But What About the Resurrection?
Robert Hutchinson’s article, “What the Rabbi Taught Me About Jesus” [Sept. 13], is wonderful. Jacob Neusner’s book gives Christians needed insight into the difficulties encountered by Jewish friends as they consider the claims of Jesus. Hutchinson was deeply blessed by his encounter with this remarkable scholar.
I read Neusner’s book and wondered about his evasion of questions concerning Jesus’ resurrection. Then I realized he was limiting himself to writing about his reaction had he actually been present at some of Jesus’ teaching sessions, which took place before his crucifixion. Surely, though, he must also have wondered how he would have reacted to news of the events recorded in the last chapter of Matthew.
One cannot read the book without being filled with admiration for this esteemed Jewish scholar, and with gratitude for his having written it. I found myself longing for the opportunity just to visit with him as he, in his imagination, had talked with Jesus. My first question would have been, “Yes, Dr. Neusner, but what about the resurrection?”
Eleanor Barzler
Marshall, Mich.
Hutchinson misses some major gaps in Neusner’s “debate with Jesus.” While wanting to ask Jesus if he thinks he’s God, Neusner misses Jesus’ clear announcement of his Godhood in John 6; 8; 11; and 14. Isaiah prophesied the Messiah would be called “Mighty God, everlasting Father” (Isa. 9:6). Even in Matthew’s gospel (9:2) we read of Jesus assuming, as God, the authority to forgive sin.
Hutchinson doesn’t reveal that Jesus constantly connected Jesus’ “new” doctrine with the Jewish Scriptures. Nor should Christianity’s spread to non-Jews be a surprise, since Isaiah prophesied that the Messiah would be “a light to the Gentiles” (42:6), and five times in Genesis God announces that “in [Abraham’s] seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
It is easy to “debate Jesus” if one trims away the bulk of Jesus’ sayings, miracles, and the many prophecies concerning him.
Frank Langben
Campbell, Calif.
Thank you for Hutchinson’s thought-provoking discussion. Neusner’s observation that Jesus, in effect, claimed the right to modify the law of Moses sheds light on why the crowds were astonished at his teaching “as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law” (Matt. 7:29). It is mind-boggling to realize this amounted to yet another of Jesus’ claims to deity, as the law could be changed by God alone.
This brings to mind the words of C. S. Lewis on the dilemma facing each of us on how to respond to these claims of Christ: “You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse.” For us, that question is conclusively settled by Christ’s miracles and his resurrection, not to mention the experiences of countless numbers of changed lives over the past two millennia.
Darrel D. Hoerle
Manhattan, Kan.
Neusner has done us a service—and Hutchinson rightly points this out—in emphasizing Jesus’ deity and its radical implications. We need to be reminded of this periodically.
However, Hutchinson “misses the boat,” as does Neusner, about Jesus’ Jewish connection. While Jesus stands out from his Jewish upbringing, he does not stand against it. Jewish rabbis and scholars have demonstrated this. And Christian scholars have concurred. Had Hutchinson consulted some of these people, he might have realized that, as he said, “Christians can learn from Jews … what is at stake in following Jesus.” But it would not be the lessons he drew from Neusner.
John Fischer, Chairman
Department of Judaic Studies St. Petersburg Theological Seminary St. Petersburg, Fla.
Will Sunday Evening Services Survive?
Perhaps the end of another era is dawning. We’ve been thinking of calling off the Sunday evening service at our church. A handful of survivors kept it alive for a few decades, as if it were a reunion of World War II vets. Not only are the vets becoming unwilling to drive at night, but one of them has also discovered that evening services are nowhere mandated in Scripture. Presumably Abraham, Isaac, and their brood stayed home and spent time together as a family, playing badminton with the sheep or watching Walt Disney.
It was about the time that the Disney show left Sunday night television that our evening service began to suffer. Could it be that previous generations of Sunday evening worshipers were in reality just avoiding reruns of “Bingo, the Dog Who Thought He Was a Goldfish”?
In its heyday, the evening service was a repository for fringe church programming. Where else might one have caught the Regional Sword Drill Semifinals, or the latest teenage mutant musical atrocity? We reached people through these programs who might never have darkened the door of a church, and probably never would again.
But if the evening service dies, where are we to place foreign missionaries and their slides? What lumbering, ill-prepared evening sermons will show us just how lucky we are to have the morning ones?
Rest in peace, evening service. As for me, I’m told Disney shows have a new home on cable 24 hours a day. That’ll do at least until the Regional Sword Drill Semifinals are televised. Now that’s entertainment.
I found it fascinating to read Neusner’s opinion. I want to join him in questioning Jesus. However, I would like Rabbi Neusner to let me pose the first few questions: With whose authority did you raise Lazarus from death, four days after he was deposited in the grave? With whose authority do you teach that we have eternal life only through you? Then I would like the rabbi to ask Jesus all his questions, including: Who do you think you are—God? Now, if what the Bible teaches in the New Testament about Jesus is literally true, then we need to have a very different approach to Jesus and to life in this world.
