Appendix A

Appendix A: Interviewing College Professors

As I was researching this paper, I started hearing accounts of professors at the local colleges who were becoming known for debunking Christianity, for embarrassing the Christian students with pointed questions and criticisms. I thought we should get to the heart of the matter, and deciding to find some of these professors and interview them, and then take a look at their arguments.

At that time, I somehow got hooked up with the local Christian CCM station, KYMS, and they agreed to let me do a series on these interviews and then provide rebuttals. At first, Walter Martin was tentatively scheduled to provide rebuttals, but eventually I had to do that myself.

And so I went to a few colleges. My basic technique was either to take an already-known figure (such as Dr. Larue), or to just go to the campus and ask which professors were known for being vocally anti-Christian. I set up appointments with four professors, and Dave Spiker from KYMS accompanied me with the recording equipment.

All of the interviewees were surprisingly genial, and were pretty restrained, for the most part, with their comments. I wondered what all the fuss was about. The only professor who actually knew anything about the subject was Dr. Larue, a published religion professor.

At the least, these interviews provide some insight into the thinking of generally educated people, and they reveal a fundamental ignorance of Christian fundamentals. And speaking of that, I can’t much about the interviewer’s technique – kind of obsessive!

(Passages in quotes within parenthesis are interruptions by the other person.)

James Utter
Photography, Santa Ana College

Part I. Understanding of Christianity

Erick: Our first question is, do you think Christianity is true, or false, and generally how come?

Utter: I suspect it’s true, by virtue of the number of people that participate in it, or take part in Christian activities. I think that I would like to know, basically what Christianity is.

Erick: Some people think that Jesus Christ was the only Son of God, that is, incarnation of a personal infinite God, that he rose from the dead in a body that was both physical and spiritual, and that he is coming again to judge the world – some people think that’s true, and some people think that’s false. Do you think that’s true or false?

Utter: That’s a scary bunch of things to kind of lump together and identify. You have to subscribe to a really fundamental belief in Christianity to subscribe to what you’ve just said, and I suspect that I prefer to view Christianity in a broader sense; in a sort of contemporary life-style, rather than searching back and trying to identify with specific acts that have occurred in history, or previous to the time. It would that, if you’re going to be a Christian, you’re going to be that kind of person, that you Christian-like things, you practice rules or a certain code of ethics or morality that would lead people to believe you’re a Christian.

Erick: How do you think a Christian would differ from your basic moral atheist, like Bertrand Russell? Do you think there’s a real difference?

Utter: I have no idea. I’m not a philosopher. I have read no philosophy, other than just a few books.

Part II. Evaluating the Evidence

Erick: If you were going to think of the essence of Christianity as being Jesus and who he is, and address yourself to the problem of “Is he the Son of God” and “did he rise form the dead”, do you think those things are true? Do you think they’re important?

Utter: Sure, I suspect that they’re important, for the people who choose to believe them. They’re probably some of the prime things that they rest their belief on, or they refer to in their belief. Whether or not they’re true, you’d have to question I suspect the truth in the Bible itself, as a document of a history of a group of people, and it would seem that the Bible from my knowledge of it, is a kind of collection of writings. Joe, Harry, Pete, Tom, Ed, Sam, Dick, etc., wrote these things and they put them together in a collection called the Bible. I think with so many people participating in such a thing and all coming to the same kind of general position that it’s true that these things happened and those things happened – that there’s a lot of truth in it as an event: as a series of things that actually happened. And I know of no way to substantiate this.

Erick: Do you think that the writers sincerely believed what they wrote?

Utter: Yes, I suspect they did; they profoundly believed in it, and they died for it (“it’s not a plot then …”) … no they died for it, and that to me attests to their belief.

Erick: Do you think that the New Testament is a collection of eyewitness reportage of the things that Jesus did and said, or do you think that it’s a collection of legends that were written people a long time later?

Utter: I don’t know, frankly, because I have no way to compare the New Testament to the Old Testament; I haven’t read enough of it to know.

Erick: Some people say that the Bible has changed through the years – that obviously they didn’t have Xeroxes in those days, and they had to copy it by hand, and so the Bible (they say) has changed through the years so that now we don’t even know what the original copies really said. Do you think that’s true?

Utter: Oh, I’m sure it’s true. Guttenberg translated it when he did it in 1642, the first printed Bible. He had to make some errors. And those errors were transmitted in those copies, and recopied – just the mechanics of the process would tend to change it, regardless of whether there was any attempt to change it or not. By virtue of the fact that people were copying it would change a word here and there, and every time there’s a translation they get changed. I suspect that every one who has changed it intentionally has put their own two-bits in, or warped it, or changed it, or modified it, or omitted it – for their own personal gain. I don’t know who those people are, or why they were doing it, but I’m sure that these things have happened.

Erick: A lot of people have compared Jesus to religious leaders and figures, etc. It seems obvious to me that in the New Testament documents he claims to be the incarnation of God (the Son of God is the technical term for it, I guess); and I have a hard time trying to find any other person in history whose disciples have claimed that for him, or who claims that for himself. Have you thought about that, that he’s unique in that respect?

