CNN LARRY KING LIVE
Who was Jesus?
Aired December
24, 2004 - 9 pm ET
Note: This file only includes the dialogue between the panel members. For the complete transcription of the show, follow the links at the bottom of this file.
LARRY KING, HOST: Tonight, who was Jesus, and why does Christianity
survive 2004 years after his death? On this Christmas Eve, as millions
the world over celebrate his birth, top religious authorities debate the
meaning and the message of Jesus' life and death. With us, Deepak
Chopra, renowned spiritual adviser and best- selling author. Pastor John
MacArthur of California's Grace Community Church, also president of
The
Master's College. Father Michael Manning, host of the internationally
syndicated religious broadcast, "The Word and the World." Syndicated
radio host Dennis Prager, author of many books on the relationship
between Christians and Jews. And in New York, "Newsweek's" Jon Meacham,
author of the magazine's recent cover story on the birth of Jesus.
They're all next on this special Christmas Eve edition of LARRY KING
LIVE.
Good evening. Very happy holidays to you all. On this Christmas Eve, we
have an outstanding panel. Now, last week, a couple of weeks ago, both
"Time" and "Newsweek" did major front-page stories on the birth of Jesus
and the nativity, both cover stories featured the same week. And joining
us now in New York -- and we'll start with him and then get around to
the panel -- Jon Meacham, who is the managing editor of "Newsweek." He
wrote that cover story, "The Birth of Jesus." What was new? What didn't
we know, Jon?
JON MEACHAM, NEWSWEEK: Well, I think a lot of people don't know about
basically mainstream biblical criticism and the ongoing debate about the
tension between history and theology. You know, there are a billion
Christians marking the nativity of Jesus tonight and tomorrow and later
even. And what people don't really understand in some ways is that the
gospels, in the gospels nativity was almost an afterthought, that the
cataclysmic event, the central event for the people who are writing the
gospels in the first century was the passion, was the resurrection of
their lord. And in fact, it was only Matthew and Luke who actually wrote
the nativity story going back almost 30, 40, 50 years later.
So what we wanted to do was try to explain how those stories came to be.
It is in fact the most familiar story in Western history, I think, if
you think about the baby Jesus and the stable and the (UNINTELLIGIBLE)
and the stars and the wise men. And what we wanted to do was try to
explain what those symbols, what those emblems mean to believers, how
much of it could be historically accurate, and how much of it is
theologically significant, which is to say all of it.
Things don't have to be -- it's very important when you read the Bible
if you're a believer, and even if you're not, things don't have to be
accurate to be true. You know, Shakespeare once said there are more
things in heaven and earth that are dreamt of in our philosophy, and the
Christmas story is certainly one of those.
KING: John MacArthur, what's your reaction to that?
JOHN MACARTHUR, PASTOR, GRACE COMMUNITY CHURCH: I think that's a
frightening statement, to say things don't have to be accurate to be
true. I mean, now you've just said there's no such thing as truth, or
that truth can't be verified, or that truth isn't absolute, or the truth
isn't historic.
One of the comments that Jon made I think is really definitive. He said
there are a lot of people who don't know about biblical criticism. This
is a battle between those who believe the Bible and those who do not.
KING: Why is it a battle? Why can't you just believe it and I'm not?
MACARTHUR: Because, you're taking two sides.
KING: But it's belief. You can believe and have a faith.
MACARTHUR: Believe me, it's more than a belief. It's a battle, it's a
war for the integrity, the authority, the veracity, the inerrancy, the
inspiration of the Bible. If you believe the Bible is the authoritative,
inspired, inerrant word of God, then what it says is absolutely true and
binding. If you're not going to believe that, you are going to have to
attack the Bible, because of its longevity in the world, because of its
power and its impact, you have got to deal with it religiously.
KING: Deepak, how do you view -- I'll come back to you in a minute, Jon,
I just want to get everyone's quick thought -- how do you view Christ?
DEEPAK CHOPRA, AUTHOR, "THE BOOK OF SECRETS": Well, I see Christ in many
ways. First, I see the historical Christ, which is -- you know, we know
very little. There is only one reference by a Roman historian. I see the
Christ of the gospels and of Paul, which is a different theological
Christ. I see the Christ of the gnostic gospels, the Nag Hammadi
library, the gospel of Thomas, which is completely different from the
Christ of Matthew and John and Luke and Mark. I see Christ as a state of
consciousness that we can all aspire to.
KING: So which Christ?
CHOPRA: And I see a human Christ, the one who gets angry, who throws the
money changers out of the synagogue and calls them -- or tells them not
to desecrate the den of thieves, the one Christ who's lord and says, why
have you forsaken me. So you know, there are many ways of looking at
Christ.
KING: Dennis Prager, as a Jew, and a very observant Jew, how do you view
him?
