Progressive Christian Arguments for Affirming LGBTQ+

Progressive Christian arguments for LGBTQ affirmation

Reposted from the Facebook group SoulAnchor- request to join here: http://facebook.com/groups/soulanchor

It’s an experience that has become all too common: a Christian friend suddenly comes out in affirmation of LGBTQ ideology, begins to celebrate homosexuality and transgenderism, and perhaps, eventually, even “comes out” themselves. Other deviations from traditional Christianity tend to follow suit: radical feminism, shades of Marxism, etc.

Often loved ones are left reeling and wondering “what happened?!”

Something absolutely essential that we have to understand about the appeal of Progressive Christianity for many is the appeal to the emotions. A few days ago in the group Angie shared a video from someone formerly deep in Critical Theory who mentioned that one of the best ways to help someone emerge from these false teachings is to appeal to their emotions.

Progressive Christians tend to be highly empathetic people who care deeply about the feelings and well-being of others. This is, at its roots, a reflection of the image of God. But we can see clearly that the Enemy exploits it and twists the Word of God to capture them into a false way of looking at scripture, and thus the world, in order to shipwreck their faith.

HOW DO PROGRESSIVE CHRISTIANS VIEW HOMOSEXUALITY IN THE BIBLE?

Here is a brief list (probably not exhaustive, either) of common objections to the traditional Christian view that homosexuality is a sin. We are not going to take the time to answer each objection in depth here or this post will stretch down to the floor, so check the comments for some links to helpful resources.

Paul vs. Jesus
This (false) dichotomy is an important one for many Progressives. Discrediting Paul’s authority makes it easier to ignore or downplay his commands and proclamations about homosexuality. Commonly you’ll hear “Jesus never said anything about homosexuality”. But consider, overall, Jesus’s view of the scriptures. Did he have a high view of scripture, or a low view? Did he consider it authoritative? Did he allow for picking and choosing? Did he model such behavior?

Word games
One of the words Paul uses to refer to homosexuality in the New Testament, arsenokoitai, is a notoriously difficult word for some because this is the first preserved use of the word in literature. From an article (linked in the comments) on Stand to Reason: “[The word] arsenokoitai (translated “homosexual”)—[was made] by combining two words, arsenos, for “male,” and koiten, meaning “to bed.” Arsenokoitai literally means “bedders of males” or “men who bed with males.”
Why this combination of words? Because these are the very words found in the Septuagint—the Greek translation of the Old Testament regularly used by the Apostles—to describe the homosexual behavior explicitly forbidden in Lev. 18:22 and 20:13”

The Levitical laws
You’ve probably heard this one- “Sure, Leviticus forbids homosexuality, but it also forbids wearing mixed fibers, and I don’t see any Christians following these laws anymore.” This argument fails to draw a distinction between the moral Law and the ceremonial (and sundry) Law. Christians under the new covenant are still accountable to obey the moral Law. Will we fail sometimes? Yes. That is what the blood of Jesus is for. But Jesus made it clear that the Law had not been abolished, and that teaching others to disobey God’s moral Law was wrong. (Matthew 5:17-19)

Paul didn’t know about “true” homosexuality
Another common argument is that Paul was referring to rape, to heterosexuals pursuing homosexual sex (“outside the bounds of their orientation”), or to pedophilia exclusively. The argument goes that homosexuality as an actual orientation, and a “loving” same-sex union, would be allowed. See the link in the resource section below “A Reformation the Church Doesn’t Need” for a treatment of this argument.

Resources for Further Study

ARTICLES:

Paul on Homosexuality (STR) https://www.str.org/w/paul-romans-and-homosexuality-1

A Reformation the Church Doesn’t Need Part 1: https://www.str.org/w/a-reformation-the-church-doesn-t-need-part-1

Part 2: https://www.str.org/w/a-reformation-the-church-doesn-t-need-part-2

Books by Christians who formerly practiced homosexuality and have BEAUTIFUL testimonies of Jesus’s saving grace:

The Gospel Comes with a Housekey (Rosaria Butterfield)

The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert (Rosaria Butterfield)

Holy Sexuality (Christopher Yuan)

Out of a Far Country (Christopher Yuan and Angela Yuan)

Also check out Nancy Pearcy’s LOVE THY BODY: Answering Hard Questions About Life and Sexuality for the connections between homosexuality, LGBTQ rights, transgenderism, radical feminism, and how Christians should understand these views and respond in a Christlike manner.

