Loading...Does love really “mean never having to say I’m sorry”? Is “unconditional forgiveness” possible? Is it even Christian? Is forgiveness itself always possible, conceivable, feasible, expected, required, helpful? Actually, what is forgiveness?
These are questions people often ask. When they ask what Jesus thought about the matter they usually get it wrong. And as it turns out, so did his own disciples. So I’ll be arguing in my book, tentatively titled The Origins of Altruism.
Here’s another extract from my sketch of the book as it looks at this point in the pre-writing stage….
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Part Four: Interpersonal Forgiveness (ch. 6 on Greek and Roman World; ch. 7 on Jesus and his followers)
Whereas “charity” is the manifestation of agapē principally to outsiders in need, “forgiveness” is its manifestation principally to
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Professor, curious about how fasting on Yom Kippur fit in … I found it in Leviticus (23: self denial) so it is Mitzvot presumably for Jesus as well as today?
Presumably. He affirms the importance of fasting in th eSermon on the Mount, but indicates that one should not make a public display of it.
Are mercy, agape/unconditional love, and forgiveness as Jesus taught, very, very similar/close to the same thing?
I’m thinking that to the extent that Judaism had a similar concept of love it was something like mercy and derived from the same word as a mother’s unconditional love for her children—or maybe ultimately from the word for womb.
They’re not the same, but they’re related.
Could Christians argue that, though usually misunderstood by Christians themselves, Jesus’s concept of forgiveness actually dovetails with the early Christian belief in substitutionary atonement?
In other words God requires nothing more of people than repentance to obtain forgiveness but that’s only because Jesus already suffered the necessary reprisals?
I realize that the idea of substitutionary atonement seemed necessary to early Christians because they needed an explanation for the crucifixion.
I also realize that, historically, reprisals/doing penance/punishment became the standard requirements for obtaining forgiveness.
But it also seems to me that Jesus’s concept of forgiveness has a strong similarity to the idea, strongly represented by Paul and the Protestant Reformation, that salvation comes from faith. In other words salvation (including forgiveness of sins) does not come from good works-which works might be thought to include doing penance-but from belief in the efficacy of Jesus’s crucifixion.
But I realize that I’m also implying that repentance equates to or strongly overlaps with faith and I’m not sure that’s what Paul and the Reformers believed.
I’d say that most Christians not only could argue that but do. Or rather, they don’t argue it but assume it. (Jesus was teaching that people would be forgiven by God *before* he died, and there’s no indication that he’s thinking’ proleptically! When he talks about his death, it is always in terms of atonement) (not that I think he actually predicted his death)
Dr. Ehrman,
I would like to understand or grasp some of the sayings we can attribute to the actual historical Jesus, from two sources. First I’m a bit confused about early extrabiblical sources like Papias for example, who I know you’ve rebuked. So was papias just some Greek Christian convert who perhaps heard the disciple John speak and decided to sort of embellish his own credibility? Or was he perchance actually a student or companion of John(who of course knew Jesus personally)? I know you discredit his strange Judas death narrative, as well as his grape vine one. And does the same apply to e.g. Ignatius. As for the NT itself, I have found the Jesus Seminar’s format helpful, but is there anything decided in the Jesus Seminar you particularly agree or disagree with? Thank you for your great inspiration and shining scholarship!
Papias says he got his information from a person who had been a companion of the “elders” who had known the apostles of Jesus. So his information is coming to him third-hand. My problem with the Seminar was not the format (I assume you mean how they held their meetings/discussions?) but their working assumptions and criteria. When you read the preface to the Five Gospels, it is almost impossile to figure out how they were actually deciding what Jesus said. What criteria were they using? The way they phrase it, it almost sounds like one of the criteria was that if something was apocalytic, Jesus didn’t say it. But surely they don’t mean that? They certainly eliminate everything that is apocalyptic. Crossan does in on the grounds that the sources that are apocalyptic are only late rin the tradition, but he says that because he dates sources like the Gospel of Thomas earlier than, say, Mark and Q (and he says that Q — that source we don’t have — went through three versions, the firs tof which lacks any apocalyptic material). All tihs strikes me as really problematic….
I just finished watching your latest Misquoting Jesus podcast which I always enjoy. Have you ever been invited to come back to Moody to do a debate?
