Is the Nicene Creed Biblical?

I was recently dialoging with a liberal Christian who wanted to justify his theological autonomy by pointing out that even conservatives cannot seem to agree with each other. My response was to claim that before one can enter the debate over the fringes and essentials of orthodoxy with Christians of good will, that one must first attend to what they hold in common. I suggested the Nicene Creed as a basic framework of beliefs that was early, broadly affirmed, and is still respected by the most diverse denominations of Christianity. We must start somewhere when attempting to define Christianity. If you cannot put any stakes in the ground, then Christianity is essentially anything you want it to be, which is to say, it is nothing in particular.

As expected, this fellow took exception with the creed and posted his reaction to it on his own blog. I thought it might be worth copying my subsequent response here. The following includes only slight edits of my original reply.

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The first observation I'd make is that this creed seems completely foreign to you. Perhaps it is not, but it should not be alien to any Christian and is actually recited quite often in the liturgies of many denominations, along with the Apostles' Creed and others. Whether one agrees with its content or not, it is a milestone in the theological and liturgical self-understanding of the church. Respect for this creedal statement is still found in the Orthodox Church (Eastern, Russian, American) and the Roman Catholic Church; and even the Magisterial Reformers (Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, etc.) did not take real exception with this creed (or many other things which all share in common).

The council that formulated this creed was the result of a challenge from Arius and his followers, who took Jesus to be a separately created being, like the angels. The Jehovah's Witnesses could be said to be the modern bearers of the Arian position, though not by unbroken succession. This council was the first world church council (other than, perhaps, the Jerusalem council), being attended by the leaders from all the major regions around the empire. To say that it was not representative of mainstream Christianity is to say that something like Gnosticism is the true expression of Christianity. And contrary to what Dan Brown says in The Da Vinci Code, the vote on the divinity of Christ was not "close," nor was it "first proposed" here. All but two of the more than three hundred attendees voted that the Trinitarian view best captured what Scripture and tradition had revealed about the nature of God.

The center of the second line bothers me: "God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God". That phrase sounds very formal, almost poetic or like a ritual statement. The problem is that I can't find anything even remotely like it in the Bible. Is this a translation error? Or are these simply non-Biblical statements that have crept into the creed?

The language of the creed is designed to express the consensus understanding while also serving as a refutation of the Arian view. So, it is intent to make clear that Jesus is of the same essence/substance as the Father (and Spirit) while also preserving the biblical truth that Jesus proceeds (is eternally begotten) from the Father in some way.

Certainly these words are not lifted from Scripture, but neither are words like monotheism, syncretism, soteriology, and nihilism; yet certain content within Scripture can be rightly described by way of such words. The question is not whether this text is found directly in Scripture; the question is whether or not it follows from the teachings of Jesus and the apostles. And the case has well been made that Jesus is described as deity in Scripture: He is ascribed all the attributes of the Father, He exercised all of the Father's prerogatives, and He shares titles which the Father reserved for Himself.

Here and here are some quick Scriptural references for verses making this case for the full deity of Christ, and for a good single verse I would suggest John 1:1: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

There are a bunch more statements that I can't really quibble with on Biblical grounds, until we get to "one holy catholic and apostolic Church". Is there actually any place in the New Testament which refers to a "catholic" Church?

I am not Roman "Catholic," so you know I would resist their tendency to make this word play to their favor. The Roman "Catholic" Church, as it came to be known, did not even exist at the time of this council. The word "catholic," as we now denote with a small "c", is best interpreted as "general," "universal," or "pertaining to the whole." In the creed it is a recognition that the church was and will be a dispersed and diverse body bound together by a common theology (some of which is captured in this creed). It is a rejection of sectarian, if not cultic, thinking, which was a problem then as it is today.

If the normal designation in the New Testament for the "whole Church" was "holos ekklēsia" why did the writers of the creed choose to used "catholic" instead?

In effect, they did just that. Catholic is from the two root words "kata," meaning pertaining to, or about, and the word "holos," meaning the whole. It is merely done for grammatical purposes I suppose, otherwise it would say, "One Holy whole and apostolic Church."

One final thing worth mentioning is that although the creed refers to "the Scriptures" and to the Holy Spirit speaking via the prophets, at no place does it specify that the canon of Scriptures is complete and infallible. Isn't that a little odd considering that Paul Pruett was trying to argue that this creed should be the litmus test for whether the squishy liberals or the ramrod conservatives were right?

This creed does not mention many things. You cannot take from it that if it does not mention it then they did not believe it. It was primarily designed to address some of the major concerns relating to the nature of God and what He has done for us. Yet, it was from somewhere that they grounded the beliefs contained in this creed: Scripture. And to be so dogmatic as to produce this creed (and its related anathemas) one would expect that this Source would be held in high esteem. It may or may not be true that words like "infallible" are recent inventions, but it should be noted that the early church did not suffer from the same kind of modern skepticism and redaction of the Scriptures which necessitates the naming and declaration of such a doctrine.

When the authors of this creed mention Scripture, they mean something in particular. It is true that the canon was formally declared after the Council of Nicea, but it is not as though the idea of an authoritative list of books was foreign to them at this time. Indeed, as far back as we have approvingly quoted books from the Church Father's pens and explicit lists of inspired writings we can see the outline of the canon as it would come to be known.

The only real contenders for a modified canon were the Gnostics (who are in a whole other camp); yet even they, other than Marcion, agreed to most of the standard books; they simply wanted to add their own unique works into the mix and considered the mainstream canon to be the revelation for the common man, or at least the literal understanding of it to be.

As far as whether the cannon was "complete," the very methodology behind identifying a N.T. book as Scripture precludes such a thing as new books, since inspiration and authority only applied to Jesus and His apostles. A book (beyond the O.T.) was only considered for canon if it had a solid pedigree of apostolic authority. So, for example, a book like Mark could only be justified as Scripture insofar as it could be traced to the oversight of Peter and/or Paul and reliable tradition proved that it had early authorship.

If anything, more books were ultimately included into the canon than what some had argued for. And since this chapter of God's divine plan appears to be settled (as Scripture itself claims), then no further special revelation is expected until Christ comes to claim His church. God's plan has come to fruition in Christ; we are in the Church Age spreading the Good News, a bride awaiting its bridegroom. Any revelation forthcoming can only affirm what has been accomplished or inaugurate the new age to come.

The text of the creed does mention sins, but only in the context of "remission of sins". It does mention judgment, but only in the context of the Last Judgment.

Remission of sin and final judgment certainly implies that there is such a thing as sin to remit or judge. Of course, what qualifies as sin and what we fellow sinners ought to do about the sin in the world is another matter, but Scripture is most emphatic that we should not ignore it or lull the world into a false sense of security regarding it.

It doesn't mention "love" at all. Perhaps the composers of the creed weren't familiar with John 3:16.

Since even most reasonable atheists agree that we should be loving, and that if there is a God that he/she/it would surely be loving, then this idea is not really a controversial doctrine on which the framers thought to make a stand. (If you want a creed with more "love" mentioned in it, here is a more recent one that most of the church would probably give the nod.)

Of course, the word "love" must be defined. Saying that we must love one another and that God loves the world needs an explanation. When John says that "God so loved the world" he spends many chapters explaining just how it is that God expressed that love. The Nicene Creed captures some of that explanation in saying the following:

"Who, for us men for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father."

God does not simply have warm feelings for humanity and look upon our apathy toward Him and His will with a blind eye. He loved us enough to come down among us and make a road home for His fallen creatures. May God grant that we travel it and lead others to do the same!

False Dichotomies of the Emerging Church

I am published!

I was recently notified that my comment on a blog post by Myron B. Penner titled "Postmodern Apologetics" had made its way into a book being compiled from the various materials on that same website. The site's name, which will probably be the book title as well, is "A New Kind of Conversation." It is (or was) devoted to topics of concern to the Emerging Church Movement.

The short description of that movement might be "postmodernity meets Christianity." In my mind the movement roughly falls into two broad camps. One includes those who have refashioned Christianity to suit the tastes of the postmodern culture. The other is those who are attempting to contextualize the Gospel for a postmodern people. Perhaps it is simply the latest flavor of liberal versus conservative Christianity, though the liberalism in the Emerging Church is cleverly veiled behind a dense linguistic fog that is often difficult to penetrate. And I believe they prefer it that way, as to come right out and plainly state one's beliefs and disbeliefs would express the kind of dogma that they are very keen to reject.

