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Practical Differences Between the Orthodox and Evangelicals
First Orthodox Cathedral built in Georgia in 1,000 years.
I am a Baptist and a missionary that was on the field for 14 years and I worked primarily in Georgia but other Orthodox countries as well. My experience with culturally Orthodox and faithful Orthodox believers are from these countries in descending order of interaction, Georgia, Russia, Romania, Ukraine, and America. I was inspired by this post from @heavywater on the conversion of the Bible Answers man to Orthodoxy. What I wanted to do here is to lay out the practical differences I found between not just the teaching of Orthodoxy and Evangelicals generally but how the teaching is put to work in the real world. I am a Baptist and I would be a Reformed Baptist, on the question of salvation, to lay down a theological marker.
I am not trying to win or even make an argument here, I am not interested in this post who better reflects the teaching in the Bible or the wishes of Christ, instead I want to lay out how the differences in the teachings of the two churches play out in the lives of people practicing the two faiths. I want to illuminate what motivates the conversions that move people from Orthodoxy to Evangelicalism and what often motivates the reverse. I intend to take a more bottom-up look at what happens here so instead of starting with theology and then working down to the people I am going to start with the people and work my way up to some insights on the theology.
Let’s get started with part of a testimony of a girl that went from Orthodoxy to Evangelicalism.
“My first doubt about my faith is when we went to sacrifice a chicken to the Lord at the local Orthodox church. We had sinned and the Priest said we needed to sacrifice a chicken to Lord to atone for it. So my parents brought the chicken and while we prayed the Priest slaughtered the chicken and threw half in a basket before the altar and then took the other half for himself. Before I could control myself, I said aloud, “That is for God, why are you taking it?” My parents were mortified but the Priest just smiled at me and said, “Christ also takes care of his Priests.”
Now any, even nominally educated, Orthodox believer will quickly tell you the above story is a mess. Orthodox theology does not need chickens, no one atones for sin with the blood of animals. Some even question whether the above incident could have even happened. No one in Georgia would bat an eye at it however, they all know it happens. I am here to tell you though that Orthodox theology does not allow the Priest to act the way he did and it is true even if the people believed the chicken was sacrificed for their sins it was only because they were taught incorrect Orthodox theology.
Even Priests in Georgia, educated ones used to foreigners, will tell you what we see here is simple folk practice. Country priests have to find various ways to supplement their income to survive and people build up stories about once simple rituals to give them greater importance and so we get bad theology. But they are also quick to assure you that it is alright and the people’s faith in the Church is justified and their salvation is secure. Why is that? Well, one more story.
My sister in law, Nino, is out on a camping trip with her girlfriend and some male cousins and friends. They are feasting on fish the boys have caught in the stream and the next day they are going to a church up in the hill country called Tetri Giorgi (White/Silver George) the church is ancient and very holy. It is said the earth all around the church is black from the tens of thousands of cattle sacrificed there over the centuries. One of the boys noticed a gold chain around her neck and said, “You better hide that or even bury it out here.” Shocked Nino responded, “No, way. Why would I do such a thing?”
The boys explained that Saint George and other Saints located at the church are very hungry for sacrifice and if they “see” the gold they will demand it from her and if she does not give it they may even curse her causing her death. Nino, then explained that the church they are going to is simply a piece of cultural heritage to her and there are no saints who do anything like they say, and that her faith is in Jesus Christ regardless and Jesus doesn’t really need nor wants her necklace.
The boys then launched into long stories about how magical the church was, how the Saints can mess with the Earth’s magnetic field and essentially tell horrifying ghosts stories with gruesome ends for those that tried to defy the Saints of the church of Tetri Giorgi. When Nino and her friend still weren’t moved and tried to explain that even according to normal Orthodox teaching what they were saying about the church was wrong. The boys were so angry the girls were frightened and asked to go home and one the cousins drove them away from the camping trip.
What to make of these two stories, stories used often when explaining to others why the people that experienced them became Baptist instead of Orthodox? Well, normally the conversation derails on high theological grounds and defenses based on the fact that the bad actors in this story were not acting as true Orthodox and who seem ignorant of basic Orthodox teaching.
