Steven Carr
March 11, 2004, 03:51 AM
http://home.hiwaay.net/~kbush/Wright_Mat28
is an excerpt from this book
'In particular, the movement in Western culture known as the
Enlightenment, which swept through philosophy and politics
in the eighteenth century, producing the French Revolution,
the American Constitution, and many other phenomena, always
tried to make out that it had done away with previous super-
stitions and was replacing them with rational, 'enlightened',
views. These, it claimed, would free people from intellectual
and political tyranny. In fact, the opposite is the case. Granted,
the movement brought great blessings, such as modern
medicine and communications. It also brought great curses -
not only the French Revolution itself, which killed thousands
of its own people in the name of liberty and equality for all,
but also the terrifying totalitarianisms of the twentieth century.
So Stalin was a child of the Enlightenment, as was Mao.
Wright continues
'No wonder, then, such a world-view wants to resist the news
of Jesus' resurrection every bit as much as the chief priests did.
No wonder it bribes people in all kinds of subtle ways to tell
stories in which Jesus didn't really rise from the dead. No
wonder it tries to make out that Christianity is just the inven-
tion of a few cunning individuals trying to feather their own
nests. (This always was an absurd charge, of course; it was
three centuries before anyone gained anything except insults,
danger, torture and death by believing in the resurrection.)'
Wright concedes that believing in the resurrection did not bring eternal life. Nobody gained anything, he says.
Wright says :-
'In this passage Matthew returns to the
chess-game once more, to ward off more thoroughly a move
that was regularly made in his day to enable people to avoid
coming to terms with the resurrection as an actual event. He
knows the line of attack that is regularly employed among the
non-Christian Jews of his day: the disciples, they say, came at
night and stole his body. Ah, says Matthew, that's what the
chief priests paid the guards to say. You're simply repeating a
frantic and unlikely tale that people told when they'd been
well bribed to do so.'
How any idiot thinks soldiers can be bribed to say that they fell asleep on duty is beyind imagining.
Wright , however, makes a savage attack on the Bible.
'Everybody in the ancient world, just like everybody in
the modern world, knew perfectly well that dead people don't
get resurrected.'
Gosh, the disciples had personally been given powers to raise the dead. Lazarus was still walking around. Moses and Elijah had been seen by the disciples.
Wright says 'The Christian belief is not that some people
sometimes get raised from the dead, and Jesus happens to be
one of them. '
This is exactly the Christian belief , surely?
is an excerpt from this book
'In particular, the movement in Western culture known as the
Enlightenment, which swept through philosophy and politics
in the eighteenth century, producing the French Revolution,
the American Constitution, and many other phenomena, always
tried to make out that it had done away with previous super-
stitions and was replacing them with rational, 'enlightened',
views. These, it claimed, would free people from intellectual
and political tyranny. In fact, the opposite is the case. Granted,
the movement brought great blessings, such as modern
medicine and communications. It also brought great curses -
not only the French Revolution itself, which killed thousands
of its own people in the name of liberty and equality for all,
but also the terrifying totalitarianisms of the twentieth century.
So Stalin was a child of the Enlightenment, as was Mao.
Wright continues
'No wonder, then, such a world-view wants to resist the news
of Jesus' resurrection every bit as much as the chief priests did.
No wonder it bribes people in all kinds of subtle ways to tell
stories in which Jesus didn't really rise from the dead. No
wonder it tries to make out that Christianity is just the inven-
tion of a few cunning individuals trying to feather their own
nests. (This always was an absurd charge, of course; it was
three centuries before anyone gained anything except insults,
danger, torture and death by believing in the resurrection.)'
Wright concedes that believing in the resurrection did not bring eternal life. Nobody gained anything, he says.
Wright says :-
'In this passage Matthew returns to the
chess-game once more, to ward off more thoroughly a move
that was regularly made in his day to enable people to avoid
coming to terms with the resurrection as an actual event. He
knows the line of attack that is regularly employed among the
non-Christian Jews of his day: the disciples, they say, came at
night and stole his body. Ah, says Matthew, that's what the
chief priests paid the guards to say. You're simply repeating a
frantic and unlikely tale that people told when they'd been
well bribed to do so.'
How any idiot thinks soldiers can be bribed to say that they fell asleep on duty is beyind imagining.
Wright , however, makes a savage attack on the Bible.
'Everybody in the ancient world, just like everybody in
the modern world, knew perfectly well that dead people don't
get resurrected.'
Gosh, the disciples had personally been given powers to raise the dead. Lazarus was still walking around. Moses and Elijah had been seen by the disciples.
Wright says 'The Christian belief is not that some people
sometimes get raised from the dead, and Jesus happens to be
one of them. '
This is exactly the Christian belief , surely?