AUDIO:

Dr. James White: The Holiness Code for Today https://www.sermonaudio.com/search.asp?currSection=sermonstopic&keyword=Holiness+Code+for+Today&keyworddesc=Holiness+Code+for+Today&seriesOnly=true&sourceid=phxrefbap (especially the messages Blooduiltiness and Arsenokoites, and Sex and the Law of God)

A Gay Man’s Story of Redemption with Becket Cook: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/71-a-gay-mans-story-of-redemption-with-becket-cook/id1260262855?i=1000477030525

Why Does God Care Who I Sleep With? With Sam Allberry: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/67-why-does-god-care-who-i-sleep-with-with-sam-allberry/id1260262855?i=1000471463233

Holy Sexuality and the Gospel with Christopher Yuan: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/40-holy-sexuality-and-the-gospel-with-christopher-yuan/id1260262855?i=1000427727060

The Big Six (And Why They Matter): https://www.sheologians.com/the-big-6-why-they-matter/

The Big Six (And Why They Matter) Part Deux: https://www.sheologians.com/the-big-6-why-they-matter-part-deux/

Solid Doctrine Friday: Biblical Inerrancy

Have you ever wondered if the Bible could be wrong in its historical depictions of past events? Have you ever heard it suggested that some accounts, which are clearly presented in the Bible as historical facts, may actually be something closer to legend? If these thoughts have ever crossed your mind, you’ve found yourself up against the doctrine of biblical inerrancy.

What is inerrancy?

Inerrancy is simply the assertion that the Bible is without error.

Inerrancy is a foundational doctrine of the historic Christian faith. The very earliest church fathers (including but not limited to the Apostles themselves) stated in no uncertain terms their confidence in the inerrancy of scripture. A few samples:

Observe that nothing of an unjust or counterfeit [false] character is written in them (Clement of Rome, A.D. 30-100)

But when you hear the utterances of the prophets spoken as it were personally, you must not suppose that they are spoken by the inspired men themselves but by the divine Word who moves them (First Apology, p. 36). (Justin Martyr, A.D. 100-165)

The Scriptures are indeed perfect, since they were spoken by the Word of God [Christ] and His Spirit (Against Heresies 2.28.2). (Irenaeus, second century A.D.)

Visit the Defending Inerrancy link in the comments for many, many more cited examples of the earliest church fathers expressing their belief in the doctrine of inerrancy.

Then there is, of course, the letter from Paul to Timothy:

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16-17)

And Hebrews:

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12)

Why does this matter?

It really all comes back to the very first temptation in the Garden:

“Did God really say?”

In order for unbiblical worldviews such as Progressive Christianity and the New Age to take root, they must first undermine the authority of scripture, which clearly denounces them in no uncertain terms.

But what if the Bible was just written by fallible human beings and can therefore sometimes be wrong? (This is a common case brought against the writings of Paul.)

What if its representations of God, especially in the Old Testament, were not entirely accurate, but rather the “best guesses” of a more primitive culture, based on their limited understanding and not ACTUALLY representing the true God?

Once you’ve brought into question the inerrancy of scripture, you are welcome to bring in replacements for the parts you don’t like. Who can stop you? By what standard could anyone say that you’re wrong? All truth becomes subjective.

As you sit in church, read blog articles, and converse with friends, keep your ears open for hints that they may be giving up on this essential doctrine. If they do, you can be sure that the sacking of other essential doctrines is not far behind.

See the comments for more resources on inerrancy.

RESOURCES:

The Rationality of Belief in Inerrancy (J.P. Moreland)

Why is Inerrancy Important? (Defending Inerrancy)

Did Early Christians Believe the Bible Was Inerrant and Authoritative? (Alisa Childers)

If the Gospels are Inerrant, Why Do They Contain Discrepancies? VIDEO (Stand to Reason)

Solid Doctrine Friday: Penal Substitutionary Atonement

This is a repost from the private Facebook group SoulAnchor. In the group we discuss false teachings currently infiltrating the church, seek to increase our knowledge of God through theology and doctrine, and learn more about how to gracefully answer skeptics. If you are a Christian holding to the doctrines of the historic Christian faith and would like to join our group, please visit http://facebook.com/groups/soulanchor and request to join.

Surely He Has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows;

Yet we esteemed Him stricken,

Smitten by God, and afflicted.

But He was wounded for

our transgressions.

He was bruised for our iniquities;

The chastisement for our

peace was upon Him,

And by His stripes we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray;

We have turned, every one,

to his own way;

And the Lord has laid on Him

the iniquity of us all.

(Isaiah 53:4-6)

As we continue in discussing Progressive Christianity, we want to take Fridays to cover some doctrinal basics of historic Christianity. Today we want to look at the doctrine of Penal Substitutionary Atonement, hereafter referred to as PSA.

PSA states that Jesus died on the cross as our substitute- that’s where the word substitutionary comes in. Isaiah 53:6 makes it clear that every one of us has “turned… to his own way”. Psalm 14:1-3 makes our problem clear:

“They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none who does good…They have all turned aside, they have together become corrupt; there is none who does good, no, not one.”

