Book Comment: If the Church Were Christian, Chapter 1, Part 1

If you are joining this book review series mid-stream , you can read the comment from the beginning by going to the LABELS section following the last post on this page and clicking on PHILIP GULLEY

If the Church Were Christian. Chapter 1, Part 1; in a chapter by chapter series of posts in response to the book by Pastor Philip Gulley. Chapter One: Jesus Would Be a Model for Living Rather Than an Object of Worship.

" ... the era of uncritical acceptance of Jesus stories is past ..."

There are numerous extant apocryphal Jesus stories and gospels, many about His childhood and early adulthood, before (and after) his three year public ministry. These are not the stories Pastor Gulley is questioning. The ones he doubts are in the Bible. He believes that we cannot "assume that the gospel versions of the Jesus story are historically accurate" and that some sayings biblically attributed to Jesus (ie. Matthew 16:18 and 18:17, for example) probably did not come from His mouth.

Gulley questions the rationality of a belief in the Virgin Birth and doesn't accept the divinity of Jesus. In fact, he thinks Jesus, as a monotheistic Jew, would have been offended to be thought divine. Jesus' miracles Gulley sees as "pre-Enlightenment affirmations of the transforming presence of Jesus."

Insisting that jesus wasn't about His own glorification (this is correct; see John 8:54) and that rather, He was about humility and modesty. Gulley says that making Jesus God is an excuse not to be like Him.

Jesus answered, If I honour myself, my honour is nothing: it is my Father that honoureth me; of whom ye say, that he is your God: John 8:54

Some perhaps would use Jesus' deity as an excuse not to be like Him, but actually, this is one of the paradoxes of the Christian faith. We can't be like Jesus but are expected to be like Jesus. We wouldn't be expected to be like Jesus if we couldn't do it in the power of the Holy Spirit. In his excellent book, After You Believe, N.T. Wright, the Anglican Bishop of Durham speaks of the development of Christian virtue, the process of sanctification.

But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, [even] as by the Spirit of the Lord. 2 Corinthians 3:18 

There will be more to follow.