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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
There is no scientific consensus on the multiverse theory. I don’t see why we should conclude that God exists if the multiverse theory is unproven.
But even if I were to concede that there is a God, this, by itself, doesn’t really tell us much.
There is a difference between the claim:
[1] God exists and created all matter.
[2] God exists, created all matter and will only let you into heaven if you put your faith in Jesus.
What if God created the universe and then disappeared, never to exist again? So, instead of “God exists” it would be “God once existed.”
Now, we could wonder why God would create all matter and then go pooof! But if this were true, we would never know why.
Similarly, if God came to earth in China in the year 1000 BC and told people they must play rock, paper, scissors 15 times a day to get into heaven and then died without any manuscripts recording his life surviving, we are all likely to miss out on heaven.
Sound implausible? Sure. But so does a talking donkey, walking on water and so on.
Yes, of course. I focus on the job, the family, and sometimes original Warcraft, now cheaply available at GOG.com.
I still try to move some money to the mutual.
You appear to be under the influence of a false dichotomy fallacy: You think a person cannot focus on higher goals than wealth while still being fiscally responsible. Or you presume, for no apparent reason, that Jesus operates under that fallacy.
Well, I won’t pretend to have a thorough grasp of all the details. But when you say there are none, one example is a sufficient refutation (although I could probably locate more than one).
In the healing of the paralytic (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) he claims to have the authority to forgive sins, which belongs only to G-d (to which the narrative draws our attention quite emphatically).
Speaking of scholars and their reasoning, what’s the reasoning here? It appears to be something like this:
The premises support the conclusion well enough. The second premise is false, but there’s more. The first premise is doubtful at best.
We could make the same claims about Jesus as heir to David, as prophet, as sacrifice for sin, as fully human, and as fulfilling this, that, and the other OT prophecy. All of these–and more–are crucial to Christian orthodoxy. We don’t, and shouldn’t, expect each witness to give equal emphasis to every detail.
I suspect that this insistence that heavy emphasis be placed on Jesus’ divinity comes from a peculiarly modern conception of theology: that theology is mainly about divinity and the happy afterlife.
That is a misunderstanding of ancient Judaism and, accordingly, of the New Testament and of Christianity along with it. The terms of ancient Jewish theology emphasize the afterlife little; they emphasize kingship, Messiahship, covenant, Temple, and land just as much as divinity.
If there just one thing we could really expect a Jewish witness to the Messiah to really emphasize while writing a euangelion/good news/Gospel about it, it probably would not be the Messiah’s claim to divinity. It would probably be his interpretation of the Torah, and his take on whether Jews get to keep the land and how this connects to G-d fulfilling his covenant promises.
This last point is where we find the real apocalypticism of the New Testament, and this is one thing that confirms the New Testament as an authentic work of ancient Jewish theology.
If we read it looking for theology on our own terms–Is it up-front about divinity? How does it describe divinity? What does it say about the afterlife?–we are probably going to misunderstand it. We may even concoct ill-informed critiques based on its not being written in the genre we expect. Our job is to read it for the genre it is written in.
10/…
This all leads you to this statement
HeavyWater (View Comment):
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.
As if this tells us something about the Canon and the use of the New Testament in the early church. Heck maybe the book were even finished being written until the fourth centuries!
@saintaugustine already mentioned him but here is an article that you should really read.
Though The Question of Canon by Kruegar would really help you balance good old Bart….a little.
Which takes us to this where you say why your interpretation of Matthew 25 is important.
HeavyWater (View Comment):
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.
HeavyWater (View Comment):
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.
So if we lose our faith it is important that we know that Jesus offered several contradictory ways into heaven? Why? The only possible reason what Jesus said about salvation has any importance is if it has a chance of being true.
HeavyWater (View Comment):
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.
In the face of your radical skepticism on what grounds do you call Jesus wise? What proof do we have that he was wise? Or is it just the lazy fabulists that wrote the Gospels said wise things that are curious for us but of no material importance?