God is perfectly righteous and just, and will “by no means (clear) the guilty” (Exodus 34:7). He must rightfully punish the overwhelming sinfulness of humankind. That’s where the word “penal” come in. It means relating to or prescribing the punishment of offenders under the legal system. And under God’s legal system… we’re all offenders.

The doctrine of PSA states that on the cross, Jesus took the punishment that we deserved for our sin upon himself, acting as a substitute in our place and draining the full cup of God’s wrath, that His anger toward our sin might be completely satisfied for all time. “For the transgressions of my people He was stricken.” (Isaiah 53:8) Sometimes the Isaiah 53 verses are called “clobber verses”, but as this article from TGC puts it (https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/3-reasons-changed-mind-penal-substitution/) it’s not just a few cherry-picked prooftexts that lay out this doctrine clearly; it’s the whole arc of scripture from beginning to end.

More resources on Penal Substitutionary Atonement:

SimplyPut podcast: Propitiation (this is just 5 minutes) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/propitiation/id1460030295?i=1000478131277

American Gospel: Christ Crucified http://www.americangospelfilm.com/watch-christ-crucified-ag2.html

(This is an excellent 3-hour documentary explaining PSA as well as the opposing viewpoints. Well worth your time! I have a hard copy I’m happy to loan out.)

If perhaps not with the entire mouthful of 5 dollar words, were you taught about penal substitutionary atonement? Have you interacted with anyone who had trouble accepting it? It’s a common doctrine for Progressive Christians to reject.

A common response to PSA by Progressive Christians is the assertion that it’s “cosmic child abuse”, that such a response to sin makes God vengeful and hateful. They’ll sometimes say that Jesus was a political revolutionary who was executed by the state (for a thorough response to this position as well as other resources, see Sharayah’s blog: https://snayskitchen.wordpress.com/2020/06/16/answering-zealot-by-reza-aslan-introduction/)

Another response is the Moral Influence Theory, which suggests that Jesus’s death on the cross was a demonstration of God’s love and NOT his wrath. While most Christians who hold to historic beliefs see it as both a demonstration of love for the sinner AND wrath against sin, Progressive Christians will often reject the “wrath” part entirely and insist that any chastising, bruising, or wounding of Christ on the cross was inflicted only by humankind and not by God.

For more on how Progressive Christians view PSA:

Does Isaiah 53 Support Penal Substitutionary Atonement? (Alisa Childers) https://www.alisachilders.com/blog/does-isaiah-53-support-penal-substitutionary-atonement-a-refutation-of-the-progressive-christian-interpretation-of-the-suffering-servant

Cosmic Child Abuse? Answer Moral Objections to the Atonement with Mike Winger (Alisa Childers) https://www.alisachilders.com/blog/cosmic-child-abuse-answering-moral-objections-to-the-atonement-with-mike-winger-i-dont-have-enough-faith-to-be-an-atheist-radio

 

Progressive Christianity- a quick overview

This is a repost from the private Facebook group SoulAnchor. This group is a labor of love by myself and my mom; we started it due to increasing concerns about false teachings compromising the church. In the group we discuss false teachings currently infiltrating the church, seek to increase our knowledge of God through theology and doctrine, and learn more about how to gracefully answer skeptics. If you are a Christian holding to the doctrines of the historic Christian faith and would like to join our group, please visit http://facebook.com/groups/soulanchor and request to join.

Every Wednesday we will be using this group to discuss false teachings that are currently gaining ground in the church. The better we understand them, the better we can recognize and reject them in favor of the true Gospel, and help our loved ones who may be falling into this teaching.

For the next couple of weeks we want to focus on Progressive Christianity.

Progressive Christianity can be hard to pin down in terms of its definition- there are no doctrines or creeds that unite all Progressive Christians. But as we study it, we begin to see some common themes emerge. A few examples:

• Progressive Christians tend to downplay the authority and inerrancy of scripture. Often this is done on the basis that scripture is written by flawed human beings, and must therefore reflect inaccurate views of God as well as biases.
• Progressive Christians reject fundamental doctrines of historic Christianity including penal substitutionary atonement (more on this on Friday).
• The gospel is understood not to be the good news of Jesus’s death and resurrection to reconcile sinners to a holy God, but rather the “gospel of the kingdom”, a socially-conscious gospel bent on ushering in the kingdom of God in the here and now through social reforms. A view toward one’s eternal soul before God largely vanishes.
• Because of the low view of scripture, Progressive Christians are much more likely to affirm homosexuality, transgenderism, and abortion.

Not everyone who holds one or more of these views will hold all of them. You may notice that a hallmark of Progressive Christianity is uncertainty (often considered to be humility) and the rejection of the notion of objective truth. This is postmodernism in action.

