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THE CHURCH’S MYSTERY GHOSTWRITER

Many Americans can point back with fondness to a favorite President whose life touched their own. Perhaps some monumental piece of legislation changed the nation – or even came right down into their home and gave them a new lease on life, made them part of the “Great Society.” Maybe they heard a youthful, hatless, just-sworn-in John Kennedy inviting America’s restless youth to “ask what they can do for their country.”

In his book, The Jesus I Never Knew, Philip Yancey quotes from H. G. Wells, whose brilliant writing left a few positive skid marks here and there.

“More than 1900 years later,” the time traveler wrote, “a historian like myself, who doesn’t even call himself a Christian, finds the picture centering irresistibly around the life and character of this most significant Man, [Jesus Christ]. The historian’s test of an individual’s greatness is ‘What did he leave to grow?’ Did he start men to thinking along fresh lines with a vigor that persisted after him? BY THIS TEST JESUS STANDS FIRST.”

And then Yancey eloquently concludes:

“You can gauge the size of a ship that has passed out of sight by the huge wake it leaves behind.”

Our question for today is this: do the teachings of Jesus corroborate the claim that He was and is the living Son of God? Are they so good, so revolutionary, so impacting that the One who brought them to this world must obviously be divine?

Back in 1957, speaking of Kennedy, some of you senior citizens might remember a flap about who wrote what. The Senator from Massachusetts had come out with a book called Profiles in Courage. The boyish JFK went on to become President of the United States three years later, but right now, ABC News and Mike Wallace – ever heard of him? – had claimed that Kennedy hadn’t really written the book. The suggestion was that longtime aide and confidant Theodore Sorensen had done most of the writing work, the “heavy lifting,” and that this celebrity Senator had just slapped his own name on the front cover. Now that the book had received a Pulitzer Prize, the charges were very serious. A literary deception like this could result in the Pulitzer being withdrawn . . . and could certainly have ended the Kennedy ascendency toward the White House.

Kennedy’s wealthy father, Ambassador Joe Kennedy, was on the phone screaming at lawyer Clark Clifford, demanding that ABC be sued for fifty million bucks. “My boy wrote that book! This is a plot against us! It’s dishonest and they know it.” But Clifford managed to provide scraps of paper, handwritten notes in the Senator’s own handwriting. He produced statements from eyewitnesses who had personally seen Kennedy, lying in a hospital bed – he had back surgery a few years earlier – writing notes for the book. An Arthur Krock swore that he had watched the frail Senator with a yellow legal pad, painfully scratching out the stories of brave Senators who had made a difference in American history.

Ironically, the preface to Profiles in Courage had openly given some major credit to Sorensen for his part in the project. In the dog-eared copy we have here at the office – it cost 35 cents, so maybe we’ll order a new one soon – he cites his “invaluable assistance in the assembly and preparation of the material upon which this book is based.” And now Sorensen himself was helping to compile the documentation of his boss’s active participation.

What was the real truth behind it all? Nearly half a century later, long after ABC’s public retraction, Sorensen has admitted that the original accusations did contain some truth; his contributions had indeed been very substantial. And there we shall leave it. For those who want to dig further, the Internet is ready and willing to soak up your days and nights. But it is undeniably a painful letdown when you find out that a person whose writing you admired so much had a flunky in the back room do all of the creative work.

And on an ongoing basis, this same charge is leveled against the charismatic Teacher from Galilee. Did He really say those things in the Sermon on the Mount? Were the parables of the prodigal son and the five foolish virgins really His own stories? Or did someone come along later and ghost up these four books that lead off the New Testament? Was there perhaps a “collaborative committee” someplace that clandestinely put together the basic writings we now have as the literary underpinnings of the Christian faith?

