PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS

WITH ALL YOUR MIND

PART ONE: MAPPING THE LANDSCAPE

CHAPTER THREE: THE MOVING IMAGE OF ETERNITY (Part 3)

The Challenge of Existentialism

Page 64

Rudolf Bultmann was the leading "Christian" existentialist theologican of the 20th century. According to Bultmann what can we know about Jesus?

According to Bultmann what must you do in order to be able to understand the NT?

If you don't "demythologize" the NT, what are you forced to sacrifice?

Instead of bypassing the supernatural passages in the NT, what does Bultmann do instead?

Page 65

According to Bultmann Easter is "not the actual raising of Jesus from the dead, the rise of the disciples' ______________ in their Lord."

According to Bultmann is the resurrection an event of past history?

According to Bultmann what is the most that historical criticism can establish?

Bultmann then goes on to say that the resurrection appearances were "made up" by the apostles to describe their spiritual resurrection, the new life they experienced because of their relationship with Jesus, not the risen Jesus, but with the earthly Jesus and His death on the cross.

Woodfin deals with the difficulty of the modern mind accept the historical witness of the NT. What does the current scientific milieu (culture) find scandalous about the resurrection?

Page 66

For Bultmann the person of Jesus is not necessary for the message about Jesus. Basically Bultmann has reduced the Christian message into being nothing more than a set of truths totally unrelated to the Jesus who came 2000 years ago. Ebeling concludes though that if Bultmann is right, then the message "would be no more than a mere _______________." Moreover, "the _________ of Jesus is an integral part of that which is proclaimed." In other words, we're not just proclaiming truths--"love your enemy," we're proclaiming a person, Jesus. The first 6 letters of the word "Christianity" is CHRIST, a person! If we strip the person of Jesus away from the message, then we have radically changed the message itself!

Page 67

According to Ebeling if "the difference between the historical Jesus and the messages of the church disappears we will have to fear that the ___________ has usurped the position of Christ." Moreover, the "kerygma [the preaching about Christ] has taken the place of something which is ____________."

Historical Method

Is there historical "proof", or even better, evidence which can give us confidence that the resurrection was an historical event, an event which occurred in history? Do non-Christian sources throw much light on Jesus and His resurrection?

Page 68 What are some non-biblical sources which do mention Jesus?

What is the problem with the Jewish Talmud as being a source of evidence about Jesus?

What is positive though about the Talmud in being a witness to Jesus, even though it is either indifferent or hostile towards Jesus?

Confidence in meaning merged with what 2 things to produce the modern concept of history?

What did rationalism encourage men to do?

What did evolution teach people to do?

Page 69

Modern history is dominated by an early scientific orientation which tended to overlook what?

Early historians of the 19th century tried to come up with a picture of the true historical Jesus. What did they come up with instead of the true historical Jesus?

According to Albert Schweitzer though, what did Jesus followers believe about Jesus?

Historical Confidence

Even though the NT does not present a purely historical Jesus, how does it portray Jesus?

Is there any unity to the different accounts of Jesus and His resurrection in the NT?

Why is there this unity?

The NT portrays Jesus as an earthly figure who is believed to be ___________, but above all one who in fact is ____________ from the _______ and possesses ultimate eschatological __________________." (This last clause means He will judge ALL mankind at the end of human history.)

Page 70

Jurgen Moltmann says that the early Christians did not only say: "I am certain." What else did they say? (Acts 1:3 is an example of this.)

According to the NT did anybody see Jesus rise from the dead?

The empty grave does NOT prove Jesus rose from the dead; however, if there was a body in the grave, then Jesus did not rise from the dead the way the NT says He did. The tomb must be empty if Jesus rose from the dead the way NT says He did.

Page 71

Woodfin now looks at how credible the early followers of Jesus were. We're going to see if they were credible witnesses. According to David Hume there are 6 major criteria credible witnesses must fulfill. What are these 6 criteria?

Finally, Hume says that "no testimony is sufficient to establish a __________, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact that it endeavors to establish." In other words, maybe saying Jesus rose from the dead is hard to believe; however, it may be even harder to believe other explanations of what happened. For example, do you really believe the early disciples overpowered the Roman guard and stole Jesus' body from the tomb and then died for their belief that He rose from the dead? Now that would be difficult to believe.

If some Christians claim that Jesus rose from the dead, what would support their claim?

“If therefore, the NT documents and the very aura of the continuing Christian community possess as transparent and creative ________________ confirmation, the case for the resurrection of Christ is perhaps ____________ as it can ever be for faith apart from firsthand historical experience.”

Page 72

If we are dependent purely upon seeing things for ourselves firsthand for things to be considered historical, then we are in trouble. Instead we need to be able to evaluate the witnesses of certain events before we dismiss or accept those events as historical.

C. S. Lewis helps us understand that what we experience today confirms that the resurrection is historical. How does he use the analogy of the sun in the sky at mid-day as an illustration of this principle?

This principle is called reciprocal validation. For example, the documents which claim that Jesus rose from the dead also claim that we receive forgiveness from this resurrected Jesus. Therefore, if we believe in a resurrected Jesus and experience forgiveness, what can we say about the resurrection?

The same true holds with a sense of belonging with Christ’s people in His church and an intuitive inner consciousness of His living presence. If Jesus is not risen, why have I experienced this things?