This is a cursory overview, but in the coming days and weeks we want to dig in further into some of the beliefs of Progressive Christians. In the meantime, check out some links from Alisa Childers, who has spent the past few years studying Progressive Christianity in depth:

1. 5 Signs Your Church Might Be Heading Toward Progressive Christianity: https://www.alisachilders.com/blog/5-signs-your-church-might-be-heading-toward-progressive-christianity
2. What is Progressive Christianity? (Podcast episode): https://www.alisachilders.com/blog/podcast-1-what-is-progressive-christianity
3. The Gospel According to Progressive Christianity- Is it Really Good News? https://www.alisachilders.com/blog/the-gospel-according-to-progressive-christianity-is-it-really-good-news

Have you seen this teaching creep into your church, or started to hear concerning things from a friend or loved one? What has been your experience with progressive Christianity?

No white people in the bible

At first I didn’t want to engage with this photo. Don’t “feed the trolls”, so to speak. But the more I thought about it, and the more I thought about those 8,000 retweets and 41,000 likes (!) I realized that with repeated exposure, pithy little “gotcha” one liners and memes like this DO influence a person’s thinking over time.

And there is so much that is concerning about this image, I have to say something.

What I would like to start with is: I wish this woman no ill will. I don’t want to call into question her character or make any implications about who she is or what she is like. I’m engaging with the idea on the cardboard sign.

I tried to figure out where this image came from because it’s useless to try to determine her intent without knowing more of the context. Unfortunately a reverse image search brings up nothing but a couple of 9gag and reddit threads without any context.

I’m tempted to dismiss this because in general it seems that it was originally posted as little more than a troll. But again… the traction that it gained on Twitter (and the quantity of enthusiastic responses I scrolled through) was concerning to me, and I think it’s an argument we’re going to need to be able to understand and be able to articulate a counter-argument to it, or at least an explanation of its errors.

• What is this sign meant to convey? Is there an argument here beyond stating the supposed quantity of people in the bible with a relatively small amount of melanin in their skin?
• Does no white people in the bible mean white people can’t be saved? (An idea that shows up on the fringes of black liberation theology courtesy of James Cone)
• Does no white people in the bible mean something else? That white people can’t talk about Jesus? Or teach scripture?

My best guess is that this sign is meant primarily as a pot-shot against a straw man.

It’s difficult to refute an unclear argument or make a guess about the specific straw man it may be addressing, so let’s take it at face value: are there white people in the bible?

What is a White Person?

It seems obvious at face value, but we all know it isn’t as simple as pigmentation. There are certain groups, for example, that consider “Black” and “White” to be not just indicators of race or ethnicity but also political designations, so much so that an individual can have significant melanin pigmentation but not be considered “Black” by certain standards.

We can’t know how the pictured protester would choose to define “white people”. I discovered something a little shocking when I checked with the official U.S. Census Bureau website, though:

“The U.S. Census Bureau must adhere to the 1997 Office of Management and Budget (OMB) standards on race and ethnicity which guide the Census Bureau in classifying written responses to the race question:

White – A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.”

The “Middle East” is a loosely defined geographic region, but the countries are generally understood to include:

• Bahrain
• Cyprus
• Egypt
• Iran
• Iraq
• Israel
• Jordan
• Kuwait
• Lebanon
• Oman
• Qatar
• Saudi Arabia
• Syria
• Turkey
• United Arab Emirates
• Yemen

Do you generally consider people from these regions to be “white”? The problem, again, is that there are political definitions at play, but in most discourse both on- and off-line we aren’t defining our terms or revealing our motives for using certain definitions and not others.

But the question remains: what could the sign holder possibly have meant by “there are no white people in the bible” if the vast, vast majority of events that are recorded in the bible occur within the borders of Egypt, Israel, and the surrounding areas?

My guess is that she meant “There are no White Europeans in the bible.” (There are no Eastern Asians or Central Americans or Australians or Pacific Islanders either… what’s the point here?)

Political Whiteness

You’ve probably heard the term “whiteness” by now. It’s a term meant to refer not just to people of a certain pigmentation, but a way of being that is supposedly wrapped up inextricably in oppression and supremacy that one must take a lifetime of “work” to unlearn. A few helpful resources for (trying to) wrap your head around the nebulous concept:

Whiteness- New Discourses

Whiteness- Just Thinking Podcast

Because a quick Google search was enough to debunk the face-value proposition of the protest sign, I have to assume that what she has in mind is a whiteness that is more political in nature. So let’s follow that train of logic for a few minutes. If by “white people” the protester means “colonizers” or “oppressors”…. I’m curious who she thought the Romans were?

Rome occupied Israel for hundreds of years, and while some were severely oppressed under the crushing weight of the Roman tribute added on top of the Temple tax, others took advantage of every opportunity to better their circumstances (among these were the tax collectors, who made themselves decidedly rich off their Jewish brethren and were hated and shunned in response). It was a complex situation in which the presence of the force of the occupying Romans meant new construction and new business opportunities at the same time that it meant violence, fear, and oppression.

