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The Jesus Confession

Let’s imagine for a moment that a new ancient text is discovered which rocks the Christian world.

It documents a conversation Jesus had with a fellow prisoner, Judah, on the night before he was crucified. According to Judah, Jesus expressed repeatedly that he was not the Messiah, and that things had spun out of control. Yes, he may have hinted at being the Messiah a few times, but this was due to pressure from his disciples, who were the most ardent of all believers in his Messiahship. Jesus said the miracles he was supposed to have performed were as much a surprise to him as to anyone else, and he sometimes wondered just how real they were. He also said that he had only set out to help people live together without so much strife and division. He wanted to show everyone that God’s love for the Jews did not imply God’s hatred for the Romans, Samaritans and Syrians. To the contrary, God’s love of the Jews meant that Jews could also love everyone. “Because we know the love of God, we know how to love like he does,” went one of the memorable lines of the document.

Let us also imagine that this document, immediately labeled The Jesus Confession, had all the marks of historical authenticity. So much so that some Christians were abandoning their faith due to its claims. Jesus was just a good teacher, they said, but some of his contemporaries used his notoriety to their own ends and invented a religion based on his persona. Other Christians, predictably, called The Jesus Confession a forgery and claimed that it did not challenge the Bible or the divine identity of Jesus in any way. As with any challenge to Biblical Christianity there will also always be someone who says it came from the devil, and there were those too of course. Some more sophisticated “intellectual” Christians said that the document was not a forgery intended to deceive, but that it reflected the ideas of a sect of Jesus followers that had been prominent in the early years after his death. But this sect was clearly wrong. The Pope declared that The Jesus Confession was “of historical interest” but that it did not in any way affect the teaching of the church.

However, there was a group of theologians who called themselves progressive evangelicals. They considered themselves to be open to all evidence and they also said they wanted to be honest about any challenges to their faith. They were not like the fundamentalist Christians who put their head in the sand and denied anything they didn’t like. That was intellectually dishonest and it not convince anyone other than fundamentalists. Progressive theologians thought it was important to interact intelligently with the non-Christian world. They prided themselves, perhaps at tad bit too much, in their intellectual integrity in the face of any challenges that Christianity faced.

After a careful analysis of The Jesus Confession, progressive evangelicals agreed that the historical evidence in favor of its authenticity lined up very well, and that the document was probably authentic. Or, as one of them put it, “The Jesus Confession is at the very least as historically reliable as the Gospels are. Therefore, it should be taken as seriously as they are.” Given that conclusion, some serious soul and brain searching was due. Eventually the idea developed among the progressives that The Jesus Confession did not, in fact, challenge Christian faith, rather, Christianity was enriched by it!

Their reasoning went like this: Christianity has always affirmed that Jesus was both human and divine. Therefore, what we have in The Jesus Confession is a glimpse into the human side of Jesus. For just as humans sometimes doubt the goodness and truth of God’s plans, so Jesus also, in his human side, had doubts. One scholar pointed out that thematically, The Jesus Confession, was really just an expansion of the Biblical account of Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, where he seemingly resisted his calling and pleaded with God that he would not have to “drink from this cup” (his death). Jesus was in so much distress in that moment that he bled through his sweat glands. The Christian tradition has not, argued the progressives, given enough attention to this incident in the Garden of Gethsemane and we may thank The Jesus Confession for highlighting the human side of Jesus and reminding believers today that doubt is a natural part of belief.

The progressives pointed out that some people (like those crazy fundamentalists) deny their doubts. They seem to think that the existence of doubt implies the non-existence of truth. But this is a misconception born out of fear. If we allow ourselves to feel the weight of our doubts, said the progressives, and work through them, always keeping the goodness of God as our guiding light and our foundation, we will find that doubt strengthens our faith in the end.

The progressives were satisfied with their explanation. They put together a theological conference where they read papers to each other about it. They magnanimously invited several thinkers who disagreed with them to speak as well, and they all had a very intellectually stimulating event. Over beers afterwards one progressive who was starting in on his third Guinness declared, “I don’t think any factual data could ever contradict Christianity!”

Cheers!