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Thursday, 1 August 2024

MUDDYING THE GOSPEL WATERS

MUDDYING THE GOSPEL WATERS             The apostle Paul was aware of Satan's schemes and designs (e.g. 2 Cor.2:11; Eph.6:10-13), one of which is surely to muddy the waters so people cannot thin…
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MUDDYING THE GOSPEL WATERS

By Peter Barnes on 1st Aug 2024

MUDDYING THE GOSPEL WATERS

            The apostle Paul was aware of Satan's schemes and designs (e.g. 2 Cor.2:11; Eph.6:10-13), one of which is surely to muddy the waters so people cannot think clearly. I have a Muslim friend who has lately become very interested in the document known as Q. No such document has been found, but the letter is used to designate material in both Matthew and Luke, which is not in Mark (which is assumed to be the earliest Gospel).[1] Whether Q exists - or existed - or not, matters little in considering the authority of the four Gospels. Luke, for example, says he consulted earlier documents (Luke 1:1-4). However, some scholars who should know better have done their best to sow confusion in the minds of seekers.

            My Islamic friend lent me a book he had purchased by John S. Kloppenborg, with the title, Q, the Earliest Gospel Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008). I had not read very far before I came across this claim:

The discovery of new extracanonical Gospels in the past sixty years – the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of the Savior, the Gospel of Judas – has made it clear that the Jesus movement was variegated and diverse, with early Jesus groups constituting themselves around differing sets of traditions, differing ethnocultural identities, and differing ecclesial practices. While the sayings and deeds of Jesus play an extremely small role in Paul's theology, the death and resurrection of Jesus is central to it. Conversely, some Gospels such as the Gospel of Thomas feature Jesus' sayings, to the exclusion of almost everything else, including the death and resurrection of Jesus. Salvation, or as Thomas puts it, "not tasting death," is connected with finding the correct interpretation of Jesus' sayings, not with participation by faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus, as it was for Paul. Matthew and James claim that keeping the whole Torah is incumbent on Jesus' followers. Paul, by contrast, argued that circumcision, one of the key identity markers for Judeans, was not a requirement for Gentile Christians. Such differences are far from incidental. On the contrary, they go to the heart of the various identities of the Jesus groups. Decisions concerning which tradition to privilege and which practices to embrace created multiple Christianities (pp.viii-ix).

It is not given to many authors to pack so much confusion of thought into just one paragraph. What is wrong here?

            This would be a shorter article if we asked: 'What is right here?'  Only three quick points will be raised:

The misleading claim that the Jesus movement was variegated to the point of contradictions

            We live in a world which applauds diversity while it increasingly enforces conformity. Liberal biblical scholarship suffers from the same disease. That the early Christians did not emerge as identical products from an assembly line should be clear to all. Even amongst the Twelve, there was a tax collector, Matthew, who would have been serving the Roman occupying forces, and a Zealot, the lesser-known Simon, who must have had a background in being utterly opposed to those same forces (Matt.10:1-4). Peter and John are described as uneducated, common men (Acts 4:13; which does not mean illiterate) while Paul was a rabbi who had studied under Gamaliel and was said to be advancing in Judaism beyond many of his age (Acts 22:3; Gal.1:14). 

            Yet there were not multiple Christianities. There was - and is - one Lord, one faith, one baptism (Eph.4:5). For all his independence of the other apostles, Paul was glad to receive the right hand of fellowship from Peter, James (the Lord's brother) and John (Gal.2:9). Regarding the other apostles, Paul declared: 'Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed' (1 Cor.15:11). Peter referred to Paul most affectionately as 'our beloved brother Paul' (2 Pet.3:15). Brothers can dispute, especially when one, namely Peter, does not practise what he knows to be true (see Gal.2:11-14), but their essential unity is revealed even there, and they must have been soon reconciled.

The use of the Gospel of Thomas as a Gospel

            The so-called Gospel of Thomas exists in two extant versions. There is no story line, just 114 sayings, some of which reflect Gospel sayings (e.g. no. 73, Jesus said: 'The harvest is indeed great, but the labourers are few. But pray the Lord, that he send forth labourers into the harvest'); others of which are enigmatic (e.g. no.7, Jesus said, "Blessed is the lion which the man eats, and the lion will become man; and cursed is the man whom the lion eats, and the lion will become man'); while the last saying should cause some consternation to those, like Dan Brown, who think that the Gnostic Gospels present a more human and modern Jesus (no.114, 'For every woman who makes herself male will enter into the kingdom of heaven').

            The late and gnosticizing approach of the Gospel of Thomas does not represent a part of the Jesus movement, but a grave distortion of it. Had Paul ever come into contact with it – which he did not because it belongs to the mid-second century at the earliest – he would have judged it 'a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you'(Gal.1:8).

The supposed contrast between Paul on the one hand and the Synoptics and James on the other

            Kloppenborg sets Paul's emphasis on the death and resurrection of Christ over against the four Gospel writers and James who emphasise keeping the whole Torah, including, it seems, circumcision. Actually, Matthew records that Jesus praises the faith of a Roman centurion, who would not have been circumcised (Matt.8:10). Mark sees the fulfilment of the Old Testament food laws (Mark 7:19). Furthermore, Matthew, like Mark, cites Jesus' saying that he came 'to give his life as a ransom for many' (Matt.20:28; Mark 10:45). At the Last Supper, Jesus takes a cup and tells his disciples: 'Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins' (Matt.26:27-28; see Mark 14:24; Luke 22:20). Keeping the Torah cannot save sinners, for 'With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible' (Matt.19:26). John too emphasises Christ as the Son of God who dies and rises in order to bring sinners into his kingdom (John 1:29; 3:14-15; 10:11, 15, 17-18; 11:50-52).

            To gleefully point to the book of James as different to Paul's epistles is rather like discerning the differences between the books of Proverbs and of Leviticus. They are not contradictory; it is just that the former mainly deals with godly wisdom in daily life, while the latter deals mostly with the Old Testament sacrifices for the forgiveness of sins. The apostle Paul too had plenty to say about Christian ethics. Romans 12, for example, is saturated in the language of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt.5-7).

            The main issue here is not the mysterious entity Q. Q, like circumcision, is neither here nor there (1 Cor.7:19; Gal.5:6; 6:15). Rather, it is that unbelieving scholarship muddies the waters. People who wander into unfamiliar territory – in this case, my Muslim friend – are easily tempted to think that Q somehow proves the New Testament unreliable. No, the wells of salvation are clear and refreshing (Isa.12:3). Drink from them.

- Peter Barnes


[1] Cf. James M. Robinson (ed.), The Sayings of Jesus: The Sayings Gospel Q in English, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002.

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