Loading...Bart speaking: I often get asked how someone can be a scholar of the NT, understand all its critical problems, and yet still remain a Christian. That’s a mystery to many people. But it’s not a mystery to biblical scholars. I was looking back through old posts and saw that in the first year of the blog, eight years ago now, I asked my friend Jeff Siker, a well-published NT scholar and long time professor of NT at Loyola Marymount, if he would explain why despite all he knows, he remains a believer and an active member of the church. He has agreed to allow me to republish the two posts he made and is happy to answer questions about them.
Jeff is the author of a number of books, including Jesus, Sin, and Perfection in Early Christianity, Homosexuality in the Church, and Liquid Scripture: The Bible in the Digital Age.
Here is the first of his posts.
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When I first went to Princeton Theological Seminary to begin the Ph.D. program there in New Testament Studies, one of the first individuals I met in the graduate study room was Bart Ehrman. (This was back in 1983.) There were several long tables with chairs in the room, and each graduate student had managed to commandeer an end of one of the tables, marked by various piles of books and coffee cups. Bart had his own stack of books and 3 x 5 notecards as he was busy collating (collecting and comparing) the Gospel citations from the 4th century theologian Didymus the Blind (Bart’s first published book). I remember asking him what it meant for a blind man to use a particular version of the Gospel text. His response was something like, “Good question!” And we’ve been friends ever since! He regularly whipped me in racquetball (and I mean whipped), and we spent many long evenings playing backgammon, smoking a cigar or two, and talking NT and theology, among other things.
At the time he was working part-time pastoring a Baptist church in the Princeton area. His educational pedigree demonstrated a clear fundamentalist-conservative trajectory (Moody Bible Institute, Wheaton College, then Princeton Seminary for his M.Div. and finally his Ph.D. in text criticism with Prof. Bruce Metzger, the most important and prolific text critic of the time and author of The Bible in Translation; and Bart was his prized student). Despite his very conservative background, he was open to all kinds of questions and issues, and he had clearly moved significantly away from his most fundamentalist days that had included the assertion of biblical inerrancy. His understanding of the Bible had developed a critical edge, which often happens to individuals with conservative theological roots.
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Hi Jeff, I’m a Christian too and only 16, so to see this is quite encouraging. When it comes to Jesus Ive found much of the scholarly debate quite nourishing, it confirms his existence, generally agrees that his early followers claimed they saw him, and even ensures a quite early date for a lot of our NT texts. I never came from a fundamentalist background, the idea of treating the scripture more as a record of early tradition of Jesus, through which we can then try to meet the real Jesus through a bit of digging never really threatened me, however the idea he claimed an imminent end worries me a bit.
Also thinking about the ahistorical nature of the OT has troubled me, if prophets like Moses where God “spoke to man” never existed and the origins of Yahweh are obscure (possibly pagan!), then how can we trust that God is “revealed”?
If Jesus bases himself on the Jewish tradition, yet much of that is ahistorical, how can we trust him? Would it be a God incarnating in Jesus and simply taking up the guise of a mythical Yahweh? that to me seems so reductive.
Oneness.
How did we lose the sense of “Oneness”that was given to us, where maybe we all came from, let it slide away, scattered carelessly.
We have it written in our sacred scriptures,,,and so do other traditions too. Why do we make all those different (organizational) forms, humanly organized as rather powerful exclution mechanisms. No wonder many loose an orientation, or are bewildered in narrow human made dogmatic definitions which can stand the test of time or reality, guarded by human forces who inherently are full aware of its completely insufficiency of knowing the all.
As in John,,,, ” On that day you will know that I am in my Father, you are in me, and I am in you.”, is a dimention which could point to a greater dimentions regardless of what form one is trapped within. This alone is a fundamental dimention wich also could point to a belonging, and also a kind of inherent spark or notion of something profoundly much more than our top of the iceberg “ego”.
From such perspective I understand your collegue and your fellow NT scholar.
Wow, it is breathtaking to read an essay from a scholar from Pittsburgh! That is where I am from and live! As you know, Pittsburgh has many beautiful Catholic churches! My favorite is Epiphany Roman Catholic Church, right in downtown! I hope you have been there; it is GORGEOUS inside! God bless!
Ah, Pittsburgh! I don’t know Epiphany Catholic Church, but indeed the Burgh has many beautiful churches! Enjoy!
Excellent start! I continue to hope that someone will tell me what they do when it comes time to solemnly intone, “I believe … “.
I selectively sculpt my way through the Apostles Creed!
Here is what sculpting leaves me with. I am very uncomfortable with the finger-crossing, mumbling, and general level of deception and dissembling during the recitation necessary to survive with my conscience intact.
I believe Jesus Christ suffered under Pontius Pilate and was crucified, dead; I believe in The forgiveness of sins.
I can’t believe that I am alone, and would appreciate hearing how others may have coped. I admit I am a bit “soft” on the Holy Spirit; although I can’t quite say “I believe,” I am open to the possibility that there may be something more to explaining human behavior than Darwinian edge.
But don’t we all “sculpt” (for lack of a better term) our beliefs and convictions in relation to more generic communal statements, whether the Apostles’ Creed or the Declaration of Independence, or the Gospel of Matthew? The history of creeds and confessions is a continuous effort to make sense of a faith in changing times. But I get your discomfort with the finger-crossing and mumbling through many of these things.
Sorry, but you’re evading the question. There is one point in the service where we are called on to publicly state, “I believe … “. It is qualitatively quite unlike the having the bible read to us, or listening to a sermon, or even receiving communion, or singing preposterous yet lovely hymns, or any other part of the service. So, is it okay to just think of it as performance, wherein the words are only pleasant noises, devoid of their linguistic meaning? If so, must we ‘fess up during confirmation (or adult instruction) class, when we are told we should really believe this stuff before we agree to join up? Maybe it was easier for Catholics when it was all in Latin!