The article to which I responded invoked my criticism in that it seemed to advocate throwing out the baby with the bathwater. In this case, the abuses of secular modernism suggested that we should rethink our ideas about propositional and objective truth claims. In its place would come telling our "story" and living it out among the unchurched. I found this and other ideas in the essay to be false dichotomies, and I said as much.

Here, then, is my response in full:

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False Dichotomies

While this article offers some valid critiques of modernity, I think it does not affirm what is, in fact, biblical underlying certain ideas that have been abused by secular modernists. Many authors have offered similar critiques of modernity and classical apologetics without seeing the need or prudence of questioning its very foundations. I think that Penner's conclusions rest on a number of false dichotomies.

1) Modernity vs. postmodernity

Penner seems to be suggesting that thinking objectively and rationally means thinking without bias and presuppositions. I believe there is some equivocation on the word "objective" here. There is a difference between thinking that there is objective truth and thinking that you know it objectively (i.e., without bias or error). Postmoderns are right to question presuppositions and human fallibility, but we lose all tools of discourse if we go beyond this to conclude that no one, then, has any better-reasoned belief than another or that truth itself is a vapor. It does seem warranted to conclude that we ought to be humble regarding our fallibility, more introspective toward in our suppositions, and more rigorous in our application of reason. Penner says he "greatly values the insights of analytic philosophy and admires its rigor." But if these things get us nowhere, then what is to value; and if they do have merit, then let's use them to their fullest advantage.

2) Authority of revelation vs. reason

The problem with secular modernity was that they did not accept revelation at all. But Christian "modernists" accept it as objective truth and apply it as the foundation, frame, and fence for rational discourse. St. Paul rightly warns against vain philosophy according to human tradition, but when philosophy is grounded in those truths revealed by the Author of reason, then we are privileged to taste the "mind of Christ." And if we reject reason in relation to biblical revelation, then the very words of God become nothing but unprocessed photons striking the retina.

3) Science vs. Christianity

There seems to be a driving need to segregate the world of empirical science from the world of "faith." I think this is a response to the imagined hostility of the one to the other. However, we are now living in an age where we have the best scientific reasons ever to believe in a loving and intimate creator. The problem is not that there is no good reason to believe that science is compatible with the God of the Bible; the problem is that science has been secularized and its very definition has been changed to exclude the supernatural from consideration. Secular scientists are now more concerned with getting a certain kind of answer than with getting the right answer. The field of science has a deeply Christian legacy, and there has been a recent resurgence in Christian scholarship. There is no sense in abandoning a healthy ship.

4) Kerygmatic vs. rational and objective approaches (or, Cognitive claims vs. subjective "actuality")

But is the "kerygma" which we should share grounded in truth? When we tell our "story" is it an objectively true story, and if not, why is there any reason or passion for sharing it? If it is not based on objective truth, then we are simply peddling an interesting story and we are ascribing a mystical value to it that has no more weight than a Dr. Phil book. Our story can be both true in the objective sense, and efficacious in a subjective sense. Indeed, it has "actuality" because of the power in the truth that it contains. And when we tell that story, we are offering a series of cognitive claims. Even if a story were metaphor (like the parables), the very meaning of those metaphors is a matter of rational proposition.

5) Arguments and reason vs. love and empathy

To say that our beliefs are objectively true and advocating for them is not to say that you cannot give personal expression to these truths. In fact, those truths are the very things that impel us to love our neighbors (and enemies) and to meet them at the point of their need. How would we know how we ought to love them if not for the very things which apologists seek to defend, since one man's love (according to his own fancies) is another man's coddling?

It is true that you may win an argument but lose a soul, but every good apologist should know this. And for those who don't, the answer is not to surrender our claims to truth and the reasons for them; the answer is to refine our tactics, character, and wisdom. As Peter says, we should be ready to give a defense, but we should do this with gentleness and respect. And we should know when a good intellectual response is called for and when an outstretched hand and a willing ear are in order.

Cafeteria Christianity

I was recently asked to review a commentary titled, "Thus Saith the Lord. No Exceptions." It was written by Leonard Pitts Jr., Pulitzer Prize winning syndicated columnist for the Miami Herald. He is also a member of the United Church of Christ, a self-consciously liberal denomination, and that fact strongly colors this particular commentary. What follows is the text of Pitts' commentary in full accompanied by my own responses.

First Baptist Church of Watertown, N.Y., fired Mary Lambert for being a woman. They say the Bible told them to do it.

Nothing against women, says the Rev. Timothy LaBouf. The church is just trying to obey 1 Timothy 2:11-14, which says in part, “A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.”

So, after 54 years as a Sunday school teacher at First Baptist, Lambert was given the heave-ho a couple of weeks ago. She and others have said the firing probably had as much to do with church politics as with scriptural injunctions, but let’s stick with the stated reason as given in her letter of dismissal: the Bible forbids women taking positions of authority. There is, for the record, a similar injunction in 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, which warns that it is “disgraceful” for a woman to speak in the church.

So Pitts readily admits that there is biblical justification. Unless he wants to argue that a private, voluntary organization should not have the right to set its own standards, then the most he can rightly say against this church is that it was hypocritical in letting Mary Lambert begin teaching in the first place. I could go in to the "politics" of the situation, or the theological issues, but these do not beg a response here; Pitts has chosen to entirely bypass these points and seems willing to lean on the unstated assumption that any limitation on the role of women in the church is just "disgraceful."

So the church is scripturally right. It’s just not right right.

Pitts seems to have his theology all nailed down here. I wonder what canon he's using to derive his doctrines about spiritual leadership and church politics. It is certainly not the Bible; he admits right here (rightly or wrongly) what it has to say and that he rejects that. For this reason, any further appeal he makes to the Scriptures must be suspect.

So what grounds does he have for being dogmatic about how Christians ought to believe and practice? If it is merely his own spiritual feelings, then I will have to wonder what he does with the feelings of the rest of the spiritual people of the world, many of whom have very different ideas from his own. Perhaps Pitts might be so humble as to consider that he has not felt his theology correctly.

The Lambert case intrigues me because it illustrates a point I’ve made on many occasions when people bring out Bibles to explain why gay folk deserve no civil rights. Maybe now, without the reflexive emotionalism that gay brings to cloud their view, a few more people will see the obvious: Bible literalism is impractical and impossible. Or maybe they won’t see.

Gay's deserve no civil rights? I've never heard a case made that they shouldn't be able to vote, hold office, own property, have legal protections, etc. I think what Pitts is really referring to is the "right" to marriage. But they have the same right there that everyone else has: The right to marry one person of the opposite sex. The difference is that they don't want to exercise that right; they want a new right: The right to marry someone of the same sex. But heterosexuals are denied that right as well. Just because someone has a desire for a thing does not mean they ought to have that thing. But that is another issue, which, by the way, we do not even need to appeal to the Bible to speak against.

As far as Bible "literalism" being impractical, I would beg to differ. It is only when you have persons in your community that do not agree with your theology that problems arise. This happens to be the state we are in here in America, as in the world at large (we are not ancient Israel, having made a covenant with God). For this reason, the theocracy that Pitts is so fearful of is not a "practical" reality, and most American Christians are satisfied to stick with the political vision of our founding fathers. But for some, even that is too much.

Allow me to share by way of example an e-mail I received last week from a gentleman named Al who took exception to a column I wrote condemning capital punishment. Said Al, “When one criticizes the death penalty one criticizes God’s judgment in the matter, as scripture ordains death for numerous crimes. It is not wise to criticize God.”

I shot back a note pointing out that among the crimes for which scripture ordains death are cursing your parents (Leviticus 20:9) or committing adultery (Leviticus 20:10). Did Al really believe those misdeeds should be treated as capital offenses?

“Only if one wishes to accomplish God’s will in the matter,” Al said.

I don’t mind telling you, people like him scare me.

Methinks Al's chief mistake was alluding to the Bible in answer to Pitts in the first place, as though it were some authoritative playbook in shaping his opinions. If Pitts actually believed the testimony of those who delivered the religion he presumes to correct, then he would remember that Jesus is scheduled for a return visit; and when He does, it will be the end of many things, including smart-mouthing and unfaithfulness.

What we humans should do about sin in this post-messianic era is another question, but if Scripture is to be believed, even broadly, then we at least know what God thinks about it; and the Levitical laws are but a foreshadowing of the fate of those who think of sin as nothing more than a little harmless shenanigans.