Utter: I suspect his claims are unique, if you want to compare that, sure … well, I don’t know if they’re unique or not. You just said that they were, so I’ll have to agree with you – because that sounds logical – although I suspect there are other races of people, religions, that have elevated some personage from their midst to a position to deity, somehow. I can’t think of any … the Japanese emperors have always been deified. (“How about the Roman emperors, too …”) I suspect, yeah. I think the Egyptians – some of their ruling class deified, or thought to be direct descendents of a god or series of gods – I think, I’m just kind of winging it, because I don’t know for sure, but it sounds like it would work.

Part III. Is it Important?

Erick: Now this idea that God could become a man, one time in human history, and that he died for a particular reason, and that he rose from the dead, seems to me – if it is true – then it’s the most mind-blowing historical event that has ever happened.

Utter: Well, I suspect that there would be people who differ with you. (“What would be more important than that?”) I don’t know. I can’t think of anything. Moveable type. I’ll cite the Bible, because that was a pretty important event. Modern man seems to have extended rapidly from the point of moveable type. It just so happens that moveable type and the Bible came at the same time – not really, because the Koreans had it in 1046, well before Guttenberg was even conceived. (“Yes, but how can you compare moveable type with God becoming man?”) You were saying mind-blowing events, so I picked a – for – mind-blowing event: moveable type, for that seemed to expand knowledge. I was just giving you a counter-offer. (“Well, that would blow my mind less than …”) I agree, but I could trade and say that God manifesting himself in the presence of a human being is not as important as moveable type to me. I’m just contrasting your view. (“Well, that is one view to take, I’m sure”) I could cite other – for me – events that were of equal importance: mostly relative to communications, I suspect. Those seem to be the things that have changed our society …

Erick: Do you think that this alleged event would be important enough to really investigate it – for instance – you had a friend who told you all these things happened; now, do you think this event is important enough for you to say: “Yes, I think the evidence is in favor of it and I think it’s really true”, or to say, “No, I think it’s not true, because of a particular reason.” Do you think it’s important enough to really deal with like that? Or do you think you can just … pass it off, or something?

Utter: Again, it comes down for me to “Why should I investigate it, why should I spend my time, what kind of gain am I going to get from it?” Lately, I suppose, in the last four or five years I have decided there are some things that are not important to me. I would rather do other things: be productive, make pictures, build a house, work in the garden, etc. And so I tend not to spend time verifying events like that – because they haven’t happened, that is, it hasn’t happened in contemporary society, so I don’t need to verify it … It may not be worth the energy because I couldn’t see any gain, any reason – I still don’t see a reason to take the time to do that, because it would mean a lot of research.

Erick: What would it take in order to show you that this is important? That it’s important enough to spend a little time and effort? Can you imagine any series of circumstances of things that would happen?

Utter: I’m a materialist, I always measure those things in some kind of material exchange. Because I feel relatively secure in my own personal philosophy, I kind of look for exterior kinds of things. I can’t think of anything in those terms, right now.

Erick: Well, how about life after death? (“That depends on where it happened.”) … (patter) … It seems like that would be important.

Utter: Sure, it’s important, but difficult to measure, somehow. It would be practically impossible. (“Can’t think of anything that would make it important to you?”) Nothing measurable, no. It comes down to that, I suspect.

Erick: The upshot of the thing is that if it could be shown to you – although s far we haven’t established how that could happen – that this is so important that you should spend a lot of time on it, in looking into it; then – obviously you would. (“That’s right.”) And then evidence may turn out to be very good, and then we would just all go to heaven together and be happy forever after. (“Great solution.”) Ok.

Dr. Barry M. Dank
Sociology, Long Beach State

Part I. Meaning and Importance of Christianity

Erick: Why do you think people become Christians? Where do you think the impulse is to become a Christian?

Dank: Well, first of all let me say the impulse is quite strong, obviously, because people have been becoming Christians for numerous centuries. I’ll give a rather simple answer and elaborate on it. I would say that the basic attraction of Christianity is that Christianity is a sort of life-insurance policy. People fear extinction, insignificance, consequently they want to feel significant, they want to feel important. And ultimately, vast numbers of people want to feel that when their physical life ends, that this is not really the end. In other words they want to transcend death. And Christianity offers them the opportunity – if they have faith, if they embrace Jesus – to transcend death. And that, in essence, is the symbolism of Jesus Christ, because Jesus Christ was a person who many people believe transcended death; he denied death, which I believe is the essence of the attraction to Jesus as a religious figure. One might also go on and say, basically, that much of Christianity is basically death-oriented, rather than life-affirming. One, of course, can look at the basic symbolism of Christianity, which has been Jesus on the cross, which is a sort of death symbolism. One can go on from there in terms of asking questions.

Erick: You spoke of the idea that Jesus transcends death. Right? (“Correct”) And that Christians feel that he actually rose from the dead, and that validated his claims to be God in the flesh.

Dank: Right, he became a God-like figure. Consequently, by embracing Jesus the person who embraces Jesus becomes a God-like figure, takes on attributes of God, and does not become simply another mortal, another person. And by people embracing a God-like figure, whether it’s Jesus or whoever else it might be, this gives them a sense of importance, a sense of significance, a sense of meaning to their life, and a feeling that they are not going to end in extinction, that their being in some sense will continue after death. We don’t want to – and I say we in a very general kind of way – we don’t want to believe that we go from dust to dust. It’s really inconceivable for most of us to deal with.

Erick: Why do you think people choose to be Christians, rather than Jews, Moslems, or Buddhists, etc.?

