'The Most Embarrassing Verse in the Bible'

Passage of the Week: Thursday 25th January

In our last passage of the week, we explored C.S. Lewis’ views on the historical Jesus.

There we found that Lewis was critical of attempts to reconstruct from behind the Gospels a different figure to that of historic, Orthodox belief.

Yet in one respect, at least, Lewis found himself in agreement with the critics: as many scholars in his time (and still today) observe, Jesus and the early Church believed that the Kingdom of God would arrive within a generation.¹

And they were wrong. Two thousand years have passed, and we are still waiting.

C.S. Lewis even goes so far to call Matthew 24:34 - a verse about the fulfilment of all these things in a generation - ‘the most embarrassing verse in the Bible.’

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Some modern admirers of Lewis - particularly his evangelical ones - may be surprised that Lewis would concede Jesus’ error on this point; and the error of Scripture.

Yet while Lewis saw the Scriptures as, in some sense, authoritative, he was clear that not all parts of Scripture were the Word of God in the same sense.² In this regard, Lewis’ views on Scripture were perhaps more akin to neo-Orthodoxy than contemporary evangelicalism.³

So how does Lewis resolve the tension of failed expectations?

He notes two things. First, that Jesus was wrong - in a strangely reassuringly way - on the very point at which he confesses ignorance. As he says, ‘of that day or hour no one knows, not even the Son, nor the Angels in heaven, only the Father’ (Mt. 24:36).

Second - in an application of the historical principle of embarrassment - the Gospels’ confession of Jesus’ ignorance can be taken as an indicator of their reliability.⁴

It seems, then, that Lewis was able to live with a fallible Christ and a fallible Bible. Such is the sort of thing we might expect from the Mystery of the Incarnation.

Here is Lewis on the apocalyptic Jesus:

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‘…But there is worse to come. ‘Say what you like,’ we shall be told, ‘the apocalyptic beliefs of the first Christians have been proved to be false. It is clear from the New Testament that they all expected the Second Coming in their own lifetime. And, worse still, they had a reason, and one which you will find very embarrassing. Their Master had told them so. He shared, and indeed created, their delusion. He said in so many words, “this generation shall not pass till all these things be done.” And He was wrong. He clearly knew no more about the end of the world than anyone else.’

It is certainly the most embarrassing verse in the Bible. Yet how teasing, also, that within fourteen words of it should come the statement ‘But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.’ The one exhibition of error and the one confession of ignorance grow side by side. That they stood thus in the mouth of Jesus Himself, and were not merely placed thus by the reporter, we surely need not doubt. Unless the reporter were perfectly honest he would never have recorded the confession of ignorance at all; he could have had no motive for doing so except a desire to tell the whole truth. And unless later copyists were equally honest they would never have preserved the (apparently) mistaken prediction about ‘this generation’ after the passage of time had shown the (apparent) mistake. This passage (Mark 13:30–32) and the cry ‘Why hast thou forsaken me?’ (Mark 15:34) together make up the strongest proof that the New Testament is historically reliable. The evangelists have the first great characteristic of honest witnesses: they mention facts which are, at first sight, damaging to their main contention.

The facts, then, are these: that Jesus professed Himself (in some sense) ignorant, and within a moment showed that He really was so. To believe in the Incarnation, to believe that He is God, makes it hard to understand how He could be ignorant; but also makes it certain that, if He said He could be ignorant, then ignorant He could really be. For a God who can be ignorant is less baffling than a God who falsely professes ignorance. The answer of theologians is that the God-Man was omniscient as God, and ignorant as Man. This, no doubt, is true, though it cannot be imagined. Nor indeed can the unconsciousness of Christ in sleep be imagined, nor the twilight of reason in His infancy; still less His merely organic life in His mother’s womb. But the physical sciences, no less than theology, propose for our belief much that cannot be imagined.

A generation which has accepted the curvature of space need not boggle at the impossibility of imagining the consciousness of incarnate God. In that consciousness the temporal and the timeless were united. I think we can acquiesce in mystery at that point…’⁵

1. The classic treatment of this problem is found in Albert Schweizer’s 1906 work, The Quest for the Historical Jesus. For a modern iteration of this thesis, see Dale C. Allison, Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998).

2. C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms (London: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1958), 19.

3. For Lewis’ less than conservative views on Scripture, see the excellent little treatment of Michael J. Christensen, C.S. Lewis on Scripture: His Thoughts on the Nature of Biblical Inspiration, the Role of Revelation, and the Question of Inerrancy (Dallas: Word, 1979).

4. The criterion of embarrassment qua criterion has come under much scrutiny in recent Jesus research. Part of the difficulty is knowing what was embarrassing for the earliest followers of Jesus. At this stage, for example, would an ignorant Jesus have been less embarrassing than a failed apocalyptic expectation? For an overview of criticisms of the criteria of authenticity, including embarrassment, see Anthony le Donne, Chris Keith (eds.), Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity (London: Bloomsbury, 2012).

5. C.S. Lewis, The World’s Last Night: And Other Essays (San Francisco, HarperOne: 2007), np.