I respond to the writings of the New Testament as if they are internally consistent and the author(s) had a point in writing them and trying to undertand them is important. 10/…
So, you are suggesting that the author of the Gospel of Mark didn’t like his own Gospel? That he wrote it up and said, “This stinks.” But before he could rewrite it, it spread like wildfire?
In any case, Matthew 25:31-46 is not in Mark or Luke or John.
So, maybe one could argue that Matthew 25:31-46 inaccurately expressed what Jesus “really” said.
That’s not what Bart Ehrman argues. He argues that certain verses in John, where Jesus makes his boldest claims for divinity, do not accurately reflect what Jesus really said.
So, you think that some one looked at the Gospel of Mark and said, “This stinks. Let’s rewrite it.”
Maybe that’s what Matthew and Luke, in some sense tried to do. Maybe that’s why sometimes Matthew and Luke copy Mark word for word (or almost word for word) and other times change the story up.
It depends on who’s doing the copying and editing and what their views on salvation are.
You think that someone should have or could have deleted Matthew 25:31-46 from Matthew? Do we have any old manuscripts of Matthew with Matthew 25:31-46 deleted? If so, would we think Matthew 25:31-46 was added or deleted?
If someone were to read one of the Gospels, this reader might have a few options available.
[1] Copy the Gospel word for word.
[2] Make a minor tweak to it.
[3] Add a bunch of versus and modify some stories. (This is what Matthew and Luke seem to have done to their copy of Mark. They added the virgin birth. They added the Sermon on the Mount (or Sermon on the Plain).
You might want to double check this. I don’t buy it.
This is exhausting. I still have some comment drafts to polish off, and there’s sure to be more before bedtime tonight!
I wonder if this thread is gonna keep going next week. In a week I’ll be flying. Lots of travel: three continents, at least five different family homes. I’ll have to quit or slow down dramatically.
If you don’t buy it, then you should double-check it. What’s it to me if you don’t buy it? We need only read; it’s about as plain as the Ring of Power being evil in Tolkien, or justice being good in Plato’s Republic.
11/11
HeavyWater (View Comment):
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.
Not really both types of people can look at the text and discuss what it means in context unless something demands that the text in question needs to be taken out of context. Both types of people can agree on the same meaning of the text and agree on the most likely interpretation with no trouble at all. This can be done using historical interpretation, what did the people closer to the text think it was saying in time, what the rules of interpretation of the original language, and compare several translations of skilled scholar if the discussion must be in a language other than the original. And as with any document the whole document can be gone over for clues to the meaning of any specific part of the document.
Really the only difference is, what they do with the meaning in the lives. Someone that believes it is truth will act one way one that thought it was an interesting thought puzzle will react another way. The meaning of the text is not dependent on the significance that place in it.
Okay. So, let’s say that Jesus really did say, “I and the father are one” and “Before Abraham was, I am” and “If you have seen me, you have seen the father.”
Matthew, Mark and Luke didn’t place these statements of Jesus into their Gospels.
We have a couple of options here.
[1] Matthew, Mark and Luke decided, intentionally, to not include these statements of Jesus.
[2] Jesus didn’t make these statements, but the author of the Gospel of John (one of them anyway) thought that Jesus probably did say something like this.
[3] There are other options perhaps.
This sort of goes back to C.S. Lewis’s apologetics. He argues that Jesus was either Liar, Lunatic or Lord.
Liar: Jesus claimed to be God. But he knew he wasn’t God.
Lunatic: Jesus claimed to be God. He thought he was. But he wasn’t.
Lord: Jesus was God.
But as many scholars have pointed out, there is another option.
Legend: Jesus never said he was God. But later followers put those words on his lips.
I demand posts good sir! What a fine topic…
That is your claim not mine. As I quoted you extensively.