DENNIS PRAGER, AUTHOR: Well, it's interesting. I've spent a life
evolving in this way. Obviously, I do not hold Jesus as my savior, or my
messiah or my God, and yet I have come to the belief, largely watching
America's Christians, frankly, though not only, that Christianity, that
the belief in Jesus Christ for Christians has a divine role to play. And
I'll be very specific. I think that the spreading of my Bible,
specifically my Torah, has been done more by Christians than by Jews.
And this goes to a very basic point that was just being made here about
the importance of texts. I share the same text with Christians,
vis-à-vis the Old Testament. We both hold that to be divine. That's a
big deal, and it was spread by people who believe in this Jew named
Jesus. And I can't sit here and say, gee, the whole thing is just made
up in full.
KING: But you don't believe he was born of a virgin birth and that he
was resurrected, that he's your messiah.
PRAGER: No, correct. That is correct. Those are things that by
definition, one is a Christian who believes that. I am not a Christian.
But do I believe that they're not doing God's work as Christians? No, I
cannot say that.
KING: How do you -- the Catholics, how do you view him?
FATHER MICHAEL MANNING, HOST, "THE WORD AND THE WORLD": I believe Jesus
is the son of God. I believe that he has lived, died and come to life
from resurrection. I believe that that reality is something that I can
understand more deeply when I read the Bible. But I also can understand
it very much in my little parish in San Bernardino, California, as I
work with people who are loving Jesus and trying to experience how he
has an impact on their family life, on their social concerns, on their
desire to be able to relate to the Father. I find that the Bible, the
experience of the live God moving in a great way is very, very important
for me.
KING: Jon, you want to explain what you mean by you don't have to be
accurate to be true?
MEACHAM: Sure. I think there is a difference
between history and theology. This is a fight that goes back much
farther, but I think we're at the most divisive moment currently since
really the Scopes trial in 1925.
I am a believing Christian. I am a devout Episcopalian. I know that
sometimes strikes people as an oxymoron. But I do believe in the words
of the creed, which I repeat everyday. I believe that Jesus was the Son
of God who was incarnate by the Holy Ghost to the Virgin Mary and was
made man and was crucified for our sins under Pontius Pilate, and rose
again. He's coming back to judge the quick and the dead.
I do believe that. Do I believe, to go to the Torah point, that it was
six calendar days in the way we measure a week at "Newsweek" or anywhere
in the West, that the world was actually created? Not especially. No. I
think that it was a literary metaphor for divine creation.
Do I believe that there was a star in the east on that particular day to
lead the magi to Jesus? It's a little tricky. Because if you look at
what the points the gospel authors were trying to make, they weren't
writing journalism. They were writing the good news. That's what gospel
means. Gospel does not mean history or biography in the way we use the
term today. It means a...
KING: So Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were not journalists?
MEACHAM: No. No. And thank God for that, because, you know, there are
plenty of us out there, and thank God there were at least four of them
who were making this case. They were making a case for the most powerful
thing you can possibly imagine. The world, the very order of the world
had been shattered. That out of darkness was coming light, out of death,
life, out of weakness, strength, with the resurrection of Jesus, and his
coming to the recognition that he was Christ or messiah. Remember, Jesus
is a name and Christ is a title. They were trying to make sense of this.
And it's the most transformative possible message one can imagine.
Yet I don't think it's particularly productive for us today in the first
years of the 21st century, when so much divides us, to act as though we
all have to agree that every word of holy scripture is inerrantly
accurate. I just don't see how that's very...
MACARTHUR: Well, the Bible claims to be inerrant. It claims to be
accurate. Every word of God is pure. Well, but that's its claim. So if
it is not true when it says it's accurate, why would we believe any of it?
KING: Where does it say -- where does it say we're true? It was
written...
MACARTHUR: Paul: Scripture was given by the inspiration of God. Plain
and simple.
KING: All right, Dennis Prager, if it's not literal, if you don't accept
virgin birth, then you don't accept Christianity.
PRAGER: Well, that's for Christians to answer. But I'd like to tackle
the issue of text, literalism, inspiration and God. I believe that my
Torah is divine. But do I believe that each of the 24 hours -- each of
the days is 24 hours? No, I don't. And I don't think that the Bible
suggests that it is. The sun is not created until the third day. How do
you have a 24-hour day without the sun?
KING: So what do you believe?
PRAGER: Oh, I believe that it's divine. Divine and literal are not
identical. It is divine. I live by it. It tells me how to live, and I
believe it is God's instruction manual to me. But that doesn't mean that
God created the world in six times 24 hours.
KING: When you read things that Christ said, what do you think?
PRAGER: I think that, largely, what we have here is a rabbinic Jew
speaking, sometimes outside the tradition, sometimes where he himself
will even say, you have heard it said "X", but I'm here to say why. But
the more research one does, the more one finds that most of what he is
saying is in his inimitable way, Jewish text.
KING: Do you ever disagree with what he said, Deepak?