I think this misses the point. The Orthodox are basically unchallenged in Georgia. They have government backing and have been free of Communist oppression for more than a generation. If the Orthodox Church in Georgia wanted to stop these practices, they certainly could. A priest or monk coming out of the church of the Tetri Giorgi and telling everyone with a cow in tow that there was no reason to kill the cow and that it would bring them no advantage would swiftly put an end to the practice. They chose not to end it. Why?
Church Authority in Salvation
The reason these practices horrify Baptists and usually get rueful shrugs from Orthodox Priests is their different views of the role of the Church in salvation. For the Orthodox, the membership in the right church brings a person to salvation. The hard work of the priest and the church hierarchy is to bring their flock into salvation the flock does not have to do much more than belong and stay members in good standing with the church to make it into heaven.
Imagine for a moment that you are a priest and strongly believe that people need salvation and that salvation is on offer in the Orthodox Church. You head out to a village or small town and start caring for the flock. As you teach standard Orthodox theology you find that many people are surprised by what you are teaching and they start questioning many of their folk’s beliefs. As you try and reassure them that their folk beliefs are wrong they begin to worry about their dead grandparents and other relatives and get upset. The flock is troubled and there is dissension in the flock with many accusing you the Priest of teaching bad or “new doctrine”. You have a big mess on your hands, you are barely paid anything, you depend on donations from the flock who are upset and angry, other Priests around rebuke you for rocking the boat, and in general your life becomes very unpleasant. What would you do?
Well, I think we can forgive a Priest for asking, “Do the people really need to know any of these things?” They are in the right church, it is your job to secure their salvation by blessing a few folk practices you make a lot of people happy and you will give them correct sacraments and really isn’t that the most important thing?
People yearn for the supernatural and the unexplained, they desire meaning in their lives and folk practices, superstitions, legends, and Saints give them something to get them through hard days and for the Priests there really is no harm done since the people are in the right church. They obey their “Fathers” and they get the correct and very powerful sacraments and that is simply enough for salvation. I should say here too that the Priests I knew of or knew personally did not, for the most part, hide their deeper theological truths from their people but they took a very God-focused approach to sharing theology. If God moved someone to really ask questions and wanted to read books the Priest would help them do those things and teach them, because they figured they really wanted to know. They were always careful to leave some wiggle room for the customs and practices of the local people however, no matter how weird. As long as the practice did not detract from the authority of the Priest or the church he served.
There is a movie that gets at this as well. It is called Leviathan. A 2014 film from Russia. In the movie a man is losing his lands to a corrupt official but the innocent man knows a lawyer so he fights back to keep his land. This land stealing has been normal for a while in the region and the corrupt official Vadim is giving some of the land to the Church and using some of his wealth to build up the church in the area. There is Bishop in the movie and he is pretty good. I could not find the scene I wanted on YouTube but when Vadim thinks he is about to be undone by his victim’s lawyer he goes to the Bishop for advice. The scene starts at the 1:11-minute mark in the movie and Vadim confesses he is feeling uneasy about his criminal behavior, he is not sure if he will succeed. The Bishop carefully keeps himself from hearing any details of crimes and instead checks in on the man’s faith. He asks if he is going to the mass and talking with his confessor and then spiritualizes the conflict for him. The Bishop says that the realms of the two men are different, Vadim is in the secular realm and must use his strength to solve his conflicts. Vadim is doing God’s work, yes? Then act like a man and don’t let the Enemy win over him. The Bishop rebukes him for being a child and having doubts and then blesses him and sends Vadim off. Sure enough, the lecture works and Vadim solves all his problems with some carefully applied violence and fear and soon all his enemies have fled, committed suicide or are in jail.
Again this is not what the great moral theology of the Orthodox theology would teach. What is shows how easy the Orthodox fall into the trap separating what happens inside and outside the church. In the Secular world, you do what you must to accomplish your goals and the “greater good” when you are in the world of the church you obey the church authority and trust in them for your salvation.
Again the point here is to not show how the Orthodox Church “really” works I am discussing flaws in the system thate convince people to leave the Church for another denomination or faith.
A Nominal Orthodox confesses her faith in Christ.
So what about the Baptists?