As it happens, one of America’s greatest churchmen recently weighed in on the question of Bible literalism. In a twilight-of-life interview with Newsweek, Billy Graham spoke of the way age and perspective led him to reject the absolutism of the left and right and to make his peace with the notion of God as a loving mystery. People of faith, he said, can “absolutely” disagree about the details of theology. “I’m not a literalist in the sense that every single jot and tittle (of the Bible) is from the Lord,” he said. “This is a little difference in my thinking through the years.”

It is a difference people like Al would do well to emulate.

It is what Graham has preached and lived that makes him credible to those whom Pitts would seek to correct, and I suspect that some of those doctrines that he has not begun to rethink in his twilight years would still give Pitts cause for heartburn. However, I'm sure that it is only as far as Graham's comments support Pitts' selective theology that he is much interested in him.

Or has no one else noticed how literally some Christians interpret those scriptures that give them license to condemn, yet how elastic and liberal their readings are when dealing with scriptures that convict their personal behaviors. Meaning that it’s always a little more difficult to catch people being literal about turn the other cheek, do not store up treasures on earth, do not turn away the borrower, love your enemy. Yet, you can’t go to the store without tripping over someone who wants you to know the Bible calls homosexuality an abomination.

Pitts is correct that it is easier to see and judge other people's sins than your own, but this does not mean that they are not, in fact, sins; and it may be but a demonstration of the fact that it is easier to be objective about others than about yourself. He's also right that we see in Scripture only what we prefer to see and filter out the rest. But I'm not sure how he imagines he has escaped the same mistake, especially since he's already admitted that Scripture is not to be taken too seriously. The very methodology of liberalism is to pick and choose from the Scriptures, whereas his only complaint against the conservatives can properly be that they have not taken it all into their view.

When someone like Pitts makes their decision on which biblical ideas they will keep and which to discard, what standard do you suppose they will use? If one were disposed toward promiscuity or homosexuality, do you think they would be more inclined to accept the verses that speak against these things, or the ones that speak of God's love and mercy? It is a far easier thing to believe that God holds no grudge against your behavior. But if we remove such a bias, yet retain the liberal, cafeteria approach to Scripture, the truth could turn out to be something far different than Pitts would be comfortable with.

Why is it that liberal Christians find the portions of Scripture that speak of love and charity to be the ones that have survived the misinterpretations and corruptions of the ages? Given that Scripture is equally filled with talk of God's righteousness and justice, it seems equally warranted, according to the liberal approach, to say that the verses regarding God's mercy and forgiveness are the ones that we have taken too literally! That is a fearsome idea, but what grounds does Pitts have for thinking it is the wrong one?

People obsess on the fine print, yet miss the big picture, the overarching themes of sacrifice, redemption, love.

Unfortunately, some seem to miss even the overarching themes! Words like "sacrifice" and "redemption" may be part of that big picture, but you can't just hang them out there without definition. Just what or who is this sacrifice, and what are we being redeemed from and to? It does not take too many such questions before we find ourselves looking at the "fine print" for clarification, and it doesn't take a magnifying glass to find things like sin and Christ's atonement all over the text.

In their selectivity, they are reminiscent of the Islamic fanatics who bomb and behead, citing some passage of the Quran as justification, yet conveniently ignoring a dozen other passages commanding mercy and love.

Ah, he wants to be provocative, eh? All right, how would it be if I pointed out that his kind of theological subjectivism has led to (or sustains) almost every one of the cults? "God is still speaking" to them too, ya know. Unfortunately, it's not always the same things that the UCC is hearing.

To address his point, though, Pitts rightly implies that there are passages in the Qur'an that advocate aggression against unbelievers, but he wrongly implies that the Bible is similar in kind and that a wise reader should then heed only the more genteel passages.

If the Qur'an teaches both violence and inclusiveness toward other religions, then we can only pray that Muslims practice Pitts' brand of liberalism and hear only the non-violent passages. Fortunately, Christians are not in this same dilemma. There are no applicable biblical mandates that teach aggression toward unbelievers. And the contrast could not be more stark between the spread of Islam by the sword from its outset and the spread of Christianity by the blood of the Apostolic Fathers, who were very much biblical literalists.

Those Old Testament passages that might be accused of condoning violence (e.g., the taking of the Promised Land and the penalties in the Mosaic Laws) nowhere give license beyond the scope and borders of pre-messianic Israel. Even if we were inclined to do so, and even if anyone has ever done so, there is nothing in Scripture, at least, that would support going after peaceful unbelievers with bombs and swords.

People are much less apt to be selective in the direction of mercy and love.

I disagree. Just like Pitts, the vast majority of those who select anything at all from Scripture (even atheists) select only those things that speak of "mercy and love." The biblical "literalists" include these things as well, but the difference is in the understanding of what these things mean and how they are exercised. The difference is on par with a parent who "loves" a child by giving and allowing everything versus a parent who offers boundaries and discipline with the goal of raising a healthy and mature adult.

I’ll close by observing that Exodus 35:2 requires death for those who work on the Sabbath. Were I a member of First Baptist, I might wonder where the church leaders stand on that one.

Of course, I’d be scared to ask.

Since it turns out that the historical church has worshipped on Sundays, in honor of the resurrection, and not on the Sabbath (Saturday), then Pitts should know that something new is in play. But since Pitts most likely rejects a literal resurrection, then he is probably not inclined to see Jesus as the fulfillment of the law (as He claimed to be) in any meaningful way.

The lens of the Messiah is the key to reconciling the whole of Scripture. I think that Pitts would prefer to see it as one big incoherent jumble containing interesting mythology and a few good moral lessons. The curious thing is that Pitts' UCC believes that God is in there somewhere. Were I a member of that denomination, I might wonder what kind of God it is that is so incompetent or impotent that He can't get a decent revelation to His creation. And if this truly is the kind of God we're talking about, then I wouldn't be scared to ask such presumptuous questions, since apparently He's all love and mercy without law and judgment anyway.

Role Your Own Jesus

Jesus was a really great guy. He said a lot of things with which it's hard to take exception, and He's got a lot of clout in spiritual circles. Everyone wants Jesus playing for their team; every religion seems to find some niche for Him in its theology. For Islam, He is a great prophet. For Buddhists, he is a Bodhisattva. For Hindus, He is a great swami or avatar. For the cults, He is "a god" or a special creation of God. And for liberal Christians, He is a great spiritual teacher and moral example.

If you can employ a biblical quote from Jesus to make your point in a religious debate, then you can imagine you've scored big points — especially against someone who holds to a more traditional view of Christianity. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work the other way around; a classical Christian can't get much leverage for their view by appeal to Scripture.

In a dialog with liberals and non-Christians you will often hear them say things like, "Jesus just wanted us all to love and accept each other" or, "I think Jesus was just an enlightened human, like Buddha." And then they will appeal to some snippet of the Bible in support of their case. But how is it that they know anything about Jesus from which to form such opinions?

Our only source of any detailed knowledge about Jesus is in the Scriptures. However, the very thing that unites liberals and those of alternative religions against historical Christianity is the rejection of the reliability of these Scriptures. In order to reject doctrines such as the bodily resurrection, the deity of Jesus, and the final judgment, they must first have convinced themselves that it is all just an allegory or that myth and error have invaded the texts. Unfortunately, this leaves them with a problem.

If you've rejected the reliability and historicity of the biblical documents, then how do you know which parts are corrupted and which parts hold the truth? What good are they to your portrait of Jesus if you can't count on them as a credible witness? But the antagonists of orthodoxy do quote certain texts to support their theology, as though such passages had escaped corruption and were to be taken literally. However, if you present clarifying or "competing" verses to them they will brush them aside as so much litter.

So, have these people with the "real" portrait of Jesus found the magic key for sorting the good verses from the bad? In a sense, yes: The "key" turns out to be their own personal opinions on the matter. They may have picked up their notions about Jesus from some imaginative books or religious leaders, but in the end it is their own thoughts and winnowing of these ideas which drives them. When approaching the biblical texts, it is those passages that support their original thesis which survive their credibility filter.

Unfortunately, short of divine revelation, there is no reasonable way of getting at what Jesus really said and thought if the primary witnesses — the Gospel writers — have made a mess of the job. At least Mormons and Muslims, with their supposed divine texts about Jesus, have some hope of playing in this field of competing claims. Most people, however, are leaning on nothing more substantial than their own feelings to justify their interpretive approach.

Could something like the Gnostic texts help us to get at the "real" Jesus? Well, I suppose they could, in theory, but how would you be able to know that? If one has issues with the canonical texts, which even many liberal scholars place in the First Century, then one has even worse problems making the Gnostic texts authoritative. That is because they didn't even begin appearing until the mid-Second Century.

