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Loading...Aren’t critical scholars of the NT more or less bound or driven to stop believing? I’ve decided to provide two reposts on the question, since I continually get asked about it. First: my introduction to the issue and the guest poster.
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One of the questions I get asked the most frequently from blog members is how someone can possibly continue to be a believing Christian if they understand the enormous problems presented by the critical study of the New Testament. I always tell them that in fact it’s not only possible – it happens all the time. Sometimes they are incredulous, but it’s not only true, it’s so true that my friends who know everything I know about the Bible and are still believers often find the question / issue completely puzzling. They have trouble understanding why anyone thinks it’s a problem. As we learned from “Cool Hand Luke” (a great movie, btw, with tons of Christ-images), “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”
I have asked my former student and long-time friend Rev. Dr. Judy Siker to write a couple of posts from a personal standpoint, indicating why / how she continues to be a believer and faithful church person even though she is, at the same time, a critical scholar of the Bible.
I first came to know Judy thirty years ago, when she applied for our graduate program in New Testament/Early Christianity at UNC Chapel Hill. She did both an MA and a PhD here, and developed a number of academic interests, including especially the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew in particular) and Jewish-Christian relations in antiquity. Her dissertation dealt with what we can know about the tensions and conflicts between followers of Jesus and the non-Christian Jews in the community behind the Gospel of Matthew.
Judy had a long and distinguished career in teaching, with positions at Meredith College, the American Baptist Seminary of the West, the Graduate Theological Union, San Francisco Theological Seminary (where she was also Vice President of the institution), and Loyola Marymount University. In addition to being a professional academic, she is also an ordained minister. Here is a first post in which she begins to explain how both are possible.
(Feel free to respond! Judy will be happy to answer your questions)
Judy Siker is author of Who is Jesus? What a Difference a Lens Makes.
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…and you still believe?
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Thank you for your story.
Personally I find it helpful to describe my religion similarly to being married. I don’t believe that marriage is perfect, or that my wife is always right, but that’s not why I’m married. I’m married because I love my wife, and I love being married to her. She doesn’t have to literally be perfect to bring me joy. Similarly, I don’t need to believe that Christianity is perfect or that the Bible is always right, in order to love being a Christian. I don’t think everyone needs to be a Christian, just like I don’t think everyone needs to be married, but I will tell them what’s great about it if they ask me. I find this is a useful way to explain my Christianity to my more skeptical friends.
Thank you for this story. I have a similar story of being in church from the time I was born. Sunday morning and evening, Wednesday night, every gospel meeting, Bible class, youth group, VBS, church camp…I was at all and enjoyed all. I never wanted to miss any chance to be at a church function. One difference for me was that it was always with the Church of Christ. Never any other denomination.
When I was young, the message from the pulpit was that we did not need any other book than the Bible. We were not to read any other religious books. If we had questions, we were to ask the leadership and it was implied that their answer was to be accepted. When I was a young adult, we were told we could read approved books written by CofC authors. Not all CofC authors were approved.
As I got older, I realized that there were many authors to be read who had good information. But I was warned that if I read and studied too much, I could lose my faith.
I will continue with another post.
I continued to read and study. I found helpful blogs like Prof. Ehrman’s. As time went on, I found that Judaism and Christianity were similar to most all other religions. Humans trying to make sense of it all by looking to an all knowing and power god of some sort. I do not have an issue with people trying to find answers, but the issue is with the rules and requirements that seem to come with organized religion. Some of these issues have lessened over time but many have not. Most still have “required attendance,” guilt driven offerings, required beliefs of super natural events, exclusion of people with different sexual orientation, exclusion of people with different beliefs, the desire to have bigger and more buildings and the list goes on.
But in addition, I also discovered through study that my church experience that I grew up with and enjoyed very much was all based on a faith system that was based on religions created by humans, not by God or any god. I will not lose the memories of my church life but it is not something I want to hold onto or pass onto my children and grandchildren.
I have asked some questions regarding Isaiah 53 in the Forum. Is there any chance that Mr. Ehrman could take a look? Thank you.
I have set up the forum so blog members can talk among themselves without my input. So have at it there!
My question is whether humans are capable of choosing their beliefs. I do not accept that I can choose what I believe. Rather I consider beliefs to be a snapshot in time of a continual process whereby one weighs and assesses the available information that the individual counts as relevant. A process that is too complex to fully understand.
My best friend who is very smart says he chooses his beliefs, and he chooses to believe in god and chooses to be a believing Christian. I’ll challenge him by asking whether he could choose, if he wanted, to believe the world is flat. He says he doesn’t want to believe the world is flat, I say he couldn’t believe it is flat if his life depended on it, and the debate disintegrates at that point. Yes he could say he believes the world is flat but I remain unconvinced that the actual belief is a choice.
Perhaps my question is for neuroscience or psychology, but I ask the Christian scholar whether someone like me whose mind simply cannot reach the conclusion that god exists or that Jesus was divine, could ever choose to believe and become a Christian?
You make a good point and one which a number of psychologists would agree–in some sense beliefs are not under our control. There are some things that you may not be capable of choosing to believe, but I think that has to do with how you read the evidence. If your view of the “evidence” in a certain situation leads you to “believe” one thing or another then you do have some rather indirect control. I cannot go as far as your friend who says he could believe something if he wanted to. I think you only believe something if for you the evidence sends you there. As to your final question, if your mind “simply cannot reach the conclusion that god exists or Jesus was divine” then you are obviously not lead by any evidence to reach that conclusion. (That does not mean, however, that someone whose mind does allow him/her to reach that conclusion is in error.)
The problem in the US is the absolutist fundamentalism that is so prevalent. I was taught that to surrender even one point of doctrine meant that I would have to throw out the entire thing. In many ways compromise was considered worse than unbelief. But once I got past the fear of questioning there was nothing to hold me back. As predicted it all came tumbling down.
What I miss is being part of a close-knit community. But their price of admission is simply too high. I have come to see that no system of thought is healthy unless it incorporates a method of internal critique. How will I know when I’m wrong?
The absolutist fundamentalism has wreaked havoc on Christianity and left many feeling as you do that it is impossible to be part of such a system. I understand why you miss being part of a close-knit community and I understand why you say the price of admission is too high. Not all communities of faith are like this. There are Christian communities that welcome the questioner and are invitational rather than exclusionary.
Wow! How interesting and well written. Keep going!
Thanks!
My path was similar was similar to your fellow students who “were angry that they had been lied to all their lives.” Not that I felt directly lied to, more like all I had been told and taught just scratched the surface, as if the details regarding contradictions etc. should remain hidden. This made me suspicious of anyone pushing the Christian faith, as if they could no longer be trusted. Lack of trust in anyone professing religious beliefs is what made me lose my faith. I know Bart’s path was different, and I appreciate knowing that your path took you in a different direction compared to me as well.
Thank you for your comments. I am sorry that your experience with folks “pushing the Christian faith” lead you to mistrust anyone professing religious beliefs. I don’t think one’s faith is meant to be pushed and I wish you had had a positive experience with someone who was willing simply to tell you what they thought and why.
Thank you Bart and Judy. I look forward to the next installment.
Dr. Judy Siker, when you say that you “continue to believe” and “live in my faith tradition”, can you clarify what it is that you believe in? For instance, do you believe that the resurrection was an actual event that happened in history?
Thanks!
It would take far more room than I have here to state what exactly I believe in but let me just say that it includes my own experience and sense of a power greater than myself that is a force for good in the world. When we get to specific doctrines and beliefs such as an understanding of the resurrection or an expression of Christology, my beliefs differ from many others who call themselves Christians–and that is ok. I do not think there is only one way of interpreting the information we have. Rather I think it is a constant evaluation of how to live in this world, and my tradition happens to be based on someone I believe was an actual historical figure, Jesus of Nazareth. I believe there are many paths to seeking good.
My father was a World War-II vet, and a battle-hardened atheist. The only theology he ever shared with me, a few weeks before he died, was this: ”What kind of a god would kill his son on a cross?” I had no answer for him, and he didn’t want a visit from the hospital chaplain. I have pondered his question since 1998 during my study of many religious scriptures. With the help of Drs. Bart and AJ Levine, my current view is that Pontius Pilate and the Sanhedrin were responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus, not the Heavenly Father.
Your thoughts?
Hosea 6:6
I require devotional love –not sacrifices, and that you know I’AM –not burnt offerings.
I think your current view is correct. I am sorry that your father was led to believe that God killed God’s son. No need to blame God for our human failures!
Dr. Ehrman, I am also struggling with whether or I can still believe in God. I struggle most with the idea of the 4 Omnis of God and the state of the world around us (for example: the problem of suffering & evil in the world). Is it possible that the problem is not “How can God allow evil”, but rather our definition of what characteristics God must have. Maybe the argument falls apart not because there is no God, but because our definition is wrong & naive. What if God is flawed? What if there is a Creator who is all knowing but not all powerful … or all loving? What if, regardless of our insistence that God must possess all 4 Omnis, what if God is still just the tribal storm god of the Sinai that he was when Moses first encountered him on the mountain? Wasn’t “Yahweh” originally just a minor deity in the Canaanite pantheon (one of the Sons of EL)?
What if *that* understanding of God was correct and the modern understanding is the myth?
Dr. Ehrman I look forward to your answer.
Thank you for your comments. This is Dr. Siker, however, not Dr. Ehrman who is responding. I understand the frustration with the “4 Omnis” as you put it and I think many of us struggle over the state of the world around us. My own understanding of this lies in my belief that God is not a puppeteer pulling all the strings in such a fashion that all is well with the world. That view of God contradicts the understanding of human’s having free will. We humans have much to learn and are far from perfection, so I believe there will long be evil in this world. Yet not everyone is evil and my hope continues to be that love will gain an upper hand one day.
I think that for some, the belief in God, or the Christian belief system or its protrayal of the divine nature of the universe, is founded on the idea that the teachings of Christianity contain mystical truths that go beyond a purely literal interpretation of the scriptures as solely historical-religious texts. This belief might even be a premise for the possibility of continuing faith. Similarly, I think it is possible to believe in love, despite the significant differences in how love is portrayed in Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” and Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables.”
Yes,,,,,it is possible to continue believing for whatever that might means
The author is what I would call a “natural believer”. She always believed, irrespective of what she learned.
Then there are the natural “non-believers”. Irrespective of whether they are taught to believe, they never do. The whole thing seems silly to them and if they are taught to believe as children, they eventually give it up.
Then there are the rest of us – whom I call the “Suggestibles” including me and – from what I know about him – Bart, and lots of people, including the people in the clergy study I conducted with Dan Dennett, who are taught to believe as children, and do for a while, until they start thinking about it and maybe reading about it.
I thought up these categories fairly recently. As far as I know, they have not been tested.