10. Patience in suffering

Doherty quotes the epistle of James, who offers "the prophets who spoke in the name of the lord" as the example to be followed of patience in the face of suffering. Why would the early Christians not have been looking to Jesus as their quintessential role model for this as well as all other virtues?

Ted's response is twofold. First, he notes that James is referring to suffering that lasts "months or years," whereas Jesus' suffering at Pilate's hands lasted for only a few hours at most. Three verses earlier, he says, the author had said, "Therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord." And so,

The time until the coming of the Lord is unknown Since the author's readers had already waited years for this coming, it is hard to imagine the author recalling a few hours of patience Jesus may have exhibited in front of Pilate as a valid comparison.

I can't speak to what Ted finds hard to imagine, but my imagination is severely challenged by trying to picture a Christian as saying, "Jesus didn't know what real suffering is like. He certainly never suffered like I'm suffering."

Second, Ted tries to show that whatever we might think of James, "We have plenty of references" to Jesus' suffering elsewhere in other epistles. But Doherty's argument here is not that no NT writer ever said Jesus suffered. It is that when they must come up with role models for Christians to follow, they go to the scriptures instead of the stories that they must, on the historicist assumption, have heard about Jesus. According to Ted, the other writers do say Christians ought to emulate Jesus. And that is true, but they say it only once in a great while, not to the extent one should expect if the usual story about Christianity's origins were true.

Ted offers a few specific examples—the best he could find, one supposes. Let's look at them. First up is Philippians 2:8, from which Ted mines the quote "obedient unto death." Here it is in context, beginning with Philippians 2:5:

Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

It is not immediately obvious what Paul meant by "Have this attitude in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus," but among the least likely interpretations, considering everything he says here about the Christ, is "Act the way the Christ acted."

Next we get, from I Peter chapter 2,

For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps, WHO COMMITTED NO SIN, NOR WAS ANY DECEIT FOUND IN HIS MOUTH; and while being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously;

Ted points out that the author "identifies himself as 'Peter an apostle of Jesus Christ'" and that he "claimed to witness Jesus' sufferings too." Very well, but almost no scholar outside of the inerrantist community thinks the author really was the man whom Paul knew as Cephas, or that he was anybody else who could actually have known Jesus of Nazareth. Of course, there remains the implication that the author believed such a man had existed. Otherwise, why pretend to be his chief disciple? However, while my knowledge of hellenistic thinking is still very limited, I don't think that a claim to have witnessed Christ's sufferings would have been tantamount to a claim to have known a man who was the Christ and to have seen him suffer. If Ted is suggesting that no other interpretation is possible, then he is just begging the question again. Even the orthodox-friendly Encyclopedia Britannica remarks, "Any Christian, not just a fellow eyewitness, however, might be such a witness and hope to partake in the future 'glory that is to be revealed.'"

It must also be noted that the question is what the Christians of the first century believed about Jesus, and I Peter does not inform us about that. Again according to Britannica, the document is probably from the second century. In Doherty's scenario, a few Christians by that time were beginning to pick up some historicist notions. I don't agree that I Peter manifests those notions, but even if it does, it would not be evidence contrary to Doherty's thesis.

Ted then goes to Hebrews, which he says "does refer to the suffering with some specificity." So it does, but according to Doherty, the author of Hebrews clearly supposes that the suffering all happened in the spirit world. Of course Ted thinks otherwise, but he cannot base his counterargument on the assumption that Doherty is wrong.

Then we get: "In 1 Timothy, which is disputed, the author uses Jesus' testimony before Pilate as an example for Timothy . . . ." Uh huh. And what, precisely, is "disputed" about it? And why doesn't Ted say? Are we supposed to think that the particular point of contention is irrelevant to what we should make of the reference to Pilate?

Doherty addresses the passage the Ted is citing here, and I have nothing to add to his comments. If Ted thinks they are not even worth responding to, he should at least say so. He seems instead to be pretending that this was something Doherty had somehow overlooked.

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This page last updated on June 15, 2015.