While I have been discussing cracks in the Orthodox practice, it has to be said that the system overall is quite popular. Things like this don’t last if they are not popular and do not appeal to a side of our human nature. Since this post is about conversion, I thought I would line up how Baptist practice, and Protestant more generally, match up against these fault lines.
The first is the practice that matters here is the emphasis on Bible reading. It is often alleged that the Orthodox don’t read the Bible because they are not allowed too. That was not what I experienced working and living with Orthodox for 14 years. There is rarely, if ever, any command not to read the Bible by any Orthodox authority. Instead nearly all Orthodox believe, especially those in Orthodox countries where I have direct experience, the Bible is challenging and confusing. Reading the Bible directly is a holy exercise that requires regular access to a Priest and a lot of time. It is troublesome to read the Bible so it is better to read the readily available and curated books that Priest have put together where you read Bible verses and/or chapters with explanation in one book. Passages that are too troublesome are just left out.
This usually meant that the normal Orthodox member you ran into wasn’t just ignorant of the Bible, most people everywhere are Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox or other notwithstanding, they were shocked to learn what was in the Bible. In other words, Orthodox were often truly ignorant of the Bible but confident they were not. Reading the Bible, especially passages they didn’t know existed, would shock many Orthodox and undermine their trust in the church. I would say that of all the Georgians and others who sat down and read the Bible with me over the course time 80% of them became Baptist. Now, getting them to read the Bible with you for a period of time was very difficult but if they did they were very likely to convert.
This was not because the Bible “disproves” Orthodoxy; it was because they had been told for their whole lives that the Bible was confusing and that the Church would take care of the salvation. Reading the Bible, they did not find it very confusing and the Bible was pretty clear about having faith, yourself, in Christ to be saved. The church hierarchy didn’t seem to factor into this according to the Bible.
The second aspect of the Baptist practice that attracted people away from the Orthodox Church was fusing their normal secular lives with their faith. As a missionary, the hardest lift for me in teaching and preaching was not convincing people that Jesus loved them and they needed a personal faith Christ but that faith in Christ meant their “public” life was to match up with the “church” life. When people realized that Christ could affect their whole life, through a relationship with Him, the rituals of the Orthodox Church would feel empty or even pointless. Doing rituals to get rid of sin as you went pales in comparison to Jesus Christ who forgives all sin, once and for all so that we can love Him and love others more freely. This strikes many Orthodox as a life of greater integrity and fulfillment than one of ritual obedience to the Church. Once you believe that you are in a relationship with Christ and his Holy Spirit dwells within you the idea that Saints of any kind or Holy Water, Blessed Crosses, Holy Candles or any other aid or intercessor is necessary loses their appeal. Instead, converts felt these things distracted from Christ instead of drawing Christ closer to them. If Christ loved them instead of being angry with them, why do you need someone that Christ “really” loved, like a Saint, intercede for you?
This post is more than long enough. I will write a part II that will be up early next week where I will write an “Ode to Orthodoxy” about how the practical aspects of Baptist practice will lead people to the beauty and ancient wonder and wisdom of the Orthodox Church.
Published in Religion & Philosophy
The divine Jesus is also a matter of history. That is the very meaning of Christian theology.
Of course, as I recently said, a miracle by itself does not entail divinity. The miracle taken in conjunction with all the other facts is what provides evidence for divinity.
If your point is that remarkable claims require remarkable evidence, I need only say, as I’ve been saying around here for years, that I agree. It does require a higher standard of evidence. That, too, is a matter of those historical criteria.
Well, of course we should consider all the plausible explanations that fit the evidence.
Whoever said otherwise?
I doubt whether Josephus, Xenophon, or Herodotus did that. Or Isaiah or Jeremiah, who were drawing from David just as Isaiah, Jeremiah, and David were all drawing from the Torah.
When there are earlier sources we naturally use them. I even use earlier sources at Ricochet while talking at Ricochet. Why waste a good resource?
However, that they drew from earlier sources does not mean they were not aiming at truth.
Nor does it mean they would not aim at internal consistency. Maybe your idea is that, for the NT writers, Diverse Sources + Maybe a Few Memories + Their Own Speculations = A Hopeless Jumble You Can’t Make Consistent.
