One of the emails I get *all* the time is from authors who have written a book, or hope to write a book, who want to know how they can get a publisher to take a look at it.   The short answer: it ain’t easy.  Often the inquiry comes from someone who wants to publish a book for scholars to convince them to take a different view on a matter of scholarly importance.  How does a someone get a publisher to publish a book like that? People don't like to hear this, but if you don't already have scholarly credentials an academic publisher will almost certainly (or at least extremely rarely) even consider your manuscript.  And having the credentials, for a first-time author, almost always means having done advanced graduate level education in the field. I know a lot of authors who think that it’s not fair that they can’t get their books published “just because I don’t have a PhD.”   It get that -- it must be hugely frustrating.  But the problem is that [...]

Some of you have probably had this same experience.  Now that I'm 70, I'm thinking about my past a lot more than ... in the past.  The other day I was thinking about my life in high school soon after I had become a born-again Christian (an incredibly ignorant born-again Christian).  One incident quickly came to mind. Before I became a gung-ho Christian, my first serious girlfriend was Linda, whom I met when we were starting our sophomore year in high school.  She was funny, personable, attractive, intelligent, and Jewish.  I’m not sure I had ever known a Jewish person before her. Now I don’t recall that we ever talked about religion, and looking back  I suppose it’s not particularly surprising.  She and her family  certainly weren’t observant Jews and my uninformed sense is that they were completely secular.  I don’t know if they went to synagogue or kept any of the holidays, but I kind-a doubt it.  In any event, at that point in my life religion wasn’t really my main concern [...]

Isn’t atheism an extreme position to take?  If you (or, well, I) give up believe in the Christian God we were (I was) raised on, why give up on the idea of any god entirely? I’m on a trip giving lectures to a group of folks who, well, want to see Norway (!) but also want to discuss issues closely related to what we do on the Blog – questions about the New Testament, the historical Jesus, early Christianity, related topics in religion, and questions about religion in general.  It’s a great group with people of a wide range of backgrounds and lots of interesting stories. Already we have discussed lots of interesting things, and one of my fellow travelers has pushed me on why I became an atheist.  They agree that there are real problems with believing in an all-loving and all-powerful God who wants humans to thrive, be happy, be content with life, and who is certainly able to make that happen for everyone if he chooses (even if there does [...]

I'm with a group of travelers just now who are interested in critical approaches to the Bible (not views that are criticizing per se, but views that approach the Bible using historical methods -- "Biblical Criticism").  One of them - as usually happens - has asked me about the very popular writings of John Shelby Spong, who was an unusual figure in numerous ways, most famously because he was both highly skeptical about the reliability of the New Testament AND a long-time bishop in the Episcopal church.  How does that work? Well, work it did.  He had a deservedly huge following. Years ago I posted comments on a book he wrote near the end of his career on the Gospel of John, which takes an even more skeptical view of its reliability than I do.  But I realized I should first set the context for those of you who don't know who he was by re-posting my "Memorium" for him written soon after he died.  So here is that first, then my summary/discussion of his [...]

In my previous post I gave a brief overview of the doctrine of predestination, especially as developed by the great 16th century Protestant Reformer John Calvin and his followers.  I ended the post by indicating – surely this is a surprise for many people – that one of the most interesting and formative understandings of modern capitalism is that its has it can be traced back in its origins to Protestant views of predestination.  How does that work exactly? The key text is Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, tr. Talcott Parsons (NY: Scribner, 1958; German original, 1920).  Weber (= VEY-ber) was an important German intellectual often credited as being the founder of modern Sociology as an academic discipline. He begins his book with an intriguing question about modern economic systems that, till then, had never posed: why [in his time, the early 20th century] are there more capitalist ventures, capitalists, and trained capitalist laborers in Protestant countries than in Catholic ones?  And in countries of mixed populations, why are there [...]

Some think that, in contrast to miracles & martyrdom, the fear of perpetual torment in hell may be what drove the early growth of Christianity. After all, who WOULDN'T want to avoid eternal fiery torture? Here’s what I said about that in my book Triumph of Christianity (Simon & Schuster) ****************************** I’ve indicated that fire and brimstone preaching won many converts in early Christianity.  What about the idea that the stalwart faith of Christian martyrs, the willingness to “die for the truth” had a big effect on ancient people as well?  As it turns out, those two were closely related. The horrors of hell may have been the argument for why people should convert, but it was the miracles that made the argument persuasive.  God had shown, and continues to show, what he could do to counteract the ravages of pain, misery, and suffering.  Anyone who refused to side with him now would pay a price later.   Or as one group of Christian martyrs is said to have proclaimed to the pagan hordes [...]

Miracles converted millions of people to the Christian faith in the ancient world.  What about the fear of hell? Here’s how I talk about it in my book Triumph of Christianity (Simon & Schuster) ****************************** One of the reasons stories of miracles proved so effective in making converts is that Christians combined them with the claim that God’s manifestation of power in the present foreshadowed what he would do in the future.  The present life may have been filled with pain and suffering: people were starving; they were afflicted with blindness, loss of hearing, paralysis, the ravages of disease, or abject poverty; they were attacked by hordes of evil demons.  Life could be, and for many it was, a wretched existence, a cesspool of misery.  But God’s miracle workers cured these ills.  They could multiply the supplies of food, cure the body’s deficiencies, heal any disease, and overpower the demons. Moreover, all that was merely a prelude to what was to come.  After this life humans could enter into a world of sheer [...]

Miracles seem to be everywhere in the early Christian literature, and it is striking how insistent all these ancient sources are it was precisely the wonder-working abilities of the Christians in the name of Christ and the Christian God that convinced potential converts to leave the religious traditions that nearly everyone around them had and had had for time immemorial to join this bizarre new faith in only one God who would provide salvation only to those who believed in the death and resurrection of Jesus. But that's the consistent testimony, and to cap it off I turn to Augustine, the greatest theologian in the history of Christianity, famous still today, incredibly learned, devout, and sincere, and not one who was prone to deception.  Augustine in fact wrote two treatises about lying, arguing that in NO circumstances, WHATSOEVER, was it EVER right to lie.  Not EVER. He too reports that Christians did miracles and more than that, he claims explicitly that he had seen a whole lot of them.  He gives some details. Here's what [...]