THE GOSPEL TRUTH?

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So disgusted is Johnson, in fact, that he, like Bultmann before him, counsels believers to ignore the search for the historical Jesus altogether. Does the Seminar condemn the Resurrection as unprovable? Rather than trying to assert the authenticity of the story of the empty crypt or backing up John's tale of Doubting Thomas, Johnson maintains that the Resurrection that has always mattered to Christians is the ongoing miracle, the "transforming, transcendent personal power" that marks the moving of the Holy Spirit in the hearts and among the communities of believers. "Christianity," he writes, "has never been able to 'prove' its claims except by appeal to the experiences and convictions of those already convinced. The only real validation for the claim that Christ is what the creed claims him to be, light from light, true God from true God, is to be found in the quality of life demonstrated by those who make this confession."

To which N.T. Wright replies: poppycock. "He kicks the ball back into his own net by mistake," Wright booms. "He's putting the clocks back to the 1890s, when the Germans said that all this historical Jesus nonsense shows we shouldn't be trying to find the Jesus behind the Gospels at all!"

Wright, who until recently taught New Testament at Oxford University, talks at his office in Lichfield, England, where he is dean of the 700-year-old Anglican cathedral. His is an influential voice in the debate; not only is his 600-page Jesus and the Victory of God eagerly anticipated by participants on both sides of the Atlantic, but he did an 18-city American lecture tour in 1995, and has similar plans this year.

On the face of it, he is Johnson's staunchest ally. Wright knows and likes Crossan--the two go drinking after their debates--but he calls his friend's latest book "radically wrong in almost every second thing it says." His own 40-page critique of the Jesus Seminar's work echoes Johnson's point regarding oral cultures and similarly questions the Seminar's snub of Jesus' apocalyptic, eschatological side. Most important, he concurs that it is a mistake to "carve up" the New Testament and analyze the pieces separately. Wright believes the Gospels are more supportive than subversive of one another: "If I read about the Prime Minister in the Telegraph, the Times, the Mail and the Guardian, there are four different views, but that doesn't mean I don't have [a pretty good idea] of what the Prime Minister did.

"Jesus cannot be reduced to a wordsmith in the marketplace, spinning little aphorisms and telling funny stories," he announces. Building on previous work by the historian E.P. Sanders stressing Jesus' place within 1st century Judaism, Wright concludes that the Gospels provide sufficient evidence to deduce not just a wandering sage who was crucified for reasons unclear, but a prophet who announced a coming Kingdom of God and died for it; and that this framework in turn clarifies "dozens of examples where the details fall into place." Specifically, his book will state that Jesus' trial, the fact that he claimed to be the Messiah and his bodily Resurrection have sound historical basis.