I find that totally implausible, unless you also think they were kind of stupid. It’s not that hard to pay attention to what you’re writing and not contradict yourself, especially if you’re not aiming at truth.
Or perhaps you think they weren’t much interested in avoiding contradictions. That takes us back to Brian’s question: Why wouldn’t they be?
Maybe I’m just not following you.
It’s hard to know what the vision represents. Let’s say a woman who’s husband died a year ago sees her husband at the foot of her bed one night (or at multiple nights). Should we assume that her husband was raised from the dead and then went back into the grave (or to heaven)? Or should we think that the woman’s subconscious was at work, tricking her into seeing her husband because she missed him so much?
If someone says, “If you drink one cup of grape juice everyday, you will never get cancer,” one might ask this person, “How do you know that?” If the person responds, “My grandfather drank a cup of grape juice each day and he lived to be 105,” you can say that this isn’t strong enough evidence.
Now, we could perform a randomized clinical trial where over a period of 20 or so years, one group of people consume one cup of grape juice while the other (control) group does not. Then we could look to see if there is a statistically significant difference in the death rate.
But we don’t have the resources to perform a randomized clinical trial on every hypothesis out there.
Maybe they were aiming at truth and maybe they weren’t aiming at truth.
There are lots of writers who aim for truth and lots of writers who don’t aim for truth.
Saint Augustine (View Comment):
Perhaps they put forth a modest effort to keep things consistent, but didn’t go over their “book” with a fine tooth comb.
Maybe they saw themselves as being more collectors of stories provided to them, with a modest amount of editing, rather than someone starting from scratch, writing a well thought out story from beginning to end.
Let’s take a look at the Death of John the Baptist as an example of how the author of the gospel of Mark and the author of the gospel of Matthew handled the story differently. Not much difference. But a slight difference.
Here’s Mark 6:17-26
And now let’s look at Matthew 14:5-10
It looks like Matthew edited Mark in this story, saying that Herod wanted to put John the Baptist to death whereas Mark says that Herod protected John the Baptist because he was a righteous and holy man.
But Matthew did not change the part about Herod being grieved after putting John the Baptist to death.
So, one could argue that Matthew’s editing of Mark was a bit sloppy on this. Or maybe it was intentional.
Ok. This answers Brian’s question, I think. Maybe they weren’t aiming at truth, or at consistency. And this is because they were just collecting some stories, like . . . well, for a familiar example, kind of like me editing an anthology (cheap on Kindle!) around a theme but not really caring if the different authorial viewpoints are consistent.
Ok, that answers that question.
Now do you have any evidence that they saw themselves as resembling editors of an anthology, or is this just a theory that happens to explain the evidence as you see it?
I was thinking about this a few weeks ago.
Even if not a single Gospel had been written, even if none of Paul’s letters had been written, it does not follow that Jesus didn’t rise from the dead.
It’s possible that someone, someone whom nobody has ever heard of, rose from the dead and is God.
Maybe there’s some dude who lived in China in the year 1000 BC who was God incarnate, died and rose form the dead and then vaporized himself, transforming himself outside time and space, from where he came.
Just because no one witnessed the event doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
So, all this talk about whether the Gospels are contradictory or not contradictory, how many people believe in Jesus, is really beside the point in terms of whether Jesus really is/was God, really did rise from the dead.
Islam is expected to become the world’s largest religious faith by the year 2050. Does that mean Islam is true? Not at all.
Maybe some tiny religious sect in India is “in the truth.” We should not equate popularity with truthfulness or historical accuracy.
Or we could abandon the pseudo-logic that says two things are contradictory just because they’re a bit different, and consider whether/how they might both be true at the same time and even fit together nicely.
This is how I read books.
Let’s step over to Athens for a moment. Sure–there might be different historical sources behind Meno and Republic, and maybe one of them wasn’t even written by Plato, and maybe Book IV of Republic contradicts Book VII.
But why should I give a rat’s hemorrhoid about any of that? These are probably all from Plato, and my first goal is to understand what the great books means; hopefully, if I have time, I’ll figure out later whether they are also correct. Maybe someday, if I have a chance, I’ll look at some fancy theory of different authors.
