According to atheists and historians, Jesus, if he was a real person, lived and died in first century Palestine. Today, all we have left - if indeed we have anything at all - are his teachings, or second-hand accounts of his teachings, as well as the various scriptural writings associated with those teachings.

But according to Christians, after Jesus' death, he rose again to eternal life. He is not "gone from the world" - he is present, active and communicating right now to anyone who will listen.

What I don't understand is how you square the idea that the first century teachings are the perfect, complete and unchanging Word of God with the idea that Jesus is, right now, communicating in the world.

If the Bible is complete and perfect, then the only role of the living Christ is to repeat it. But surely there are topics on which he has something to say, which are not captured in the words of the Bible. For example, suppose Jesus thinks it's immoral to isolate yourself within a crowd by turning up the volume on your iPod, because your brothers and sisters in humanity are more important than Nickelback. Since he is risen and living, he can presumably communicate this preference to believers.

But the Biblical-literalist position is that this new information - this direct communication from Jesus Christ himself - is necessarily epistemologically inferior to the words found in the Bible.

Is this because Christians know that other Christians frequently lie about what Jesus did or didn't tell them, so only the Bible is reliable? If so, why would God ensure the fidelity of translations of the Bible, while not ensuring the fidelity of the current teachings of Jesus?

It seems to me that the Biblical-literalist position is hopelessly indefensible. However, not only fundamentalist Christians but most atheists seem to be firmly committed to this version of Christianity. Anyone care to explain why?