CHOPRA: No, I don't disagree with what he said. But I do agree with Jon
Meacham when he says that there is a difference between what is true and
what is factually accurate. What is true is what we hold to be true as a
collective people. So Father MacArthur and his flock...
KING: Reverend.
MACARTHUR: John MacArthur.
CHOPRA: John MacArthur. They believe something to be true. It's true for
them. Joseph Campbell said, mythology is truer than history. History is
just journalism. And we know that journalism can be distorted. Listen to
Al Jazeera and listen to Larry King, they have two completely different
points of view. But mythology encapsulates the aspirations, the
imagination, the desires, the highest level of expression of a
collective mind. So the Bible is divinely inspired, but it's not
factually accurate if you interpret it in the ways it is interpreted.
KING: So you read it the way you want to read it?
CHOPRA: Yeah. You read it the way you want to.
KING: Do you ever doubt it, Father? Do you ever doubt the Bible?
MANNING: No, I believe in the inspiration of the Bible, but at the same
time, I understand that there are aspects for me of trying to understand
from different communities just who Jesus is, so that I have a community
of Mark and I have a community of Matthew and Luke.
KING: And do they disagree?
MANNING: Sometimes factually. You're going to find things that are going
to be different, concerning the date of the Last Supper. Whether or not
Lazarus was raised from the dead. John mentions it, the others don't,
you'd say that. But what are they really getting at? They're trying to
express their faith in Jesus Christ and allow that to enter into, for
example, with Lazarus. What does it mean to die and come to life again?
What does that mean? And so...
PRAGER: A very quick thing on accurate and truth, or what was said
before. The phone book is entirely accurate. There are no truths in it.
KING: Good point. Excellent point.
MACARTHUR: Yeah, but it has no bearing on the Bible whatsoever. Because
the Bible is not assortment of facts and data like a phone book, the
Bible is a testimony to Jesus Christ. And in the Old Testament, you have
the preparation for Jesus Christ, you have all the prophesies, 330
prophesies, 100 of which at least are resolved in the birth of Jesus
Christ.
You have to ask this question, and I would ask this to Dennis, if you
accept what Jesus said as the teaching of a Jewish rabbi, what about
when he said to the Jews, "Before Abraham was, I am." And they took out
stones to stone him, or when he said "if you've seen me, you've seen
God."
CHOPRA: John, "I am" is a state of consciousness. "I am" means "I am," without
qualifications. I'm not, so and so I'm not.
MACARTHUR: No, no, it's not that simple.
CHOPRA: If I read the gospel of John, the resurrection -- sorry. Read
the Gospel of Thomas, which none of you seem to even be aware of.
MANNING: I'm very aware of it. (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
CHOPRA: Thomas says very clearly and implies very clearly that the
resurrection of Christ was not a corporeal resurrection, but a spiritual
resurrection.
MANNING: There's where you need authority to be able to understand...
KING: Jon Meacham, sometimes just jump in, because you're at a
disadvantage not being here. So I'll have Dennis comment on what John
MacArthur brought up, and then Jon Meacham.
PRAGER: Yes, so the question was, how I do react to Jesus' statements?
MACARTHUR: He claims to be the creator.
PRAGER: Look, the answer will sound terribly simplistic, but it's just
-- it's honest and simple. If I believed that, I'd be a Christian. It's
as simple as that.
KING: He doesn't believe it.
MACARTHUR: So you think -- I know you don't believe it. You think Jesus
-- you think Jesus was a good teacher, in complete control of his
senses, a wise rabbi, and said he created the universe and that he's
God. And that he's either...
PRAGER: No. 1, as an outsider to your faith, though deeply, as you know,
involved in frankly in helping spread it, because the spread of
Christianity is a good thing for mankind at this time in history, there
is no question in my mind. But having said that, as an outsider to the
faith, I don't believe that necessarily he said those things. I don't
know that. It is an act of faith on your part that he even said it.
KING: Would you accept what Moses said?
PRAGER: Yes, I do.
KING: OK. Jon Meacham, you're a devout believer, right?
MEACHAM: Well, I try to be devout, but I am certainly a believer.
KING: OK. Are there days you question virgin birth?
MEACHAM: No. I accept the truth of it. I accept that there's a line in
the Epistle to the Hebrews, which I think is one of the great definition
of faith, that faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence
of things not seen. In my tradition, in Anglicanism, we talk about how
sacraments are an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual
grace.
I think when we're talking about both the Bible itself, we're talking
about the beginnings of tradition of authority. There were already
traditions existing that I think everyone would agree, I hope, that
there were oral traditions and traditions of teaching that predate the
actual writing down of the gospels. Remember, I think it's very
important to remember, that Jesus said in the gospel of Mark, which is
the earliest gospel, that truly, truly I say to you that this generation
shall not pass away but that the son of man would return. The early
apostles were looking for the coming of the Davidic messiah, of the end
of the age and the beginning of a more heavenly one. They weren't really
expecting to have us still sitting here debating this on this holiest of
nights so many years later.
