A Response to “Pagan Christianity?”
3.13 Chapter 12 Review – A Second Glance at the Saviour: Jesus, the Revolutionary
In the final chapter of the book, Viola and Barna make an argument alarmingly familiar to anyone acquainted with liberals and revisionists in the church. It boils down to the assertion that Jesus, in his earthly ministry, was a rebel: a revolutionary, opposed in principle to the “establishment”. Such individuals then seek to make a direct application to our day: the Pharisees and Sadducees of Jesus’ time are equivalent to our religious leadership today. We need to be like Jesus, they say, and reject traditional religious structures and restrictions. In the end, of course, such rhetoric is always just an excuse to promote radical changes in church doctrine and practice.[1]
In this vein, Viola and Barna claim Jesus was a “revolutionary teacher—radical prophet—provocative preacher—controversialist—iconoclast—and the implacable opponent of the religious establishment.” The implication of this, according to Viola and Barna, is that “He will not compromise with the entrenched traditions to which His people have been held captive. Nor will He ignore our fanatical devotion to them.” I want to observe here the return of the absolutist language, which is not entirely consistent with the actual argumentation offered throughout the book. The practices we have been discussing – church buildings, pastors, sermons, etc. – are now “entrenched traditions” opposed by Jesus himself!
To start with, I want to observe that this is an unbalanced and misleading portrait of our Lord. Jesus genuinely did oppose the hypocrisy and false traditions of the religious leaders of his day. But as we have seen, he did not oppose tradition simply as tradition, and nor did he advocate revolution against religious or political hierarchies. In fact, Jesus acknowledges the authority of Jewish teachers of the Law, even as he condemns their hypocrisy, saying: “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice.” (Matthew 23:2-3). The real revolution of Jesus’s earthly ministry was not his criticism of Jewish leaders or traditions, but his defeat of sin and death by his death and resurrection, and the subsequent inauguration of the New Covenant, making obsolete the Old Covenant system. But even in bringing Old Covenant to an end, Jesus did not repudiate it like a revolutionary, but fulfilled it. In his earthly ministry, Jesus clearly affirmed the validity of the Old Covenant system, with its leadership, temple, and sacrifices. Indeed, the New Covenant itself is an affirmation of the Old Covenant, even as it supersedes it: just as a road sign reading “Brisbane City, 10 km ahead” is both affirmed and superseded when you actually reach the city. In the New we have the substance promised by the Old.
In reality, it is irrelevant to the question to observe that Jesus is a “revolutionary”. We can grant that Jesus is a revolutionary, in some sense. But the question posed by Viola and Barna was whether the modern church is fundamentally wrong in her current practices. If they want revolution in the church, they needed to show that our practices really are opposed by Christ. And yet, we have seen in every chapter that this is not so. They have failed to substantiate their arguments. So, we’re left to conclude that no revolution is required.
[1] I have witnessed this very thing amongst the Seventh-day Adventists.
Next Section: 3.14 Afterword Review
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