Dank: I would say because of death. Because Christianity, of all the major religions, most effectively deals with that, and most effectively deals with people’s fears and insecurities concerning the termination of their own life.

Part II. Christianity’s Bad Witnesses

Dank: Unfortunately, the underside has always been that many Christians that have embraced Jesus Christ – and therefore have felt that they were significant or important – could not accept the significance, importance of their own beings without therefore demeaning or degrading other people. I would say that the underside of Christianity historically has been anti-Semitism, persecution of the Jews, not only in terms of missionary activities (because Christianity has been historically characterized by a zealous kind of missionary kind of activity), but persecution of people who will not embrace Christianity, and in fact some of the major Christian leaders have been vehement anti-Semites.

For example, many Christians look to Martin Luther as a very major historical figure in the development of Christianity. And I think we cannot possibly deny that Luther did have a tremendous effect on Christianity. And I want to give one quote from Luther. This is from 1543, and Luther is talking about how Christians should deal with Jews. He says, (1) to “set fire to their synagogues and schools, (2) I advise that their houses should be razed and destroyed, (3) I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings in which such adultering lies, cursing and blaspheming be taken from them, (4) I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb, (5) I advise that safe conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews, (6) I advise all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them, (7) Let whosoever can, throw brimstone and pitch upon them so much the better, and if this is not enough, let them be driven like mad dogs out of the land.”

In fact, I could have read you that quote and incorrectly prefaced it by saying that it was written by Adolph Hitler, and this would not have stunned you. Of course, although Hitler came from a Catholic background (by the way, he was never ex-communicated from the Catholic Church, was not a professing Christian), however his basic appeal was to Christians, many of whom profess to be true believers in Christianity, and destruction of six million Jews originated out of a traditionally Christian society, from which in fact, Martin Luther came (which was Germany).

Erick: Where did he write that? Does it come from a book?

Dank: No. It comes from a book on Hitlerism. The exact source I can’t tell you off the top of my head. But it’s a very well known source. In fact, the Nazis, when they gained power in Germany in the 30’s, in a sense resurrected this quote, and it was distributed in many of their anti-Semitic pamphlets. Most people who are into Lutheranism are quite familiar with his anti-Semitism. And also another concept of Luther which has had tremendous impact, was that true Christians, although they should have spiritual and religious freedom (sort of internal kind of freedom), should always obey the State. This is one of the prime concerns of Luther.

Consequently, when Hitler came into power, the vast bulk of Lutherans in Germany and in Europe remained silent because it was incorrect to dissent from the official state policies. In fact, one might say – or ask the question – how is it possible continue to be a confessing Christian with the knowledge of Auschwitz, a death camp established in a Christian society which gassed to death four million Jews?

Part III. Is Christianity True or False? – No Public Reality

Erick: How would a person decide whether it was true or not? (“Whether what was true or not?”) Whether Jesus really rose from the dead and was the Son of God, or it was false. How would a person decide that?

Dank: I don’t think I can give you a general kind of answer to that. That depends on each individual’s particular ethics, world-view, etc. Personally, I can’t decide that question because I don’t consider it to be a meaningful question. (“Why is that?”) I’m not going to put myself into evaluating whether a person is God-like or non-God-like. I’m not going to judge persons. Personally, I don’t deal with that question. I see all of us as human beings who ultimately will die and my concern in life is to make life more humane, more ethical, to decrease the blood baths which have been with us through the history of mankind and unfortunately with us in the history of Christian societies.

I’ll be more blunt. I will embrace no one personally as a reflection of God. However, if persons state or profess to me that they in some sense have embraced Jesus Christ or embraced some other God figure, I will not judge them. But at the same time, I ask that they not judge me, either positively or negatively, for not embracing their viewpoint. And this is one of the things that concerns me greatly in my interactions with Christians, and born-again Christians. Particularly, I find that a number of people I have contact with who say they are born-again Christians, and when they find out that I am not a born-again Christian, and in fact Jewish, a number of such persons tend to distance themselves from me or judge me or try to convert me. They won’t accept where I’m at. On the other hand if they do, I’d be quite willing to accept them.

Erick: … How do you think the Jews contemporaneous with Jesus, and who were his disciples, got the idea that he was a God made man, which is a very odd idea?

Dank: No, it’s not an odd idea. Jews were waiting for the messiah for many years. Where did they get the idea? Well, they got the idea the messiah would appear from Jewish writings and from Jesus. (“Do you think he claimed to be God in the flesh?”) What he claimed is not really important, it’s what other people believe. And I would say that many people believe that, yes, he is God in the flesh. And many people today literally believe that by taking wine they take Jesus’ blood and taking break they take his body – which is still the official position of the Catholic Church, this is not a symbolic thing but a literal thing, that by engaging these rituals you taste the blood and body of Jesus Christ.

Erick: The reason I asked that is because it seems to me that I don’t know any other Jewish prophet type who claimed to be God in the flesh. In fact it seems that at his trial he was executed for that – for blasphemy – and that for his fellow disciples to get that idea, he must have taught it to them, or gave them an indication he was. In which case, if it wasn’t true, then he must be a religious maniac. I don’t see him being a good religious teacher. I see him either being what he said he was or …

Dank: Listen, I’m not going to use the word maniac. You could say possibly he was deluded or under an illusion. But, I’m not going to hold Jesus personally responsible for what his followers have done. Many of his followers in essence have in effect reacted as maniacs, and been totally unrestraining in sacrificing, or willing to sacrifice, other people in the name of Christianity – rationalizing oppression of other people in the name of Christianity. I want, on the other hand, to be perfectly clear that there have been Christians who have not ever rationalized brutality and violence in the name of Christianity; unfortunately, Jesus has been a figure which people have conveniently used over the centuries to justify whatever they want to justify. The most important concept flowing out of Christianity, which is a very simple kind of concept, is the concept of love.