KING: There were so many mysteries, John MacArthur,
where was he from age 12? What did he do? Where was he when he was 18?
What did he look like?
MACARTHUR: Well, we don't know what he looked like.
KING: Why not? These people were there, they were writing about him.
MACARTHUR: Well, it wasn't important what he looked like. I mean, that
was not important. He looked like probably a lot of other Jewish people
at that time.
We only have one incident between his birth and his beginning of his
ministry, when he's baptized by John the Baptist. At the age of 12, he
is with his family at the Passover in Jerusalem, and he's left behind,
and he's in the temple and he's asking questions of the doctors, and his
parents don't even know he's not there because it's a large group. They
finally go back. What are you doing? He says, I must be about my
father's business. I think it was at that point, having grown in wisdom
and stature and favor with God and men, he had full cognizance of his
deity and his mission.
KING: Why do you think there's nothing known after that?
MACARTHUR: Because there's really no point until he begins his ministry.
I think the Bible tells us that he was at all points tempted like as we
are, that he was fully human, that he needed to live a fully human life,
from childhood to adulthood, experiencing everything, including
temptation. And that perfect life, which he lived, the Bible tells us is
credited to the account of every people who puts his trust in him.
Here is the heart of the Christian gospel, OK? On the cross, Jesus dies
for my sin. In other words, God treats him as if he lived my life. Turns
around...
KING: But you weren't born yet.
MACARTHUR: No. But God knows that. He treats him as if he lives my life.
Turns right around. And by my faith in Christ, God treats me as if I
lived his life. He credits his life to my account. That's the doctrine
of justification at the heart of Christianity.
KING: Father, how much your faith is in frankly fear of death?
MANNING: Oh, I think it's very much so. I think in the back of my mind,
I'm wondering where am I going to go after all of this. I tie in very closely to Jesus and this fact of his living and dying
and coming to life. Wow. I can't think of anything more consoling and
strengthening to know that I'm going to live forever.
KING: If you're one who wants to have hope, the hope
that something goes on, it's a great story, it's a great story. It makes
me think I'm going to go on, which is, for example, if there were no
death, there wouldn't be religion, would there? No death.
MANNING: Not necessarily. Well, I guess you would have to say that,
sure. Because that's the reality that Christ has come to overcome death.
KING: Death is bad. Obviously, it's bad.
MANNING: Of course. Of course. Yes, it is.
KING: But you tell us it's good because of heaven.
MANNING: We're going to overcome it. We're going to overcome that.
KING: So it's good? Is it good or bad?
MANNING: We are going to move through it to light.
PRAGER: The trick is to be preoccupied with this life even though one
knows that this isn't the only thing that exists. That's the trick.
MACARTHUR: Jesus answered that question. He stood at the tomb of
Lazarus, and he wept, and then he raised him from the dead. He wept
because the bad part was, he knew, he wasn't weeping for him, he was
about to raise him from the dead. He felt the accumulated agony of all
the people in the future who would suffer the pain of death.
KING: Deepak, what do you believe about death?
CHOPRA: You know, you asked earlier, what did he look like. Nobody can
answer that. But I can tell you if you did a DNA analysis on him, he
would not look like John MacArthur, he would look like more the people
we're throwing bombs at in the Middle East. He was a Middle Easterner,
you know, and he was a Semite.
Secondly, the missing 16 years, there is a lot of literature about that,
you know, how much he spent time in Egypt and in Greece and in possibly
India. And the third point that I want to raise is that in the council
of Nicaea, in 325 A.D., King Constantine actually took out large amounts
of Christian literature, and they were done away with, and not
discovered until 1945, of which we now know as the Nag Hammadi library.
So the Westernization of Christianity is a phenomenon that comes from
Paul and from King Constantine.
I have been to churches in India, for example in south India, the Church
of St. Thomas, where for several hundred years people didn't even know
that there were Christians elsewhere in the world.
KING: Do you believe, Jon Meacham, that he's coming back?
MEACHAM: I do. I believe that one of the things that links Judaism and
Christianity in particular is that wonderful image, and I think it's the
21st chapter of Revelation, which is an image drawn from the Prophet
Isaiah, that at the ultimate moment, there shall be no more pain, no
more sorrow, no more tears, that God shall wipe every tear from every
eye, and there shall be no more death, for the former things are passed
away. And I think that is the ultimate moment where the world will be
brought back into order. And I think that that explains the appeal of
this night and the great vigil of Easter and so many other holy nights,
Passover, for both Christians and Jews, is that we are living in the
promise that one day all shall be made right. And it happened in time
and space here, and ultimately, we shall be brought together in a way
that will make sense of all that's come before.
KING: Does the Jew believe as well that the messiah is still to come?
