In our time the main divisions in Christianity appear to be political: fundamentalists are struggling for power against their liberal adversaries. In terms of church attendance and attracting coverage from mass media, the fundamentalists have the upper hand. But this ongoing political drama hasn't resolved the deeper question. Everyone in the modern world faces a choice between reading the Bible literally or interpreting it along more symbolic lines (a problem that spreads to other religions and other scriptures, not just Christianity). The balance between faith and rationality is more precarious than ever. This leads directly to the next argument: Argument #4. There was no real Jesus, or if he existed, he is buried under layers of theology. Pro: The tactic here is to cut the Gordian knot and simply dismiss the whole issue of who the real Jesus was. The strongest adherents, those who assume that Jesus was a mythical figure to begin with, point to the almost total lack of historical evidence for his existence. They hold that the New Testament belongs to the many documents in spiritual history that blend together hopes, wishes, blind faith, traditional stories, magic, and deeply embedded myths that pervade every culture. From this amalgam a band of mystical Jews created the very thing they longed for, a Messiah who would save Judaism from foreign oppression and validate the destiny of the Chosen People. There is no doubt that such a theme runs strongly through the four gospels; the central question is whether it is credible that a group of people could invent Jesus and believe in him without a single shred of physical proof. It could be that a rabbi named Jesus actually existed, and after his death by execution the gospel writers began to assert his divine status. Buddha and Muhammad certainly existed as historical figures, yet their lives are cocooned in layer upon layer of myths and miracles. Could this not also be true of Jesus? Con: The obvious objection to this argument is that it doesn't solve the mystery of the real Jesus but only restates it. We already know that faith and reason are at odds. We already know that the gospel writers had their own agendas. What people want is a way out of this confusion. To arbitrarily dismiss Jesus as a fiction has no more validity than to arbitrarily accept the whole New Testament as literally true. On the simplest level, it is more probable that Jesus existed than that he didn't, because the notion of a new religion spreading like wildfire around a fairy tale is too improbable. What gives pause is the more diluted form of this argument: Jesus was real, but the four gospels have buried him in so much confusion and contradiction that we will never recover him. One could call this the agnostic position. It straddles the fence without coming down for faith alone or reason alone. As such, it doesn't satisfy one's emotions. Far better to find a way to have some kind of Jesus (e.g., ethical teacher, Messiah, miracle worker, saint, or model of human goodness) than a shadow figure forever suspended in limbo.
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