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Xavier
University Professor's "Third Rate Scholarship"
Dr. Arthur J. Dewey and the Jesus Seminar
(from the Nov./Dec.. 1999 issue)
A RECENT ARTICLE in Cincinnati
magazine has returned to a subject widely popularized
earlier this decade by the mainstream media: the quest
for the "historical Jesus." Skip Tate’s
October, 1999 article does so by way of Arthur J. Dewey,
Professor of Theology at Cincinnati’s Xavier
University.
Dewey, former chairman of
XU’s theology department, is co-founder of the
"Healing Deadly Memories Program," a project
that conducts workshops on how to deal with "the
question of anti-Semitism in the New Testament." His
scholarship, he claims, is not limited to the canonical
books of the Bible as accepted by the Church for more
than 19 centuries. Accordingly, he considers himself
"a specialist on the historical Jesus and the
Gospels and has also taught and written extensively on
[St.] Paul, the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Thomas,
the Acts of John, and on the oral, written and electronic
gospel."1
His most well known
pursuit pertains to his involvement with the so-called
Jesus Seminar. Since 1985 Dewey has been a Fellow of the
Berkeley-based group of liberal New Testament
"scholars" dedicated to discerning a
non-Christian Jesus hidden inside the Gospels.
Cincinnati seems to
delight in the controversial nature of the Jesus Seminar
as much as the condescending attitude of Professor Dewey,
who maintains that he has the blessing of Xavier’s
president Father James Hoff, S.J., who has received many
letters protesting Dewey’s involvement in the
Seminar. Although Fr. Hoff declined to talk to Cincinnati
about those letters, Dewey explains that they are written
by people with "very limited vocabularies."
For Dewey there is no room
for criticism of his research interests, the Jesus
Seminar, its pursuits, its methods or its results. He is
known on campus as congenial and low key on every subject
short of his own field of expertise; he becomes extremely
touchy, defensive and tart when challenged by anyone on
his scholarship. According to colleagues, he is known to
take a "bizarre glee in shocking staid and
traditional Catholics" as evidenced by the crucifix
hanging in his office: a woman’s corpus is affixed
to the cross in lieu of Christ’s own figure. His
audacity in exhibiting such a caricature of so sacred an
icon is topped only by the sign tacked to the wall
outside his office. "Jesus is coming," it
reads. "Look busy."
Yet the outward
manifestations of this theologian’s faith (or lack
thereof) are merely a mild prelude to his professional
proclivities and cavalier attitude. "It’s not
my job to turn them into good Catholics," he says of
his Xavier students in Cincinnati. "It’s
my job to prepare them to think thoroughly and to think
critically. I have to give them the best Biblical
scholarship I can give them."
But far from offering
students the best in Biblical scholarship, Prof.
Dewey dabbles in what critics call "third-rate
scholarship" that is dismissed by even some liberal
scripture scholars. His intimate association with the
Jesus Seminar places him with a group of aging
Rationalists, including such mentionables as the
openly-homosexual and agnostic Episcopal Bishop of
Newark, N.J., Dr. John Shelby Spong,2 and
DePaul University’s John Dominic Crosson,3
who continue to be intellectually titillated by a
"novelty" that is now more than a century old.
Rationalists
resurrected
In 1893 Pope Leo XIII warned of these Rationalist
adversaries of the Holy Scriptures. The Rationalist, the
Holy Father wrote in his encyclical Providentissimus
Deus, sees in Scripture "only the forgeries and
the falsehoods of men; they set down the Scripture
narratives as stupid fables and lying stories: the
prophecies and the oracles of God are to them either
predictions made up after the event or forecasts formed
by the light of nature; the miracles and the wonders of
God's power are not what they are said to be, but the
startling effects of natural law, or else mere tricks and
myths; and the apostolic Gospels and writings are not the
work of the Apostles at all."
The Historical Jesus
Movement, of which the Jesus Seminar is the contemporary
torchbearer, has its origins in the latter half of the 19th
century when German theologians began their discussions
of "enlightened textual criticism." When they
thought for certain they had discovered "flaws"
in the Gospels they began their search for Jesus’
"original words"; they began their quest for
the "historical Jesus," an inspirational but
purely human figure. The various authors of the 19th
century "liberal lives" of Jesus rationalized
or eliminated the miracles in order to present Jesus as a
preacher of social progress who met a tragic end at the
hands of people who misunderstood him. A separation began
to occur between the "Jesus of history" and the
"Christ of faith." It came to be popularly
believed in certain circles of skeptic intellectuals that
a man named Jesus did live, but that fantastic myths grew
up around Him. He thus became the "Christ of
Faith" in story, symbol, and worship.
Just as the 19th
century German rationalists, Jesus Seminar scholars such
as Dewey form an anti-missionary group that practices
evangelism in reverse. Instead of calling the faithful to
a deeper commitment to the Christ of the Gospels, they
are interested in "unburdening" any such
commitment Christians may have. Robert W. Funk, the
Seminar’s founder, describes the group’s
purpose as "a clarion call to enlightenment. It is
for those who prefer facts to fancies, history to
histrionics, science to superstition."4
Although secular
journalists often refer to Seminar scholars as
representative of mainstream biblical scholarship, they
can hardly be viewed as a cross-section of academic
opinion. Most hail from three of the most liberal schools
of theology: Harvard, Vanderbilt, and Claremont College.
Dewey, for instance, is a graduate of Harvard’s
divinity school. The nature of the Seminar’s pursuit
is such that it would attract only a liberal secular
contingent of New Testament scholars.
The Seminar meets twice a
year to dissect scripture passages. Their goal is to
separate historical fact from the fiction of the Bible.