Actually I was once! But it fell through. Too bad: would’a been fun!
I’d be interested in knowing if you see (as Peter Brown does, for example) a connection between this evolution from open-ended forgiveness that Jesus apparently taught to atonement (esp. blood/sacrificial atonement) and the idea of pecuniary debt in the ancient world and the relations of domination that it entailed. What accounts for this shift in the “economy” of sin and forgiveness, particularly so early on?
Good question: where does Brown talk about this? I can’t recall off hand. My sense is that the movement to “debt” was very early (it’s already in teh Lord’s prayer in Matthew) and it is related to what one “owes”. We owe God our devotion, when we don’t pay it, the debt has to be paid off some other way. For Jesus, God simply forgives the debt. For most NT authors, someone has to pay. So that’s why Jesus died. I don’t think we have to wait till late antiquity for the shift.
Dr Ehrman,
Great article and I fully appreciate and agree with your ending point that turning the other cheek is a recipe for disaster on an international basis. However the reciprocal of that is also often a recipe for disaster in an international setting. Sure wish God would solve that one.
If you are arguing that the concept of atonement–the idea that Jesus died to pay for our sins once and for all–was cooked up after his death to explain his death, how do you explain the passages used to support it? I’m specifically thinking of the last supper, in which he talks about his blood being spilled to pay for sin (though there may be more). What would you say to a person who cited that passage to you as evidence that the concept of penal substitution was always Jesus’s plan?
I don’t think I’d say the idea was cooked up by Jesus’ followers. I’d say that the concept was almost everywhere in their environment in both religious ceremony/language and personal relationships — when someone does something wrong, they need to atone for it or have someone else do so for them. My view is that when Jesus disciples realized that God had wanted him to die they realized it must have been as an atonement. The Gospel accounts, from 40-60 years later, were written by people for whom by this time that was the Christian common sense, and naturally they thought that Jesus himself must have planned that all along. That’s why we have the predictions of it in the Gospels. (this is part of the larger problem that historians have to evaluate each and every saying of Jesus to decide if it’s something he actually said or not, since we know that some sayings were placed on his lips by his later followrs before the Gospels were written)
Wow! I knew that early Christians came to see Jesus’s death as atonement for mankind’s sins, but I was unaware of the transition from forgiveness “for the asking with repentance and resolve” to something that required atonement. Your explanation really helps me personally. I have no problem forgiving (even if I don’t forget) someone who says they are sorry, but I’ve always struggled forgiving those who show no recognition or remorse for what they have done. I always thought I was violating some ancient Christian belief, and although I’ve abandoned a lot of my beliefs, that one has stuck with me. Geez, I now feel better about myself! Thank you, sir!
The “Jesus died for us” tenet has always disturbed me.
God: “My people – the Jews – screwed up again, so I’m going incarnate into a human, and punish myself in order to forgive them. I’m doing this because someone needs to pay me with physical punishment and I love my people too much to make any of them suffer to pay me. So I will suffer and pay myself but it won’t be me on the cross, it will be my son who is an incarnation of me. So it’s me but not me. Does this make sense? If not, I can flood the planet again.”
People: “That works for us, Lord. By all means, you can take the pain for us. Thank you!”
I ruined my neighbors azalea bushes with my snow blower. I owe my neighbor an apology. But being the good neighbor he is, he sent his son over to my house and told me I can kick him around a bit.
Neighbor: “Don’t pay me for the bushes. I’m sending Brendan over. Beat him up and we will be even Steven. I like you as a neighbor so don’t want you to suffer.”
Me: “Thank you, neighbor!”
Ha! I bet you have a lot of fundamentalist friends…
When I get angry, people often say why do you give others control over you? Then I ask why people give their control away to punish others. Isn’t it better to wash our hands of others’ sins and not sin ourselves by judging and wanting to punish others? For those who believe God punishes sinners, it’s funny. We have got laws against double jeopardy, but some believers seem to want to punish people twice. If you’re going to believe in Jesus, then believe in his teachings at least. But what do I know? that two wrongs don’t make them right?
Looks like if Jesus’ teachings prevailed, Morgan & Morgan would go out of business!