Erick: I’m trying to find a way to make you respond to whether Christianity is true or not, and … (“I would think that you ask this question for a true believer, … for a Christian”). I’m talking about the world of real reality, either it is true or it is false.

Dank: But see, I don’t believe there is one true, real reality. We create realities. Your reality, if you are a Christian, is true for you. And I’m not going to say to you that your reality is a pseudo-reality, it’s inferior to my reality. I feel most comfortable with my world-view, but on the other hand, I’m not going to degrade or demean other people as being inferior, and this is what you’re asking me to do. I accept as valid for you what you profess about Christianity; however, if you start to flaunt your Christianity, saying that I must be a Christian, then I will fight your reality, which you are trying to coercively apply to other people.

[ At this point, the interview ends, but we continued to talk off-camera about his notion of “creating” realities. He said that there was no “real” reality. Always looking for something clever to say, I countered, “What kind of reality is there then, a FAKE one?” I wanted to ask him for the keys to his car, since in my reality I owned that car, but I thought that would be out of line, so restrained myself. ]

Dr. Owen Jensen
Speech, Long Beach State

Part I. Statement of Position

Jensen: I believe there’s an order to the universe. I believe there is some unifying spirit – some power source, if you will – or something that makes us brothers and sisters under the skin (so to speak), and that all of life has some connection one way or another. Now whether we call that God or the essence of life, or power, or energy, or whatever you want to call it, depends on which major religion you’re talking about: as to which they tap into and which direction they go in – I firmly believe there’s something there, and that all of life is connected one way or another. Now whether this is a personal being called God or not, I don’t know – and again, there is evidence to say there must be a controlling influence, or a person if you will, directing things. ON the other hand, there is some evidence that we all generated out of one place and will all go back to that place, and it really isn’t controlled all that much, but that it just works that way. I don’t know. I like to believe myself to be a religious man, in that I believe underneath there is something that pulls all of life together. For some, that’s God, and that’s great, and I’m one hundred percent for people that believe that’s God. I haven’t made up my mind on that yet.

Erick: Some Christians feel that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and that he rose from the dead. They base this in large part on what they consider to be eyewitness recordings of the people who were concerned in the events – his immediate disciples – that they heard him say various things, and lived with him, and got the impression that he was the incarnation of God, and they said they saw him after his resurrection from the dead. As a historical event, is this likely to be true or false – what is your attitude toward that?

Jensen: My basic attitude to that is my basic attitude toward all historical events: we’re left to the reporters’ veracity and truthfulness. And since it’s my understanding the bulk of what we have in the New Testament was written even originally some time after the facts, we’re left with the recollection of people and their interpretation of what occurred. Since we have the testimony of only a few people that he was certified “dead”, it’s entirely possible that he wasn’t dead at all, but when he was seen by other people after the “death” he very well may have not been dead but have been hiding out and reappearing.

Those people who claimed to have seen him may very well have seen him; whether he was a spirit or ghost, or whatever you want to call him at the time they saw him or not is open to some speculation. Whether he actually was there or not is open to some speculation. And I believe like most religious principles and almost any of the major religions, you are left to an act of faith, if you will, that the explanation that is accepted by the members of the Christian church is the most logical explanation.

And that requires an act of faith, because we’re talking about something that happened two thousand years ago, reported some time after the fact. And you can accept that or reject it, and either way you’re sort of suspending judgment because you don’t have concrete, first-hand, sensual inputs of your own on which to base that decision. So you have to accept either the historian that said he actually did die and did appear after his death in a resurrected form or the historian that said it didn’t happen at all: it was all a big put-up job, and he either wasn’t dead originally, or he wasn’t really seen afterward, or whatever.

The person sitting here in 1977 has to have an act of faith either way, which one is he going to believe? I don’t have the answer to that. I don’t know who to believe. I think there’s evidence on both sides … but I’m not sure I buy that I’m going to be tried and weighed in the balance at the time I die or not. I don’t have enough evidence to say I’m going to be, and as long as I don’t have enough evidence to convince myself, that I’m going to have to stand in front of the great tribunal, and answer questions or defend my faith and so forth. It is relatively unimportant to me.

Part II. Types of Evidence

Erick: Once you did have some evidence that you would be tried in the balance, would that open the subject up to investigation for you?

Jensen: Once I had enough to convince myself, yes.

Erick: If this guy Jesus was a contemporary of ours, if you hung out with him for a few years, and talked to him, and he told you that yes, he was the incarnation of God, yes you would be tried in the balance, and that he would take care of you; and you saw him after he rose from the dead: would that be enough evidence to start you responding?

Jensen: It probably would if I had evidence that I’m taking in with my own sensual apparatus and I could … that he was there, that I had been there at the time he died, and I verified for myself that he was dead; then he reappeared at a later time and I verified for myself that he was the same person; and that I had no other logical explanation than to accept his claim that he was the Son of God and that he indeed rose from the dead, then I’d be included to pursue quite a bit further.

