Loading...Here’s a post I made six years ago, when just starting to think about what I would do in my book How Jesus Became God, where I recount a rather emotional experience of starting to doubt my faith.
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When I attended Moody Bible Institute in the mid 1970s, every student was required, every semester, to do some kind of Christian ministry work. Like all of my fellow students I was completely untrained and unqualified to do the things I did, but I think Moody believed in on-the-job training. And so every student had to have one semester where, for maybe 2-3 hours one afternoon a week, they would engage in “door-to-door evangelism.” That involved being transported to some neighborhood in Chicago, knocking on doors, trying to strike up a conversation, get into the homes, and convert people. A fundamentalist version of the Mormon missionary thing, also carried out two-by-two.
One semester I was a late-night counselor on the Moody Christian radio station. People would call up with questions about the Bible or with problems in their lives, and I would, well, give them all the answers. I was all of 18. One semester I was a chaplain one afternoon a week at Cook County Hospital. Completely out of my depth with that one.
When I was a senior (it was a three year degree program), my roommate and I decided…
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What a bonanza today – Saturday when you do not post. Still, some of us are always checking, it’s that good!
I dont disagree that there are problems in the bible. But have you never felt the existence of God outside the bible.
How would you know if you did feel that? What does god feel like? and how would you determine that some feeling you have is in fact god? This is the problem that we have. We cannot verify causal links because the proposed cause is supernatural and by definition beyond investigation. This is where faith comes in, and faith is not a reliable pathway to truth.
I had similar experiences when I left fundamentalism and tried “liberal” Christianity for a few months. It seemed like selective cherry picking of verses they (liberals) liked, with no better reason to believe those verses than any other. Ultimately I left the whole system. It’s a shame there is not much out in the secular world to replace the sense of community and fellowship one finds in church. I still miss it many years later.
I have found the closest spiritual community in Twelve-Step and other support groups. Perhaps it is the shared experience of loss (in a variety of meanings) and the sense of replacement through belonging. I wish parishes had that kind of ambience.
The implicit assumption is that if Jesus didn’t actually say it, then maybe it isn’t true. There are two billion people and six billion books all saying Jesus rose from the dead, and the story hasn’t changed in 2000 years. You might dispute that fact as improbable, but then you must also admit that Jesus and his apostles are the most improbable historical figures ever.
How many of the two billion people and six billion books are from verified eye witnesses? Should we subtract the billions of non-christians that say otherwise or only count one side? There are many ancient stories that are improbablee and about improbable people. Christians tend to ignore those for some reason. It appears most improbable the claims of Christians about a kind and loving God who wants to save people from what God himself is going to do to them. Apparently he doesn’t have the power to change the rules on his own, well at least not without a human sacrifice or something. People are supposed to believe in poorly and questionable stories including translation, from 2000 years ago. The standards used also validate conflicting religions. Wouldn’t a caring, kind and loving God as described do something for a reliable message to people today?
The number of people making a claim is irrelevant to the question of whether the claims are true. Just because something is well attested, and i doubt that your numbers are anywhere close to accurate, has nothing to do with its historical accuracy. All we have are claims. That’s all the New Testament is, claims being made by later followers of Jesus about what he did and said. All we can say for sure is that this is what people were saying after Jesus died. We cannot prove the claims are true. All we can do is assign a relative probability based on historical criteria, but proving history is simply not something historians can accomplish.
Oak Lawn! Not far from where I was born. One of the good things about my Christian experience was the nice people I knew, but one of the bad things, looking back, is that religion made them not as nice as they could have been. I mean, how can you fully relate to people that you think are reprobates because of their beliefs or lifestyle and you know they’re going to hell unless you can change their way of thought? You can’t just be a friend and care for them – you have to SAVE them! I have a hard time now building friendships because in my past each person was a project, not a friend.
What happened to Pastor Goranson? Did you or do you ever hear from him?
He died many years ago. A deeply loving and much loved man!
So presumably you were a “strict Calvinist” at this point… did you ever struggle with that theology and the idea that God had predestined people to hell? Part of my struggle after losing faith involved worrying I had never been one of the ‘elect’ – did you struggle with similar fears?!
Yeah, I think most thinking Calvinists struggle with it on some levels. But if it’s God’s plan, it must be good….
“The problem with Pastor Goranson was that he was not a strict Calvinist, and I didn’t trust anyone who didn’t subscribe to predestination.”
