The Fascination Continues: Part 1
The New Testament does not speculate about Jesus. It simply presents Him as the divine Son of God. Nor does it answer the numerous concerns about Jesus' being and person that would occupy succeeding generations. Yet, in all the discussions and arguments, there was a rock-bottom acceptance of the centrality of Scripture and the basic identity of Jesus Christ.
But the so-called Age of Enlightenment (of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) would change all that. No longer would Scripture constitute the foundation of discourse about Jesus. Instead, new methods and criteria being applied to the study of other ancient documents also would be applied to the Bible. With everything now subject to rational analysis and criticism, supernaturalism, a foundational presupposition of biblical faith, was rejected. The traditional biblical view of a human race steeped in sin and needing Divine rescue was replaced by humanism, an optimistic belief in human capacity and progress.
The change of outlook was so radical and far-reaching that many thought they were witnessing the end of Christianity. Religion was considered obsolete, and reason, once the handmaid of theology, became its acknowledged mistress. The result was that the focus now shifted from the Jesus described in the Gospels, the Jesus of our salvation, to the historical Jesus, supposedly the real Jesus as He actually existed without the theological baggage superimposed by the Gospels and later Christian piety. In other words, this Jesus, whoever He was, surely was not the Savior of the world.
As you reflect on these developments, consider the following: (1) The Gospel writers were very confident in the truth of what they had written (see Luke 1:1-4). What does Luke say about what he is writing? Why can we trust it? (2) One of those eyewitnesses that Luke speaks about was Peter, who himself had to confront doubters and skeptics (see 2 Pet. 1:16-21). Though Peter is speaking here about issues wider than the single one about Jesus' identity, how might we use his approach to secure ourselves against the Enlightenment onslaught we are discussing here? (3) Paul also needed to address the issue of Jesus head-on. How did he argue the case? (See 1 Cor. 1:18-27, 15:3-7.)
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