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The cure for what ails us
By James V. Heidinger II

The ministry of Good News was launched thirty-eight years ago. From the very beginning, our concerns have always been theological. Whether the focus was on curriculum, confirmation materials, or "theological pluralism," we have attempted to encourage our church to rediscover its Wesleyan doctrinal heritage-what Wesley called Scriptural Christianity.

While pastoring in East Ohio years ago, I remember conference meetings in which we discussed vigorously our UM membership loss and the need for greater evangelistic outreach. As various programs and strategies were considered as hopeful remedies, I wondered if new and better signs, more contemporary music, friendlier greeters, and better public relations, etc. really would cure what ailed us? Instead, I feared that perhaps we had simply failed to effectively communicate the message of the gospel.

Many years ago, former Candler School of Theology Prof. John Lawson wrote, "The evangelical renewal of the church cannot arise apart from a renewal of her historic and scriptural evangelical theology" (An Evangelical Faith for Today, Abingdon). He was right.

In 1999, a group of respected evangelicals including Timothy George, Maxie Dunnam, Thomas Oden, and J.I. Packer released "The Gospel of Jesus Christ: An Evangelical Celebration" in Christianity Today. It was an attempt to say "This is what the good news really is!" David Neff, executive editor of Christianity Today, writing for the drafting committee, noted the infinite capacity of human beings for "getting things wrong," even the substance of the gospel. He added that as evangelicals interact with the historic churches, we realize that "the biblical understanding of the good news is, first, the most important thing that we can offer friends in these churches and, second, the only thing in which we can find true unity" (emphasis mine).

Refreshingly, it declared: "This Gospel is the only Gospel; there is no other; and to change its substance is to pervert and indeed destroy it." In a series of affirmations and denials, the document stated, "We affirm that the bodily resurrection of Christ from the dead is essential to the biblical gospel (1 Cor. 15:14). We deny the validity of any so-called gospel that denies the historical reality of the bodily resurrection of Christ." No waffling or ambiguity there. 

In one of the chapters of Ancient & Postmodern Christianity, (InterVarsity Press, 2002), a book of essays in honor of Thomas C. Oden, Lutheran theologian Carl E. Braaten grapples with the critical theological disputes of the twentieth century. Let me highlight three of those conflicts.

First, Braaten presents the quest for the "historical Jesus." The thrust of this movement was to go behind the gospels to get at Jesus as he really was. The result was a picture of Jesus as simply a heroic personality "at odds with the way the Evangelists portrayed Jesus as the Christ." The outcome was a "so-called historical Jesus" fashioned to suit modern sensibilities, and not the real living Jesus Christ of apostolic preaching.

Braaten believes we are currently "witnessing a revival of the quest of the historical Jesus. The result is virtually the same. The historical Jesus in the works of the current crop of questers is totally void of gospel significance, whether it be that of [Robert] Funk, [John Dominc] Crossan, [Marcus] Borg or [John Shelby] Spong."

The problem here is one of presuppositions, says Braaten. "If we presuppose that Jesus is someone else than his best friends and followers said he was, we will discover a Jesus we have never known-a complete stranger to the gospel." And we will end up answering Jesus' question, "And who do you say that I am?" in whatever way we may choose.

Braaten declares: "The real Jesus is the core of the gospel. He is the ground and content of faith, who can be truly known only by the testimony of the Holy Spirit. The real Jesus of history is the risen Christ; we cannot have one without the other. They belong indivisibly and inseparably together, as the creed of Chalcedon has taught us to say."

The biblical scholars involved in the oft-cited "Jesus Seminar" are theologians whose presuppositions are that Jesus was something other than what the gospel accounts present him to be. That's where they begin.

Second, Braaten presents Rudolf Bultmann and the hermeneutical question. One cannot overstate the impact of the German theologian on American Protestant theology in the last century. In a Good News dialogue with curriculum personnel in Nashville years ago, a denominational leader leaned back with arms folded and affirmed to the group, "Now, we all know that everyone today affirms the Bultmannian view of Scripture." Of course, not everyone did, but it reflects how popular Bultmann was for several generations of clergy.   

Bultmann tried to build a bridge from the first-century preaching to twentieth century experience. He was trying to make the ancient faith appear acceptable to modern and scientific people. To do this, Bultmann "laid all the stress on the existential (personal faith experience) meaning of the gospel rather than get bogged down in the debatable facts of history." Bultmann would say, "An historical fact which involves a resurrection from the dead is utterly inconceivable." In Bultmann's understanding, historical facts and existential meaning simply are oil and water-they do not mix.

The problem, says Braaten, is that "without the narrative history of Jesus, there would be no gospel in the Gospels. There must be a fundamental continuity between the Christ of faith in whom we believe and the historical Jesus." I vividly recall a conversation with a college classmate years ago who, after attending a liberal seminary, told me that it would not disturb his faith if the bones of Jesus were one day found in the Holy Land. What was important, he insisted, was "resurrection faith," not an empty tomb.

Third, Braaten mentions Wolfhart Pannenberg and reclaiming the historical resurrection. Pannenberg had a major impact on Thomas C. Oden, helping him in his reversal from being a Bultmannian to affirming the historicity of the resurrection. The first lecture Pannenberg delivered when he came to America was titled "Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead?" His answer was yes, to the surprise of many. After all, Bultmann had declared, "The resurrection itself is not an event of past history." But Pannenberg had the courage to call the bluff of these theologians. He insisted that the truth of the gospel rested on two conditions: "that it really happened to Jesus and that it means what the first witnesses said it meant." An Easter "experience" means nothing without the Easter "event"-the resurrection of Jesus.

Revisiting these conflicts, says Braaten, should remind us "to keep the gospel at the flaming center of all our thinking and writing.lest the gospel be controlled by alien ideologies, some isms out there that keep our theological legs moving on the treadmill of the latest trends." He added that we also "should reverse the trend in theological education that has turned the pyramid of profound learning on its head, giving greater time and attention to what is recent and novel at the expense of what is ancient and classical."

Our task, he says in conclusion, is "to teach the basics all over again, and help every new generation to learn them by heart and love them with a passion." Might it be that United Methodism will begin "to teach the basics all over again?" It would surely be the cure for what ails us.



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