, before I'd fled to the mountaintop. They had begun, when I was 10 or 11, with the kitchen confrontations with my mother over issues to do with God's foreknowledge. They continued, with increasing severity, as my apostasy became more evident and fears for my soul grew more intense. And they ended only when our closest neighbor, Balfour Joseph, intervened and threatened to call the police were they to occur again.
I shan't dwell on these ugly, but all-too-common, manifestations of fundamentalism. Instead, I'd like to finish with a little bouquet of aphorisms to carry with you as you reflect on my story:
* Today's so-called "evangelical Christians" are fundamentalists in sheep's clothing, many of them still possessing the wolf's fangs.
* Liberal Christians have traded their fundamentalist heritage for a mess of verbiage, but may be the better for it.
* Intransigent belief is not a sign of strength or virtue, but of intellectual and moral weakness.
* Faith in the sanctity of faith itself is the ultimate sacrament of those who abandon reason for unreasoning religion.
* No faith can be the ultimate arbiter between itself and other faiths: all must submit to the tribunal of reason and experience.
And finally (mimicking the sexual innuendo found in female Christian mystics like St. Teresa of Avila):
* Mystery, like a coy virgin, yearns to have her secrets revealed. But faith locks her in a chastity belt to frustrate reason's desire. |
