Madam, - Seán Mullan of Evangelical Alliance Ireland argues (Rite and Reason, May 24th) for the creation of "a new engagement with the Gospel of Jesus"; for evangelicals "share a common conviction that the good news of Jesus is true, and as relevant and necessary as it has ever been".
Indeed "the good news of Jesus is true". But the question needs to be asked: "What is 'the good news of Jesus'?"
This is a more complicated question than evangelicals allow for. The late 19th and early 20th centuries witnessed a debate between the proponents of "the Jesus of faith" and "the Jesus of history". But the debate has moved on, and can now be summed up in rather different terms: "the Jesus of the New Testament" versus "the Jesus of the whole conspectus of the New Testament and extra-canonical scripture combined".
A different "mix" emerges. Most Christians, and particularly evangelical Christians, have been slow to appreciate the full implications of the two volumes of the Hennecke-Schreenelcher New Testament Apocrypha and E. Székely's two volumes of Essene scriptures, not to mention the extent of what has been discovered at Nag Hammadi and Qumran.
These new elements make little or no difference to the code of conduct necessary for living the Christian life: the parable of the Good Samaritan, and injunctions such as "Love your neighbour" and "do unto others as you would that they do unto you" remain as true as ever they were. What has changed is the underlying theological suppositions which underpin the "code of conduct".
The extra-canonical evidence is too important simply to be dismissed out of hand. In a nutshell, the old approach, "Holy Scripture - i.e., the Old and New Testaments - containeth all things necessary to salvation", is no longer even remotely sustainable. To continue to think so is "to see through a glass, darkly" when we could be seeing, more nearly, "face to face". - Yours, etc.,
Dr MARTIN PULBROOK,
New Meeting House,
Prince's Street,
Cork.