At each meeting, the Seminar debates technical papers
submitted by the scholars. At the close of debate on each
agenda item, Seminar participants vote by dropping
colored beads into a box to indicate the degree of
authenticity of Jesus’ words or deeds. A red bead
indicates Jesus undoubtedly said or did something very
much like this; pink indicates that Jesus probably or
might have said or did something like this; gray means
Jesus probably did not do or say this; and black
indicates that Jesus did not do or say this, but that it
was concocted by men at a much later date.
Thus far they have
rejected as myth the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead,
the Virgin birth, all Gospel miracles, and more than 82%
of the teachings traditionally attributed to Jesus. All
are dismissed as legends with no historical foundation.
Even the Lord’s Prayer does not go untouched. In
fact, the Seminar accepts only two words as authentic:
"Our Father."
The complete results of
the Jesus Seminar deliberations on the
"sayings" of Jesus were published in 1993 as The
Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus.
Out of the 1500 items reviewed, the Seminar concluded
that only 18% were of probable authenticity. Likewise, in
1996 the Seminar published more of their findings in The
Acts of Jesus. Out of 387 reports of 176 events, only
ten were given the red rating. An additional 19 were
rated pink. The combined number of red and pink events
amounts to 16%.
In his 1994 keynote
address to the Jesus Seminar, Funk confirmed the findings
of the first eight years of their work as published in The
Five Gospels: "Jesus did not ask us to believe
that his death was a blood sacrifice, that he was going
to die for our sins; Jesus did not ask us to believe that
he was the messiah; he certainly never suggested that he
was the second person of the trinity. In fact, he rarely
referred to himself at all; Jesus did not call on people
to repent, or fast, or observe the Sabbath. He did not
threaten with hell or promise heaven; Jesus did not ask
us to believe that he would be raised from the dead;
Jesus did not ask us to believe that he was born of a
virgin; Jesus did not regard scripture as infallible or
even inspired."
Presuppositions, not
conclusions
The Jesus Seminar, however, does not begin with
historical evidence as it claims. Nor are its conclusions
based on scientific, historic analysis. Rather, the
Seminar starts with presuppositions that it makes no
attempt to prove. Seminar "scholars" singularly
fail to critically examine and explicate the
"historical principles" which govern their
research. Their unevaluated and gratuitous assumption is
that the Bible is essentially an historical document and
should not be given any credence beyond this historical
framework. The folly in their work is that they cannot
accept any significant reality that exceeds and
transcends the boundaries of history’s events; i.e.,
divine intervention.
Subscribing to this
philosophy of naturalism, Seminar scholars are unable to
accept that the Gospels are historically accurate because
they cannot accept miracles, many of which are recorded
in the Gospel accounts. Likewise the Seminar does not
accept prophecy. The Gospels, for instance, report that
Jesus prophesied the fall of Jerusalem. Although history
unequivocally confirms this prophecy the Seminar
justifies this by claiming that the Gospels could not
have been written earlier than the invasion of Titus in
A.D. 70. Likewise, Seminar scholars start with the
presupposition that Jesus was not divine. Therefore,
despite that Christ claimed to be God, Savior, Messiah,
Judge, Forgiver of sins, sacrificial Lamb of God, etc.,
the Seminar concludes that this was merely the work of
His devoted followers.
In other words, the
Seminar does not conclude that the Gospels are
inaccurate or fabricated; that’s where it begins.
Seminar scholars, precisely because they are not open to
the possibility of divine intervention, cannot consider
any evidence for something so important as the
Resurrection. Accordingly, the conclusions of the Jesus
Seminar do not represent "facts." Rather, their
point of view and research methods are deeply flawed
because of their commitment to an ideology that is
hostile to the events described in the Gospels.
In Jesus Under Fire, a
strong refutation of the Seminar’s conclusions,
philosopher J.P. Moreland sums up the Jesus
Seminar’s assumption: "that someone, about a
generation removed from the events in question, radically
transformed the authentic information about Jesus that
was circulating at that time, superimposed a body of
material four times as large, fabricated almost entirely
out of whole cloth, while the Church suffered sufficient
collective amnesia to accept the transformation as
legitimate."
This approach to the New
Testament is not new. President Thomas Jefferson, for
instance, admired Jesus as a social reformer but, just
like Seminar scholars, he preferred his own reason and
biases over the possibility that the Gospels are accurate
in what they say about miracles, prophecy, and the claims
of Christ. With scissors and paste Jefferson cut up his
King James version of the four Gospels, expurgating all
miracles, prophecies and claims to Christ’s
divinity. When finished, he was left with just 82 columns
out of 700. He entitled his creation The Life and
Morals of Jesus, and his book ended with the words,
"There laid they Jesus… and rolled a great
stone to the door of the sepulchre and departed."
—Michael
S. Rose
ENDNOTES
1 Auto-biographical
sketch published in Westar Institute literature
2 Episcopal Bishop
Spong is well know for having challenged the traditional
Christian view on human sexuality, the Virgin birth, and
the physical nature of Christ’s Resurrection. He has
authored numerous controversial books such as Liberating
the Gospel, Resurrection: Myth or Reality? A
Bishop’s Search of the Origins of Christianity, and
Living In Sin? A Bishop Rethinks Human Sexuality.
When Bishop Spong retires next year he will teach at
Harvard University.
3 Crosson is
Professor Emeritus at DePaul University in Chicago. He is
author of The Historical Jesus: The Life of a
Mediterranean Jewish Peasant, Jesus: A Revolutionary
Biography, and The Essential Jesus
4 Funk, Robert W. The
Gospel of Mark, Red Letter Edition, pp. xvi-xvii
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