PRAGER: That's the Jewish belief.
KING: When is he coming, or she?
PRAGER: Well, one is supposed to believe any moment, but there are no
predictions. I will say that though a belief in a messiah is one of the
13 principles of the Jewish faith as established by Maimonides. The
concept of messiah or the belief in messiah, is a larger issue, a larger
daily operative issue for the believing Christian than it is for Jews.
And this is -- always comes as hmm to my Christians friends. Really,
it's not that critical. And it just isn't.
I went to yeshiva for 15 years, I don't think we discussed the messiah
for 10 minutes. Fifteen years of yeshiva training.
By the way, can I ask Jon Meacham a question?
KING: The panel consists of Deepak Chopra, "The New York Times"
best-selling author. The most recent book, "The Book of Secrets:
Unlocking the Hidden Dimensions of Your Life." Other books include "How
to Know God." John MacArthur is evangelical Christian, pastor, teacher,
the Grace Community Church, author and host of "Grace to You," president
of the Master's College and founder of
Master's Seminary. Father Michael
Manning is a Roman Catholic priest, Society of the Divine Word, host of
"The Word and the World," seen on Trinity Broadcasting, and the Catholic
Diocese and Cable Television. Dennis Prager is host of the nationally
syndicated radio program, host of numerous books, including "Nine
Questions People Ask About Judaism," and "Why the Jews: The Reason for
Anti-Semitism." And in New York, Jon Meacham, managing editor of
"Newsweek," who wrote the recent "Newsweek" cover story, "Birth of
Jesus."
Dennis, for Jon.
PRAGER: Yeah, Jon, where do I look for Jon? Right over
there. Hello, Jon. You said it might be an oxymoron to some. What was
the word? A...
MEACHAM: A devout Episcopalian.
PRAGER: Much more oxymoronic is a "Newsweek" editor who is a Bible
believer. So I'm just curious, are there any more of you?
MEACHAM: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I think that's one of the -- it's
interesting -- I don't mean to make light of it. But I think that
question shows us in many, many ways why we have sharp and ultimately
completely unproductive divisions in the country. We've just seen it in
the campaign. One of the reasons we wanted to do this piece actually,
"The Birth of Jesus," was to look at the conflict between faith and
reason. You know, John Paul II wrote that wonderful essay in 1998, on
faith and reason, in which in a perfect image, he talks about how there
are two wings on which we must fly to the contemplation of truth. And
that's a very important thing for us as journalists. We want to be...
PRAGER: But the truth is, the secular media are known for being secular.
Look, there's more, you know, there's more coverage of billiards than
there is of religion in "The New York Times," for example. I mean,
that's just the way it is.
KING: Do you think that's a plot? You think "The New York Times" gets
together and says, we are going to give it to religion? Come on, Dennis.
There's a plot against it.
PRAGER: Oh, I believe -- no, there is no plot. Nobody sat down and said,
you know what, we think religion is in a province of morons and we don't
want to cover it. It just works out that way. People's values reflect in
what they do. It makes perfect sense. And so the press does under-report
and undercare. Listen, "The New York Times" best-seller list does not
include Christian books. How's that? You tell me if that's not plot.
It's not. Deliberately. They will acknowledge it. If it's sold in a
Christian bookstore, it doesn't count for "The New York Times."
KING: It has a separate section for children's books. It has a section
for business books.
PRAGER: No, not on the best-seller list. The best seller list should be
books that are best sellers. It doesn't report Christian best sellers.
KING: Let's move -- I want to touch other bases. We ought to do a whole
week on just -- with this panel.
PRAGER: Hey, and I'm Jewish and I (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
MEACHAM: Larry, let me just say one thing, if I may, since we've talked
about this, is I do think that referring to something as "the secular
media" is as frustrating to members of the press as somebody referring
to evangelicals or fundamentalist Christians. As we all know, life is
much more complex, there are many different kinds of strains of belief
and values within various communities than we can usually talk about.
And that's certainly true of the people I know who do what I do.
KING: Father, who killed Christ?
MANNING: I think that Christ moved, especially with the Jewish leaders
of the time, in a way that was very threatening to them. And that there
was a real concern that the power of the Romans, who were very strong at
that time, were people who were -- their authority was also threatened.
KING: Did you see the Mel Gibson film?
MANNING: Yes, I did.
KING: What did you think?
MANNING: I was very moved. It was very touching for me. I even had a
chance to have the star, Jim, what his name is, that was there...
I was very, very moved by it. It told me that Jesus is God, he
loves me, and he has died to prove that love for me. And in that love, I
have a deep, deep affection for him.
KING: Who killed him, John?