I notice that Meno, Republic IV, and Republic VII say X, Y, and Z. Maybe there’s a subtle shift in emphasis, but that’s not evidence of a contraction; it’s just an opportunity to get a fuller picture. Now it’s my job, as a reader of books, to put the bigger picture together.
Or step out of this world altogether. Fellowship of the Ring says Boromir did something bad, but Frodo in The Two Towers says some stuff about some good stuff he did. Do I leap to the conclusion of a contradiction and start speculating about different authors or different sources? No, because that’s a bad way of reading.
Similarly, if Matthew and Mark together tell me that Herod respected John and also wanted to kill him, I don’t make the illogical jump to “Ta-da! A contradiction! Thus I refute the Bible!” Instead I ask whether they could both be true, realize that of course they could, and thank G-d for giving me a fuller picture of Herod.
Indeed.
Now why not address the issue at hand?
According to Hank Rhody’s observation on the scholarship, NT scholars often use arguments against NT miracles which rely on the premise that miracles are not possible. You have acknowledged–in # 114 and # 127–that this is a bad premise. So you should reject the arguments that stand or fall with it.
My sense is that it is darn near impossible to get inside the head of the gospel writers, except, perhaps, to examine in detail what they wrote and what their sources were.
And let’s remember that while most NT scholars think Mark was the 1st Gospel written and that Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source, there are NT scholars who dispute “Markan priority” as it is called.
So, some NT scholars can write books claiming that, say, Matthew got these stories from “Q” (a hypothetical source of sayings of Jesus) and so on, this is all way above my knowledge base.
I am not an NT scholar, though I am trying to find the time to read more NT scholarship and am struggling to stay awake for much of it.
Recently I attempted to read the 1st volume of a 2 volume commentary on the Gospel of Mark. It was interesting. But 1,000 pages of commentary on the shortest of the Gospels? Goodness.
I didn’t say they contradicted each other.
I did say that they told the story slightly differently.
HeavyWater – can I call you D2O? – I think you misunderstand miracles.
What if I told you that none of the miracles violated the laws of physics? Heck, if you gave them a technological cause, most people would not bat an eye. What a miracle represents is divine intervention.
The laws of physics do not exclude intervention by an intelligent agent. Take your example of jumping off a building. If someone with a jet pack caught you, or there was a slow deceleration system at the bottom, gravity would still work. God could achieve the same effect without using technology.
However, God or the guy with the jet pack is not required to intervene! Just like you can choose whether or not you reply to this post, God decides whether or not to perform a miracle. The miracles are not a repeatable process since they involve action by a more powerful being than humans.
This is an assertion of Hank Rhody’s. But is there any evidence to back up this assertion that NT scholars often use arguments against miracles based on the premise that miracles are not possible?
I’ve read some NT scholarship (not as much as I would like) and I have not seen anything saying, “But this could not have happened because miracles are not possible.”
I’ve read some of Geza Vermes’ work, lots of Bart Erhman’s work and some of Joel Marcus’ work. Never did I read anything suggesting that “I reached conclusion X because miracles can not happen.”
I don’t think it’s a bad premise to start out with a belief that we live in a naturalistic world where people do not walk on water, do not talk to Satan, there are no talking Donkeys and people do not rise from the dead.
If I were investigating stories told about how some Jewish Rabbi was God, I could do a good scholarly job of investigating the issue even if I do not believe that a flesh and blood human being can be God.
I might be able to debunk the claims of the followers of this Jewish Rabbi or at least cast doubt on them.
Nothing philosophically wrong with taking the view that miracles do not happen.
Yes, I much prefer to say suspension rather than violation.
True, I admit. You only suggested two explanations, sloppiness and intentionality.
If you weren’t thinking of contradictions, why else would you consider the explanation of sloppiness?
Was the suggestion of intentionality meant to allow for the possibility of truth?
I see little point in speculations about things that might conceivably have happened–beyond the same sort of amusement I derive from science fiction.
However, I know very well that my job as a human being is to attend to the known facts. I have an abundance of known facts concerning Jesus of Nazareth. I have a responsibility to deal with facts as such as much as I have the time and the ability. I also have an urgent responsibility as a human being to care about the meaning of life, to which Jesus of Nazareth is alleged to be a major clue.
