My wife Angie and I went to hear Ben Witherington speak at Grace United Methodist Church in Kokomo this afternoon. He had preached there in the morning and was speaking this afternoon on the singular rather than pluralistic Jesus. I imagine that there are any number of church settings where his presentation might be controversial, although this crowd was friendly to his message.
It was a good mix of scholarship cum evangelism. Jesus claimed to be divine, so either he was or he was a liar or a lunatic (the classic Lewis argument). But Witherington supported this argument with some scholarly reflections on what Jesus might have meant when he called himself the Son of Man, an allusion to Daniel 7.
W also went through texts most of us know well that claim that Jesus exclusively is the way to God. As W responded to a question from the audience, "there are sheep not of this fold" cannot mean other religions, or else John massively contradicts itself ("I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me").
There were also reflections on the importance that Christ be without sin in order to serve as a sacrifice. Ben dipped into the question of whether those who have not heard can be saved and he gave the classic Wesleyan-Arminian answer from Romans 1 and being judged according to the light we have.
He took questions at the end, including one about the Iraq war. Going where angels fear to tread--especially in semi-rural Indiana--he didn't flinch to say matter of factly that we couldn't have done more to hinder those who want to be our friends in the Middle East and empower our enemies there.
I told him afterwards that he was a brave man. He noted in response that he didn't get stoned.
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He is pretty brave in the topics he discusses. I saw him recently teach at a church on end times views and asked him during the Q&A what political implications (if any) the "Left Behind" view of eschatology had on political or social issues and without flinching or giving it a 2nd thought he went straight into talking about the environment and middle east issues and Christians responsibilities to other Christians in Palestine and how that relates to the Jews and Israel and so on.
The the next day at this church that seemed pretty conservative to me (although I couldn't really tell) he proceeded to give a lecture on the women in ministry issue and divorce in the church. I was probably more uncomfortable in the audience than he was giving the talk.
Good stuff.
Blessings,
Bryan L
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