Bart insists he knows lot of scholars who still go to church, and I remain puzzled over how they do it.
“So I did not experience the kind of jolt I think Bart did…” I grew up Lutheran but converted to a more fundamentalist group in college. I sometimes wonder, if I had stayed Lutheran would I have experienced my own “jolt” that did not cause, but led to the unraveling of my faith? Kind of ironic, the church I was in encouraged intense study of the Bible, but as I did so, eventually reading the Bible straight through on my own, I came to quite different conclusions than the church expected! I look forward to your next post.
Thanks Jeff for participating in Bart’s blog. I always enjoy a view from a believer’s mind. I can hardly wait for the remainder of your story. You said,” I found I was able to integrate historical understandings with a faith that was not scandalized by contradictions in Scripture (or even the very notion of such contradictions)”. How were you able to maintain the veracity of the Bible, even though, as you honestly admitted, found the Bible to be a very human book, without jeopardising your belief/faith ?
The veracity of the Bible… By viewing the Bible as an expression of what early Christians (in the case of the NT) thought God was up to, I see myself engaged in an ongoing conversation with the earliest Christians and with commentators on the Bible throughout history. Never a dull moment!
I always find it interesting that enlightened (non-fundamentalist) Christians claim to not read the Bible literally until it comes to stories about sightings of a walking, talking (resurrected) corpse. Why believe these stories literally and reject so many others? For all we know, the detailed Resurrection Stories are no more historical than are the stories of Creation, Noah’s Ark, and the Tower of Babel. They were fictional embellishments written for theological/evangelistic purposes. It is entirely possible that the original “sightings” of Jesus were all based on nothing more than visions or sightings of bright lights.
Why would such an intelligent person as yourself maintain a supernatural-based worldview based on such tenuous evidence?
Ah, evidence. I think what I have found compelling is the kind of community I have experienced in the church, based not on the historical reliability of the Bible but on an experience of a transcendent Spirit (which I would call God) animating a community of believers to engage the world with compassionate action, exemplified by the ministry of Jesus. Not all evidence is rational!
Maybe you are a universalist; you believe that one’s belief regarding the afterlife doesn’t matter. Maybe Christianity is more of a social club for you. If so, no harm, no foul. I wish more Christians were like you.
But if not, Muslims, Hindus, and Mormons make the same emotional claims about their gods and their communities. If “experiences” are valid, reliable indicators of universal truths, how can we know which religion is correct if everyone is claiming the same intensity of experiences??
If your belief in Jesus is no different than membership in the Elks Lodge, then your experiences are valid. But if in your worldview, belief in Jesus determines one’s eternal destiny, shouldn’t you have better evidence?
What counts as evidence for validating experiences? Common belief? An “aha” moment? A compelling narrative? A rationale explanation? Some would say that experiences are self-validating, though we are always in the process of re-evaluating the validity of what we think we know and believe based on our experiences. In the Christian tradition there are typically four classic guides: scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. The idea is that they work together to provide guidance. I’ve always been struck that in Galatians 3 Paul appeals to experience in trying to convince the Galatians that they received God’s Spirit by believing in faith, not by doing works of the law. He apparently thought that would convince them, though apparently he was wrong. So for me it really is a combination of those four authorities in varied combinations. Kind of a recombinant set of authorities that is open to change.
“scripture, tradition, reason, and experience”
Claims of universal truths need better evidence than a collection of ancient texts, ancient traditions, and subjective experiences. Reason?? It is not reasonable to believe in brain-dead body resurrections.
Abandon your superstitions, my friend.
“And so I think that one of the key differences in my own experience from Bart’s was that I did not feel betrayed by the church when I encountered historical critical approaches to the Bible.”
Did you feel betrayed by the churches of your youth? I don’t recall you putting it this way.
Who me? (Bart) Yes, I feel like some of the Christian leaders I associated with as teenager and in my early 20s veyr much led me astray, though I doubt if they had any bad intent.
I think I got y’all beat on the conservative upbringing: full blown five alarm Church of Christer here, 2 generations or more deep on both sides. Verbal plenary inspiration was taught from the pulpit as sure as John 3:16 was. It was at Oklahoma St that I first had the door of critical study cracked open, ever so gently I might add. I enrolled in a masters program at Oklahoma Christian University (again church of Christ in orientation) and to my surprise, the off the wall things that looney Baptist at OSU had introduced me to were, in fact, also taught at OCC by my fellow church of Christ-ites. Whew! What a shocker, but I at least had heard of jedp etc.
That was 25 years ago. My faith is still evolving. I look forward to your next posts. I am most recently more intrigued by the OT henotheistic ideas. Does a conservative need to buy into a council of gods? Was the mysterious and ominous Azazel waiting out Int the wilderness for the scapegoat to join him? Really? Did God really crush the heads of Rahab way back yonder? What do you think?
That’s a good point: “There’s nothing wrong with having a third grade understanding of the Bible, … as long as you’re in the third grade!”
Can I just say I really appreciate both posts, and particularly those from and informed and reflective individual still in the faith. I grew up a fundamentalist and gradually transitioned in later life to what I call a’ sympathetic agnostic’ thanks in no small part to Bart. In listening to these posts and in debates elsewhere with believers I have often felt that it has been an opportunity to debate with my former self, and to complete the process of working things out and sorting out the strangenesses.
I like the notion of debating with one’s former self. Aren’t we always engaged in that process?!
Good to know another fine Pittsburgh theologian. My previous favorite was Mr. Rogers.
I’m still quite a fan of Mr. Rogers!