This raises a question that I don’t think you’ve addressed before on the blog. I ran a quick search for “predestination” and also “election” and didn’t see anything along this line of thought. As an evangelical you were a Calvinist of some variety and must have felt that the New Testament had a fairly clear presentation of these ideas. While you can’t address the whole range of passages that could apply to this topic, how has your view of some of these passages changed over time as you’ve progressed as a historian, as well as shifted away from your old faith? To be more specific, as a historian, are Paul’s references to predestination in places like Romans 8:28-30, broadly speaking, “Calvinistic” or “Augustinian” in some sense? I’m not asking if he believed in a 16th century protestant theological doctrine or 5th century theology; rather, is there a similar notion of determinism at work in his thinking? It almost seems at times that Paul embraced a kind of paradox between free will and predestination.
I guess you’re right, I haven’t dealt with it. But I don’t think Paul at all had views that could be classified as Calvinist, Augustinian, or anything else based on much later theological and philosophical assumptions that he, as a good first century Jewish apocalypticist, simply didn’t share. The key is to see what *he* means in these kinds of passages, without importing later theological categories into them. Hard to do!
I know. It’s hard. When I started doubting Jesus’ divinity (which if I’m honest, was never as central to my worldview as it was for you), and told my father that I still believed in what Jesus said, but that he clearly didn’t think of himself as God, he was saddened that I’d ‘lost my faith.’
I guess, to me, that’s never been what faith was about.
So it was less of an adjustment. I was ready for it, and it was much less of a transition (your writing helped, but I was already most of the way there before I starting reading you).
If anything, Christianity became more important to me afterwards, because I’d been drifting a bit, and I realized there was all this important stuff there I’d neglected, ideas I’d never really understood, because the very idea of Jesus’ divinity was obscuring them.
We come at things from different directions. But as the priest in Rossellini’s “Rome: Open City” says, comforting a comrade in the resistance who is an atheist–“I believe that those who fight for justice and truth walk in the path of God and the paths of God are infinite.”
THAT’s faith.
When I could no longer believe in God, I never told my parents that. It would have made them feel bad (to them, devotion to God was the most important thing in life), and (I feared) they might have felt a little distant from me. I wish I could have talked with them about it without hurting them.
If Jesus thinks new thoughts even about God’s purposes and his brain has been working for 2000 years aren’t we all agnostics? I enjoy the openness of possibilities
I’ve heard mythicists claim that the entire Testimonium Flavianum is a later interpolation. Is there a specific reason you reject this, or is there just not enough evidence to claim it is?
I think they bear the burden of proof, and they haven’t borne it well enough. I also think it doesn’t matter a *bit* for deciding if Jesus existed or not. (It’d be like saying if a particular modern historian doesn’t mention Billy Graham than he probably didn’t exist….)
Do you still retain good friendship with any fundamentalist friend/ mentor/ mentee/ convert from your Christian days?
A couple of friends. But we’re not close any more. We move in completely different circles.
As always, your very best blogs, by far, it’s not even a close call, are the ones where you mix your personal journey with your scholarship.
I read this post some years ago and it still moves me. Lots of what you say resonates with my own experience. Looking back and cringing slightly at the responsibility I had as a Christian student leader, the fond memories of fun times at a really great church, and feeling guilty for how my loss of faith affected others.
Thank you for this post. It helps. I had something of a similar experience which motivated me to change directions with my education and advocation.
Dr. Ehrman,
This post has me thinking of the many evangelical scholars who devote their life to apologetics. I am fans of several of these scholars and some are people you have known for a long time (Craig Evans, Dan Wallace, Mike Licona). I appreciate their passion and scholarship because it shows a different side and view of scholarship. Do you think that a critical look at the evidence can really ever lead someone to faith in Jesus as a savior without preconceived biases or loyalty? I know many people come to faith through “experiencing” Jesus then they become scholars. But has anyone really became a believer because they were truly convinced by the evidence? One may legitimately look at evidence presented at trial and think “oh, they are innocent” and someone else say “oh, guilty as can be”. Is that really possible with Jesus in your opinion? Have you ever known anyone in that boat?
Thanks, Jay
No, I think the answer is absolutely not. Logic/reasoning in itself will never ever do it.