I realize, of course, that my own sensual apparatus might feed me incorrect data. I know I’m fooled very day when I watch TV by the angle of the camera, and so forth; I know that I’m fooled every day by my own sensual inputs, when I say to myself “this looks this way” or “this looks the other way”, etc. I know I can be fooled, but it’s all I have. And so, as long as that’s all I have, if I have that direct testimony for myself, then yes, I have to pursue it further, because I have to go on the assumption that what I have is correct for myself, and then I would pursue it.

Erick: Taking it one step further, what if your best friend, who you trust and seems to be reasonably intelligent, came to you with that exact same information, would you draw a distinction between your own particular experience of the thing and real good reporting from a personal friend? Would you say that that was not to be trusted or investigated?

Jensen: If possible, I would probably want to investigate it on my own, and I would not believe his report as a report without verification on my own. Even though I might trust his reporting is a fairly accurate report, I may have misunderstood his report, he may not have perceived correctly, so I’d be left to my own kinds of perceptions.

Erick: … and you would accept it enough to consider it as a possibility, and in order to put some practical tests to it.

Jensen: I would probably accept that he believed it strongly, and for that reason it might be worth my investigation because he believed it strongly enough. But I wouldn’t believe it for me until I had put it to my own investigation.

Erick: So you would have to put it to your own test. (“Right”) Sounds logical. What if, instead of a friend, you had written documents that were written by people who had experienced these things; and if these documents could be shown to be of eyewitness nature, and that the people sincerely believed what they were talking about, and they had a reasonable opportunity to experience the things they did; would you consider that evidence enough to investigate it?

Jensen: Not knowing the nature of the so-called eyewitnesses when I’m further removed from them, I may or may not look at it as worth further investigation. (“That would pretty much depend on what you knew about the eyewitnesses.”) Pretty much.

Erick: If you saw these events for yourself, you’d probably go with it, and if a friend told you about it, you would be interested enough to give it practical tests for yourself. And if the documents told you about it, before you would want to even test it for yourself, you would have to be assured that the eyewitnesses are of sufficient character and intelligence, etc., that they would serve as a “surrogate friend.” So you would need to (1) examine the eyewitnesses, (2) see if they qualify as friends, (3) and then put it to practical tests to see if it is true. (“That about sums it up.”) That sounds fair to me.

Part III. Evaluating the Evidence: Who is Jesus?

Erick: Could you give me what you would consider to be the closest couple of instances of people that were similar to what Jesus was?

Jensen: I can’t give you any, because none of them claimed to be the Son of God; and Christ alone is the one that claimed to be the Son of God, at least in my studies of religions. He’s the only one that made that claim. I believe the very fact he made that claim may have been conducive to people deifying him and believing that claim. (“In fact, I think it would be necessary, for his contemporaries to deify him, for him to have made that claim”) Right. I would go along with that. But I don’t know of any others who made that claim, whether the claim was justified or not. I have to say I’ve heard people at Metropolitan make similar claims, but they’re people we feel are not functioning in the normal run of society, or what we call normal reality.

Erick: It seems as though if he were not the Son of God, then he would either have to be a candidate for Fairview Mental Hospital, or Metropolitan – or else he would have to be a pretty big fraud, a liar who was aware that he wasn’t the Son of God and simply went out to fool the world anyway.

Jensen: He may have convinced himself that he was, whether that was self-delusion or whether he really was, I don’t know. All I know is he is reported to have made the claim, and consequently, if he was reported to make the claim, and his close associates heard him make the claim, then they were left with the alternatives that either the claim was justified or it wasn’t. They had no middle ground: it was one or the other for them, because he made the statement. And according to my study of biblical writers and scholars of that time, they either accepted it or rejected it. I have read nobody that has a middle ground.

I fully believe that his followers accepted that he was, for whatever reason. I fully believe that if the accounts of what he said are accurate, that he believed it, whether that was “true” or “not true.”

Erick: What do you do with it then? (“I don’t know.”) Doesn’t it seem interesting to you that the only man ever to claim to be the Son of God … it seems interesting to me if he was, or even if he wasn’t. He is a unique type of person.

Jensen: Yes, he is unique. Let me back up. He’s the only one I’ve read about claiming to do that. That doesn’t necessarily mean he’s the only one that ever did, he’s the only one I’ve read about. Yes, he would be a unique person. He could be the biggest and most unique fraud we’ve ever had; he could be the biggest and most unique liar we’ve ever had; he could be the biggest and must unique self-deluded person we’ve ever had. He could be any one of these. I don’t know …

There is a fourth alternative that it may have been a whole group of people got together to perpetrate a religion, that he didn’t know anything about it till it was all said and done. And they put words in his mouth, and built him up, and found this nice poor hapless guy who for one reason or another got hung on the cross – and they decided to build a whole myth around him, and did an excellent job of doing it.

Erick: And then either those other people would be his followers or they would be later people that made it up and (“claimed to be his followers, and claimed to be eyewitnesses.”) So that if it could be shown that they were eyewitness reports, then the later people would be ruled out, and the plot would have to have been perpetrated by his immediate disciples.

Jensen: Yes, if there were enough evidence for me to accept that.