But it's not as though those who appeal to such documents are seeking to be orthodox Gnostics; they don't really believe that this is "authentic" Christianity. If you were to start ascribing specific Gnostic beliefs to someone appealing to the Gnostic texts for their alternative Jesus, they would most probably be insulted by your presumption. In practice, such persons do nothing more than add these additional writings to the buffet from which they fill their spiritual plates. There is no divine and authoritative canon to which someone like a New Ager or liberal Christian may look in order to set boundaries upon their wild speculations.

So, the next time you hear someone making a claim like, "Jesus was all about loving people, not judging them," you could respond with something like the following.

How do you know what Jesus was like? You can have no clue, since you reject the reliability of the Bible and you have no authoritative and accurate revelation about Him to which you may appeal. Your view is simply based upon your own imagination and desire for what you want Him to be like. By that measure, my imagination is as good as your own. And since the earliest writings of the Christian community and the consensus of the historical church is on my side, then I feel quite comfortable sticking with my own "opinion," thank you.

Presupposing Perfection: Bart Ehrman and N.T. Textual Transmission

Whenever I encounter the work of a new biblical scholar who is critical of orthodox Christianity, I have to admit to feeling a twinge of anxiety. Is it because I fear that I'll be exposed to some new facts that will destroy the foundation of my beliefs? Well, I suppose that's logically possible, but I am more consciously concerned that I'll hit an objection that I am unable to engage without first dedicating years of time acquiring the background to even begin the task. Fortunately, I've found few such issues. Most can be addressed at a fairly high level before even going into the details. And I find that it's not always the details that are the problem anyway, but the presuppositions applied to the data.

This gives some background as to why I had both apprehension and enthusiasm about hearing Dr. Bart D. Ehrman's critiques. It seems that I've been hearing Ehrman's name come up quite a bit this last year and when I did some investigation I came to the conclusion that he was one of the better class of skeptics. No Dan Brown conspiricist or John Crossan stealth-atheist: Ehrman is a UNC Chapel Hill scholar and author (most recently, Misquoting Jesus) who knows his biblical history and says exactly what he believes about it without straying too far from the data itself. So, hearing him speak in his own words on the Issues, Etc. radio show turned out to be both a treat and an education, in ways he did not intend.

Todd Wilken, the host, did a wonderful job of drawing out Ehrman's position and the basis of his conclusions. It seems that Ehrman discovered at some point in his theological education that there are variants in the ancient biblical manuscripts, and this set him down a road that caused him to question the inspiration of the original text and, ultimately, his own faith. Let us review, then, this compelling data that has driven Ehrman to reject classical Christianity.

Confronting the changes

The first thing to note is his point regarding the variations in the manuscripts. Somehow this fact, or the implications of it, managed to escape his attention all those years he read his Bible, most versions of which are footnoted with the more substantial variant readings. This is no secret, and is available information to any willing to look at the widely published materials (even from conservative sources). In fact, Ehrman admits that we have an "honest record of the changes." That is to say, there are no rumors of hidden ancient manuscripts and no incriminating documents that "fundamentalists" won't admit onto the field.

Ehrman did not just learn these things from liberal scholars. Indeed, one of his mentors was Bruce Metzger, a conservative whom Ehrman calls "the world's leading New Testament scholar." When Wilken asked how he came to differ from Metzger, Ehrman admits that they are both using the same raw data, but they simply take different things away from it. And Ehrman freely offers the grounds of his own conclusions, which turn out to be dependent upon a rather problematic presupposition about the way God ought to work in inspiring and transmitting the Scriptures.

Ehrman suggests that if God didn't go to the trouble of preserving the words of Scripture, He probably didn't inspire them in the first place. To be honest, he's got a compelling point. I've even used a form of this argument against Mormons and Muslims, who depend on the idea of a radical corruption of the text to support their departure from it. If God couldn't manage to get a meaningful record of His words and deeds down for posterity, then why bother, or what kind of God is that?

Inflating the problem

So, just how bad are the damages? Is there any hope of sifting the wreckage for the surviving original? Here's where it gets interesting. Enigmatically, Ehrman admits that the New Testament is "not fundamentally unreliable," and that for approximately 95 percent of the material "we know pretty much exactly what the text said." In fact, the whole reason we know that there's been any changes at all is because we've got a raft of surviving original language copies against which we can make comparisons, and the age of some of these copies dates to within 50 years after the originals were penned. Ehrman is forced to admit that we are in far worse shape in regards to most other classical texts.

But, detectable as they may be, what are these changes in the text? Perhaps there is a conspiracy afoot to mythologize the story of Jesus and weave "orthodoxy" into the text, which Ehrman does seem to believe. Wilken invited Ehrman to give an example of a variation that affects an important doctrine of Christianity. This was his big chance to drop a bombshell on the listeners. Did he have an example to offer, like Jesus "blessed" the water rather than "turned it into wine," or the tomb was "ransacked" rather than "empty?" No. The example he did give relates to Jesus' reaction to the lepers in Mark 1:41. In most manuscripts it says He had "compassion," but in a few it says He expressed "anger."

This is an example of his faith-destroying changes? In fact, most of the variant readings in the texts turn out to be even less consequential than this — things like grammatical and copyist errors. Ehrman thinks, though, that this particular change in Mark is an example of an intentional edit in order to soften the perplexing "anger" saying, which he takes to be the original. Ehrman finds these kinds of helping-the-author-along changes incriminating, and of even more concern to him than the innocent, though more common, copyist errors. The two together are enough to make him question the whole orthodox Christian enterprise.

Missing the point

But Ehrman fails to make the case that any particular copy or family of manuscripts is so riddled with errors as to affect one's ability to glean orthodox Christianity from it. Indeed, the individual manuscript differences are rather sparse and seldom alter the overall meaning of any given passage. Additionally, even if some copyists wrongly took liberties with the text to make it more palatable, understandable, or "orthodox," it does not follow that they were crafting orthodoxy in doing so, only following an existing stream of theology that can clearly be found in the rest of the text.

For example, one variant of Luke 2:33 reads, "Joseph and His mother were amazed at the things which were being said about [Jesus]," rather than "His father and mother" were amazed. Ehrman, in his writings, claims this is done to buttress the case for the virgin birth. But this seems a trivial concern in light of the fact that Luke 1:26-38, which is found in all manuscripts, explicitly tells the story of the virgin conception (not to mention Matthew's inclusion of it). While annotating and clarifying are not desirable in a formal copy of the text, it is exactly what we do with our modern paraphrase translations; and while the Luke 2:33 change may represent a liberty taken with the text, it does not represent a theological corruption given the previously established premise of the virgin birth.

The ironic thing is that in Ehrman's focus upon these textual variants he neglects the stunning claims made within the very same chapters that are not a matter of dispute. For instance, in Mark 1:41, Ehrman may not know the scope of emotions with which Jesus approached the lepers, but the remarkable thing is that all texts agree that Jesus healed them. And in Hebrews 2:9, Ehrman points out the variant of "by the grace of God," but in the very same chapter we find Jesus being attested to by miracles (v.4) and making propitiation for our sins (v.17). It would seem that Ehrman is swatting at gnats while ignoring the camel.

Surviving the ages

I think, though, that when Ehrman points out these variants he is suggesting a sort of evolutionary case for the corruption of the text. This would imply that year-by-year, copy-by-copy these little incidental changes would add up to make later manuscripts that are unrecognizable from the originals. There are at least four problems with this theory.

1) It is not just a case of scribes making copies of copies, which mutate endlessly. At various places and points in history there are intersections where manuscripts come together for comparison, which permit auditing of the text. Examples would be the Textus Receptus from around the Reformation, and the Westcott and Hort text from the late 1800's.

2) We have in our possession numerous writings from the early church fathers who quote extensively from the biblical texts. Indeed, the fact that we can clearly identify those quotes demonstrates that they closely match the surviving Scriptures.

3) If the biblical texts have indeed mutated over time beyond recognition, then we should expect that any discovered ancient manuscripts should be largely alien in nature. As it turns out, in the last century or so we have acquired numerous very old documents, none of which supports a radical corruption theory. In fact, a couple of these — the Rylands Papyrus (P52) and Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 3523 (P90) — date to the first half of the 2nd century and are mere scraps. But even with such scant text for comparison, they are so similar to later, complete works that we can easily tell the book, chapter, and verses to which they relate.

4) As mentioned above, Ehrman himself states that "we know pretty much exactly what the text said."