I don’t want to excuse the violent and evil things that took place under Roman occupation. The Romans invented crucifixion. But I do want to point out a story in Matthew 8:5-13:

“⁵ Now when Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to Him, pleading with Him, ⁶ saying, “Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, dreadfully tormented.”

⁷ And Jesus said to him, “I will come and heal him.”

⁸ The centurion answered and said, “Lord, I am not worthy that You should come under my roof. But only speak a word, and my servant will be healed. ⁹ For I also am a man under authority, having soldiers under me. And I say to this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes; and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”

¹⁰ When Jesus heard it, He marveled, and said to those who followed, “Assuredly, I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel! ¹¹ And I say to you that many will come from east and west, and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. ¹² But the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” ¹³ Then Jesus said to the centurion, “Go your way; and as you have believed, so let it be done for you.” And his servant was healed that same hour.”

A Roman centurion was a commander of around 80 Roman foot soldiers (legionaries). To the Jewish people living in occupied Israel, a centurion would have been synonymous with oppression. And here we have a picture of Jesus commending the centurion’s great faith. Jesus, who I will readily concede was probably not “white” by the standards of pigmentation as we generally determine the skin color today, did not say a word about the centurion’s skin color, his ethnicity, his tribal or national affiliations, or even his position as an oppressor. He responded to his need and commended his faith.

That centurion was not sinless. He was an oppressor by any standard, and had probably killed people. But he heard about Jesus, he believed in Him, and that was all that was necessary.

What the protest sign does, ultimately, is create division. Had you given much thought to the skin colors (political or pigment) of the people in scripture? I can take or leave the paintings and illustrations of “white Jesus”, to be honest. They’re kind of a weird cultural phenomenon, but if Asians or Black people or people from Central- and South American countries want to depict Jesus as phenotypically looking like them, that is fine with me.

Jesus came in the likeness of human flesh in order to save humankind by being the sacrifice necessary to condemn sin in the flesh (Romans 8:3). The presenting phenotype of the human flesh he came in is irrelevant, and if you don’t believe me, ask Paul. He makes a concise point in 2 Corinthians that answers once and for all the “arguments” put forth in this protest sign:

“For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died; and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.

Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.” (2 Corinthians 5:14-19)

My final point upon sharing this scripture is this: nonbelievers will take scripture out of context and twist and contort it to support their political cause. I don’t judge them for it because they do not have the truth, but I do call them to repent of their sins and believe in Christ, the only one who can save them from God’s righteous judgment against sin.

But you who claim the name of Christ- sharing memes like this is divisive, can easily be proven factually incorrect, and can also be proven wrong quickly according to the standard of scripture. Jesus may have been “Brown”. But he came to die for the sins of all people, even White people. He set an example of doing so while he was living on the earth, he commanded his disciples to go into “all the world” to share the good news of the salvation bought by his blood with “all nations”. All the world. All nations, all skin colors, all ethnicities, new creations in Christ under the cross. Let us know one another no longer by our skin color, pigment or political, but let us know one another as brothers and sisters in Christ who have been reconciled to God by our great Savior.

Anything less is a distraction and a disservice to the cross of Christ.

Answering Zealot- Other Resources

This is a short resource page for anyone who wants to do further reading on Zealot, the scholarship Reza Aslan drew from to craft his narrative, and the common answers to many of the objections he raises.

See my response to Zealot here.

ARTICLES & PAPERS

An NY Times articles on the “Jesus Wars”

Another response to Zealot, this one five times more concise and ten times smarter than mine: https://www.biola.edu/blogs/good-book-blog/2013/a-response-to-zealot-by-reza-aslan

Was Jesus a disciple of John the Baptist? Does that mean the church altered the gospels to make Jesus look better than the Baptist? https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/eq/disciple_badke.pdf

The Jesus Seminar Under Fire

” The only novelty in Aslan’s book is his relentlessly reductionist, simplistic, one-sided and often harshly polemical portrayal of Jesus as a radical, zealously nationalistic, and purely political figure.” What Jesus Wasn’t: A Zealot, Jewish Review of Books

WEBSITES

Answering Bible Difficulties

Stand to Reason

BOOKS

Several of these are books on New Testament reliability and the historical Jesus, thanks to Alisa Childers for her book recommendation page

The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus, Gary Habermas & Michael Licona

The Historical Jesus of the Gospels, Greg Keener

The New Testament Documents- Are They Reliable? F.F. Bruce

Jesus Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents the Historical Jesus, Michael J. Wilkins & J.P. Moreland

Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels, Craig Evans

Was Christ Born at Bethlehem? A Study on the Credibility of St.Luke, Sir William Mitchell Ramsay

Answering Zealot Part 4- Final Responses

Read the previous parts here:

Answering Zealot (Introduction)

Answering Zealot (Author’s Note)