Very interesting article and it leaves me with a few questions. Yes, the followers of Jesus claimed he was resurrected and then they came up with the idea that his crucifixion was an atonement sacrifice. They had to do that because that was the only way they could claim that Jesus was the Davidic messiah and, hence, keep their messianic movement from dying out. But in promoting the atonement sacrifice idea, do you think the followers of Jesus betrayed his moral and spiritual teachings about how to get in right standing with God? Did they betray his teachings more generally? As you know, Paul didn’t convert to the messianic movement of the Jerusalem church after his alleged encounter with Jesus. Rather, he went away for three years during which he created his own religion, that is today called Pauline Christianity, and then “converted” to that. In creating Pauline Christianity, do you think Paul betrayed the moral and spiritual teachings of Jesus about how to get in right standing with God? Did Paul betray the teachings of Jesus in a more general sense?
I wouldn’t say they “betrayed” his teachings because I think of betrayal as an intentional act; I think instead tehy came to realize that his death must have been an atonement and ran with that idea, without fully realizing that in fact that was quite contrary to his views. That may seem odd but it’s not really. Most people throughout history have not realized that “forgiveness” is quite different from “atonement” — even biblical writers and scholars today who discuss them!
I’m not sure the betrayal was intentional. But forgiveness contradicts atonement, and vice versa, because with forgiveness penalties and reparations for wrongs done are not necessary (whereas for atonement they are necessary). So, the Jerusalem church, Paul, and others abandoned the teachings of Jesus about how to get into right standing with God by changing from a forgiveness-based approach to an atonement-based approach. If they had stuck with a forgiveness-based approach, then there is no way they could explain why Jesus was crucified. Therefore, there is a choice and a contradiction between keeping their apocalyptic messianic movement alive versus accurately passing along the teachings of Jesus. And, to their shame, they chose the former instead of the latter. Will your new book give criticism of them for making the wrong choice? To me, ignorance of the difference between forgiveness and atonement is no excuse because of the enormous harm that the atonement-based approach has had on western civilization.
I recall in Marcus Borg’s book Heart of Christianity his discussing how the Enlightenment period, with its emphasis on structured scientific forms, affected Christian thinking, leading to a more formulaic approach to faith. Perhaps I am mis-remembering, but I concluded that this led to the atonement formula–Christ’s sacrificial death equals salvation for those who believe in him. Now you say that the formula goes back to the disciples. So, I’m thinking I misinterpreted Borg. As much as I wanted to believe Christianity was once more mystical or spiritual, it always kind stuck in my mind that the traditional mainstream of the church was never very freewheeling. Did I misunderstand Borg’s thoughts on the Enlightenment?
Yes, he may have provided more nuance than that. Or at least I hope he did! What the Enlightenment mainly did for Christian thinkers was to drive them to think through the ideas/practices of the faith from what htey considered a purely rational perspective, rather than relying solely on figuring out divine revelation. It led some strands into seeking “objective” reasons for believing, proofs for God, explanations for why God does what he does from outside the Bible, etc. In a weird way, fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals are major representatives of Enlightehment views (we can “prove” the faith). Intriguingly ironic!
“In a weird way, fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals are major representatives of Enlightehment views (we can “prove” the faith). Intriguingly ironic!”
Orthodox Christians pretty much say the same thing about (Protestant) fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals. But then some Orthodox will claim that substitutionary atonement isn’t really present at all in the New Testament or at least isn’t as strongly emphasized as evangelicals claim it is. (“You’re reading Paul wrong! Here’s what he really meant …” followed by a long explanation of 1st Century Greek language nuances plus various Church Father quotes, mostly from the post-Second Century)
“. God himself, in Jesus’ view, forgave sinners simply based on repentance, nothing else.” the soldiers & the other folks didn’t repent. except for the jews that condemned HIM that was their job. & neither did the folks that persecute St Stephen repent, or show remorse.
I’m not sure if it is Andrew Murray, but I am sure Watchman Nee though his lectures and notes interpreted by an Englishman- we are daily to take Jesus’ cross, deny self and his blood- cleanse us from our sinful natures.
intercession- repenting or praying for others was something Andrew Murray emphasized. Which with the election of Trump, I couldn’t continue
Prof Ehrman,
What is the Hebrew Bible’s view(s) on the subject of Atonement and Forgiveness? Is it either or both, and how does it marry with the concepts of intentional and unintentional sins?
There’s a lot of both in the Hebrew Bible and sometimes they are combined (atonement brings forgiveness)