Imagination and presuppositions

So, where is the big disconnect from the reality of what was written to the copies we are left to investigate? Ehrman tentatively suggests that those initial copies of the originals could have been complete hack jobs. This seems improbable in light of the fact that the church for centuries has shown itself to be disinclined toward substantive revision of the text. Also, this theory evokes an image of a single individual or group of copyists who acted as gatekeepers for all of the canonical texts. However, it is far more complex than that.

The individual books that make up our New Testament were written at diverse times and places all around the Mediterranean at a period where there was no organized and centralized church. Copies were made and distributed, usually in isolation from the other manuscripts (especially so with the epistles), and it is absurd to believe that in every case only one reengineered copy was produced with the original being suppressed or destroyed. This means that there would be many copies of many different manuscripts in circulation among various autonomous groups, each seeking to add what they could to their collections. The fact that the surviving copies are so consistent both with each other and, theologically, across all other writings suggests that we either have a faithful tradition of textual transmission or there was some remarkable transcontinental conspiracy to edit all the documents and purge the field of every last trace of the originals. Ehrman does not prefer the former though he does not suggest the latter, but it seems to be his necessary conclusion.

In light of the fact that there are no grounds to assert that the substance of the New Testament documents has been lost, Ehrman must be depending upon his presupposition about God's preservation of the text to claim that it has been lost. His assumptions seem to run both ways: he thinks that the text can only be faithfully transmitted if it is inspired in the first place, and it can only be inspired if it is faithfully transmitted. But even assuming that God is not behind the text does not imply that it must have been corrupted. It only implies that the authors were wrong about what they wrote, but that is not Ehrman's starting point (though he has stated it as one of his ultimate conclusions).

Ehrman's rejection of the documented resurrection and divinity of Jesus doesn't seem to be based on his unwillingness to accept this as possible truth (if we are to believe his former claim to faith), and it doesn't seem to be based on any evidence we have that the Scriptures are forged or fictional manuscripts. It seems to be based, as evidenced by his own personal reflections, on his presupposition that God must perfectly preserve His words if He is to offer them at all. Let's take a minute to think through the implications of this requirement.

Kevlar^® Gospels

What would it look like for God to superintend the textual transmission process in the simple and straightforward way that Ehrman demands? Well, first of all, there would be no copying mistakes. Every resulting manuscript, some taking days or weeks to complete, would be flawless reproductions. Any manuscripts slated for reproduction would be immune to stain or damage. The words "I intend to copy this" would be like a magical incantation, turning any document into Kevlar^®, at least until copies were completed.

There would never be any liberties taken with the material by well intentioned, misguided, or malicious scribes. Such persons would either be mysteriously barred from scribal duties or would often find their pens acting on their own behalves. Scribal training and quality control would become superfluous because of every person's uncanny ability to reproduce Scripture without error. In fact, the selection of the canon would have been automatic for the church fathers, since they could merely identify which texts were being flawlessly reproduced and which not. Copying the text blindfolded would be a popular party trick, and letting atheists try their best to make a flawed reproduction would be an evangelism tactic.

But possession of a flawless text would be only half the battle for Ehrman's God. After all, what's the point of having perfect revelation in a book if it can't be perfectly transmitted into the eyes, ears, and minds of the people? For this reason, these perfect Bibles must make it into the hands of perfectly literate people who would perfectly comprehend it with the acumen of a master theologian. Either that or the evangelists and preachers must have photographic memories and flawless presentations. Language barriers would be no problem either, as every foreign encounter would be a guaranteed occasion to repeat the miracle of Pentecost. And leaving anything out, embellishing, or paraphrasing would be divinely prohibited. A commission to preach would instantly make one a walking Bible.

If this seems ridiculous, then at least some localized imperfections in the copies must be tolerated. But it does not mean that God cannot divinely preserve the content through history in more broad and subtle ways, or that the essential messages cannot be found in some of the worst reproductions.

Conclusion

How important is it to have absolute precision in the miscellaneous areas that Ehrman points out as containing variants? There are Christians who have lived and died without knowledge even of the passages themselves. In the earliest church not all manuscripts were completed or widely circulated during the lives of some Christians, and in the medieval church a copy of the Bible was a rare commodity. But the central message of Christ was preached, and through it all the canonical documents were copied and spread by, and in spite of, fallible men, giving naysayers like Ehrman both the cause and privilege to spot the inaccuracies and improve future editions.

Has God preserved His message to us? Effectively, yes, in spite of the fallibility of men and even with the unwitting participation of some like Ehrman. It is ironic that at a time, two thousand years after the events, when we have more documents than ever before, and more global community among scholars to share, analyze, and reconcile these documents, that "Christian" scholars like Bart Ehrman can raise the protest that God hasn't done His job in preserving His revelation. Bart Ehrman may have other grounds for rejecting Christianity, but it would seem that his initial cause for doubt is ill-conceived and neglects the valuable contribution that his own area of scholarship has offered to the church.

Liberal Christianity: No Sale!

Let's say that you believed that Muhammad was nothing more than a clever guy who didn't really receive revelation from the angel Gabriel, and that his followers simply made up stories about him and inserted their own claims about history and God to further their own interests. Would it then make any sense to call yourself a Muslim?

Or let's say that you believed that Joseph Smith (of Mormon fame) was a schemer and concocted the tale of meeting the angel Moroni and translating the golden plates in order to forge a new religion, and that his successors continued the fiction by extending his ideas as opportunity and need presented itself. Would you think kindly of the religion and be pleased to call yourself a Mormon?

These seem like odd scenarios, and I can't imagine an earnest and right-thinking person subscribing to a religion on such a basis. That is, unless they hoped to use the religion, like its founder, for some self-serving purpose.

Now, imagine that you believe that Jesus was no more "divine" than any other human is or can be, and that he merely made certain wise and "spiritual" pronouncements and showed compassion for the social outcasts of society. Imagine that you believe that his disciples embellished his sayings and mythologized his deeds, and that their followers further reworked the stories and edited the written materials to suit their own theological and political agendas. Imagine that you thought the mainstream historical church to be a body of oppressive, simple-minded literalists who had gotten the real Jesus wrong all these years (assuming we could know what was real in any case). Would you then be anxious to also identify yourself as a "Christian?" Would you view the Scriptures, creeds, and liturgies of this contrived institution with fondness and think all its myths and exaggerations useful in the service of your true spiritual beliefs?

Sound strange? Some do exactly this. We might call them "liberal" Christians. But why go there? Why be a "Christian" if it's a forgery or hopeless historical muddle? Why not pick a different religion, make up your own, or be agnostic?

Perhaps it is for the fellowship and music. But you can get the same at a cocktail party or a witch coven.

Perhaps it is for the charity and social activism. But these are found in political organizations and among secular humanists.

Perhaps for the love of tradition. But tradition is hollow once divested of its purpose and meaning by liberalism; it's just social convention, and why pick the Christian conventions?

Perhaps liberals like some ideas found in Christianity. But why put up with all that is "wrong" in it just to benefit from a few valued items? I like furniture, and it can be found in junkyards, but I don't shop for it there.

Perhaps they just think Jesus is a swell guy. But almost every cult and alternate religion finds a place for Jesus, and without assuming some accuracy to the Bible you can't have any confident knowledge about him anyway.

Perhaps they just find the myths and parables fetching. But I find Homer's Odyssey and the Lord of the Rings fetching, and equally "true" on a liberal accounting. The problem with the Bible is that it claims its "myths" are real and the authors claim to speak for God. If that's not blasphemy then the word simply has no meaning.

Christianity seems to be the preferred ore that people use to forge their own idols. But why should I want to play the spiritual games of a contrived religion under the rubric of a mysterious and mythologized Christ? Be a liberal Christian? No thanks! No sale! I'd rather sleep in on Sunday morning. Rather than that, I'd go where God seemed more profoundly present or I'd cook something up from scratch much closer to my own liking. Fortunately, it's okay to be brash and dismissive about this anyway, since, on a liberal understanding, there's ultimately no final judgment and hell. I can afford to reject liberal Christianity if it is somehow right, but I can't afford to reject classical Christianity if it is true.

Reflections on the Authority of Scripture

In recent dialog with a pastor involved in the Emergent Church movement, it soon became clear that he had a limited view of scriptural authority. This was revealed in subtle (and not so subtle) ways by making various statements about its "cultural context," its authors and "editors," its containing "some truth," its lack of concern for "factual accuracy," and God giving us "new understanding." But as with most theological liberals, he was not willing to reject it as meaningless, or deny that God was to be found in it in some way.