I think none of those things because your interpretation is clearly wrong, I think Matthew 25 is in there because Jesus likely said all those things thought I understand that writers of Matthew may have condensed his remarks and moved them them from one location to another as was common. I am sure they had the right meaning of the words of Jesus. You made the claim that the single book of Matthew offered contradictory views of salvation. I am trying to puzzle out why you would think that statement plausible.
Again you said they were lazy fabulists that didn’t take time to look through their work for consistency and were unaware that people would copy their work and spread it around. I quoted you in the relevant posts.
Plausible only if the writers of Luke and Matthew did not see themselves as writing independent accounts and thought they were only rewriting Mark and so basically the synoptic Gospels are just all Mark with some made up stuff thrown in. I don’t think that is how anyone treated them at the time however.
D2O,
Thank you for proving my point. If Jesus appeared in front of you proclaiming the gospel on national TV, arranged the constellations to spell out John 3:16 in koine greek, and told you secrets you had never spoken, you would refuse a theological answer.
There is no point in my continuing this discussion.
For that matter, it’s even plainer than “Before Abraham was, I am.”
Both narratives demonstract the importance of Jesus’ claims by the accusation of blasphemy that was the response. But only the paralytic narrative explicitly tells us that they responded thus because his claim amounted to a claim to divinity.
Yes, and so what? It looks to me like you are thinking that this is a super-duper-important thing for Jesus to say, and that every such thing must be recorded by every legitimate witness.
This is precisely the presumption I just refuted, and you ignore my refutation entirely.
Of course that is a theoretical possibility, and not a bad working hypothesis to start off with. This is, once again, why we have to consider the historical evidence and the criteria for reliable history.
Yes, it’s a mystery.
No one should say it’s a miracle if we don’t know. (I don’t; I don’t know anything about pancreatic cancer, and you didn’t mention what treatments this guy undergoes.)
Our fourth kid was diagnosed, pre-birth, as having a hole in his heart. He was born with a healthy heart, which apparently happens sometimes. My wife’s friend annoyed me by saying it was a miracle. It was an improbable but well-precedented medical event. It was very likely not a miracle, though it was providential and grounds for thanking G-d.
No. What causes confusion is people using the word “miracle” improperly for unusual but natural events.
No. The whole point of saying that a miracle occurred (if one is not speaking loosely of hockey games and improbable but natural medical events) is that we do know the regular physical laws that have been suspended. You yourself pointed out that we know these laws in # 205, and I in # 145.
Yes, which is why we have epistemology, logic, evidence, and–above all in this matter–criteria for good historical records.
Yes, we all dismiss many miracle-claims. The point is to examine the quality and quantity of the evidence for them.
For putative miracles from ancient history, you evaluate the evidence according to the standards of good evidence for ancient historical events.
Absent some very good historical evidence, yes.
Yes, as I said in # 145.
Do you think orthodox Christians disagree? To the contrary, my dear Sir, this is precisely our point!
No. That is not a reasonable response. That is a fallacy. It is circular reasoning.
Our knowledge of how things naturally work can only be evidence against such a claim if the natural way things work is the only way things work. That this is the case is precisely the conclusion served by your “reasonable response.”
The truly reasonable response is simply to point out that this is a remarkable claim and to ask for some remarkable evidence.
Yes, and as I have been saying on Ricochet for four years now, I think that does make a difference. But I’m too much of a pragmatist (I like William James!) to not think that this serves to lower rather than to raise the standard for good evidence.
Whose religious belief is this supposed to parallel? Not mine–nor Brian’s, SkipSul’s, Paul’s, John’s, Peter’s, Aquinas’, Lewis’, or any other orthodox Christian who has the foggiest idea what he’s talking about. The whole point of the Gospel is that there is a resurrection event which is a physical fact and which, for the original witnesses, was as easy to verify as, say, a guy in a garage.
And as easy to falsify as a corpse in a garage–or in a tomb.
These days, verification and falsification are a bit more difficult, since this is now a matter of history. Accordingly, the standard of evidence is those criteria for reliable historical records.