Erick: What he have here is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 possible interpretations … (1) The New Testament is not eyewitness documents, they are legends or something perpetrated by people who were not the disciples, but later people, to start a religion or whatever (“Right.”) (2) It was a plot by the disciples (“Right.”) (3) He was a lunatic; (4) He was a liar: or (5) It is true.

My question now is: If the inherent absurdity of each of the other alternatives can be shown, that they are contrary to facts and contrary to logic, would that be sufficient evidence to convince you provisionally that Christianity is true, and to encourage you to apply practical tests in day-to-day life?

Jensen: Providing I couldn’t find the other one was absurd, too. For example, we’d first have to grant the existence of God, for the granting of the Son of God; and that may be manifestly absurd, too. I don’t know. So I would have to put that to the same tests as the other four, and if we put the same tests to all five of them and one came out as more probably than any of the others, or more possible – giving even a little more freedom – then it probably would be worth investigating a little more.

Erick: The problem is: investigating whether it’s true or not, and testing it, has to be done through personally experience God for yourself. (“Right.”) And in the gospel of John, Jesus says that if any many wills to do the Father’s will, then “I will reveal myself to him” and “show myself to him.” J thus, if we’ve provisionally accepted the Christian position, then I suppose it would take a personal sort of commitment in order to verify that in one’s own life. In other words, until you get in the water, you can’t really swim around. (“Yes, I would agree with that.”) But, however, this would not just be jumping in the dark – just some sort of “let’s believe what we want to” – because you’ve already investigated it historically, and find that – yes indeed – this is the most probably of all explanations. And that would give us a reason for jumping into the water and checking it out in our lives. (“That sounds reasonable.”)

Dr. Gerald Larue
Religion, USC

Part I. Myth, Faith, and Truth

Erick: “We’re talking about the theme, was Jesus really the Son of God? Did He really rise from the dead? And of course, a lot of people have a lot of different opinions. They base it sometimes on facts, sometimes on preference. I’d like to know your opinion and basically your outlook on that.

Larue: Well, you’ve asked two different questions. And both of them are what I call “faith questions.” These are matters of belief.

Resurrection

Let’s take the resurrection from the dead. This is a matter of which there is no proof. An empty tomb; I’ve been to dozens of empty tombs. All they say is the body isn’t there. It doesn’t tell you what happened to the body. So you don’t have an argument on that basis. You have a New Testament set of recordings saying, “We have witnessed this”, or “We have experienced this”, and these are all written from the point of view of faith. They’re not cold hard documentary reports, there was no television camera there, there was no one taking tapes. Did you really see this? This type of thing. They’re all written after the fact. If you once accept the physical resurrection of the body, you have a problem. Then what happened to the body? Did it live on for awhile, then did it die? No, says the early church, it ascended. And this raises another kind of problem, because now we’re in the space age. We’re not in the three-layer world which the New Testament people were in.

The other thing is, if you’re going to accept Jesus’ resurrection, you might as well accept all the others that go along with it. Mary went to heaven physically, Prophet Muhammad, and there are a whole series of these. We have Muhammad’s grave; we also have Muhammad going to heaven from the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. So if you are going to accept one, you need to accept them all. This is in fairness. You can’t say one is mythology and the other is fact unless you have something to demonstrate.

The other thing is, once you say that you have a physical body going to heaven, you’ve determined that heaven is a place where that physical body is now located. And this is not a spiritual resurrection you’re talking about. The body has to be gone (the tomb is empty, we saw Him on the road to Emmaus). This gets into a whole different kind of time-space dimension which we are very conscious of in this 20^th century. That is to say, we now have projected people into space. We no longer believe that heaven is right above, and hell is down below. – Sheol is the place of the dead which becomes a place of punishment in early Christian and Jewish thought). So, we’re into a different time-place set of concepts.

So if you want to believe this, if a person wants to believe it, this is fine. To me, that means you’ve got to cut off a certain amount of your thinking, of 20^th century thinking, and move back into time and space to the first century A.D., where such beliefs were possible. For me this is unreal. Now, there are people who speak of a spiritual resurrection. Okay, then, the body would have apparently decayed and gone the way of all bodies. You’re into something quite different, and again this can’t be proven or disproven. It’s a matter of faith, you either believe that there is another dimension to you, like the Greeks call body-soul, and the early Christians believed in body-soul, or you believe that this is all there is and when you die you’re dead and you go into the ground, and there is nothing left. And these are matters of faith which you can’t prove or disprove either way. Whatever makes you happiest. But for me, the idea of physical resurrection – this makes no sense, not in my way of thinking.

Son of God

Now, in terms of Jesus as the Son of God, this again is a tricky set of patterns. There have been studies done on ‘son of’; what it means, for instance, in the Old Testament. We have references to the “sons of the prophets.”   This didn’t mean they were physical descendants, it simply meant that they were men who gathered around the chief prophet, Elijah, and tried to become one like him. And he had little camps of disciples and you can read how he moved from one to another, visiting them. Elisha as one of his followers, one of the “sons of the prophet.” So you can say, “Okay, Jesus is the Son of God in that sense - that he is close to God and he is trying to be, or manifest physically what God would do if He were in the flesh. And this has been an argument, the incarnate God in the flesh … This is what God would do if He were here.”

But again, physical son-ship and all of these terms are matters of faith - discipleship, these are senses of belonging to an organized movement. You can’t say or prove a virgin birth, because virgin births are a dime a dozen in the ancient Near Eastern world. Jesus was given this kind of a birth record in the New Testament. Now, you can say, “Alright, I accept Jesus’ virgin birth, but I don’t accept a whole series of other ones, of people in the same place who made the same claim.” Once again, it’s a kind of exclusiveness.