The most common point of departure from full biblical inerrancy is to say that Scripture is only inerrant in matter of "faith and practice." And this fellow granted that it "contained all things necessary for salvation." Now, I am not going to argue here the larger issue of biblical inerrancy in all matters in which it speaks, though I do not wish to suggest that a hearty defense cannot be made for this position. I only now want to comment on the problems faced by those courting a liberal view of the authority of the Bible.

The first thing to acknowledge is that a minimalist view of the Bible is a license to discard any difficult, divisive, or distasteful passages of Scripture. This is demonstrated by the fact that so many of those who profess the Bible's authority in matters of faith a practice do not, in practice, hold to some of those plain things it does teach in these areas. Doctrines such as hell, the exclusivity of Christ in salvation, and matters of sexual purity are like the molting skin of a snake ready to be sloughed away by any friction with the culture.

Even if there were some sorts of historical, scientific, or cultural flaws in Scripture my question is, "How do you know what to throw out and what to keep?" The answer to this question, in my experience, is usually some combination of reason, human experience, and the leading of the Spirit. But now comes the problem of knowing when you've got your reason and leading right, and when you've done violence to the word of God.

It seems to me that any subjective interpretive method would be just as "fallible" as the Bible that biblical minimalists wish to amend. The only difference is that they seem willing to assume for themselves the responsibility for any potential theological errors rather than leaving it with the authors of Scripture (and, dare I say, the Holy Spirit).

And what does it say about us when we supersede those things we find in Scripture with our own better judgment or new understanding? If it is not the hubris of substituting our own rules for those of the playbook we claim to follow, then what is it? Do we imagine we are helping God along by fixing the pesky errors in Scripture that those fallible authors might have allowed in or that might have been introduced by some possible editor along the way? Are we afraid we might be getting God's truth fouled up because we've taken that corrupted and outdated Book too literally? What do we fear that God will say to us at the pearly gates?

"I am disappointed in you my flawed and faulty servant. You took the words of my Son too far. You had too much confidence in the memory and objectivity of my scribes. You failed to realize that I was just speaking to a primitive people and not your modern and enlightened society. You failed to hear your own inner voice and your clamoring culture in order to amend my revelation."

Is it so unreasonable to think that in the face of possible doubt, God will forgive us for erring on the side of the Scriptures?

Even if some portion of Scripture is merely "Paul's understanding" or "John's interpretation," this is still no warrant for departure; for these men were "witnesses to His majesty" and surely had a greater helping of the Spirit than do we. If I could sit down with the average pastor and St. Paul and ask them about evangelistic outreach to the local community, or coordinating a multi-media Christmas Eve extravaganza, perhaps I would find the pastor of more use to me. But if I had questions on matters of theology, morality, and end-times prophecy, I would take St. Paul every time. Surely even Paul and company's most strained "opinions" are better than our most brilliant guesses.

If God is anything near like He is portrayed in Scripture, then I have great fear and trembling at the thought of shrugging off biblical doctrines. And if He is not very much like the portrait of Scripture, then He/She/It is either an impotent dispenser of revelation or is not even behind the Bible at all. In either case, it renders Scripture of little more value than a repository of interesting ideas and bed-time stories. We may just as well put Aesop's Fables in our pews.

"No Creed But Christ"? Christ Who?

One of Chris' recent posts reminded me of a conversation I once had on-line in a chatroom with a "pastor" who was trying to give spiritual insight to the participants. I'll try to reconstruct the conversation here:

ME: "So, what denomination do you represent?"

PASTOR: "Oh, I'm non-denominational."

ME: "So, what theological tradition do you lean towards?"

PASTOR: "I'm not into all that stuff; I find that theology and denominations divide people. I just focus on Jesus."

ME: "Hmm... Okay, here's a challenge for you: Please tell me who Jesus is and what He's got to do with me without appealing to theology."

PASTOR: "Touché"

Everyone is a theologian, whether they like it or not; everyone has beliefs about God, even if it is only "that He does not exist." But in our pluralistic and "tolerant" society people need some way to buffer the differences of opinion that they feel to be detrimental to charity and Christian unity. I see 3 ways that this is often being accomplished (or at least attempted):

1) Suppression of beliefs. If you don't discuss your beliefs with others, then there is nothing about which to disagree, right? But if you think your beliefs are actually important, then how can you stay silent? Imagine believing that the atonement of Christ is God's only provision for salvation and then hearing a fellow church member say that they think earnest Buddhists are save too or that God's mercy extends even to "good" atheists. Quibbling over non-essentials or the mysterious fringes of what God's revelation includes is certainly questionable, but if we stand up for nothing, then Christianity will come to mean everything. However, people do, in fact, make distinctions (for instance, no one would agree that a "Christian" means a "pastry chef"); many just refuse to apply their discernment to a very meaningful extent. I suspect that it is simply a lack of confidence and grounding for one's beliefs that encourages silence.

2) Diminishing terms. If we take those words that are part of the vocabulary of Christianity and detach them from their definitions, then even if we do have disagreement over the meaning of these words we at least have unity in our surface language. So unity may even be had with liberals in saying things like, "I believe in Jesus," even though some may believe He is their God and redeemer, while others may believe he is just a good moral example. Or different people may speak (without qualification) of "hearing from God," though some may find His voice in the Bible, others may be referring to their personal feelings, and yet others may actually hear audible voices (from God knows where) in their heads. The extreme end of this is that we may all speak of worshipping "God" — Jews, Christians, Muslims, New Agers, etc. — and we can all blithely imagine that we are referencing the same thing in spite of the fact that each is pouring radically different content into the 3-letter string g-o-d. In fact, the term "faith" has now become the lowest common denominator of solidarity. It is enough to simply have "faith" — never mind the object of that faith. Even Oprah and secularists can get on board with this, since they can have faith in a force, love, humanity, self, or just the winds of fortune.

3) Sheer ignorance. Many people are just not knowledgeable enough about their own denomination or religion, much less anyone else's, to see those areas of conflict between them. You can't disagree with what you don't see. So if you hear a theological liberal talking about their experience of "God," or a Mormon claiming that the Bible is "inspired," then this may sound all cozy and orthodox if you don't understand what is really meant by such language. Even worse, some may come to confuse the incidental outward trappings with the meaningful underlying differences. I once heard a newscaster condescending to explain the difference between Roman Catholicism and the Orthodox Church merely in terms of icon use and their distinctions in making the sign of the cross. Some would even suggest that we divest ourselves of those dogmas and details which may be cause for disunity. As one fellow pointed out to me when attempting to rationalize his anemic brand of Christianity, "Didn't Jesus say that the really important thing was to just love God and your neighbor?" Sure, but now we need to know who God is and exactly what it means to love Him and other people. And the theological game is back on again.

In the end, everyone has doctrines, or at least limits to what they will tolerate in other's beliefs. While one person may draw the line at belief in a God, another may draw it at belief in a personal god, and another at Jesus as God, while yet another may draw the line at faith in this Jesus alone for salvation. It is simply a matter of knowledge and conviction that serves to set the boundaries of division and discernment. So let us give up the charade of ecumenism and get on with the tasks of study and conversation.

Emasculating Christianity

Here's a comment I just encountered in my blog travels, which I've also heard incessantly from political liberals.

My major problem with religion is that people involve it in world affairs. I don't mind religion, only the effect that it has on people. It influences their decisions and, in many cases, controls important issues. This should not be so."

What's the use in believing something if it doesn't have any application or make any difference in your life? And something as profound as an all-encompassing worldview, which Christianity most certainly is, is only logically bound to affect the way one looks at life. Shouldn't a comprehensive worldview make a difference in the way we perceive human nature, ethics, the natural world, and the very purpose of life? It certainly does for atheists. How does it make sense that I should draw the line at my political interests and be forced to live in a state of cognitive dissonance in that particular domain?

If my worldview asserts that human life has value no matter how young, how old, or how inconvenient it is to me, and then I see one political candidate that agrees with me and one that doesn't, what should I do? If I think that gender was an intentional creation and that sexuality has a particular teleology, and I see society heading in a direction that rejects all sexual constraints, what should I do? Should I just sit on my intellectual reservation and let the world pass me by? Should I support the things that run contrary to my values? Should I just consult my magic 8 ball to decide what to do?

It seems to me that a worldview that has nothing to say in the realm of values and politics is either the same as having no worldview at all or it does not take the whole world into its view, since politics is surely part of the "world." For this reason, I think the above objection is simply naïve and incoherent. However, I think what is really being said is something more like this: "It's fine with me if you believe whatever makes you feel good, just so long as you don't let it get in my way. Don't let your beliefs cramp my style."