I can really sympathize with this story. We lost our daughter Katie, our only child 5 years ago to cancer at age 25. My wife while not religious, holds a strong belief in the basic Jesus theology of resurrection and heaven. After our devastating loss I am careful to never discuss theology with her. She is well aware that I am a Bart Ehrman fan as your books are all over our house. She feels my agnosticism will keep me from reuniting with Katie as well as her in the afterlife and is deeply saddened by it. I’ve never understood why she is so upset with me when she knew Katie was agnostic and did not buy into any religion years before my stepping away from Christianity. It does pain one to see someone they love saddened over the welfare of the soul.
I am so sorry to hear about your loss. It must be truly awful. Many happy thoughts are speeding your way. My view is that if there is a heaven, God is good enough to grant it to all his children, not just to those who happen to accept certain theological views (that most of the many billions of humans who have ever lived never held)
Sorry for your loss, sympathies to you and your wife.
Do you think when the writers of the new testament used the word Lord in reference to Jesus they meant it in the same sense as how it was used in the septuagint, and that therefore they believed the Lord was God?
Lord is used lots of ways in the Septuagint, not simply in reference to God. It is used of human masters, for example, or as a term of respect. Context determines what it means in any given usage.
Yes but there’s a sense in both the old and new Testaments in which there is only on *true* Lord, who is God.
Isn’t the “Lord” in say Mark 13 who “cuts short the end of days” this one true Lord and isn’t Jesus this lord?
For Christians, yes, Jesus is certainly ‘Lord” in a divine sense. But not every use of “Lord” in the Bible means that. Look at Psalm 110:1 “The Lord said to my Lord….” God isn’t talking to himself. Yahweh (The Lord) is talking to the king (my Lord).
But isnt the christian interpretation whats important here? Mark say may not have been aware of the different interpretations of “lord” in psalm 110 or possibly thought that they shouldnt be distinguished
I’d say that it’s important to know Mark’s view. And not assume it is Paul’s. Or John’s. Or Tertullian’s. Or Origen’s. Or Athanasius’s. Or Augustine’s. Etc. Etc. They all are differently nuanced, and often flat out *different*.
Dr. Ehrman,
When one walks away from one’s faith, as I had and you have, one realizes that fate does not care what religion one has. Many born-again Christians speak of reaching a low and finding hope through Jesus. When one has the income to “paper over” fate’s inconveniences (as I did and do and as I believe you do), and when one’s DNA is good enough that one is not sent down the path of disease or gambling or drugs or alcohol it is easier to keep from sinking to such lows (as I have not and I believe you have not); then one can continue without faith relatively reasonably in spite of fate’s inconveniences.
Many people, however, reach the point of hopelessness and giving them hope may be the least expensive and most important thing one can give them. Hope is the only thing most pastors have to give someone who comes to them for help. And all pastors who truly care must have asked why their God is so miserly with His blessings and so cruel to those who love to do His will.
I believe the pastor’s tears came because you struck to close to his doubts, for how a person can be a pastor all their lives with only today’s understanding of Jesus and the God of Abraham and also keep their faith is beyond me.
But the pastor should have answered you as I will answer you, “ Bart, it doesn’t matter if Jesus said it. It only matters that it is saying what is true.” I believe it is saying what is true. For the book of John seems to have been written to provide the understanding that was missing in the first three Gospels and Revelation is also attributed to John. For example, the words “born again” are only found in John and Peter. But one must connect the dots.
Even though I had lost my faith (I have it again), during that time I still tried to live by Jesus teachings concerning the treatment of my fellow man because I never had trouble believing the moral truth of those teachings. Therefore my questions (if they are not too personal) are: Do you ever just read the Bible for the pleasure of reading those moral teachings again? And: What would you say keeps you on the “straight and narrow” concerning your desire to do acts of goodness for your fellow man?
Thank you for your blog.
Dennis Keister
There are many theologians who believe Jesus was a man ,Dale Tuggy and Daniel Kirk just to name two , and for fun read Dale Allison. My second point is that Calvinists love the book of Romans but as Douglas A Campbell has shown Romans was read aloud and many things in it he was quoting an opponent so it is a dialogue …one of the many reasons to throw double predestination out. And last I am agnostic about afterlife but theologians always mean the short term when they talk about resurrection and such. I read an article “Why you really don’t want to live forever ” from the Huffington Post and Immortality by Stephen Cave particularly the end on do we want immortality really and lost a lot of the dread of death. Also a chapter on afterlife in “Bitten by A Camel” by Kevin Dobson. I hope it helps
In light of your recent discussion at Carol Woods retirement community in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, I found this blog to be very interesting.
