Larry Hurtado Starts a Blog

I'm excited to see that Larry Hurtado, professor of New Testament Language, Literature, and Theology at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, has started his own blog.  His book, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity, is a masterpiece of Christological scholarship.  If anyone wants to know if the early Church had a high view of Jesus this is must reading.  His scholarship is characterized by careful attention to detail without overplaying the evidence.  Here's just a sample:

"I reiterate the observation that, in terms of the religious scruples of the ancient Jewish tradition, the most striking innovation in earliest Christian circles was to include Christ with God as recipient of cultic devotion.  What could have prompted such a major innovation in the devotional scruples and practices that were inherited from the Jewish tradition?  What might have moved Christian Jews to feel free to offer to Christ this unparalleled cultic devotion?  In light of the characteristic reluctance of devout Jews to accord cultic reverence to any figure other than God, it seems likely that those very early circles who took the step of according Christ such reverence would have done so only if they felt compelled by God.  That is, in these groups there must have been some who experienced what they took to be revelations sent by God that convinced them that obedience to God demanded of them this cultic reverence of Christ." (Emphasis his, 72) 

His blog will warrant frequent visits.  Here's his YouTube feature on How Did Jesus Become a God? 

Was Paul a "More Orderly Thinker" than Jesus?

I recently read a statement made by Dale Allison in his book Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet which took me by surprise.  Here's what Allison was wrote:

Human beings are not vulcans.  Why have critics asked whether Paul's views on eschatology evolved with time and whether Romans and Galatians say different things about the law?  The reason is that the apostle, who was surely a more orderly thinker than Jesus, said some things that do not obviously go together.  Why should we believe Jesus was any different?  Do we have a holdover from the old systematic theology?  Surely if Jesus was, as many have held, an eschatalogical prophet who lived in the imaginative world of the apocalypses, we should not expect much consistency from him, for the essential irrationality of apocalyptic is manifest from the history of messianic and millenarian movements.  (page 3-4, emphasis mine)

My mind went through a whirlwind of ideas?  "This can't be right.  Jesus was God and Paul was just a man.  (The implicit Docetism hit me between the eyes!)  But, Jesus was a real man too with all the limitations that come with it.  Why couldn't that affect the "orderliness" of his thinking?  Disorderliness is not sinful.  Was Paul more orderly?"  Then a host of similar questions came to mind?  "Were there better carpenters than Jesus?"  "Was Jesus the fastest kid on the block or was there someone faster?"  "When Jesus was five could he have drawn a perfect circle?"  Did Jesus ever find himself looking for the right word and saying (in Aramaic of course and with an equivalent expression) "it's right on the tip of my tongue"?  What would be so wrong with that?  Part of what has influenced me, I think, is hearing the word "perfect" used so often when talking about Jesus.  He was the perfect teacher, the perfect preacher, used the perfect expression, asked the perfect question, gave the perfect response, saw the perfect opportunity and on and on.  So, the corollary seems to be, since no one is perfect (except Jesus), then no one could do it (whatever "it" may be) better than he did.  Right?

Clearly Jesus was sinless but does sinlessness entail perfection?  I don't think so.  Having said all that it still seems to rub me the wrong way to say that Jesus' thinking was in some way disorderly.  Perhaps because, for Allison, this disorderly thinking includes the idea of the Jesus uttering contradictions (a conclusion I would certainly deny).  I do think there were probably kids who could run faster than Jesus.  But it's another matter to take a writer like Paul who took time and care in composing a book like Romans and comparing that to a sermon from Jesus or any of his parables and from this judge who is the more orderly thinker.  I'm not saying that any of Jesus' sermons or parables shows signs of disorderly thinking.  It's just to say it's like comparing apples to oranges.  No doubt Allison is thinking of the entire raw data of what we have about Jesus as found in the Gospels (not just one or two samples).  And, compared to Paul's writings, he seems to be able to affirm that Paul was the more orderly thinker of the two.  But let's go back to my illustration about the better runner.  Admitting that there were faster runners than Jesus does nothing to diminish is humanity.  Would it diminish Jesus' humanity to admit that Paul (or anyone for that matter) may have been a more orderly thinker?  Doing something in a less orderly manner does not mean that it is wrong (and certainly not sinful).  The question has got me thinking.

Your thoughts?    