MACARTHUR: Well, the Romans executed him on the mountain, but they did
it under duress and the pressure of Jewish leaders, who hated him, not
because of the cure he offered but because of the indictment. I mean, he
went to his own town. One of the most riveting portions of the whole New
Testament, Luke Chapter 4, he goes to Nazareth, where he grew up, goes
back to his synagogue where he attended every Sabbath, he's with his
family, his relatives, his friends that he grew up with. He preaches one
sermon there, and they try to throw him off a cliff. It wasn't that they
didn't want the kingdom of God or salvation or forgiveness or heaven or
whatever. They couldn't accept the diagnosis that their religion was not
true, that it was not of the heart. And that was the issue that finally
drove them to the cross.
KING: I want to see how a Jew reacts to that.
MANNING: That was a reaction especially significant to me, that what
upset them was that Jesus was open to finding God's presence even among
people who were not Jews. And that really shocked them.
CHOPRA: You know, it is great that they did kill him; otherwise we
wouldn't have Christianity today. Judas is as important to the plot as
Christ is.
KING: Shouldn't Judas be praised?
MACARTHUR: Well, let's go back and say, in the Book of Acts, when Peter
preached on Pentecost, he said "whom you killed," to the people, "by the
determined council and foreknowledge of God." If you asked who
ultimately killed Jesus, God killed Jesus, because he had to put him on
the cross for our sins. But that doesn't relieve the people who were
involved of culpability.
KING: If he makes the plan, how do the Jews have control of their acts?
CHOPRA: The story of any good plot, implicit allies, explicit enemies.
You know, you have to have a Judas in order to have a Christ.
MACARTHUR: There are secondary causes, and that's human. The primary
cause is God.
KING: How does a Jew react to that? You killed him.
PRAGER: No. That's exactly it. I know you're not blaming me. He's not blaming me. He's blaming
me. He doesn't like my politics. OK.
KING: I like you.
PRAGER: I know you do. And I appreciate it. It's mutual. Listen, this is
key. I have no issue. No Jew will have an issue with
saying Jewish leaders of the time, along with the Romans, conspired to
kill him, even though the Jews couldn't do it alone, they didn't have
the death penalty or crucifixion. Plus the fact that tens of thousands
of Jews were also crucified, other Jews, which is also necessary to
point out.
The problem has only been if Christians said Jews are to blame forever,
all Jews all the time. That's, and unfortunately, in Europe, not in
America, and I tell the Jews make a huge distinction between the Jewish
experience with American Christians and European Christians. There, Jews
were frequently blamed for something that they had no hand in, and that
is evil. But to say that -- but I have no problem in saying that there
were probably Jewish leaders, who, according to the story, who conspired
with the Romans.
KING: It begins the era of anti-Semitism.
PRAGER: Yes, it does. Because the reader -- it's up to the reader. And
this is what I have learned, no matter how divine you find the text, it
is still in our hands what we do with the text. This is the ultimate
freedom God has given us.
KING: Your interpretation.
PRAGER: Two people can read the same text and one can say, that God
ultimately killed him and we are of the branch of Judaism, as
evangelical Christians and many Catholics will say today, and others
will say damn the Jews. Reading the same text.
KING: Jon Meacham, I'll come to you in a second. I got to take a break.
You wanted to say something, John MacArthur?
MACARTHUR: It's much deeper than that. No true Christian transformed on
the inside by faith in Jesus Christ is going to be an anti-Semite. What
you have is people who call themselves Christians, but who have not been
transformed by the power of Christ. They're the ones that would be
anti-Semitic.
KING: In other words, if you're a racist, you can't be a Christian.
MACARTHUR: No, if you're a Christian, you will be converted from your
racism.
KING: You can't be a racist if you're a Christian.
MACARTHUR: That's right. So true Christians...
KING: So when churches were segregated on Sunday morning, they were
non-Christians.
MACARTHUR: You know, I have a real trouble believing -- we're talking
about a different issue now. We're talking about a social issue, not a
religious.
KING: But they were Christian.
MACARTHUR: I think Christians act like Christians. I think Christians
are transformed people. And lots of people take the label, but don't
know Christ.
KING: Wasn't it Mark Twain who said, if Christ came back, the one thing
he wouldn't be is a Christian.
MACARTHUR: That's another overstatement by Mark Twain.
KING: Deepak Chopra, what do you mean by Jesus as a state of
consciousness?
CHOPRA: That Jesus said love your enemies. That Jesus said bless those
who curse you. That Jesus said, do good to those who hurt you. That
Jesus said, who said, pray for those who spitefully use you and
persecute you. I want to know what is that state of consciousness, where
you can actually feel that, because if you did, the world would be
different.
KING: If he was that, wouldn't he be labeled a peacenik in today's
world, wouldn't he be scoffed at?
CHOPRA: No, I think...
MANNING: Very much so. I think...
KING: Turn the other cheek?
MANNING: Certainly he was against the Romans. There was a whole movement
of Zealots against that. And he moved against that. But the problem,
Deepak, that I have with what you say is, this general consciousness, is
not what I believe in. I believe in the person of Jesus Christ.
