The Christmas Story attacked by Newsweek

Blog guru, Hugh Hewitt shed some light on a recent artical by Jon Meacham regarding the birth of Jesus. As it turns out, this article is also the cover story for Newsweek’s Christmas edition. (Thanks Hugh for including my blog on your site!)

This Newseek article is an attempt by a secular writer to dismiss not only the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, question the authority of the Scriptures, but also to reject the deity of Jesus Christ. The article is comfortably argued, however verses are taken out of context and carefully chosen “scholars” with a liberal bent were quoted.

For example, Meacham quotes the findings of the Jesus Seminar group, a self-proclaimed group of scholars that deem themselves experts on the teachings of Jesus Christ. Well known pastor-teacher, John MacArthur exposed the Jesus Seminar as those who try to shape Jesus into a politically correct person that fits their liberal world-view. According to Jesus Seminar founder Robert Funk, the entire Gospel of John is to be dismissed as containing authentic teachings of Jesus because, “Jesus speaks regularly in adages or aphorisms, or in parables, or in witticisms created as a rebuff or retort in the context of dialogue or debate. It is clear he did not speak in long monologues of the type found in the Gospel of John.”

What Funk fails to explain is that the fourth Gospel, the gospel of John, was not a narrative or synoptic Gospel like Matthew, Mark, and Luke. John’s Gospel purposefully was different than the synoptic Gospels in that it portrayed the person of Jesus Christ. John took an account of what Jesus Christ was like as a person, as the Son of God, His private ministry to people, and His personal dialogoues with the disciples.

The Jesus Seminar founder also is on his way to reject the resurrection of Jesus Christ as MacArthur explains, “The Jesus Seminar is not finished yet. The panel is going to reconvene soon to evaluate the works of Jesus. Funk says he is “reasonably sure the seminar fellows are going to say that the Resurrection happened as a vision to followers such as Peter, James, and Paul.” No doubt he’s right. The scholars have already announced their conclusion that the disciples’ accounts of an empty tomb are merely embellishments of Paul’s report that the risen Christ had appeared to him.”

The agenda of the Jesus Seminar is not so much to understand the historicity of Jesus teachings but rather take them out of context, dissect, and omit those verses that have any bearing on one’s repentance from sin. NT Professor from the Master’s seminary Dr. Thomas accurately opines, “Whose perception of Jesus depicts the real Jesus, the perception of the earliest Christians or that of specialists working nearly 20 centuries later?” He went on to say, “the verdict must favor the historical accuracy of the earliest perceptions found in the four Gospels.” This basically goes back to the fundamental law of biblical exegesis, we must interpret scripture in light of its historical and gramatical context. We cannot force our modern day philosophies and world views to scrutinize sentences penned 2000 years ago.

For further info, one of Hugh’s guests, Mark D. Roberts, has written a dismantling rebuttle to this Newsweek article mentioning the the Jesus Seminar, founder’s opening remarks at the seminar’s first meeting in 1985:

What we need is a new fiction that takes as its starting point the central event in the Judeo-Christian drama [Jesus] and reconciles that middle with a new story that reaches beyond old beginnings and endings [creation and eschatology]. In sum, we need a new narrative of Jesus, a new gospel, if you will, that places Jesus differently in the grand scheme, the epic story.

Not any fiction will do. . . . The fiction of Revelation keeps many common folk in bondage to ignorance and fear. We require a new, liberating fiction, one that squares with the best knowledge we can now accumulate and one that transcends self-serving ideologies.

This doesn�t exactly sound like the beginning of an objective quest for the historical Jesus, does it? In fact in that same lecture Funk said this about what his Seminar fellows would experience:

What we are about takes courage, as I said. We are probing what is most sacred to millions, and hence we will constantly border on blasphemy. We must be prepared to forebear the hostility we shall provoke.

Other than quoting the Jesus Seminar, Meacham attacks the legitimacy of Christ’s virgin birth, assuming Mary comitted adultery with a Roman soldier or had pre-marital sex sith Joseph. What makes it more disturbing is that he quotes a verse from John’s Gospel and takes it completely out of context. He quotes, John 8:41 as the Pharisess are in a heated dialogue with Jesus, they say, “We were not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God.” (NASB). To support his view, Meacham quotes Raymond Brown (a Catholic Scholar), who suggests that this verse may be that the Pharisees are suggesting that Jesus is an illegitimate son. According to Raymond Brown,

“The Jews may be saying, ‘We were not born illegitimate, but you were.’ The emphatic use of the Greek pronoun ‘We’ allows that interpretation.”

If we read this passage in its context, is this really what it is saying? .. that the Pharisees are accusing Jesus Christ as an illegitimate son?

As a reader and student of the bible, reading through the 8th chapter of John, one can follow the dialogue between Jesus and the Pharisees. The dialogues turns ugly in verse 31 as Jesus accuses them of being bound or enslaved to their sin, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin.” (vs. 34) Jesus exposes the Pharisees for their failure to see their own sin therefore, making them a slave to it. Jesus goes on to say that though they may have a lineage to Abraham, they are not truly children of God sayin, “I know that you are Abraham’s offspring; yet you seek to kill Me, because My word has no place in you. I speak the things which I have seen with My Father; there you also do the things which you heard from you father.”

Jesus draws a line saying, He is of His father in Heaven, while the Pharisees were of a different father. Clearly Jesus does not mean the Pharisees were of their spiritual father, Abraham, because he later says, “if you are Abraham’s children, do the deads of Abraham. But as it is, you are seeking to kill Me” (39b-40b) Jesus then directly says they are not sons of God the Father in vs. 42

This scathing accusation of Jesus that clearly says they were not of their father Abraham, was an insult both to their national purity and to their standing with God. So in retaliation they say that verse that Meacham quotes (vs 41) “We were not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God.” What could the Pharisees mean by that?

In the mind of the Pharisees, getting to God or becoming a child of God, was through their Abrahamic lineage. They were in effect saying, “yes we are of God, our lineage back to Abraham is true and pure. This statement in verse 41, was not so much an attack on Jesus that he was illegitimate, but a defensive statement in effect saying, “our lineage back to Abraham is pure. There was no fornication that polluted our lineage back to Abraham. Because of this, we are of God the Father”

Because of the Pharisees’ sin and pride, they couldn’t see that Jesus came to offer deliverance from the very sin of pride which they failed to see. They were proud of their lineage, while all the while failing to see their pride was exactly what separated them from God.

More I’m sure could be said, but we’ll leave it at that.

Every year it seems the world makes its attempt to take shots at Christianity. Jon Meacham took a very big one with this article. Scholarly and balanced, this article was not. A controversial seller possibly. What concerns this reader is the world’s bravado increasing and undermining the Savior’s love for them, especially in a season in which His message is most celebrated.