Last week, at Carol Woods, you discussed your recent book “The Triumph of Christianity” and offered your opinion that the reasons why pagans converted to Christianity had to do with “miracles”. Or more specifically that they believed that stories regarding “miracles” told to them by Christians convinced them of the fundamental truth of the central primitive Christian teaching regarding Jesus, his relationship to God and the necessity for accepting his death and Resurrection as the way to avoid punishment for their sins in an afterlife.
I found your reasons not persuasive. The blog does not permit me to give you the many reasons I think so.
Suffice it to say, I think you have underestimated the real power of the Christian community and its impact on the life of people who participated in the community. Yes the Christians met in secret. But they lived the rest of their lives with the other people in their community. And what they experienced in the Christian community most certainly had a profound and positive impact, at least for some of them, on how they related to other people outside of the community. This must have been the case unless you wish to maintain that the experience in secret of a community of love and mutual regard and support had nothing at all to do with how Christians behaved toward other people in their daily lives.
This is why this blog is so interesting. You have given us a moving example from your own life of the power of loving behavior. Pastor Goranson was not all that interested in theology and he did not appear to answer some very difficult questions you had about Christian beliefs. You were not and are not moved by his ideas regarding Christian faith. You were moved and apparently remained moved by his example of Christian love.
What is true for you was most certainly true for pagans 2000 years ago.
Cliffschilke
Jesus said he spoke the words that a God gave him to speak & did what God commanded him to do. He qualifies statements like “I and the Father are one” (being one with God) by clarifying that God is greater than he is. He did say that God dwelled in him & spoke through him though. What do you call someone who speaks the words of God? A Prophet?
Jesus never called himself the Son of God (others certainly did). He mostly called himself the Son of Man. In Ezekiel 2 this term is defined as a Prophet. In the OT both David & Solomon are called Anointed & Sons of God. The nation also is the Son of God.
The claim that Jesus was a king got him executed.
In the Greek culture, a son of god is literally a son of Zeus.
‘Then I asked him, “But what if Jesus never said that?”’
Dr. Ehrman, do you think we have ANY (even nearly) verbatim, word-for-word quotes from Jesus?
What are some of the sayings that you are confident are the closest to verbatim quotes of things he actually said, and why do you feel that they are?
Yes, I think we have some of his sayings. Mark 1:15 I think is very close to his basic message; and a number of Markan and Q sayings/parables almost certainly go back to him. I give a bunch of them in my book on Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet.
Just for grins: Let’s just say that a human being is a being created by God, and comprised of a body and a spirit. The body is a “created thing” – it is *not* “the Creator” (God). And, likewise, the spirit that indwells that human being is *also* a “created thing” – it also is *not* “the Creator”. Thus, we have this human being as a wholly “created” thing.
Now, (and this is all for grins), let’s just say God creates a human body (a created thing), but instead of giving that created body a created spirit, God Himself – God, a “spirit” – indwells that created, human body. A created body, indwelt with the spirit of the Creator Himself.
Is that body therefore “divine”? Or is that spirit (God’s own spirit) divine? How does one explain how, or even if there is a separation of the divine from the “profane” (ie, the created body)?
This is the difficulty of figuring out which “label” to put on Jesus. Was “Jesus” divine? That is, was the whole of the combination of a “profane” body, plus the (clearly) “divine spirit” somehow divine in it’s totality? Or, is this a case of somehow, this person (Jesus) being *both* “human” (profane) and divine (the Creator)?
“Was Jesus divine?” doesn’t get a “yes or no” answer.
What truly, deeply amazes me that someone can have an education in theology and never once realize that the question is *not* a “yes or no” question. One can hardly read the NT without realizing the “struggle” there is, evident in it’s pages, to somehow convey that a person (Jesus) could bodily be fully human, with every human limitation, capable of suffering and death, and having to use the same human “mechanism” or “method” of communing with God the Spirit (ie, prayer) as every other human, yet at the same time, being fully God (in being indwelt by the spirit of the Creator, and not a created spirit). And, the even bigger struggle is that in Jewish thought, these two things (body and spirit) were *equally* parts of a “human being” – thus – there really *isn’t* a separation at all.
At best, the question “Was Jesus divine” doesn’t have a “yes or no” answer – it has a “yes *and* no” answer (followed by a lengthy explanation).
