strange bedfellows

It's a strange expression that, isn't it? Does it originate from a more innocent age? But that begs the question, was there ever a more innocent age? Since the Fall of Adam and Eve the world has never been innocent. But that's not the subject of this blog. Rather it is the news that Lord Jeffrey Archer of Weston-super-Mare has co-authored a book that is NEWS! Forget the Da Vinci book! This book has come from one of England's pre-eminent novelists and from one "regarded by many as the greatest living biblical scholar" (so Ruth Gledhill in The Times). The book declares that some of Jesus's miracles did not take place and that Judas was trying to do Jesus a favour. And so on. The greatest de-mythologiser of them all of course was Bultmann in the post-war years. Such writers maintain that the Gospel records had as their purpose to give Jesus Messianic credentials. It is no new thing to de-bunk Christianity - it started early in the living memory of the disciples. What has for ever seemed strange to me is that the most zealous of de-bunkers, rationalisers, call them what you will are so-called members of the church. God has done a great thing for us, a kind and merciful and loving act of grace which has no comparison in any other world situation. He sent His son to bear our sins in His body on the cross, that we might be saved. The sheer simplicity of the act and the teaching of Old and New Testaments to explain it is truly marvellous. I'm no intellectual and very simplistic perhaps, but I find only awe and wonder in the story given in the Gospels. If God is God, why are so-called Christian scholars so keen to dumb Him down? The danger of saying 'this bit is not true' is to prompt one to say 'well how do we know that that bit is true'? And on what grounds do we say such things anyway? I wonder whether, when we say the creed which ever one we use, whether we shouldn't add a list of terms and conditions to it. I have never read Archer, I have never heard of Moloney and I saw a book in Borders that purports to put the lie to the whole story of Jesus.
Meanwhile that author, Moloney and Archer will have their day and be forgotten, but the Bible will continue to be read and its message transform lives. Deo gratia.