If, however, we find that
three of the four witnesses agree in reporting that he said or did a
certain thing, we feel surer about it than when only one witness
reports it. And if two report, why, even then we feel a little more
certain than we do when the report is from only one. And yet, of
course, the three may have omitted that which only one has recorded,
and which is true. But scholars have wrought out along this line what
is called the Triple Tradition; that is, they have constructed a
complete story of the life and the teaching and the death of Jesus out
of the words which are common to three of the gospel writers. All of
them tell this same story; and this story of the Triple Tradition has
no miraculous conception, it has no resurrection of the body, no
ascension into heaven. The miracles are reduced to the very lowest
terms, becoming almost natural and easy to be accounted for. In this
story Jesus teaches none of the things of which I have been speaking.
I say, then, that along the lines of the very best critical
scholarship, coming as near to the teaching of Jesus as we possibly can
to-day, we are warranted in saying that this which has usurped the name
of the gospel of Christ is not only not good news, but it is not the
news which Jesus brought and preached. As has been said a good many
times, it is a gospel about Christ instead of being the gospel of
Christ.
I am ready now to make the claim that we liberals of the modern world
are the ones who come nearer to preaching the gospel of Christ than any
other part of the so-called Christian Church.
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