Answering Zealot Part 3

In the middle of dismissive assertions that much of what lays the foundation for the Christian faith is simply fabricated, Aslan has some wonderful insights about Jesus’s supreme authority that shines through even before his death on the cross. In a strange turn, Aslan finds himself unable to deny that early contemporaries of the NT writers, even those who vehemently opposed the message, had no interest in attempting to claim that Jesus didn’t perform miracles. The evidence was too clear, the message too widespread and corroborated by too many witnesses. Jesus performed miracles. The blind saw, the dead were raised, the lepers were cleansed. Instead, Aslan attempts to make the case that there were scads of magicians wandering around the countryside during those days, and so miraculous healings and exorcisms were really par for the course, and the only interesting thing about Jesus’s wonders was that he was offering them for free. For Aslan, in the final analysis Jesus was nothing more than a political revolutionary…. and a magician?

This notion raises tremendous questions for me. For example, Aslan’s claim is that Jesus was essentially “radicalized” as a would-be revolutionary between working for over a decade as a laborer in the nearest big city (where he would have been stricken by the stark contrast between the well-off and the poverty of his own village of Nazareth) and becoming a disciple of John the Baptist (an assertion which, surprisingly to me, holds some water- no pun intended- inasmuch as Jesus intended to validate John’s ministry and “fulfill all righteousness”. This paper harmonizes with Aslan’s notion that Jesus started out as a disciple, but disagrees with the idea that it was the “church” that had a need to change the narrative to make Jesus appear greater). Aslan has already insisted that Jesus would have been illiterate. So when did Jesus learn magic? When did he come under the tutelage of a sorcerer? How did he learn to perform exorcisms? This is left as a giant question mark.

Later Aslan notes that a certain interaction with a leper, whom Jesus tells after cleansing him to go show himself to the high priest, leads to a very telling up-ending of the Temple structure. Typically the leper would have had to make very costly sacrifices and jump through a great deal of hoops in order to receive purification rites from the priests. But here instead Jesus is asserting that the leper is already cleansed- this is an incredible claim to authority. I loved this insight and really appreciated Aslan’s ability to draw together the history and the scripture to point out a truth about Jesus’ claims to authority. Where we part ways is the ultimate purpose of those miracles. It’s also somewhat maddening that much earlier in the book Aslan asserts that Matthew, Luke, and John are fabrications. But when the scripture supports his own claims about Jesus, he is pleased to quote it liberally.

In another moment of insight, Aslan speaks of the Transfiguration:

“Elijah’s presence on the mountain has already been primed by the speculations in Tiberias and by the ruminations of the disciples at Caesarea Philippi. But Moses’s appearance is something else entirely. The parallels between the so-called transfiguration story and the Exodus account of Moses receiving the law on Mount Sinai are hard to miss. Moses also took three companions with him up the mountain- Aaron, Nadab and Abihu- and he, too, was physically transformed by the experience. Yet whereas Moses’s transformation was the result of his coming into contact with God’s glory, Jesus is transformed by his own glory. Indeed, the scene is written in such a way so that Moses and Elijah- the Law and the Prophets- are clearly made subordinate to Jesus.”

This elicited a fist-pump from me. Aslan makes it clear that he doesn’t believe it, but he puts it both simply and beautifully.

But then Aslan will go on to claim that Jesus did not fit any of the messianic paradigms offered in the Hebrew Bible (200k Jewish Christians disagree)

“Jesus spoke about the end of days, but it did not come to pass, not even after the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and defiled God’s Temple.” R.C. Sproul’s The Last Days According to Jesus is a great place to start for a reasoned response to criticism of the Olivet discourse (what Aslan is referencing here) and why it is not a failed prediction by any means.

“He vowed that the twelve tribes of Israel would be reconstituted and the nation restored;” Jesus did not give any “vows” within time frames that he did not keep. Aslan does not clarify here which vows he is referencing.

“The Kingdom of God that Jesus predicted never arrived; the new world order he described never took shape.” This depends entirely on how you define the “kingdom of God” and Aslan has deliberately chosen an interpretation that shows Jesus to have failed. But that is not by any means the most common or commonly accepted interpretation. Why force something upon the text that isn’t there?

Aslan takes Jesus’s silence or reticence to take for Himself the title of Messiah until the very end of his ministry as a sign that he never viewed himself that way. That he then only accepts it passively is apparently evidence that Jesus didn’t believe himself to be the messiah, or rather didn’t want to baggage associated with the title. Yet Aslan has until this point made an important point of the wide range of other “messiah” figures roaming the lands, claiming royal titles for themselves and promising to free the Jewish people from the tyranny of the Romans. Could there perhaps be another reason Jesus strategically chose not to claim the title for himself, but rather much more often referred to himself as the Son of Man? More on the Son of Man from the Bible Project: https://bibleproject.com/explore/son-of-man/ (I don’t 100% endorse all TBP material but in this case it’s helpful). Aslan insists that the term is “so ambiguous… that to this day no one is certain what it actually means”, which could not be further from the truth. Check out the link above for a helpful explanation as well as links to more explorations of the term. Also compare Jesus’s use of the term “Son of Man” with Daniel chapter 7. Aslan’s argument is that Jesus diverts attention away from the “messiah” title and back to the “Son of Man” title because he knows that the term “messiah” is already openly charged, and Jesus is “wanting to avoid, if at all possible, the fate of the others who dared claim the title,” which is in direct contradiction with Aslan’s concession that Jesus did in fact predict his own brutal death many times. How could he both “want to avoid the fate of others who dared claim the title” of messiah, yet anticipate, down to the details, his own crucifixion?

