ABC TV Attacks Jesus Christ

""Peter Jennings Reporting: The Search for the Historic Jesus,"" on ABC (aired June 26, 2000), should serve as a wake up call for Christians interested in the integrity of the scriptures and some of the ""new scholarship"" concerning who Jesus was and what He truly did. Many things stood out in the program, which purported to tell ""what we really know about Jesus."" First, it was entirely slanted toward the ""scholarship"" of what is known as ""The Jesus Seminar."" These are scholars who have banded together for the purpose of determining what, if anything, is true in the gospel accounts of the life of Jesus. Their methodology and means for determining this is questionable at best. In addition, much of the program was devoted to the ""political"" nature of Jesus, with one scholar finally comparing Him to Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Why should anyone care about what ABC News thinks of Jesus? Isn't this just another example of the liberal media tearing down the Bible? That is certainly so to some extent, but a closer look will permit us to see the dangers inherent in ignoring such a presentation. The scholars whose views dominated the program, while serving as members of ""The Jesus Seminar,"" also serve as faculty members at many prominent universities, particularly those associated with large denominations. Already, their work has had a profound impact on teachings about Jesus in other places. While your child may not get the Seminar's version of the Historic Jesus at Florida College, if he/she takes a religion course almost anywhere else (up to and including Abilene), much of what we believe from the gospels will be presented as fiction. This will also impact the work of future commentaries on the life of Jesus, so that it will join other prominent errors (such as Calvinism) to be guarded against in those works.

More important, this will impact what your neighbors and friends think about Jesus. It will make teaching them (our mission, after all) more difficult. How will we answer the charges made by Seminar scholars?

In an effort to provide you with useful, practical defenses against these charges, we have seen fit to reprint many articles from our April-May 1996 issue concerning ""The Jesus Seminar."" These articles concern some of what passes for scholarship among Seminar members, as well as our desire to look again into the question Jesus asked so long ago, ""Who do you say that I am?"" (Matt. 16:15). If you are interested in even further work on this subject, please look at this issue on our website: www.JustChristians.com.