Do any of those facts depend on the fallacy of appealing to a multitude of people to determine the truth when multitudes lack expertise? Not that I can tell.
Are some facts known by means of many–a near-multitude–of witnesses? Yes. Is that a logical fallacy? Not when they are witnesses.
So no–no evidence. It’s just a plausible alternative.
You seem to think very, very highly of scholars.
Yes, I’ve been over this. It’s fine as a tentative hypothesis, or an inductive conclusion to a lot of observations of the world containing no miracles.
It’s a bad premise to an argument against evidence for some putative miracle.
Why don’t we, for a moment at least, dispense with the terms “miracle” and “supernatural.”
Instead, let’s just say that there are some “events” that if we were told about them, we would not doubt them.
For example, let’s say someone tells me that while walking through the park, they saw a dog. That’s believable to me because I am as sure that dogs exist as I can be of just about anything.
Now let’s say someone tells me that while walking through the park, they saw a ghost. That’s not believable to me because I am not convinced ghosts exist.
Getting back to the 10 story building issue. We tend not to jump off 10 story buildings because, well, we think that if we do we will die.
Sure, maybe if I do jump off a 10 story building, angels or God or some guy with a jet pack will save me. But I’m not convinced that angels or God exists and that guy with the jet pack is never there when you need him.
For me, viewing the world through a naturalistic lens is a way of avoiding mistakes less significant than jumping off a 10 story building. Someone can claim that Mohammed did this or Jesus did that. I don’t believe their claims.
Then your # 114 made a big mistake.
You should have said this in response to # 95.
I do think that NT scholars are worth reading. It’s just that I struggle to find the time to read all that I would like to read.
I figured it was just a case of someone dismissing certain NT scholars as having an anti-supernatural bias.
The bottom line is that words like “miracle” and “supernatural” don’t really tell us much.
We want to know [a] if some event actually happened as opposed to someone claiming it happened and [b] how it happened.
If my cup falls over, did a ghost push it over or did the wind blow it over or did my arm knock it over?
How would I provide evidence that a ghost knocked the cup over?
How would I provide evidence that Mohammed heard God’s word in a cave in the 7th century?
How would I provide evidence that Lazarus rose from the dead as described by the Gospel of John?
So, I perfectly understand why someone might dismiss miracle claims.
We live in a world in which people who are dead stay dead. They do not come back to life.
So, someone says, “2,000 years ago, a man rose from the dead.”
The reasonable response is, “That’s nonsense.”
Then argument goes, “But it says so in this book.”
The reasonable response is, “Words in a book do not overwhelm our knowledge of biology, that people who are dead stay dead.”
Now, the Christian is going even further than making the ridiculous claim that Jesus rose from the dead. The Christian is also saying faith in Jesus provides salvation.
But there is no way of proving this claim.
That is fascinating Bart Erhman is the one I know the best and he says forthrightly that any explanation, no matter how unlikely, as in seeing the Twin of Jesus aend then jumping to the conclusion that he had risen from the dead is more plausible than Jesus being raised from the dead by God. He might not be saying that miracles are impossible but that an account of miracle can only be accept if our imagination is utterly exhausted for an alternative reason. So I guess that he does not exclude the possibility of miracles but he comes as close to that as he is able.
Let me back this up to Matthew 25 and our motivations for not accepting your unique interpretation of it in isolation from all of Scripture. To get to your interpretation we must take the following steps:
Step One: Because of differences and difference in emphasis and other skeptical and critical study of the Bible we now believe that each Gospel was written by several hands and then further edited and shaped so that each Gospel contains several contradictory ideas about everything of importance. Why was it done this way? We don’t know and don’t really need to know but for whatever reason the early church did not think they need any kind of coherent belief system. Now their is not much actual evidence of that, Church never propagated or believed that you could get to heaven by caring for the poor and neither the early or later writers of the New Testament felt a need to address that issue but critical scholarship says that idea is there and Jesus most likely believed.
Step Two: knowing everything in the New Testament is in doubt and the documents are contradictory we ask why is anything in the New Testament important for us then? Answer who knows if Jesus said something it might be true, maybe it it is? Why? We don’t know.