Larry Hurtado on How Did Jesus Become a God

Larry Hurtado is Professor of New Testament Language, Literature and Theology at Edinburgh University, Scotland and author of Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity and How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God?: Historical Questions about Earliest Devotion to Jesus. His research has significantly advanced the discussion on what the earliest Christians thought about Jesus. Hurtado provides solid evidence that Jesus was thought of as divine within just a few short years after Jesus death and resurrection. Indeed, in this video Hurtado says if you want to be a bit more daring you could say it perhaps happened within the earliest weeks or months after Jesus death but we don't have any evidence from that period. At the end of the video he contrasts his view with that of Maurice Casey and James (Jimmy) D. G. Dunn who hold to a more "evolutionary" view which sees the divinity of Jesus as developing over several decades after Jesus death (that discussion starts at 6:41 if you want to skip ahead). Enjoy!

J. P. Moreland on Logic and the Incarnation

I did my masters thesis on the incarnation and I appreciate what J. P. Moreland says here on the subject. J. P. has never been one to pull any punches. Consider these two statements from this clip:

"If the Bible teaches something that’s a logical contradiction you should disbelieve the Bible."

"Shame on you, if you claim to love Jesus, if you don’t care enough to learn what our brothers did for four centuries so that we would not affirm a contradiction. So committed was the church to the supremacy of logic."

Three Views on The Extent of the Atonement

Michael Bird will be posting three short blog entries sometime today answering the question "For whom did Christ die?" Here are the contributors:

The Calvinist View: Paul Helm

The Amyraldian View: Michael Jensen

The Arminian View: Ben Witherington

This should prove to be very interesting, or as Michael puts it "a ripper."

Was Jesus Born of a Virgn?

In his book, Velvet Elvis, Rob Bell asked us to imagine that someone had finally proven that Jesus was not born of a virgin. In fact his father was named "Larry" and DNA tests proved "beyond a shadow of a doubt that the virgin birth was really just a bit of mythologizing the Gospel writers threw in to appeal to the followers of the Mithra and Dionysian religious cults that were hugely popular at the time of Jesus, whose gods had virgin births." (026) Bell's point was not to deny the virgin birth (he made it clear he believed in the virgin birth) but to ask the larger question would "the whole faith [fall] apart when we reexamine or rethink" one item of faith. (027) The question sparked a firestorm of reaction. See here for one example.

What most layman don't realize is that this is nothing new. Oh, sure they know that liberals don't believe in the virgin birth but most are not as familiar with how much the doctrine is increasingly being undermined by Christian scholars. One example is James D. G. Dunn in his book Jesus Remembered.

In Dunn's discussion of the virgin birth he is careful to note that while Jesus' birth was "special--'from the Holy Spirit' (Matt. 1.20), by the power of the Holy Spirit (Luke 1.35). That of itself need not imply a virginal conception, but a virginal conception could well have been an elaboration of the basic affirmation, especially when Isa. 7:14 was brought into play." (347, emphasis mine). He further comments that the notion of an illegitimate birth cannot be excluded as a "historical judgment" though the inference for this is "exceedingly thin." (346) In a footnote Dunn says we "also need to be aware of the biological and theological corollaries on insisting that the virginal conception/birth was a historical fact." (347 n.48) What does this mean? He follows this with a quote, which Dunn describes as nothing more than being "blunt" from Arthur Peacocke. It reads, "For Jesus to be fully human he had, for both biological and theological reasons, to have a human father as well as a human mother and the weight of the historical evidence strongly indicates that this was so--and that it was probably Joseph. Any theology for a scientific age which is concerned with the significance of Jesus of Nazareth now has to start at this point." (347 n.48)

It is true Dunn himself never comes right out and says "the virgin birth didn't happen" but there isn't much here to give confidence in the historical veracity of the virgin birth. In fact, he offers many reasons why it would be reasonable and justifiable to deny its historicity. So, you might be thinking "who's going to read this book of 900+ pages anyway?" Answer: students who will soon be filling the pulpits of tomorrows churches. Dunn is professor of divinity at the University of Durham, England. It takes a while for the fruits of scholarship to filter into the pew. But it will come.

Those interested in learning more about the virgin birth should consult J. Gresham Machen's classic The Virgin Birth of Christ. One final thought. In my initial quote from Bell he mentions that the "followers of the Mithra and Dionysian religious cults" had gods who were also born of a virgin. This is a myth that seems to perpetuate itself in the popular skeptic materials. I'm not saying Bell believes this to be true. He was just making an illustration. But let's set the record straight: according to Edwin Yamauchi, a specialist in Mithraism, Mithras was born "out of a rock." (In "Christianity's Beliefs about Jesus were Copied from Pagan Religions" in The Case for the Real Jesus by Lee Strobel, p. 171). As for Dionysus, Yamauchi says, "There's no evidence of a virgin birth for Dionysus." (180) Christians have nothing to fear from the alleged parallels to pagan religions and have better reasons than those afforded by Dunn in accepting the virgin birth.