How The Westar Institute Undermines the Faith

I have examined the anti-Christian motive and bias-laden methods of the Westar Institute sponsored Jesus Seminar.  Today I will take a look at how the Institute and Seminar tries to undermine faith.  In general, their approach is simple and straightforward, they hollow out and water down the Bible.

The original Jesus Seminar did this by holding court over the words and works of Jesus.  As I have written in previous posts a hand-picked panel of experts isolated Jesus from His historical context and edited His life.  They then added a spurious, gnostic, Gospel of Thomas even though it was dismissed by both Hippolytus and Origen in the early years of the church.  This pattern of hollowing out and watering down continues today.

The leadership of the Presbyterian Church of the Rockies somehow found that their service to the local body of Christ was to bring the Jesus Seminar to Estes Park and invite Hal Taussig to hold forth on faith communities in the 1^st and 21^st centuries.  Taussig, a member of the original Jesus Seminar, is the editor of a book audaciously titled A New New Testament: A Bible for the 21^st Century Combining Traditional and Newly Discovered Texts.

This attempt to water down the New Testament is the product of the deliberations of a group of what the Taussig refers to as “spiritual leaders from across North America”, nineteen of them in fact.  Since Taussig has had to defend himself twice on accusations of heresy within the United Methodist Church it is not surprising that he hand picked spiritual leaders, not church leaders.  These 19 determined that they had to correct the New Testament that the church has been using for two millennia by added 13 books.  Here they are:

·      The Prayer of Thanksgiving

·      The Prayer of the Apostle Paul

·      The Thunder: Perfect Mind

·      The Gospel of Thomas

·      The Gospel of Mary

·      The Gospel of Truth

·      The Acts of Paul and Thecla

·      The Letter of Peter to Philip

·      The Secret Revelation of John

·      The First, Second, Third, and Fourth Books of the Odes of Solomon

While these titles may seem strange and exotic, within the world of legitimate scholarship (that is in the real world outside the Westar Institute) most of these works are known to have been written by a marginal, heretical group in early Christianity that taught that the way to God was to shed our material possessions and selves and instead pursue secret, esoteric knowledge only available to a few.  Of course, even back then the secret knowledge could be had for a price.  Today the price is the $75 the Presbyterian Church of the Rockies will charge you to attend the Jesus Seminar.

Notice above that I said “most of” these are from a heretical group in the early years of Christianity. The exception is number four on the list “The Thunder: Perfect Mind”.  Some scholars think this may have been written in the 3^rd century B.C.  Naturally it has no references to Jesus, and it is never, ever mentioned by any other ancient works as far as scholars have been able to determine.  How a clearly non-Christian, apparently ignored book finds support among 19 “spiritual leaders” for inclusion in the New Testament probably has more to do with their anti-Christian agenda than with evidence supporting its inclusion.

One thing about the list however that is strange and exotic even to scholars today is what is missing from the list.  There were several books revered in the early church that the council of 19 never even considered.  Maybe the most popular was a work titled The Shepherd of Hermas.  It was so popular that we have more ancient copies of this than we do the Gospel of Mark!  New Testament scholar Dan Wallace writes concerning The Shepherd of Hermas “The Muratorian Canon (a document dating to 180 A.D. which lists the books in the New Testament) speaks highly of it but stops short of treating it as bearing the same authority as the New Testament books because of its known recent vintage (mid-second century). But certainly, the Shepherd has far better credentials than any of the 13 newly discovered writings for canonization. That the ancient church rejected even this document is implicitly damning evidence that none of the new discoveries really belong within the pages of Holy Writ.”

Now, about that council of 19, Taussig writes that they were “modeled on early church councils”.  Really?  The councils of the early church were attended by representatives sent by the churches to make decisions that would be binding on all.  These councils were convened to hammer out critical issues of doctrine.  Except for the liberal protestant branch of the church, these council decisions continue to be the definition of orthodoxy.  Taussig’s council was sent by no church.  They are hand-picked by him and their decisions are binding on no one.  Furthermore, Taussig’s council of North Americans are in no way like the early church councils who were staffed by people from all over the ancient world who had been persecuted for their faith.  Later some even lost their lives for remaining steadfast in their beliefs.  Lastly, it should be noted that no church council ever made an official list of the books in the New Testament.  Protestants in fact view the canon of the New Testament as a list of authoritative books, and not as an authoritative list of books.  The council of 19 however has draped themselves with authority to decide that the books the church had received as authoritative are lacking.  Finding similarities between the council of 19 and the early church councils strains the imagination.

The Jesus Seminar and its current form of the council of 19 is simply a farce.  The New New Testament is just another attempt to undermine the faith of centuries through hollowing out and watering down the message of Jesus Christ.  This is simply a wolf dressed up like a sheep who unfaithful shepherds are not protecting.