In their book, Ready With an Answer, John Ankerberg and John Weldon string together some powerful arguments on that very matter, borrowing from keen thinkers who have grappled with this possibility. Nineteenth-century British historian, W. E. H. Lecky, an admitted foe of the Christian faith, makes this amazing confession:

“It was reserved for Christianity to present to the world an ideal character which through all the changes of eighteen centuries has inspired the hearts of men with an impassioned love; has shown itself capable of acting on all ages, nations, temperaments and conditions; has been not only the highest pattern of virtue, but the strongest incentive to its practice, and has exerted so deep an influence, that it may be truly said, that the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and to soften mankind, than all the disquisitions of philosophers and than all the exhortations of moralists.”

That’s an impressive tip of the cap – and coming from the opposing dugout. A psychiatrist and Christian named J. T. Fisher, in a book entitled History and Christianity, seconds the opinion with these words:

“For nearly two thousand years the Christian world has been holding in its hands the complete answer to its restless and fruitless yearnings. Here rests the blueprint for successful human life with optimum mental health and contentment.”

We’ve already addressed the issue of whether or not a person who produced such a body of work, who made such a distinguished mark on the world he was in . . . could himself be deluded. Could Jesus have been so brilliant as this, while at the same time, thinking Himself to be God when He wasn’t? That’s not a likely scenario, but what about the possibility that a first-century Ted Sorensen surreptitiously wrote a lengthy document, signed Jesus’ name to it, and began printing up copies of the Sermon on the Mount?

It’s even been suggested that there never was a Jesus, that the entire story is a fabrication from start to finish. We began this series playing off the Mel Gibson film, The Passion of the Christ, but such a sinister conspiracy theory makes us think of something more like Capricorn One, where a NASA mission to Mars is entirely faked and anyone who might expose the lie is assassinated. But is it possible that some brilliant person in the early, phantom “Christian Church” simply invented a Jesus? A virgin birth? The life, the teachings, the miracles, the stories, the debates, the sermons? Crucifixion: fake. Resurrection: fake. Ascension: fake. Maybe a really smart person with a vivid imagination and a bunch of blank scrolls to fill just put the entire scheme together in a month of furious midnight writing.

Philip Schaff, in his monumental work, History of the Christian Church, takes a swing at that concept. He reminds us that, first of all, such a person would have to be either diabolically deceptive or diabolically demented. Could such a person produce what turned into the Christian Church, with its pure and upright teachings? Would a liar churn out a body of work uplifting and proclaiming pure truth with such power?

Then Schaff reminds us that both the teachings and the life itself of Jesus Christ are of such an exalted nature that it would almost be harder to CREATE such a Jesus than to simply BE Him! Here’s his exact quote:

“A character so original, so complete, so uniformly consistent, so perfect, so human and yet so high above all human greatness, can be neither a fraud nor a fiction. The POET, as has been well said, would in this case be greater than the HERO. It would take more than a Jesus to invent a Jesus.”

One more thing. I’ve sat in enough committees to realize that great sayings and solid writing generally comes from a person. It’s rare for a “team” sermon or a “team” manuscript to really shake the world. You generally turn to one chosen person, and ask him: “Give us the best you’ve got.” Is it possible then – and Bible scholar Burton Scott Easton poses this question – that the early church there in Palestine, which sprang into existence on a bald-faced lie:
“. . . Had in its midst a single, brilliant thinker ‘from whom the sayings all proceeded, but whose name and very existence had disappeared from history – something well nigh unthinkable”?

Put another way, where is the Ted Sorensen who did all this? Who concocted this story? A megalomaniac with the ability to do so would have wanted some credit for his work, would have wanted his name attached. Where did he go? This same scholar, Easton, asserts that it’s even more unlikely that some secret committee, some “Jesus Project,” “all fired with the same superlative genius and all endowed with the same exquisite style,” just disappeared beneath the waves of history without a single trace or ripple. No way.

Friend, I’ve stood on the dock, as it were, and seen the wake left behind by Jesus. That’s all we do here at the Voice – is talk about the wake. And I’m telling you: it’s real. Jesus was no ghost, and there was no ghostwriter. End of story.