Watching these two men discussing the resurrection (see c. 7:04) makes Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s attempt to synthesise opposing truths look positively dumb. Bird and Wright seem more muddled than Marcus Borg and Rudolf Bultmann combined! The two latter ones were not at all muddled but explicitly, if not wilfully, opposed to clear biblical teaching! And ignorance cannot be pleaded, either!
But is it ‘both-and’ or ‘either-or’?! Can it be ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ at the same time? Either Jesus did rise or He did not. Who is deluded? The issue is not just the empty tomb, but also the authority of Scripture which is being questioned if not attacked, or viewed as non-essential, not pertaining to the substance of faith, though I have no idea what that might be according to Bird or Wright.
To put it differently, how can one harmonise biblical Christianity with theological liberalism? Belief in the physical resurrection – if I may be permitted to be tautological – is not a peripheral matter, but lies at the very epicentre of the Gospel (see 1 Corinthians 15:1ff.). No one can be saved without believing it according to Romans 10:9! It really is kindergarten theology already enshrined in the earliest creeds. Yet 1 Corinthians 15:14 has been ignored. There can be not Gospel without the cross and the empty tomb!
R. Bultmann, like all liberal theologians, who owes more to Kant than to Christ, rejects a supernatural Christianity, which of course leaves us with Feuerbach’s god, an idol of our own making that fits in with the creed of anythingism. No divine revelation, no creation ex nihilo, no space-time fall, no devil, no incarnation, no miracles, no resurrection, no ascension, no parousia, no heaven, no hell. All rejected as unhistorical! What the mind cannot grasp can not, must not, be allowed to exist! ‘Causa finita est’! And we have not even looked at the atonement which cannot be understood without the resurrection!
It seems to me that Bible-believing Christians are now the true heretics that need to be ejected from the Church of England; it was so in 1662! One must be nice, respectable, appealing and not frighten people with the Gospel!
Bird is for the birds and Wright is wrong; in the name of God I must protest! Who will rid us of these troublesome priests who are paid to destroy the “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints ” (Jude 3)?