This seems an arrogant and hypocritical view to me. I'm sure that the connections between the non-Christian's beliefs and his advocacy and voting record can be easily traced. Are these invalid too? Shall we ask the pantheist to get her values out of her environmentalism? Shall we ask the Hindu to stay away from animal rights causes?

Even worse is that those with a secular worldview "push" it on society every bit as much as (I would contend more than) Christians allegedly do theirs. To them I would say, for the sake of parity, the following: Don't impose your non-theistic view of nature on my kids at school. Don't make me pay to kill the fetuses of underprivileged women. Don't attack public decency laws so that I can't enjoy television or the internet without losing my sanctification.

If you want neutrality, then neutral we should all be. But if that's the way of it, then we shall all sit it out like Switzerland in WWII, or we shall toss coins for every political decision. Unfortunately for the secularists, Christians won't go there, and we have the greatest reason of all to care about the direction of politics: because we believe there are real, objective, critical truths and values to be pursued. Without a theistic grounding for values, it must all necessarily be preference and social consensus.

The secularist will then answer that we Christians are just wrong about our "truth"; it is really just based on myth, malarkey, or metaphor. Well, that may or may not be so, but that is where the real debate lies, not in this insulting insinuation that we should keep our beliefs in the closet and let the world have its way with us.

On the Defense of Scripture

Question:
I find it hard to place my absolute trust in the bible because I thought it was highly edited 100+ yrs after Christ and translated too and that there were meetings of the Roman Catholic Church where they purposely omitted certain sections and things. Also, what about those hidden gospels that were found? Like the gospel of Thomas? Now maybe to a Christian insider all these things have obvious explanations, but you must understand to the outside observer like me, its all information, who should I choose to believe?

Answer:
I can't blame you for having some confusion here; there are so many books, TV specials, and liberal professors who have worked very hard to undermine confidence in the Bible. In fact, I'm going to predict by the content of your question that you have read the Da Vinci Code. But in spite of what Dan Brown and his fans may believe, his depiction of history is not even respectable by (even rabidly) non-Christian scholarly standards — there is such a thing as "good" and "fair" critical analysis, but that isn't it.

The problem that critics of the Bible have is that they do not have much to go on. It's not like they've found old copies of the four gospels that are radically different from what we have today. There are no old manuscripts in our possession that say things like, "Jesus showed compassion to the leper" rather than, "Jesus healed the leper" or, "I show you one way to the Father" rather than, "no one comes to the Father except through Me." And there are no "other gospel" manuscripts found that have been demonstrated to be from the first century or to be copies of something that existed at that time. Claims that the Bible has been tampered with are without empirical backing; they are simply assumptions based on "conspiracy theory" type thinking. The way it works is this: it is first assumed that the stories of Jesus couldn't possibly be true because of all the miracle talk, then an attempt is made to weave a tale as to how such miracles could have gotten in the text. And if any fairly old books, like the Gospel of Thomas, are found that have a less orthodox portrait of Jesus, then these are assumed to be earlier works. The fact that there is no time-tested and consistent story from the critics regarding what "really happened" in that first century (their story changes about every 25 years) is testimony that they are simply grappling with theory and not hard data.

There was a time in the past when critical scholars suspected that the New Testament (N.T.) documents were largely authored in the second or third century, but today most admit that they originate in the first century. I've even recently heard John Dominic Crossan (of the Jesus Seminar {a group of radically liberal "scholars"}) admit on TV that the gospels were written within decades after Jesus' death! And there is even less debate over the letters of Paul, most of which are taken to be from his own hand and are the earliest writings of all. This is a real problem, because Paul's writings contain the clearest of all presentations of classical Christian theology (the book of Romans is a theological masterpiece), which were not supposed to have "developed" until decades later. This is why modern critical scholarship is trying to find a way to drive a wedge between Paul and the other Apostles — his testimony is just too...Christian like.

Some of the reasons why scholars have been forced to admit that the N.T. materials are first century works are the following:

1) Manuscript evidence. There is, by far, better and older manuscript support for the N.T. than for any other work of antiquity. If we considered other secular writers of the same era (e.g., Josephus, Pliny, Tacitus, Plutarch) we would discover that the most ancient copies of their writings that we possess are from more than 800 years after they were authored. In contrast, if we looked at something like the Gospel of John, we would discover that we have fragments of it from within 30 years after it was authored (presumably the late first century). And the Gospel of John is considered to be the last N.T. document written, so this dates the other writings even earlier! It is said that we have around 5000 ancient copies of the N.T. from around the Mediterranean in its source language — Greek (that is to say, not translations but direct copies). Most of these documents vary only in syntax or due to common copyist errors.

2) Early Church Fathers. Besides the biblical documents, we also have the writings of the early leaders of the church from all corners of the Roman Empire. It has been observed that if one took all the biblical quotes in these documents, one could reconstruct most of the verses of the NT. And their quotes compare well against the N.T. documents themselves.

3) Accuracy of the documents. There are stories of critical scholars who set out to prove the falsity of the N.T. documents, and eventually became believers themselves, by comparing them against the archaeology, cultural history, and literary styles of the first century era. It was thought that surely, if they were written in a later era, there would be technical slip-ups. Even those things that seemed to have been discrepancies have one-by-one, over time, come to be conceded as accurate. Wherever scripture can be tested, it usually comes out the victor. There are very few open issues remaining to be settled at this time.

4) Extra-biblical references. The Bible and the Christian community are not the only sources of information about the early church. Over time other Jewish, Roman, and Greek manuscript finds have been uncovered to support many points of data contained in the scriptures. For example: that Jesus existed, that He was tried and executed, that His followers continued after Him and claimed He was deity and resurrected, that they were dying for their beliefs, that Jesus' brother was the head of the Jerusalem church and was also executed, etc.

This deals (well enough for now) with the issue of those books we know as our New Testament, but what about those "other gospels," like Thomas, that were "left out" of the canon by the church? First of all, the idea that there was a council of the church that sat down with some 80 available gospels (as Dan Brown claims in his Da Vinci Code) and arbitrarily voted on which ones to include is a fiction. The closest thing to this are the various regional councils — most notably the Council of Carthage (397) — that simply "recognized" the commonly accepted list of books that had already been identified. The way that the "inspired" books came to be acknowledged was by perfectly reasonable and natural criteria, by which the other gospels that some people would like to squeeze in there (primarily Gnostic texts) fail to measure up. Here are some of the primary factors involved:

1) The book had to be a product of the first century church, and from those who were authoritative eyewitnesses to the action. If a book was from the hand of an Apostle, it was an automatic candidate. If it was from a sidekick of an Apostle (like Luke or Mark), or from those of the inner circle (like Jude or James), then it was a solid candidate as well. This is why the Gnostic books were so often written under the names of Apostles: to attempt to foster a sense of credibility.

2) The pedigree of the book had to be good. That is, there had to be high confidence that the book was actually from the time and author that it was claimed to be. We have various writings of the Church Fathers as a window into this dialog if we care to review their defenses. The backers of the Gnostic books failed to demonstrate a lineage back to the Apostles. And these books cannot be shown to be authored any earlier than the second or third century. Mention of such books in the writings of the Church Fathers (mostly critiques) does not even begin until later in church history. However, we do see some discussion about a few more reasonable candidates.

3) There were certain books that no one called into question, like the four Gospels, Acts, and most of the Pauline letters. Of those that were the subject of some debate, one standard of measure was that these should be consistent in theological content and quality with those having been already accepted. In comparison to the harmony of the four universally recognized gospels (which even the Gnostics didn't challenge) the others often sound like a tone-deaf choirboy. Here's one example from the Gospel of Thomas:

"Simon Peter said to them: Let Mary go forth from among us, for women are not worthy of the life. Jesus said: Behold, I shall lead her, that I may make her male, in order that she also may become a living spirit like you males. For every woman who makes herself male shall enter into the kingdom of heaven."

4) Another more subjective criteria would be what I might call the staying power of the book. An inspired book would be expected to have a certain popular following among the clergy and be profitable in the lives of believers and the history of the church. Perhaps I could use the analogy of pop music, in that decades later it is only the best-in-class that tends to get playtime on the oldies stations. The Gnostic texts were not so much pushed and stamped out of existence as they were neglected and abandon. The wheat survived over the chaff. And when the Roman persecutors came a-knockin' in search of contraband Christian materials, the priests and bishops were less than grieved to hand over certain texts as decoys.