Felix Florimon, M.D.
Yonkers, N.Y.
Spong wrong
I hope N. T. Wright continues to keep us abreast of contemporary scholarship on the nature of Jesus Christ. His article, “The New, Unimproved Jesus” [Sept. 13], is helpful in sorting out what’s valid and what’s speculative in recent stuff. His point is well made that if Jesus had been just another deluded fanatic, he could not have had such an impact on the early church.
However, in the introduction to his thoughtful article, he gives far too much credit to Bishop Spong for some of the avant garde ideas going around today. In his book Born of a Woman, Spong attributed to Prof. Jane Shaberg the idea of Jesus being born to Mary by rape. But Spong didn’t get her theory straight. In his book, he said, “Virgins who give birth without a male agent exist only for us in legends and fairy tales.” Shaberg clearly stated in her book The Illegitimacy of Jesus that there are no parallels in pre-or non-Christian literature to virginal conception. It is unique to Christianity. Spong got it wrong or simply didn’t read the book.
Michael Currin
Grosse Ile, Mich.
Did both Moses and Colson err?
If Texe Marrs is correct in chastising Chuck Colson for accepting the Templeton Prize from non-Christians and using the money for God’s work, then the Israelites were wrong in accepting spoils from the Egyptians and using the treasure in building the tabernacle [News, Sept. 13], Was Moses, therefore, “a wolf in sheep’s clothing”?
Leiser Colburn and Patti Anderson
Windermere, Fla.
New Agers don’t endure persecution for the sake of the gospel, they don’t fight on the front lines for biblical values, and they don’t carry God’s love to prisoners whom most of the church ignores. If “fruit” is the measure of obedience to God, Colson is growing an orchard while Marrs sows discord.
Denise Kyes
Lowell, Mich.
It’s a good thing that God toughened Chuck Colson through politics and Watergate. Otherwise the “friendly fire” in the Christian camp would eat him alive.
Rev. Paul Atwater
North River Community Church Pembroke, Mass.
What’s good about OBE
Your article on outcome-based education was very slanted [News. Sept. 13]. I am not a fan of OBE. In fact, my wife is a teacher in a public school that is implementing OBE, and she is very much aware of some serious problems as well as some advantages.
But the article does not fairly deal with the questions of teaching values. These are not inherent in the OBE program, because you can write the tests (outcomes) however you want. Our local experience has been that the outcomes can be written without objectionable use of secular values. The key is to have them locally written by committees of teachers and parents. At a local public meeting about OBE, some critics made this kind of attack and were discredited when they could not show any example of values-based outcomes that was in use in our district.
On the other hand, there are still serious questions about whether the more advanced students will be properly educated under OBE, or whether they will be held back while the other students are repeatedly retaught.
The promise of OBE is that average and below-average students will get an adequate understanding of their subjects instead of just being passed on, or being retained for an entire year at a time. It remains to be seen whether that promise will actually be realized without too many problems. Unfortunately, your article did not help sort those out.
Wayne Shockley
Brooklyn, Wis.
I came through the public-school system and experienced little success. In the fifth grade, I taught myself to read. In graduate school, I learned that, mostly, I’d educated myself. A learning disability had left me outside the traditional education strategy.
Now my nine-year-old daughter displays a learning disability. However, thanks to outcome-based education, she will be included in the educational process. Because OBE is more flexible and student oriented, education is served to her strengths, and attention is given to retooling her weaknesses.
I find few of the problems proposed by OBE opponents in my daughter’s school. My wife and I volunteer in the classroom one hour per month. When evolution is presented, we explain to her that it is a way of looking at the world, point out its weaknesses, and reinforce our belief that God is creator of all.
When passionate teachers join arms with attentive parents, I believe OBE provides a better educational system for more students. Problems? Both OBE and the traditional systems have them. I believe OBE offers the better opportunity to my child.
Rev. C. Ed Bryson
Cornerstone Free Methodist Church Lafayette, Ind.
COGIC, not AG, largest denomination
In the September 13 issue [News], the statement that the Assemblies of God is “the largest Pentecostal denomination in the United States” [is] incorrect.
In the Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches/1993, I found this statement: “The Assemblies of God … has less than half as many members as the Church of God in Christ denomination.” The article suggests that the COGIC is the fifth-largest denomination in the United States (6.3 million).
I truly hope the AG does convert 5 million people by 2000!
Pastor Carter A. Smith
First United Methodist Church Dover, N.J.
More than one “Set Free”
Your [News] article on “Set Free” in the September 13 issue was informative and also cause for concern. In the article, the writer referred only to Set Free, not to Set Free Christian Fellowship. This poses a problem for us at Set Free Prison Ministries. Much confusion already exists between the two organizations, and while we are not connected in any way, we are concerned that our Set Free will suffer from the latest report.
Bob Irvine
Set Free Prison Ministries Riverside, Calif.
