Word: seminar
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...book's first part is devoted to a savage critique of the Seminar and its methodology. The group, writes Johnson, was "self-selected" not on grounds of quality of scholarship (he notes pointedly that one of its members is Paul Verhoeven, whose credit as director of the movie Showgirls is far more recent than his Ph.D.), but on prior agreement on a goal. The goal, he maintains, is to discover a Jesus devoid of anything "mythical" or concerned with the actual possibility of a world to come, but reflective instead of the countercultural attitude favored by liberal academics. Although Johnson...
...disgusted is Johnson, in fact, that he, like Bultmann before him, counsels believers to ignore the search for the historical Jesus altogether. Does the Seminar condemn the Resurrection as unprovable? Rather than trying to assert the authenticity of the story of the empty crypt or backing up John's tale of Doubting Thomas, Johnson maintains that the Resurrection that has always mattered to Christians is the ongoing miracle, the "transforming, transcendent personal power" that marks the moving of the Holy Spirit in the hearts and among the communities of believers. "Christianity," he writes, "has never been able to 'prove...
...face of it, he is Johnson's staunchest ally. Wright knows and likes Crossan--the two go drinking after their debates--but he calls his friend's latest book "radically wrong in almost every second thing it says." His own 40-page critique of the Jesus Seminar's work echoes Johnson's point regarding oral cultures and similarly questions the Seminar's snub of Jesus' apocalyptic, eschatological side. Most important, he concurs that it is a mistake to "carve up" the New Testament and analyze the pieces separately. Wright believes the Gospels are more supportive than subversive of one another...
This, Wright points out, is in contrast not only to the findings of the Seminar but also to Johnson's conclusion, which he finds defeatist. "'The street level of what Johnson is saying is, 'We can just believe the Bible and don't need to worry about it.' But it plays right into the hands of the Seminar, and there's a huge price to be paid for that. The challenge of the Enlightenment has always been, 'Oh, we know what Jesus was, and it shows Christianity was a mistake.' I'm trying to say, It's hard work...
...this context that Blomberg, given his position on the religious/political spectrum, makes a remarkably friendly assessment of the Jesus Seminar. "People like Crossan," he ventures, "see themselves, though we might disagree, as holding out one way of salvaging something of Christianity lest the whole thing deteriorate into pure unbelief...