Step Three: We are supposed to think it is important that for the modern church based on the Scripture to over turn common practice, centuries of theology and practice and lived experience to believe that Matthew 25 is important to our faith but the rest of the New Testament is not.
Why in God’s name would anyone ever believe in or act on that? What an incredible price you demand to carry forth a frankly odd interpretation of Matthew 25. Why would anyone any where pay that gigantic price? What would we gain?
The only evidence you give to support your interpretation of Matthew 25 is that we can’t really trust anything in the New Testament. Why do you think that is evidence for your argument?
In a debate with William Lane Craig over whether Jesus rose from the dead, Ehrman explained that the historian is concerned with what most probably happened in the past.
So, while Ehrman does not exclude the possibility of Jesus rising from the dead, he argues that other explanations are more likely.
That’s a reasonable position to take.
I think the best way to explain the development of the New Testament is that is was developed incrementally.
Whoever wrote the Gospel of Mark probably didn’t think, “My gospel will become part of the New Testament.”
A reasonable guess as to what motivated whoever wrote the Gospel of Mark is that he wanted to read a story about Jesus to his social circle, his “church.” He probably didn’t think, “Well, I am going to have to work really hard on making this written work consistent because I don’t want anyone to find any contradictions in it.”
And are there any contradictions within the Gospel of Mark?
So, then, let’s say a decade later someone else wants to read some stories about Jesus to his social circle, his church. He has a copy of the Gospel of Mark, but he also has a copy of a document that has some sayings attributed to Jesus on it. And in addition he has some other material, perhaps stories he has been told about Jesus.
So, he writes it up, using these sources, makes a few changes to what he got from the Gospel of Mark and now there is what we now call the Gospel according to Matthew.
Something similar happens when the Gospel according to Luke is written. This person has a copy of Mark, some written work about the sayings of Jesus and some of other material that neither “Matthew” nor “Mark” had access to. He wants to provides his “take” on Jesus. So, he writes it up.
It’s a gradual process and there is no “master plan” behind it.
The New Testament has 27 books in it. When was the first time, as far as we can tell, when any church leader wrote up a list containing these 27 books and only these 27 books as being “what the church should teach?” In the late 4th century.
Sure. The person who has serious doubts about whether Jesus actually said some of the things attributed to him in the Gospel of John might doubt whether Jesus ever claimed to be God.
That’s one of the things that first got Bart Ehrman to start doubting some of his beliefs. Ehrman went to Moody Bible College and was a believer in the inerrancy of the Bible. Similarly when he went to Wheaton.
But at some point in his studies at Princeton Theological Seminary, he started wondering if everyone in the New Testament was factual/historical.
Ehrman gradually morphed into a “liberal Christian.” He still vaguely believing in Jesus, in some hard to pin down way. But he didn’t necessarily think you could take everything in the NT to the bank.
Years later he dropped his Christian belief altogether because he doubted that God existed due to the abundance of human suffering.
Well, anyone is entitled to believe whatever they want.
There are some Mennonite Christians who interpret Matthew 5:39
as instructing Christians to be pacifists. But most Christians do not interpret the New Testament in this way.
For me (and I’d say for Bart Ehrman), Jesus was just a human being. So, let’s say Jesus really did say what was attributed to him in Matthew 25:31-46 and those words really do represent Jesus’s views on who gets into the kingdom of God and who suffers eternal torment.
I don’t respond the way a Christian who believes in the inerrancy of the NT does to passages in the NT. It’s like reading a saying from some wise person who lived centuries ago. I can take it or leave it.
It all depends on what you actually believe.
If you think that Jesus said all of the words attributed to him in the NT and if you think the entire Bible is “true” in some historical sense, then you respond one way. If you believe that much of the Bible isn’t historical then you respond to it differently.
Whether someone can “trust anything in the New Testament” is a huge topic. Sort of like: Can we trust anything in the Koran or some other holy book?
Some people do and some people don’t.
I think one should approach all holy books, including the New Testament with skepticism. Now, I admit that I was not raised with a Christian upbringing. So, perhaps for that reason skepticism towards the NT comes more naturally to me than it would to someone who has been attending church since they were an infant and has spent their entire life surrounded by people who believe in the NT.