Or you can say the early church wrestled with the nature of Jesus. One group saw His son-ship in terms of a divine birth. Others saw it as being chosen by God at the baptism. Another sees it in terms of His whole pre-existence. Then you get into pre-existence theology. But any way you look at it, this is a wrestling with a figure who has come to be the dominant figure in the Christian cult. And this is perfectly legitimate. You can interpret it any way that makes you feel complete, and whole, and at one with this kind of a figure.

Erick: I was looking at your book today, and I remember there is always the confusion over the word “myth”, because there are two definitions: (1) The popular definition, that it’s not true, and (2) the scholarly definition that, I think, you don’t judge whether it’s true or false; it’s simply a category that deals with gods and their dealings with men.

Larue: Yes. This is a literary analysis approach. The common kind of thing where we are talking about other peoples, and we say, “Well, Amin’s disappearance in Africa at a certain time was mythical”, meaning we don’t believe it, he was really there all the time. He didn’t go to England as he pretended to go. But that kind of definition that I work with in the book Ancient Myth and Modern Man, is that myths are narratives. They have a narrative structure, and they deal with the idea of the activities of gods and goddesses, or demons, or the supernatural – not only in terms of their relationships, one to another, but also in the way in which these figures (these other, these non-human factors), affect the world of humans. And so I have a very broad definition. And this would include Christianity, and it would include the Moslem religion, it would include the claims of the Book of Mormon where you have angels giving keys to revelation to Joseph Smith, and so on.

Erick: That would include all supernatural things. (“All supernatural things.”) So then, of course, to call Christianity a myth doesn’t necessarily (in that sense) mean it’s false. No. How can we tell whether it’s a true myth or not?

Larue: Well, that’s a bad phrase I guess, whether it’s true or not. I guess it depends on the person. It’s true for those who whom it is true; the same as the Moslem faith is the true faith for those who accept Muhammad as the revealer of the will of God, the Mormon faith is true for those who accept the Book of Mormon as a revelation. So your truth depends on who or what you accept as truth. And if you say “I accept Jesus as the Son of God, I accept the New Testament and the Old Testament as true” – or if you’re in the Roman Catholic Church, you have sections of the Apocrypha as true, depending on whose Bible you’re using – “I accept these as true”, this then means that you have made a decision – what they used to call the leap of faith. You can’t prove or disprove; it’s true for you. But it may not be true for me, because I don’t buy it. I may buy a different set of values.

Part II. Eyewitness Evidence

Erick: There’s a real popular work by F.F. Bruce called The New Testament Documents, Are They Reliable. Have you seen that? (“I know his argument, but I haven’t seen his book.”) There are some people on that line like John Warwick Montgomery, and F.F. Bruce, and people who would argue, basically, that the New Testament is a collection of eyewitness reportage (which takes awhile), and because of that, the logical response to that would be either to figure that it’s some sort of plot that these disciples made up, or that it’s some sort of misunderstanding – even though they lived with Jesus and were responsible in large parts for these documents, they still misunderstood somehow. And then you have to explain that – or that it’s true.

Larue: I think I may misunderstand Bruce, but most people would argue that the New Testament is a collection of materials of the early Christian church, and that, as you know, the New Testament didn’t take its final form until the third century A.D. There were a lot of documents over which they argued: the Shepherd of Hermas, for instance, didn’t make it. Third John was argued over for a long, long time, and finally made it (“barely squeezed in”). Second Peter, and some of the other items. So, we have here a selection process going on; the early church deciding what it’s going to use. Now, in terms of eyewitness reports, I would say that the Pauline letters would be first-hand documents. (The only confusion, perhaps, would be in the Corinthian correspondence, where apparently there are four letters embedded in two. But that’s a small thing; they’re all Pauline, and so there is no argument there.) The other later materials are also witnessed of the church, eyewitnesses to what they’re talking about, but not necessarily to Jesus himself.

The gospels for me come late. They reflect, in my thinking, the evidence of the early church attempting to struggle with its mission, its destiny, and the meaning of Jesus. These are not cold hard documentaries, this is something that is part of our time and our place. For instance, we have an assassination in Dallas of a President, and it so happens that somebody is there with a camera, so that we actually catch that moment on film. And it’s there for all to see. Nobody can say this is a hoax; we have nothing like that. What you have are the memories of people who are close to Jesus. And I would argue that they were re-worked by the early church to make them presentable. Nobody is there taking notes, this becomes incredible. This was not the pattern, Paul apparently dictated his letters because he ends one by saying, or which gives the impression that he takes the pen, and writes and says, “Look how large my writing is compared to the official scribe.”

So you have that kind of a first-hand thing. But, in terms of the NT, how do you present – it’s like a minister trying to preach a sermon – how do you present what is the truth of this particular moment in time and history to a group of people who live here, here, and here: Antioch, Rome, wherever? And so we have this wrestling, you have this in the Roman epistle. Paul is attempting to make real his experiences, his belief system, to a group of Christians living in Rome. He’s writing a letter saying, “Look, here, this is it.” But in terms of eyewitness reports, written when? How long after the event?