As tempting as it is to provide page-by-page refutations for the entire book, I think this review is lengthy enough to turn away most readers as it is. I want to give a few parting thoughts about Zealot, and then I will provide another post with a lot of resources providing alternative viewpoints, theories, and scholarship for those who want to explore more.

I have pointed out several of Aslan’s strengths: he has some genuinely great insights when he connects his great knowledge of 1st century Palestine’s socio-cultural and political history with the gospel accounts. They provide rich background and context and really bring a lot of Jesus’s words into sharp clarity. I think every Christian would benefit from a better understanding of the historical context in which the gospel story takes place.

The problem, however, is that Aslan, influenced by the widely-discredited scholarship of the Jesus Seminar (see this link and this book for more), has come at the text of the gospels with an unsupported notion of what counts as “historical fact” and what is “fabricated”. More often than not, he does not provide much or ANY substantiation for his claims that the majority of the gospels were made up by the church. He simply asserts his opinions as a fact and expects the reader to accept them.

This strategy breaks down quickly for discerning readers, when Aslan proceeds to quote liberally from all 4 gospels whenever they support his thesis. The suggestion seems to be that Aslan is the only one who knows which of the gospels are historical fact and which is fiction. Combined with the lack of substantive evidence supporting his primary claims, it is impossible to take the book seriously. I truly enjoyed parts of it, really loved how he expounded on the history of the unique political and cultural pressure-cooker that was first-century Palestine, but I was profoundly disappointed with both his dismissiveness of thinking Christians and his “scholarship.”

See the final post here: Answering Zealot: Other Resources

Answering Zealot Part 3- Sir William Mitchell Ramsay answers Reza Aslan for me

Zealot is an enjoyable read. The book proper opens with an embellished narrative account of the assassination of the high priest Jonathan, son of Ananus. This narrative sets the stage for the core argument of the book, that the historical person of Jesus can only be understood by examining and understanding the socio-political landscape of first-century Palestine, and not by the accounts provided in the Gospels. Following the narrative he proceeds to fill in some historical context: he explains the method of conquest that Rome took over peoples like the Jews, often employing the use of a client-king (in this case Herod) as a ruling intermediary between two very different cultures as they embarked on the often decades-long process of assimilating them into Rome.

Aslan proceeds to cast doubt on the “infancy narratives”, present in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, that Jesus was born in the town of Bethlehem before fleeing with his family to Egypt, then eventually settling in Nazareth. Aslan’s thesis is that messianic prophecy requires that the Messiah be born in Bethlehem, and since Jesus was called a Nazarene and the earliest Gospel account (Mark) does not include any infancy narrative at all, the later Gospel accounts were written with the intention of inserting facts adequate to cause Jesus to fit the messianic profile. He casts doubt on the historicity of the gospels with claims (quoted later in this post) that no one who was reading the gospel accounts at the time actually thought they were reading true historically verifiable facts, and that the notion of a census at the time that Luke claims there was one is “preposterous”.

As I read the opening chapters, I did a little digging of my own to better understand the viewpoints on the census. I was introduced to a nineteenth-century archaeologist and New Testament expert by the name of Sir William Mitchell Ramsay, whose opening arguments for his book Was Christ Born at Bethlehem? A Study on the Credibility of St. Luke had some thoughts that could have been directed at Aslan himself with regard to his methods of argument.

Aslan insists that since we “can’t know” for sure who wrote the gospels and that it is tradition alone that assigns them to the authors by which they are named, and due to his apparent certainty that Matthew, Luke, and John were written with the intention of elaborating to build out a certain view of Christ which could not have been reached by understanding the historical Jesus, then he is justified in dismissing them outright. But that has not been the position of scholars throughout history- “Like Professor Blass, I see no reason to doubt the tradition ; but those who do not accept the tradition may treat the name Luke in these pages as a mere sign to indicate the author, whoever he may be.”- Sir William Mitchell Ramsay, Was Christ Born at Bethlehem? A Study on the Credibility of St. Luke, 1898. It is worth noting that “Ramsay was educated in the Tübingen school of thought (founded by F. C. Baur) which doubted the reliability of the New Testament, but his extensive archaeological and historical studies convinced him of its historical accuracy.” (Wikipedia)

