BitterSweetLife

© 2005 Ariel Vanderhorst

Sometimes I wonder what the dagger-sharp Greek philosophers made of Jesus. After all, Plato and Aristotle would have been old hat to them; stoicism and asceticism and hedonism were in full swing, usually pitted against each other. The Greek debaters excelled at erecting and razing arguments, and probably did so for fun in their spare time. For most of them, new ideas were a momentary diversion—toys to be unwrapped and played with and discarded. What would Christ and “The Way” have had to offer these philosophical voyeurs?

The Bible indicates that the arguments of Paul the theologian in Athens—Athens, the intellectual watering hole of the ancient world—was met with grudging approval (Acts 17:32). One wonders why, exactly. What would a handful of seasoned (probably jaded) cerebrals find intriguing in Christ’s story?

I have at least one idea.

Recently I was thinking about 1 Thessalonians 4:14 in the Bible:

Since Jesus died and broke loose from the grave, God will most certainly bring back to life those who died in Jesus. (my emphasis)

What struck me was the line of causality on display. Paul, who authored this letter, used a simple but devastating argument. “IF,” he says in effect, “Jesus really rose from the dead, THEN OF COURSE new life awaits us as well. Jesus says so.”

Paul hooks the central fact of Christ’s life—his resurrection—to the death concerns of the disciples in Thessalonica and says that for all practical purposes they are one and the same. One assertion about Jesus drags in all the rest. One truth implies the many. One strand holds the whole tapestry together. Deny one claim, you dash them all. Believe one fact, and if you value your honesty, you must take on the rest. Paradoxically, the swarm of staggering claims about Jesus are indivisible. You can’t divide and conquer. It’s the way Christ is.

Take any one part of him and it implies the whole. His character creates a glowing chain of causality that must be broken early or not at all. Consider: Grant his “great teacherhood” and you cannot deny his honesty. Grant his honesty, and you cannot deny his sanity. Grant his sanity and you cannot deny his theology. Grant his theology and you cannot deny his divinity. Case closed.

Every strand of Jesus pulls in all the rest. Therefore, to avoid affirming the eye-popping truth of the resurrection—and thereby endorsing the certainty of everything Christ said about himself—you must firmly, decisively contradict the very root of his being.

Prove that he never existed. Demonstrate that he was actually a compulsive liar, or a surprisingly coherent madman, or kept a harem of village women on the side. Do something, anything, to discredit him, because otherwise… Otherwise you pay him one complement and his Godhood is implied.

I wonder if Paul made this point to the scholars loitering around the Areopagus. It would have turned some heads. And in fact, the only sane reactions bright minds could make to such a dilemma is what the Bible documents in Athens: Some sauntered off laughing derisively and some said “Tell us more.”

You either take Christ as he is or you joke the whole thing away. Piecemeal approaches don’t work, as the Athenians clearly saw. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, you either demonize Jesus as a fiend or you fall on your face, realizing you have wandered into an encounter from which there is no escape.

Once a person stumbles over Christ, he either stays down or hurriedly gets to his feet and runs off. These are the only credible avenues. So when the well-oiled Athenian minds heard about The Way, they recognized a philosophy which exacted a heavy price: Everything.

Everything, or nothing. All the devotion the heart can muster or absolute cold indifference. An entire life or never a thought at all.

Christ must smile as person after person runs into his providential trap. He must smile all the wider when a few of them stand, scratching their heads, then lurch awkwardly toward him, having concluded that ultimate reality, the priorlife, is really the only sane alternative after all.

Lured into eternal life by a master trick.

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