Peer Review

In the book Mere Christianity, Christian author CS Lewis states “[there is] the really foolish thing people often say about [Jesus]: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or he would be the Devil of Hell.” That is, it is impossible to extract morals from Jesus’s teachings without accepting him as the Messiah. Contrast this statement with the assertion made by Thomas Jefferson when he created what is commonly called the Jefferson Bible. Jefferson, who was heavily influenced by enlightenment thinking (add citation later – Smithsonian article), took a copy of the Christian Bible and literally – and liberally – cut entire sections from its pages, extracting what he believed to be “contrary to reason” and extraneous words of “untrustworthy correspondents”, leaving only what he believed to be the essential philosophies of Christ. Jefferson was a Christian, but believed that the mysticism in the Bible was detrimental to its core truths. In short, Jefferson took an opposing stance to that of CS Lewis; he believed that any lessons in the Bible must exist independently of mystical religion.

Most people would likely argue that the truth exists somewhere in between these two extremes – the question becomes, then, where exactly does it lie? If there are truths within the Bible, to what degree are they truths? How can we best extract them? Is accepting Jesus as the Messiah essential to our understanding, or is it better to disregard the explicitly religious elements and focus purely on the underlying lessons? Reading the Bible attentively, we can see that some passages require complete belief to be useful, but others can provide valuable lessons without it.

Section One: The Gospel According to Mark

Since the Bible is a massive work, it is perhaps sensible to examine each of its major books in turn. The oldest book of the New Testament, Mark, provides the most humanized version of Jesus out of all the Gospels (citation – Powell), so it is serendipitous that our analysis begins here.

In Mark, Jesus is explicitly referred to as “the Son of Man” (Mark 2:20) as well as the “Son of God” (Mark 1:54). Though Mark does not provide insight into the inner monologue of Jesus – I.e Jesus is not humanized in the sense that he is complex and conflicted – he does depict Jesus as living the same humble lifestyle as his followers. He mixed with the townspeople, eats the foods they eat, visits the places they visit, and goes home to his mother and brothers. Yet despite these human qualities, Jesus is divine. He nominates disciples for himself and teaches them in the form of parables. He delivers four parables in the Gospel of Mark, but performs many miracles, healing the sick, casting out demons, walking on water, multiplying bread. Though he is human, evidence of his divinity abounds.

So, can we read the Gospel of Mark without accepting Jesus as the Son of God? Not easily. Jesus himself presses people to determine by whose authority he speaks (Mark 9:27-33). He never directly states to the people that he is the Son of God, but he speaks with a strong implication of authority. He delivers three parables about faith in God – the parable of the sower, for example, says that a person must be receptive to the Word of God and live by its teachings to be truly faithful (Mark 4:1-20) – that are credible only if we accept the credibility of their teller. These parables are all but meaningless if Jesus is not divine. He also delivers the “most important rule” to his followers, however, that does not require any especially divine authority: “love God above all else […] and love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:29-31). The second of these rules, in fact, doesn’t require any religious belief at all to be useful.

In short, the truthfulness of Jesus’s instructions on faithfulness is contingent on his being the Messiah, but the commandment to love one another as we move ourselves can stand quite independently.

Section Two: The Gospel of Matthew

The Gospel of Matthew presents a more explicitly divine version of Jesus and better-detailed miracles, but it also includes a greater number of parables, and with a broader scope of topics. Matthew is very much a mixed bag: in it, Jesus is stated to be the Messiah, but he also delivers many lessons that do not require faith to be useful.

Jesus instructs his followers on the proper way to pray to God, giving them the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-14) – who but the Son of God (or God himself) can give such guidance? Certainly we can choose to use this prayer even if we don’t believe Jesus is the Messiah, but we can only believe it is the absolute Lord’s Prayer if it is given to us on such divine authority. Further, Jesus himself later warns his disciples of following false prophets (Matthew 7:15-20). If Jesus is not the Messiah, is he not a false prophet himself?

On the other hand, just a few verses prior, Jesus tells his followers that the golden rule is to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Matthew 7:12), a rule that can readily be embraced regardless of the parentage of its instructor. Matthew is filled with many such teachings. Jesus says “whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever receives a righteous man because he is righteous will receive a righteous man’s reward” (Matthew 10:41). Even if Jesus is not the Messiah, he is righteous: his teachings can be useful simply because they are teachings on goodness.