I don’t know if you know that experience that a number of classrooms have done, where the professor is lecturing in the front of the room and all of a sudden the door bursts open and an ex-student comes in and grabs him by the throat. And then he says to the class, “Alright” (he straightens his tie; it’s all tape-recorded and there’s a hidden camera in the back like Candid Camera), “write down everything you saw, everything you heard, every word.” And so everybody writes busily. He collects these, puts them in a file. Three weeks later he says, “Write it again”, and so they all write it again. Two weeks or a month later he says, “Write it again.” Now, what happens is that the stories begin to change. The farther you are from an event the greater the possibility for all kinds of interpretive elements to come in. You talk to somebody, you say, “Did you see that?” He says, “No, I didn’t see that”, so he adds it in his next report, or whatever.

How close are these eyewitnesses to the event? Are they writing right on the moment, a week later, two weeks later? I just got a document here about a young lady who was writing about her mother’s suicide. This happened two years ago. She’s working on her feelings, her anger, and so on. Things change; we’re not the same every moment. And so I would ask F.F. Bruce, and these others: When? How close? Even eyewitnesses, as any police officer will tell you, after an accident, will have varying things to say. I’m cautious at this point.

Erick: If it could be shown, somehow, that they found something that was dated earlier? Or if the evidence could be shown that it was pretty strong in that type of eyewitness sense – do you think that the idea of Jesus being the Son of God and risen from the dead could be removed from the realm of a sort of leap of faith, to some sort of historical fact?

Larue: I don’t know how you would handle that. I really don’t.

Erick: Do you think that would cause a revolution in …

Larue: Again, you would have to say, what is the validity of this so-called eyewitness?

Erick: Of course, it would have to be done by eyewitnesses, preferably – for instance – if they lived with him for three years …

Larue: Well I’d rather have a report sent to the Roman police station by one of the guards saying, “The darndest thing happened to us earlier this morning while we were standing guard over the tomb” … or something like that.

Erick: That would be a nice corroboration, wouldn’t it.

Part III. Historical Evidence

Erick: Do you remember J.A.T. Robinson, who wrote Honest to God? Have you seen his book Redating the New Testament? (“No, I haven’t.”) It’s the most incredible thing. I thought he was the liberal of liberal theologians; I guess he wasn’t (“he is a liberal”) – well, he got very un-liberal recently, because he says in the book that all the New Testament – he thinks – can be dated before 70 AD. (“Yes, I’ve read that, I know he says that.”) He is more orthodox than the orthodox. What do you think about that, do you think it’s true?

Larue: I haven’t examined his evidence. I’d have to read to see what it says. You see, people can say anything; but what is the data?

Erick: Basically, what he tries to show is the framework by which people date the gospel is really based on a couple of presuppositions and a couple of general ideas, and they kind of rise and fall with each other.

Larue: The dating does have a few very specific points, and if these can be destroyed, then we would have to re-evaluate. Are you talking about the whole New Testament? I would argue that Second Peter – “Where is this promise of His coming?” – all these people are dying and so on. I guess that could be 69.5 AD, but it sounds like something from later writings, because it fits in with some other documents that we have.

Erick: Vincent Taylor said in one of his books that, according to Bultmann, the apostles must have been whisked away into heaven immediately after the resurrection, because you don’t have any overseers in the church that are trying to preserve truth – or else they’re being corrupted. Like in Walter Kauffman’s book, Faith of a Heretic, he feels that Paul – because of his strong personality, psyched everybody out and made them go along.)

Larue: Again, this is a matter of what happened to the apostles. And this chap who has a church over in Glendale, McBirnie, has done a whole volume on tracing the apostles and where they went and so on. He’s following legend; whether he believes it or not, I don’t know.

Let’s take 70 AD as kind of a date for this. That would make the apostles about 70 years old – and that’s possible (“or John would be younger than that”). Yes, he’s supposed to be younger than that. Back to the gospels. The problem with them, as far as I’m concerned, are the evidences that there was borrowing among them; Matthew and Luke apparently had Mark in front of them. The endings are so varied; they can’t make up their minds if there’s one angel or two angels, who’s talking to who (at the end of the gospels in terms of the resurrection); there are contradictions there. So you’d say if there are eyewitnesses, then there must be some sort of harmony.

Part IV. Summary

Erick: I’m going to try to summarize what we’ve established here in your position. First of all, the big problem evidence-wise, is the fact that these seem to be later legends done by people who are not really in touch with the facts …

Larue: Let me touch on this. The legend idea is that around important people there grow up a fabric of stories that may say something true about the person, but they’re interpretive, and they’re designed to make the hero reasonable, intelligent, a model, a paradigm, for those who are looking to him, saying, “What would he do in this situation?” So you have these stories created around this person. They’re not fabrications in terms of being deliberate falsehood, they’re attempts to explain the meaning of someone for the person or the group involved. They have a legitimacy; they may not be factual.

Erick: The idea that the apostles were still alive and were heads of the church, overseeing and making sure that everything was accurately done, you think is probably a dubious proposition.

Larue: Yes, I think that we’re laying on the apostles a role that they may or may not have had. I don’t know. This is a hypothesis; there simply isn’t evidence to say yes, this is what was taking place. At least not for me. I haven’t seen the evidence. You don’t enter into truth or falsehood in this kind of mythology. You enter into: “Do you buy it or you don’t.” If you buy it and it makes sense to you, fine; if it makes sense of your world.