CHOPRA: I know what you believe in. I respect your beliefs, sir, but it's not my belief. ... a state of consciousness, called Christ consciousness, which
you can aspire to. And if you do, you will heal yourself and you will
heal the world, because that is what Christ is all about. The Sermon on
the Mount is the most important inspiration for Mahatma Gandhi, who
changed the world.
PRAGER: I will try and experiment right here on this show here about
what I was saying about text, even when one believes that God is behind
it. Jon Meacham, are you pro or anti-capital punishment?
MEACHAM: I'd rather not say, given my journalistic role.
PRAGER: All right. John MacArthur.
MACARTHUR: Yeah, I'm pro capital punishment. I think it's very clear in
the Bible.
PRAGER: OK. Father Manning.
MANNING: Strongly against capital punishment.
PRAGER: OK. You both believe it's a divinely inspired text, divinely
revealed text, and have opposite views on a fundamental moral question.
MACARTHUR: Wait a minute. It's in the Bible...
PRAGER: By the way, I share John MacArthur's view, by the way. It's
Genesis, it's Exodus, it's Leviticus, it's Numbers and Deuteronomy. It's
the only law in all five books of the Torah.
MACARTHUR: Whoever shed's man blood by man shall his blood be shed.
That's the law of God.
MANNING: ... forgiving the person who was supposed to be...
MACARTHUR: Peter took out a sword in the garden when they came to arrest
Jesus, he took a swing at a guy's ear, at his head, and Jesus gave him
back his ear, because Peter missed his head and got his ear.
MANNING: Put it away.
MACARTHUR: Wait a minute. Jesus said put your sword away, and he said
this, because if you live by the sword, you will die by the sword. And
Jesus upheld capital punishment. That is clear cut.
MANNING: No, not at all.
MACARTHUR: That's a clear cut statement. Now, you can say I don't
believe what Jesus says.
KING: The rest of the world doesn't agree with him.
MACARTHUR: Larry, it comes back to whether you believe the Bible is
true.
MANNING: I believe in forgiveness, too, and rehabilitation.
KING: Jon Meacham, go ahead.
MEACHAM: You know, what's interesting about this conversation in the
last few minutes, is it shows that faith and reason are not at war, but
are actually the two engines on which we're driving down the road, I
hope, the journey to try to work out who we are and to reach a
completeness, which for Christians will be in the bosom of God, and for
Jews it will be one thing, for Muslims another, for Hindus another, for
Buddhists another. But I think the recognition, particularly in the
United States, which I think is the reason we can talk about religion
publicly so comfortably, is that the recognition that we all in fact are
on what St. Augustine saw, as a journey, that we are on our way to a
larger truth. None of us, I believe, have a monopoly on the truth.
And the more we can debate, the more we can debate in good faith, and
understand that maybe there's not just one answer, there is not just one
inerrant answer, I think the better off we are going to be.
KING: But John MacArthur thinks there is one answer.
MACARTHUR: Well, what I want to say, is, Jon, I appreciate what you're
saying, but you're drawing a dichotomy between faith and reason that is
frightening to me. My faith is based on what is reasonable. I believe in
what actually happened, what is true. I don't have an airy-fairy faith
in some concoction of my own mind. I'm not separating my faith from
reason. I believe in what's reasonable and historical and actual and
factual.
KING: So it's reasonable -- virgin birth is reasonable to you?
MACARTHUR: Well, of course it is, because it's reasonable if God came
into the world, he'd come differently than any other person who is mortal.
MEACHAM: I think one great thing, I think one great thing that could come
out of the red state versus blue state -- and I completely respect what
you're saying. I would hope you would respect what I'm saying, in the
sense that I think smart people can be faithful, and faithful people can
be smart. And I fear that in the public arena in the past couple of
years in the United States, that statement would come under attack.
MACARTHUR: Jon, it's not about being smart, it's about basing your faith
on fact, reality, biblical revelation.
MEACHAM: You and I disagree about that, but in good faith, I think.
CHOPRA: I can see it's very obvious why religion has become divisive,
quarrelsome. We only argue about things that are not even important. I
think we have to make a distinction...
PRAGER: What, capital punishment isn't important?
CHOPRA: ... between spirituality and religion. Spirituality is a domain
of awareness, where irrespective of what religion I come from, we have
love, compassion, understanding, inspiration, healing and nurturing and
affection and tenderness and creativity. Without all this argument about
facts which nobody can corroborate.
KING: On this Christmas Eve, a subject that has to be touched, are we
over commercializing this holiday, Father?
MANNING: Very much so, and I think...
KING: It never stops, it gets worse. Right?
MANNING: We have got to make sure that we're continually stopping and
saying gifts are really a giving of myself rather than an obligation,
that I've got to get this now. It's a beautiful Christian thing, as
Christ gives himself to us in the world, we imitate that and we give
ourselves and love to those around us, by using gifts.