For more information on Gnosticism, you can see my related post here: Regarding Gnosticism

Long before those councils that formally recognized the canon listings we find writings of the Church Fathers that include each of their A-lists as well as their habit of quoting only certain books as authoritative. And the selections of these writers line up very well with the modern Bible. In addition, I would point out the Muratorian Canon from the second century, which is an official catalog of accepted texts along with their historical setting. It was probably compiled to counter a fellow named Marcion, who was making an effort to discard and edit books that didn't fit into his theology (he didn't like the O.T. and any N.T. books that made positive reference to it). In fact, as it turns out, almost all the "disputed" books were ones that eventually DID make it in to the canon; the church eventually did more including rather than the often imagined excluding. The few that were seriously debated, yet not chosen for inclusion (like the epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas), are available to review today, and it's fairly plain to any who read them why they were bypassed (not that they contain contradictory theology, but simply don't fit well within the 4 criteria I mention above). Of Thomas and the other "hidden gospels" — never even considered.

Let me end this point with a lengthy quote from the church historian Eusebius who wrote in his Ecclesiastical History (325 AD) the following assessment. I include it because it is an early writing from a highly respected source that well summarizes much of what I have been saying here (not that it is the only or earliest such text).

First then must be put the holy quaternion of the Gospels [Matthew, Mark, Luke, John]; following them the Acts of the Apostles. After this must be reckoned the epistles of Paul; next in order the first former epistle of John, and likewise the epistle of Peter, must be maintained. After them is to be placed, if it really seem proper, the Apocalypse of John, concerning which we shall give the different opinions at the proper time. These then belong among the accepted writings. Among the disputed writings, which are nevertheless recognized by many, are extant the so-called epistle of James and that of Jude, also the second epistle of Peter, and those that are called the second and third of John ... Among the rejected writings must be reckoned the Acts of Paul, and the so-called Shepherd, and the Apocalypse of Peter, and in addition to these the extant epistle of Barnabas, and the so-called Teachings of the Apostles; and besides, as I said, the Apocalypse of John, if it seem proper, which some, as I said, reject, but which others class with the accepted books. And among these some have placed also the Gospel according to the Hebrews ... all these may be reckoned among the disputed books. But we have nevertheless felt compelled to give a catalogue of these also, distinguishing those works which according to ecclesiastical tradition are true and genuine and commonly accepted, from those others which, although not canonical but disputed, are yet at the same time known to most ecclesiastical writers — we have felt compelled to give this catalogue in order that we might be able to know both these works and those that are cited by the heretics under the name of the apostles, including, for instance, such books as the Gospels of Peter, of Thomas, of Matthias, or of any others besides them, and the Acts of Andrew and John and the other apostles, which no one belonging to the succession of ecclesiastical writers has deemed worthy of mention in his writings. And further, the character of the style is at variance with apostolic usage, and both the thoughts and the purpose of the things that are related in them are so completely out of accord with true orthodoxy that they clearly show themselves to be the fictions of heretics.

So far I've dealt with the origin of the text, the reliability of its transmission, and the selection of the canon, but what about our modern translations? Did the contents of the original writings get accidentally or intentionally corrupted during "all those translations and retranslations?"

First, remember that I mentioned that we have numerous very old texts in their original language. This means that if anyone happens to know the Greek language of the time (or Hebrew, in the case of the O.T.), then they do not even need to concern themselves with the various translations. The skeptical Greek scholar may compare these source materials against your average Bible translation for himself to see how faithful the translators have been. The translation issue is not one of the objections raised by informed critics; they are more concerned with the integrity of the early source language materials. There may have been times and places where translations were problematic, as in Martin Luther's case where the only available text for his German translation was the Latin Vulgate, but modern translators have a wealth of source language materials from which to work. And most modern translations DO begin with such materials; they are not simply translating translations of translations.

Our present translations are better than at any time in the past. Some target a style that is more technically accurate (like the NASB) and some attempt to be more readable and conversational (like the NIV), but harmony of meaning is rarely compromised in any (the "paraphrase" translations being the farthest from the mark). The bottom line is, there is good reason to be confident that what we read today in our modern Bibles accurately mirrors what the authors actually wrote. Of course, one can always argue that these authors were liars or mythmakers, but then some answer must be given as to why they would be inclined to invent a fiction that gained them no material advantage (unlike Muhammad or Joseph Smith) and cost them their lives to defend.

Jane Fonda's Gnostic Feminist Christianity

Awhile back I had heard rumors that Jane Fonda had become a Christian and was even attending Bible Studies at a Baptist church in Atlanta. By all available accounts, it seemed to be the real deal. However, you can imagine my confusion over hearing such reports while at the same time witnessing her anti-Americanism (even giving a nod to Michael Moore), feminist advocacy, and safe-sex campaigning. Well, I think that her recent interview with Beliefnet clears up a lot of the confusion. (Note: Beliefnet, itself, is no bastion of classical Christianity. Observe this vacuous article regarding the new Pope: The Pope's [astrological] Chart: A Willful Ram With a Spiritual Side)

Things seem to start out, for her and this article, promising enough:

Things began to change for me—as I think they do for many people—when I was in crisis. I think that the reason that that happens is because pain can break you open.

I was, utterly fascinated because [some of the Christians I was meeting] were smart people.

It was a somatic feeling that I was being beckoned, and I often felt that there was a light drawing me.

What I realized writing my book was that I had been empty since adolescence. I was learning to be satisfied by spirit, [whereas before] I had been trying to satisfy the hunger with other things.

And we even see a near brush with Biblical Christianity (though I've no guarantee that the Missionary Baptist Church that she was drawn in to was feeding her a protein-rich, balanced diet):

You know, I wasn't attracted to Buddhism although I really respect it. I wasn't attracted to Islam although I really respect it. Or Judaism. I'm attracted to Jesus.

I asked a friend of mine what did [being "saved"] mean, to her? And she said, "Well, to me, it meant going the next step." Well, boy, I mean, I'm a going-the-next-stepper! If there's a next step that can be taken, I'll take it. And so she had me read the Book of John and I was—I was experiencing grace at that time.

And then I began to go to Bible study class, and it didn't take long for me to think, "Uh oh, I've made a terrible mistake, this is not for me." I started going to churches and I fled. I just fled.

But then it all seems to sadly go down hill from there:

It wasn't a man in the sky! It was, it was: Come on! When we talk about—depending on how you talk about it—God, the Almighty, Sophia, a greater power, whatever—can't you understand that this is beyond gender? This is beyond anything that we can imagine. I mean, we can't even describe it. I understand why people latch onto gender things, but this is not a man. But because people have taken it so literally, it becomes gender and hence, hierarchal. And it just made my teeth grate. The more I studied, in the very kind of linear, fundamentalist way, the more I felt reverence leaking away from me.

And I read Elaine Pagels. I had read "The Gnostic Gospels" years before and it had really impressed me. In fact, I read it when I was first feeling God. And then I read "Beyond Belief," which is a book she came out with recently, and it had a lot of references to early Christians and Gnostic Gospels, and so I read the originals. In fact, I got the whole Nag Hammadi library and through that reading, I began to realize that I am on the right path. That Christianity is my spiritual home. This is where I'm meant to be. And that I have to discover for myself what that means.

I started venturing out when I finished the book last fall and discovered that there's a whole community nationwide of feminist Christians. I finished the book and then I heard about this book "Faith and Feminism" by Helen LaKelly Hunt, and now I've gotten to know her and through her, discovered that there's a lot of us out there. And it's like, "O.K., this was waiting. I needed to finish [the book] and this was waiting for me." And it's very exciting.

But perhaps there is yet hope:

And this is very new and so you know, it's hard for me to go into it in great detail because I'm only a few years into this journey. But I am riveted, I am fascinated with religious history, with Biblical history, with the early Gospels, with Robert Graves, King Jesus, I'm just, I can't get enough. This is a very real journey for me.

Could it be that she is on a journey toward authentic Christianity? Could it be that she is there, but is just so loaded with baggage and negative influences, and perhaps has received only a meager portion of the real thing thus far? Is this just another passing fad in her chameleon existence?

In all of my observations, I have failed to see even a hint of the idea that she understands the concepts of sin, repentance, and Jesus' person and work. And as long as she continues to flirt with major heresies, such as Gnosticism, and champion clearly un-Biblical moral causes, then I do not think I am simply being narrow or ungracious in assuming that she is outside of the camp. But who knows what lies ahead for her.