As I see it, reading Matthew 25:31-46 in isolation is just one way of approaching this text.
As I mentioned in a previous comment, one could read these verses and interpret them in the context of the entire book of Matthew or the entire New Testament or the entire Bible. I don’t think any of these methods of interpreting Matthew 25:31-46 are correct or incorrect. I would tend to think one could and perhaps should do all 3.
It is sort of like reading the Gospels.
One could just read Matthew from beginning to end, then read Mark and then read Luke and then John.
Or one could read a single story in Mark (often thought of as the 1st Gospel written) and then read the same story in Matthew and Luke (and possibly John) and see how each author told the story.
Both ways of reading the Gospels are acceptable in my opinion.
I am not claiming this. I just don’t understand why we would assume that someone can’t write a compilation of stories about Jesus, many of them passed around via oral tradition, put them together with some literary and editorial management.
Is it possible that the author of the Gospel of Mark was not influenced by any sources other than his own ideas? I suppose it is possible. But many NT scholars believe that Mark was the recipient of oral tradition and he assembled it into a “book.”
Perhaps they did think that some people would copy it. But it seems doubtful that they thought, “Hey, this could get into the New Testament.”
I should emphasize again the document NT scholars call “Q.” The Q source was supposedly used by both Matthew and Luke. We don’t have an actual Q manuscript. But scholars think that it existed at one time. But eventually the manuscripts were lost to history.
So, as for sources many NT scholars think, with respect to the synoptic gospels of the following sources:
[] Mark
[] Q [Used by Matthew and Luke]
[] M [Used by Matthew only; Matthew 25:31-46 is an example of this because it appears nowhere else in the Gospels.
[] L [Used by Luke only]
One possibility is that Luke and Matthew wrote their entire gospel on their own, without influence from other sources. But in the case of Luke, he says at the beginning that this is not the case.
Many NT scholars believe that both Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source because many of the stories are told word for word (or almost word for work) the same as in Mark (and in other situations stories are told with modifications).
Take this example here:
Mark 10:17-19a
Luke 18:18-20a
Matthew 19:16-17
In each of these versions of the story, the question is about eternal life. The answer is keep the commandments.
But in Mark and Luke, the man calls Jesus “Good Teacher,” while in Matthew the man calls Jesus “Teacher” and the word good modifies the word deed, not Teacher.” It’s a slight but interesting difference.
Also, the response to the question is slightly different. In Mark and Luke, the response is “Why do you call me good?” In Matthew it is “Why do you ask me what is good?”
So, in Mark and Luke, the question pertains to Jesus’s being good. In Matthew the question pertains to deeds that are good. Not much difference. But a small difference.
But one can not prove, rather than merely assert salvation by faith in Jesus because:
[1] We have no evidence that heaven or hell actually exist. These “locations” could have simply been an invention of imaginative human beings.
[2] Even if heaven and hell exist, we don’t have a way asking people currently in heaven, “How many of you, when you were alive on earth, put your faith in Jesus?” “How many were Buddhists who rejected Jesus?” “Jewish?” “Muslim?”
So, we don’t know if there is some correlation between [a] faith in Jesus while alive on earth and [b] actually getting into heaven when one dies.
So, we are simply left with assertions by human beings who have no more knowledge about this topic than anyone else.
But what if the story of the tomb was just a story but had no factual basis? What if Jesus’s dead body was thrown into a mass grave and gradually decomposed? And what if months later people started talking about Jesus rising from the dead?
At this point, there is no way to identify Jesus’s dead body. Bingo, people can use the absence of Jesus’s body to claim that Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven.
Again, if you think the NT contains nearly 100 percent accurate accounts, it seems like a slam dunk that Jesus did rise from the dead.
But if you don’t approach the NT with any expectation of factual accuracy, then you read about “the empty tomb” and you aren’t impressed because we don’t know if the story is true or false.