KING: John MacArthur, deck the halls with Power Rangers?
MACARTHUR: It's ludicrous, Larry, I mean, it's absolutely ludicrous the
way Christmas is mangled. I remember reading a story in a Boston paper
one time about a person who had a Christmas party, they had a little
baby, put the baby on the bed and then smothered it in the coats of the
people who came to the party. And I thought, you know, this is what has
happened to Jesus with Christmas. Somehow he's been smothered. And now
we're doing everything we can to take the terminology out.
CHOPRA: I don't think Christians are commercializing Jesus. It's
Anglo-American economic ethics that commercialize Jesus.
KING: Capitalism.
CHOPRA: Capitalism. We've done the same thing with the war industry.
PRAGER: I think it's beautiful that people get gifts. I think it's
better that they get gifts for Christmas than they do for Halloween. So
I actually think it's a very positive thing.
KING: Unless they go broke on a MasterCard.
PRAGER: Yes, well, that's true, for any time. But beyond that, I think
it's a very lovely thing. I'll tell you what bothers me. It bothers me
that people can't say merry Christmas and have to say happy holiday.
KING: What's wrong with happy holiday?
PRAGER: Because it doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean a thing.
KING: What does merry Christmas mean to a Jew?
PRAGER: It means that the bulk of our society celebrates merry
Christmas.
KING: Well, why don't you want John to say happy Hanukkah all day?
PRAGER: But the vast majority of Americans deserve a merry Christmas.
KING: OK. Thank you.
KING: Jon Meacham, what do you think about the commercialization?
MEACHAM: Oh, I think it will be ever thus. I think that the more we can
have conversations like this, I have priest friends who wonder where all
these people are who are in church tonight, why they don't show up again
until Easter? Do they always leave town for those four or five months?
But I think that the crucial thing to my mind and I'm sure to all of us,
is to follow the great commandment, which is to love one another as we
love ourselves, which first appears in Leviticus, and then Jesus in many
ways makes it a central message of the gospels. And you come out of a
night like this reminded of that, this is best we can do.
KING: Do you know anyone who loves the others as thyself? Do you know
anyone?
MANNING: Yes, I know some people. A mother that cares for their deformed
child and just gives herself totally.
KING: The neighbor cares for the neighbor as much as the child?
CHOPRA: Mother Teresa did.
MACARTHUR: I don't think any of us would affirm human perfection. By the
way, the first and greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God
with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. And nobody does that
all the time, and that's why we need a savior and a messiah to deliver
us...
KING: Doesn't it annoy the believers that he hasn't come back?
MACARTHUR: Well, it doesn't annoy me. I can trust him with a timetable.
MANNING: I'm longing for it to happen.
KING: Don't you long for him? Don't you want to see the messiah? Dennis,
don't you want him?
PRAGER: Of course I want him, if it will end all the suffering and...
KING: Wouldn't that be great?
PRAGER: Yes, but God has a timetable, that's correct.
KING: You don't question it?
PRAGER: No, I don't, actually.
MACARTHUR: Do you want to know why he hasn't come back? It's not because
he's slow in his promise, Peter says, it's because he's long suffering,
waiting for sinners to repent.
CHOPRA: I don't think, Larry, it's a person... I don't think it's a person that will come back, but it may be a
collective attitude of healing and compassion that will come back. And
love.
KING: What's been the reaction to the article, Jon?
MEACHAM: Quite positive, actually. Interestingly, when I wrote about
"The Passion" earlier this year and the Gibson controversy, it was a
much more hostile, in some ways, reaction. This has not been. People, I
think, appreciate that the nativity stories were written with particular
messages in mind. That Jesus -- named him Jesus because he just saved
the people from their sins, to fulfill various prophesies. And I think
people also, and one of the reasons we're dedicated to covering religion
and spirituality as much as we can, is it's so important to so many
people's lives. And I think they do want to be challenged and they do
want to be poked and prodded, to think about their faith, to think about
the role of faith in what we do every day.
You know, there's a wonderful story about Christmas Day, 1941. Three
weeks after Pearl Harbor, Winston Churchill is visiting Franklin
Roosevelt for the first time during the war, and they go to church on
Christmas Day. And Churchill has never heard the hymn "O Little Town of
Bethlehem." And he was reminded, as the world was falling apart, how
wonderful it was, and how it stirred the heart, that the hopes and fears
of all the years were met in one place. And that was this night. And I
think in this time of war, when so many people, so many young Americans
are out as the sentries of freedom for all of us, we should say a prayer
for them as well.
KING: Well said, a perfect capper for the evening.
Thank you so much. Deepak Chopra, John MacArthur, Father Michael
Manning, Dennis Prager, Jon Meacham, and to please Mr. Prager and
others, merry Christmas, and happy new year, and happy holiday.
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Added to Bible Bulletin Board's "MacArthur's Collection" by:
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