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Jerry Johnston Interviews John Dominic Crossan on Jesus Christ?
John Dominic Crossan is a scholar, former Catholic priest, and skeptic. Co-founding the highly controversial Jesus Seminar with the late Robert Funk, Crossan considers the greatest claims of Jesus to be metaphorical. I questioned John about the claims of Jesus Christ. He told me,
“So for me, to think that everything in the Bible is literal is profoundly naïve. Its greatest claims are metaphorical, because you could look at three people, imagine looking at the same crucifixion. One’s a Roman solider, let’s say, one’s just a Jew coming up for the feast of Passover and he’s passing by, and the other is, say, a committed that’s called Messianic Christian, Messianic Jew. The Roman said, “Good day’s work. Another nuisance out of the way.” That’s an interpretation of the fact. The passing Jew might say, “Another poor Jew on a Roman cross. What else is new?” Won’t even look and passes by. Somebody else might say, “This is the death of the son of God.” All of those are interpretations, and the challenge for you and for me today is if you were there and where you are now, which side are you on? Where are you on this? Because this person, this Jesus, is making claims about you. It’s not that he’s saying, you know, we should be nice or something. He’s making specific claims about how the world should be, and anyone who makes specific claims about how the world should be affects me.”
Repeatedly, I have listened to Crossan distort the truths of the Bible. The tragedy is that most people, even professed believers, cannot distinguish truth from error when they listen to John Dominic Crossan. The claims of Jesus Christ as Son of God, his teachings, death, and miraculous resurrection directly affect your life and purpose. Our prayer is for Christians to know why they believe in the None other (Acts 4.12). To assist in Christian discipleship, we are developing resources that will target all ages in their search for biblical literacy.