With regard to the census, Aslan considers a paragraph about how “preposterous” the notion is to be satisfactory, ignoring the careful, fair and thorough scholarship on this minute detail (a helpful treatment to reference, the conclusion of which is based on archaeological evidence, is found in The Expositor magazine, June 1897). Why? Because believers care about the details, and the record has shown that careful study reveals that what appears to be an error, an omission, or a contradiction often is much more complicated and can be either completely resolved or resolved within a margin of error satisfactory to not entirely dismiss the text as Aslan has apparently felt comfortable doing. His endnotes section is a delight to read, it’s massively disappointing that he does not include footnotes for quick reference, but he doesn’t find it important to include any notes at all in support of some of his boldest claims.

Sir William Ramsay, writing over a hundred years before Aslan, addresses his dismissive approach head on: “The whole spirit and tone of modern commentaries on Luke’s writings depend on the view which the commentators take on this question. In some cases the commentator holds that no historical statement made by Luke is to be believed, unless it can be proved from authorities independent of him. The commentary on Luke then the interpretațion which is discordant with external facts or with other statements in Luke. If it is possible to read into a sentence a meaning which contradicts another passage in the same author, that is at once assumed to be the one intended by him ; and his incapacity and untrustworthiness are illustrated in the commentary. But no work of literature could stand being treated after this fashion. Imagine the greatest of pagan authors commented on in such a way; any slip of expression exaggerated or distorted ; sentences strained into contradiction with other passages of the same or other authors; the commentary directed to magnify every fault, real or imaginary, but remaining silent about every excellence. There have occasionally been such commentaries written about great classical authors; and they have always been condemned by the general consent of scholars.” (source)

Ramsay goes on to explain “In this discussion it is obviously necessary to conduct the investigation as one of pure history, to apply to it the same canons of criticism and interpretation that are employed in the study of the other ancient historians, and to regard as our subject, not “the Gospel according to St. Luke,” but the History composed by Luke. The former name is apt to suggest prepossession and prejudice : the latter is purely critical and dispassionate.” This is the critique that I have of Aslan’s book so far overall- that he has decided for himself that the gospel accounts are not historical by any means, and he dismisses them outright without substantiation. He provides tremendous substantiation for his delightful descriptions and discussions of first-century Palestine life and Jewish goings-on. Were his tone toward the veracity of the gospels not unnecessarily dismissive, I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys historical fiction or historical accounts written in a narrative style. This is clearly Aslan’s strength.

Why is Luke presumed guilty of an ulterior motive until proven innocent? On the contrary, according to a universally-accepted standard of justice, we presume that the writer is telling the truth until he can be proven otherwise. Ramsay drives this point home: “Luke has not failed to put clearly before his readers what character he claims for his history. He has given us, in the prefatory paragraph of his Gospel, a clear statement of the intention with which he wrote his history, and of the qualifications which give him the right to be accepted as an authority. He was not an eye-witness of the remarkable events which he is proceeding to record, but was one of the second generation to whom the information had been communicated by those“ who were from the beginning eye-witnesses and ministers of the word”. The simplest interpretation of his words is that he claims to have received much of his information from the mouths of eye-witnesses ; and, on careful study of the preface as a whole, it seems impossible to avoid the conclusion that he deliberately makes this claim. Any other interpretation, though it might be placed on one clause by itself, is negatived by the drift of the paragraph as a whole. Thus Luke claims to have had access to authorities of the first rank, persons who had seen and heard and acted in the events which he records. He makes no distinction as to parts of his narrative. He claims the very highest authority for it as a whole.”

And yet Aslan is making a bold contradictory claim, that no one who read this account, which Luke very clearly states is to be read as historical eyewitness testimony, would actually have understood it as such. Again, Aslan presumes to be inside the minds of first century readers as well as inside the mind of Luke himself. Aslan states that “This is an extremely difficult matter for modern readers of the gospels to grasp, but Luke never meant for his story about Jesus’s birth at Bethlehem to be understood as historical fact.” (pg 30) He goes on: “The readers of Luke’s gospel, like most people in the ancient world, did not make a sharp distinction between myth and reality; the two were intimately tied together in their spiritual experience. That is to say, they were less interested in what actually happened than in what it meant. It would have been perfectly normal—indeed, expected—for a writer in the ancient world to tell tales of gods and heroes whose fundamental facts would have been recognized as false but whose underlying message would be seen as true.” (pg 31) There are no endnotes to substantiate these claims.

These are extraordinary and dismissive, bordering on condescending, claims that allow Aslan to wave a hand at anything he deems “myth” within the gospel accounts. How could Aslan possibly know what Luke “meant” or “never meant”? What privileged insider knowledge does Aslan possess? What are his sources? As Ramsay pointed out, