As I’ve been thinking about Marcion over the past couple of days, it has occurred to me that in some ways he is still alive and well among us. I have known Christians over the years who in fact have views in many ways close to what Marcion taught. These people would, of course, deny they have anything like the touch of the heretic about them. But at the end of the day, their views are not so different. Maybe they are not as extreme as him, but they do seem to be dwelling on the fringes of his camp.
First, I have known a lot of Christians who think that the Old Testament has a God of wrath and condemnation and the New Testament has a God of love and mercy. Students say this to me with some regularity. The God of the Old Testament gives difficult laws that no one can possibly follow (how, exactly, are you supposed to keep from “coveting” anything??). And then he condemns people for not keeping them. But no one *can* keep them. So that doesn’t seem fair. The Old Testament God is a God of wrath.
Jesus, on the other hand, proclaims a message of forgiveness, not condemnation. The God of Jesus is the God of love. He loves the world, he loves everyone in it, he loves the sinner. He has mercy on the sinner. He forgives the sinner. He welcomes the sinner. This is a different portrayal of God. The New Testament God is a God of love.
If pressed, of course, these people would say that, literally speaking …
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The word “fulfill” has many connotations in English. What does that word mean in Greek?
Kind of like English: to fill something full (for example to complete it; or to fill it out with meaning)
Heresies have a tendency to live on under other names. You can’t kill an idea. Pelagianism lives on as well, and regularly comes out of the mouths of people who never even heard of Pelagius (and how many people who believe in predestination have ever read Calvin?). A religion is just a group of people pretending to believe the same things in the same way. In reality, this never happens. We all have our own interpretations, and a heresy is just an interpretation formally condemned for being a bit too far out of line–for threatening the illusion of unanimity. Otherwise, you have endless schisms. But under a big tent, there can be a whole lot of different ideas. It’s a fine balance.
Many Christians do look askance at the OT and think the laws there are not for them, but have you considered how many have held on for dear life to the Tithing concept and would not let it go? The seventh-day Sabbath was inscribed in the tables of stone from Sinai, but they have thrown that away. But the tithe given for the Levites who had no inheritance they will not give up. Many have gotten rich holding on to that idea.
I would say some Christians use dispensationalism to explain the difference between God in the Old Testament and God in the New Testament. He just doesn’t act that way anymore because we are in the dispensation of Grace. It’s a way of avoiding saying God has changed.
It’s almost as if the Bible has no clear through line, as if it were merely cobbled together over several hundred years by various men from disparate times, disparate cultures and disparate beliefs. Strange, huh?
I notice that Tertullian mocks the Bithynian Marcion for coming from the “barbarous” Black Sea culture — an area that the Greeks traditionally associated with “savages” such the Scythians and Sarmatians. How much of Marcion’s views can be attributed to his culture?
Also, do you think clergy are responsible for their parishioners being so confused on christological matters, or is it simply the fact that the Trinity is itself such an inscrutable mess that one would expect the average Christian to be ignorant of such esoteric christological conundrums?
1. TErtullian is just slandering him of course. On the other hand, all his views were developed within a particular socio-historical context….
2. Yes, clergy do not as a rule do a good job educating their parishioners.
Prof Ehrman
I’ve been reading a book about minority religions in the Middle East and reference was made to a 10th century work by an Arab scholar named Ibn al-Nadim in which he describes groups in his day who were considered so-called “people of the book”, i.e., non-pagans and non-Muslims who were granted a measure of tolerance and protection under Islamic law.
Ibn al-Nadim apparently lists the Marcionites as such a group. This would mean that a group that can be identified as Marcionite existed as late as the 10th century. Does that sound right? Also al-Nadim seems not to consider them Christians since he makes a clear distinction between the groups in his writings. I’m not a specialist but al-Nadim seems well regarded by scholars and historians of Islam.
John the Baptist and the last Gnostics: The history of the Mandaeans (2016) by Andrew Phillip Smith
The Fihrist of al-Nadīm: A Tenth-Century Survey of Islamic Culture (1970) translated into English by Bayard Dodge
I don’t know. Marcionites, of course, considered themselves (the true) Christians.
I agree, he’s one of the most popular heretics ever. His ideas make me wonder if he was influenced by some form of Gnosticism.
Is the God of the Hebrew scriptures the same as the God of New Testament? I’ve known a lot of Christians who want to reject the first in favor of the second, but here’s another problem. Your insight in pointing out that God is very complex and difficult to resolve in either testament is very good.
Is Jesus human or divine? I grew up in a progressive church (UCC). The focus on preaching I remember was on Jesus’ ethical character. The sermons I hear didn’t try to debunk healing and miracle stories but didn’t dwell on the miraculous either. The point, I was told, is what is being taught by the miracle rather than the miracle itself. It really threw me when I got older and had schoolmates who told me that their church taught that the importance of those stories was the supernatural power of the miracle that “proved” Jesus’ divinity.
It seems to me that those who insisted on this understanding Jesus as God with infinite powers went hand in hand with something else. These Christians often told me that following Jesus as a moral exemplar was useless and even immoral. Believing in Jesus as the divine savior was the only important thing. The quote I heard from several that sticks in my mind was, “there is no greater sin than claiming Jesus was just a great moral teacher.” I even remember raising Jesus’ teachings on forgiveness, care for the poor, etc. and having those dismissed as “works righteousness.” It seemed very strange to me.
He is usually thought to have had views quite different from those of the various Gnostics.
> Possibly they think God changed?
It’s been a decade since I read it, but IIRC Jack Miles argues just that in his “God: A Biogaphy.” Pivoting on the Book of Job, Yahweh realizes that he’s been acting very badly and subsequently mellows out.
If we track with the idea that the bible is a book written by humans, then perhaps it might make more sense to say that the biblical writers varying perspectives on God changed over time, which could explain why we see large differences in emphases on many points between the OT and NT.
Your sense that many Christians hold views not so different from those of Marcion is an interesting insight. It resonates with my own observations. At one point you say:
“It’s never been clear to me how they reconcile these two claims, that it’s the same God but it’s a different God.”
I suggest that most Christians are not deep thinkers, but are rationalizers (which most people are most of the time).Their reasoning is not clear to you because it’s not clear to them. It’s an easy way, encouraged by preachers and culture, for Christians to be comfortable with their allegiance to the Bible. They simply do not see the Bible’s conflictions as conflictions, much less realize that they are rationalizing, not analyzing.
“If pressed, of course, these people would say that, literally speaking, it is the same God. Unlike Marcion they tend not to think there are actually two different gods. Still, they absolutely think that God is different in the Old Testament than in the New Testament. It’s never been clear to me how they reconcile these two claims, that it’s the same God but it’s a different God.”
I haven’t read the rest of the post yet. But I’ve never seen a problem with this. I’ve always thought it meant that God was portrayed differently in the Old Testament because the ancient Jews completely misunderstood who He was. And the type of worship they gave Him was what they mistakenly thought He wanted. So in effect, it was as if they were worshipping a different God from the one later worshipped (and written about) by Christians.
For religious and other Jews, of course, that’s an expression of the religious ego of supersessionist Christians. They feel it is offensive to tell the people whose ancestors wrote the Tanakh that they didn’t really understand what they were writing or the God they worshiped. Like telling Jews (and the world) that what Genesis 2-3 really tells is the story of man’s Fall from Grace which explains why we need salvation. In fact, that’s neither what it says nor what its authors meant (since we can only tell what they meant by what they wrote).
The personal view I’ve taken is that the wide ranging character of God has to do with the many different authors of scripture. The writers of scripture came to the task with their own perspectives, their own preconceptions, and their own personalities. My assumption is that they were all writing about the same reality (God) but couldn’t help filtering that through their own perspectives. As a result, different accounts are very different and even contradictory.
Trying to understand God seems to me a little like trying to understand some historical phenomenon that different writers have dealt with differently. For example, we know about the New England puritans/separatists but who were they. I’ve seen books that describe them as an early democracy, high minded and virtuous. Others claim they were intolerant religious fanatics who hated anything different or anything pleasurable. More recent works suggest that they were very religious, but more like ordinary English people than they were different.
We know that the puritans/separatists really existed, but to try to understand who they were, we have to be disciplined and try to get behind the different accounts. IMO the problem with God is similar.
Having read a little further, your pointing out that God is sometimes portrayed as benign in the Old Testament and wrathful in the New: I suspect most people aren’t familiar enough with the Bible to understand that. I wasn’t!
Maybe most people. But often, when I’ve made the following points to people who know the Christian Bible, they get it. In addition to portrayals of a jealous and wrathful God in the Old Testament, there are teachings about justice, love of neighbor, taking in the stranger as “we” were once strangers in a strange land, forgiveness, and justice–sheltering the homeless, caring for the widow, and feeding the poor. In the New Testament, in addition to the teaching of love and forgiveness, it teaches that, at the end of days, everyone who does not believe that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior will be judged by God (& sent to Hell?). Oops, what happened to all that love and forgiveness? Worse yet, they’ll be judged not necessarily for being a bad person but for not believing something. And it’ll come down on most people since most aren’t Christian. I don’t find the God of the NT any more acceptable than the God of the OT.
Excuse my ignorance, Bart, but what does it mean when Christians say that “Jesus fulfilled the law”? Is this statement actually in the NT? How do Xtians reason that the OT laws no longer apply because “Jesus fulfilled the law”.
Thanks and great blog!
Yes, see, for example, Matthew 5:17-20. It means two things for Matthew in particular 1. Jesus accomplished what the prophets said he would and 2. Jesus provided a fuller meaning to events foreshadowed in the Old Testament
To piggyback on what Dr. Ehrman said, yeah, by saying Jesus “fulfilled the Law” they seem to be saying, ironically, that Jesus fulfilled the Prophets. As we can see from the Talmud, the Jews at that time were still debating as to whether the Torah speaks about the Resurrection of the Dead and the World-to-come (which is how the Jews referred to the Eschaton), but that shows that there were Jews who believed that it isn’t just the Prophets who predicted the Eschaton, but the Torah does as well. Jesus and his ilk may have been some of those Jews who did believe the Torah also predicted the Eschaton.
Think how much simpler Bible study would be today if Marcion had won out with Luke and some of Paul’s letters, with the Old Testament jettisoned completely. Picture a modern Christian asking another “have you read the Bible?” The replies would much more likely be “Yes, cover to cover.” … Which Pope excommunicated Marcion, anyway?
I know. But I probably wouldn’t have a full time teaching job then!
From my studies of heresy through out the middle ages, it seems that Marcion’s views, along with heavy doses of dualism, were a common thread whenever Christians wandered outside of orthodoxy like the Cathars and Bogomils. It is fascinating how durable these ideas are: they are so “logical” that different people living in different eras and cultures spontaneously adopt them for their own without apparent knowledge of their Marcionite predecessors.
Wringer
How to reconcile the God described in the Old Testament and the God described by Jesus?
Marion’s idea is that they are 2 different Gods; that solves the problem, but seems to me it opens up even larger contradictions.
The atheist says a God accurately described by both Old Testemant and Jesus cant possibly be reconciled; and so they claim they have proved neither God exists.
The agnostic says it is close to impossible to reconcile these descriptions of God so neither one likely exists.
Both agnostic and atheist argument (at least argument above) rests the premise that both descriptions are true descriptions of same God.
All atheist/agnostic believe the Bible is full of contradictions/inconstancies/etc cause it was written and edited and re-editted by biased and fallible humans, so why do they base their arguments (or the arguments above) on a premise that the Bible is an accurate description of God?
Prof. Ehrman
Another reconciliation is mentioned in blog above is that ‘God changed’. But that idea is not developed.
Do you have any comments/thoughts on Process Theology?
I”ve never found the process view very compelling. I’ve sometimes wondered if it’s a matter of personal predilection….
Could you briefly explain why this view is compelling to u?
It has always seemed to be to be, at heart, an attempt to salvage the idea that there could be a god despite the fact that so much evidence to speak against it, a theological way of having your cake and eating it too.
Sorry but if there’s no consistent description of a god in a holy book, then we’re left with simultaneous personal revelation. And that we know hasn’t happened. If we can’t get it from the book, are we getting anything at all?
Many have proposed that what we have are many different perspectives of a very complex entity that defies human ability to capsulize or simplify it.
Some Christians believe God’s OT wrath was necessary to protect the royal line and bring forth Jesus. Jesus is the new covenant which replaces the old covenant,
It’s the greatest story ever told.
So Christian’s believe God had to wipe out thousands innocent women and children to bring us Jesus who will teach the world about love and peace. How can people believe that Almighty God has to kill to bring love and peace?
Except that it didn’t replace the Old Covenant. Judaism went right on living and arguably is doing very well, thank you. The New Covenant works for people who believe humankind is fallen and in need of salvation. Jews don’t believe humans are fallen or that Genesis 2-3 says that.
Another consideration is that not only was the Torah for the Jews but Jews did not believe anyone had to be Jewish to be reconciled to God. I like that aspect of both the Torah and Judaism. On the other side, although there is much teaching in the New Testament about love and forgiveness, one DOES need to be a Christian (according to maybe 15-20 NT verses and in the conservative view)–more precisely, one needs to believe in J.C. as Lord and Savior in order to be saved. And, at the judgment, not just bad people will be judged harshly by God but even good people who have allegedly sinned by not believing in Christ as Savior. To me, that’s utterly lacking in love and compassion.
SBrundy
Thanks for reiterating and reminding us that Torah/Tanakh include much about God’s love and mercy.
I think Marcion was wrong to think the two testaments are about two different gods.
Christians talk a lot about salvation (and explicitly or implicitly the alternative of damnation), and you say that is not necessary in Judaism. Dr Ehrman has done great service in explaining Jesus ministry is more about the coming of God’s Kingdom, a concept from the Old Testament, than about an individual’s personal salvation.
I would like to see what Christians commonly think of ‘salvation’ be changed to what Jesus taught of the coming of God’s Kingdom. What I mean is salvation is identically equal to the coming of God’s Kingdom.
So what does Gen 22:18 mean, all nations will be blessed through Abraham’s lineage ?
that you or I, personally, will avoid eternal damnation through one of Abraham’s descendants?
I think not (though many Christians thinks so) , or
that that the Kingdom of God will make it’s appearance through one of Abraham’s descendants?
I think so, but what that means I am sure at all . .
or something else?
If Marcion believed that Jesus had come to Earth like an angel with only the appearance of an adult human body, how did he explain the tradition of James the brother of Jesus, Mary the mother of Jesus, etc.? Wouldn’t somebody stand up and say “my great, great grandfather was the cousin of Jesus, and they used to play together as children…”?
They existed, but only seemed to be blood relatives (I would assume)
Maybe marcion’s bible didn’t have references to his mother or brother etc? If he only had Luke without the birth part, and some of Paul, and he edited it anyway, that might not be an issue?
Yup! Couldn’t agree more. A few months back I was actually wondering about the similarities between Marcion and some of today’s Christians. Regarding the first view, namely that the God of OT is different from the God of NT, Jehovah’s Witnesses use Galatians 3.24 to reconcile that issue. They say that Yahweh applied those strict rules to the Israelites to keep them “sacred,” or clean. According to them, Jesus, being the Son of God, had to come from a nation that was “perfect” in a sense―hence Deuteronomy 18.13. They had strict rules to make them “perfect” as Jesus, who was supposed to come from their nation, was perfect. I’m not sure whether that makes any sense to you, but that’s one way some Christians deal with this issue.
Good evening, Bart. I have a good question for you reader mailbag. As I am reading about Marcion being declared a heretic I wonder, who had the authority to do this?. You have repeatedly mentioned that all we know about a lot of early Christians was what their enemies like Tertullian wrote about them. What made Tertullian so special? As a matter of fact, what made any of these early heresy hunters holier than thou? The witnesses to Jesus or his first disciples were long dead, the first writings or books were few and far in between, Christian theology was still in its infancy, and yet we have these so called church fathers pronouncing judgement on people who were floundering around in the religious fog. Where did they get this power to do this?
Ah good one. I’ll add it to the mailbag.
I, too, have had a hard time nailing down believers on the 100% human part of Jesus. When Christians claim that He was without sin I questioned if that included lusting, anger and the other ugly side of normal human emotions. The usual answer is that he did not. My response is that these emotions are what MAKE us human so in what way was he human? It seems that having flesh and love is all they can come up with. Do you know in what sense Christians consider him human beyond having flesh in order to bleed and die and to love us? I really try to understand other people’s beliefs but this concept is just beyond me.
I think different Christians mean different things by it. Some think he wsa human in every way. Others … not so much.
I am reminded of a song that goes “He could have called ten thousand angels, but he died alone for you and me.” He really was God, or he could not have called those angels! At least in the view of many Christians.
Chuck
Dr. Ehrman, what are the best resources on Q?
Maybe start with Robert Stein’s book on the Synpoptic Problem?
I certainly second your experience here; namely that the views of many modern Christians would almost certainly be considered “technically heresy” as viewed by a tradition theologian.
With regard to Marcion: While I don’t recall meeting anyone who actually claimed that there are two gods, I’ve certainly had several people tell me that, if necessary, that we (I.e. Christians) “could certainly get along just fine without the Old Testament”.
But this is perhaps more striking with regard to Arianism. For the longest time I had difficulty understanding what the term meant, until one day it dawned on me: This is what they were teaching us in Sunday School all those years ago.
In short the message there was: You’ve got God, and then you’ve got Jesus who is his son. In terms of their relationship, this is basically no different than my Dad’s relationship to me. Why should this be confusing? There”s nothing tricky here, right?
I think the bottom line here is that for most folks, the subtler points of theology –or perhaps more accurately christology– have little effect on how they shape their views on such things.
Ironically, God evolves….wonderful topic..
It may seem arbitrary, but picking and choosing is essential for any believer. The scriptures, as they have been assembled by the church fathers, contain so many different points of view and are so firmly rooted in the times in which they were composed that no believer can actually ‘swallow’ them whole without some judicious filtering, albeit, subconsciously, perhaps.
The other argument that some christians make, is that the OT depicts God incorrectly, because they had limited knowledge, but Jesus came to show mankind what God was really like. i.e. it was just simply a matter of ignorance.
Bingo! I agree with your concise and orderly analysis. I would wonder, however, if another view might be seeing the Old Testament as containing the antiquated views of an ancient people who knew no science etc. and these views are no longer accurate. These views were revised and made more accurate by Jesus. Then, there is the Book of Revelation. Oops! Throw that book out as well.
And of course Jesus’ many threats of eternal hell-fire, and extreme asceticism. No one today would see his commands as the kind of good common sense we are ked to believe he taught if we actually read him without our theological blinkers.
The Jesus of the NT was an extremist by most modern standards. Modern Christianity has washed him and cleaned him up.
Yes he taught love and forgiveness… Under threat of eternal torture and torment in hell-fire for those who didn’t comply. He taught singleness was better than marriage, poverty better than riches. So that we could live for God and be humble and help the poor. Because God opposes the rich and proud and marriage and kids get in the way because the kingdom is literally at hand.
In mark 9:42-47 Jesus condemns sin in the most graphic and harsh terms.
Isn’t this a direct opposite of the loving compassionate Jesus quoted and other scriptures?
Why isn’t this the new covenant?
How do you reconcile the judgemental Jesus with the loving Jesus?
My sense is that Jesus thought that one should love and obey God at all costs, and that this is what he is tlaking about. (Note he is not condemning others; he is telling people they should do their utmost to revere God)
That’s a helpful interpretation and consistent with many other scriptures and teachings.
Does The pacifist, loving , non judgemental Jesus seems to be inconsistent with the apocalypticist Jesus?
I don’t think so! I lay out the arguments in my book Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet.
It’s always fun….to pretend you came from “outer space” and ….. read the Bible, or the ancient texts of all kinds. (I mean don’t say, OK tonight I’m an agnostic, or tonight I’m party line Evangelistic, or even tonight I’m going over to the Hindu temple and and offer prasadam to Ram, then read Matthew when I get home….) We used to do that with archeology….forget it was “Troy”….and just dig….what is under level VII? It might be a total surprise…..we all project so much our own prejudices. When I first heard the term “human being,” I thought it was “human bean” until I learned how to read….what a revelation that was…being not bean? Wow.
I just think the early Christians hardly had a party line and they had more fun with it all. They certainly expected to be Jews during those first years, yes? Matthew has got Jesus saying all kinds of Jewish (really Hebrew) remarks like the Sermon on the Mount — no Jewish heresy in Matthew….these are all Hebrew stories, saying and with Hebrew meaning. Let us not forget Yeshua was probably very Jewish and even a Rabbi in my opinion, and even Joseph the same, a Carpenter and a Son of a Carpenter…wise men of their generations…Yohan the Baptizer…more of the same…they were the guys that cared, but they weren’t creating a new religion at the moment they lived…Paul was a roman citizen, an approved of Jew, who studied in the Temple with Gamiliel….maybe he was getting set up to be the next High Priest.
Even Luther, he probably didn’t want to be a heretic, he just wanted reform back in the Middle Ages.
Read Hosea if want to get a great picture of the Loving Lord, the God Mercy. The Egyptians followed Moshe out of Egypt because of the plagues probably and the eruption of the volcanoe in the Med Sea, but also because he was the Lord of the God of Mercy, not the “One” God yet, but the God of Mercy and Forgiveness. How about Yom Kippur this fall….isn’t that the celebration of Mercy, where the goat gets sent out into the desert for all our sins? O I love that there is nothing like forgiveness and forgetting the sins of the past….cheers..
Yes, “we all project so much.” So maybe we should be careful about projecting images like the earliest Christians having fun with it all. And it might be misleading to say the early Christians “expected to be Jews” if they already were Jews. Soon, most were gentile. That some figures in the New Testament called Jesus “rabbi” does not mean that he was so called in his time much less that he indeed was a rabbi. And I doubt he and the Baptist were rabbis. Serious questions have been raised about the claim that Paul studied with Gamaliel (see Maccoby, The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity). That he was getting “set up to be the next High Priest,” is a huge projection.
And I believe that is just the tip of the iceberg. Calvinists love to accuse “Arminianists” of being “Semi-Pelagianists”. What they fail or choose to ignore is that “Semi-Pelagianism” is the ancient proto-orthodox Christian view. Synergism: Man and God working in union through the power of the Holy Spirit.
It was Augustine, a man who had been a Gnostic for years who brought into the orthodox Church Manichean determinism, in spite of the fact that he seemed to fight against Gnosticism after his conversion.
It is far truer to say that Calvinists are semi-determinists and that so-called Arminianists are holding on to truer form of Christianity. At least as they view it.
As a christian I struggled with this question of the “apparent” cruelty of Old Testament God. I am sure many here would share my struggles. I think the more ancient a society you belong to, the more easier to have such a conception of God. The more later in time and more thoughtful a person gets it becomes harder to reconcile the idea of a Merciful God with the apparent lack of justice and order in the world.
At some point in my life, I started digging into the Jewish religion so as to better understand Christianity and Christ. I came across a particular Jewish prayer “Adon Olam” , which basically proclaims the Lord as a King and relates to him as a subject to a monarch. As a person who is born in a democratic society with no idea of how living under a monarchy would have meant, I had to stretch my imagination to understand that. Supposing a man had a beautiful wife and lived in a monarchy and the King happened to watch the beauty of that man’s wife and wished to have that woman for himself, there would not be much of a choice. It is unpleasant, but the monarch would have his way. On the contrary if that man and woman lived in a democratic society with rule of law like USA and the President coveted the woman there is not much the President can do. Even if the President ordered the woman in the white-house, there are many things you can do. You can call the police, go to a court etc. So we get so used to the idea of justice and right and wrong and we often forget that sometimes the Universe works “as though” it is controlled by a monarch, and try to apply that principle where it does not belong. But having that sense that the universe is under a soverign always helps you to accept what happens to you , of things that are beyond your control. For eg. you could be walking through the street and a drunken driver could hit you. Or you could get cancer. Or you could win the euro million. All of these are events we do not control. One “approximation” would be to think that all these are willed by “An absolute monarch of the Universe”. Having that acceptance helps you to come to grips with tragedies in life and move ahead. There is no appeal to God . “Why did I get cancer?” . It just does not help. You got it, so you have to deal with it. That is the way the universe works. There is no reason. You can put God on trial. But that will not change the way things work in this Universe. It will continue to work “as though” it is run by an “Absolute Monarch” . So one has to change the idea that “God is absolute Good” . I think God is beyond good and evil. He is just outside its realm. Good and bad is just a human conception.
So I am not sure if there is a trend for Christians to more and more tend to a marcionite view that the Old Testament God is wrathful and hence not worthy of following. The Old Testament God is a better approximation to the reality. Christ is God in the same way the part is to whole.
Christians (and Jews, and Muslims, etc.) cherry pick their scriptures?
Say it ain’t so!
I can only recall reading this once and it was a long time ago, but someone said that loving God was more like loyalty, or obedience, or submission (eg, if you love me you will keep my commandments) than it was like emotional attachment or affection. That makes sense to me. It seems difficult to love (in the latter sense) an authority figure who is giving commands but very possible to be loyal to such a figure or to a leader.
Of course “love” is a very elastic word and could mean a wide range of things in the various parts of the Bible.
My question is whether, in the Bible, loyalty is a prominent meaning of love when the latter is directed toward God.
Yes, I suppose it is.
in your opinion, do you think that the historical jesus thought that the “dogs” and “swines” who were not jewish were capable of faith (jewish)?
in the gospel of matthew and mark, jairus came to jesus to request cure for his daughter
the non-jewish woman also came to jesus for a miracle.
if she came with intention of cure for her daughter, then she came with faith that the miracle worker will help her out, but the miracle worker says that he was sent only for the jews
and that it is not right for him to cast children’s bread to her ill daughter who he thinks is a dog
(in marks version, she (her daughter) has to suffer till jesus finishes with the children)
it does not seem to me that he is “testing” her faith, but his behaviour seems like he wanted to cause her to snap so then he could tell his disciples
“see, how these gentile dogs are ? ”
do you agree that it does not seem like jesus is testing her faith either in mark or matthew?
i just can’t see it
Yes, I do.
There’s no doubt that Christians, reformed Jews and different sects of Islam cherry pick which parts of their holy books are to be believed and obeyed. Sam Harris said it best: It’s faint praise for these sacred books, which are supposed to be the inerrant word of God, that parts of them can be safely ignored these days by the whims of 21st century believers.
I doubt there are many true dualist or polytheist Christians who think there can be, or ever has been more than one real God. What I sense from most of the Christian types who draw distinction between the Gods of the OT and Jesus is that they believe the Jews never really understood God, but that Jesus (and they) do. As foreign as Marcion’s position may seem, I have to say he at least is not libelling the Jews for misrepresenting their God.
Also, many Christians seem to think the Jews feel morally superior because of their keeping of the Law. Everything I have read from Jewish commentators indicates the mitzvot are intended for Jews only, because God has some reason for wanting them to be different, not that he wants the whole world to become Jewish. Could you possibly write on Christian misunderstandings of Judaism in the NT and other writings of antiquity?
Yup, I can add it to the list. (But what I would say here is that Judaism was by no stretch of the imagination monolithic at the time)
It was quite the revelation when, after leaving the mainstream Methodist Church of my youth (1954-64), I read Church history and discovered that many theological questions that were mentioned only as “open to interpretation, believe what you want” by my ministers had been matters for schism and sometimes bloodshed in the past. I had had no idea I was being raised in a hell-storm of heresy.
Dr Ehrman, forgive me if I’m repeating the idea from your own posts, but doesn’t Marcion also give a better reason for the atonement? The God of Love sends his own son in ransom to the Old Testament god. Makes more sense than a god sending himself to die to pay a ransom to himself.
I’m afraid we don’t really know for *certain* what his doctrine was. But yes, what we can reconstruct does make better sense to some people.
So I guess I am an Agnostic Marcionite Christian who affirms Womanist theology?
I think if Christians believe that Jesus is also the God of the Old Testament, they would have no choice but to support Abortion:
Hosea 13:16 (NIV)
The people of Samaria must bear their guilt, because they have rebelled against their God. They will fall by the sword; their little ones will be dashed to the ground, their pregnant women ripped open.
Bart man LOL ROFL! Ever since you started with your emphasis on Marcion and Doceticism, this is just how I felt, except as usual, expressed poignantly. Well put. One of your best posts. Btw imo, your best work was on Jesus the Divine Man — i.e. the adoptionistic reading in Luke.