Dear Bart, many graces for sharing a mixture of details of his personal life and his academic preparation.
According to John 10:34 Jesus, apparently, quotes the book of Psalms. What is the conflict? I think the problem is that for generations the God of Michelangelo’s paintings has been considered, that is, a Lord with character and personality, sitting in some legano place of some distant dimension, and demanding that they obey and adore him. I think that concept is very similar to the one Jesus faced in Palestine
Jesus said: God is greater than I am.
He also didn’t claim to be the Son of God.
He didn’t much seem to like being called Christ.
Matthew 16:13-20 New International Version (NIV)
Peter Declares That Jesus Is the Messiah
13 When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”
14 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
15 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
Doesn’t the verse above answered who Jesus really is? The above question is the same question we are asking today what Jesus really is. To me, he is the messiah. Nothing more nothing less.
Thank you for this post. I know that this “what if jesus never said that?” conversation is coming for me. I truthfully don’t know if I can have it, as the pastor in my situation, is my own father.
Ah, tread carefully and with love, with a view to matters of greater importance!
Good Evening, Bart,
Are you sure Jesus “claimed to be God” in the Gospel of John? In the interest of full disclosure, I am an evangelical. I am refreshingly able to cling to the text in my pulpit and I have equally conservative (theologically, morally, politically, etc…) folks for whose souls I care who seem to feel as though I do it well.
This is not a trap. I have read a couple of your books and have three more I am working through.
Sincerely,
Bill
Well, pretty much. I and the Father are one. Before Abraham was I Am. If you have seen me you have seen the Father. Etc…. Maybe try my book How Jesus Became God?
Dear Bart,
I have written three paragraphs about this. Would you mind if I pasted them here for your critique?
Bill
I may not be able to give a sustained critique, but I’m sure everyone would benefit from your thoughts.
[A source I can provide] says “…the early church developed a ‘Trinitarian’ consciousness…As the doctrine of the Trinity developed, the practice of baptizing [according to Matthew’s formula] was increasingly understood.” Well, a couple of follow-on questions: 1. Who is the early church?; 2. Did they really understand it before they formalized it? Why continue with strange “formulas” from the “Tertullians” of church history, centuries removed from the “early church”—the church of Acts?
With all the discussions on terminology, why can orthodoxy not say something to the affect of “Jesus was so much like God the Father that He was seen as One with Him—thus being called, at times ‘God’ (Isaiah 7:14; 9:6), and being called, at other times ‘Father’ (Isaiah 9:6)?” Why develop hard to understand formulas of this mystery while vilifying the opposition? Why not simply say only what Scripture says?
It seems fitting, then, to say that God the Father and His Son are so close to one another in source and resulting light that One can call the Son “Father” or “God” from time to time and it is essentially correct. God’s very essence is stamped on the Person of Jesus Christ. He that saw Jesus saw God (John 14:9). Nobody saw God at all, except Jesus Who revealed Him to them (John 1:18). In Christ was the bodily version of the fullness of God (Colossians 2:9). There was nothing but full manifestation of God in the person of Jesus (Hebrews 1:3) to the point that Jesus was at times called “Everlasting Father” (Isaiah 9:6) and was furthermore the reality that God was with man (Isaiah 7:14). If one wished to see God, they must look at Jesus. In so finding Jesus, they would find God, of Whose image Jesus bore (Colossians 1:15). All of this can be summed up in this manner, if you wanted to see God again after the garden of Eden (Genesis 3:8), you had to see Him first in the face of His Dear Son (2 Corinthians 4:6). Yet, saying anything more than this is dangerous, divisive and presumptuous. May God grant the author and the reader of this paper to major on Christ’s divinity, His origin, His Person, and leave the dogmatic explanations of “full God,” “same essence,” “same substance,” and the like, to the first order of eternity where God will have only begun to reveal His Person to the redeemed.
Thanks — this is very well thought out and thoughtful.
Dear Bart,
Thank you. That carries a ton of weight for me. Now, perhaps you can see why I do not see statements of Jesus “claiming deity” as potentially an overstatement. I do believe, based on my thoughts above, the statements you cited are rather Jesus “claiming divinity.”
So…what’s less than deity and yet divine? Not sure I can say. I do believe–no surprise to you–the Gospel of John, but I do not necessarily think Jesus would have passed the bar at Nicaea (Johannine claims to divinity yet drawing short of Athanasian dogma).
Thank you again,
Bill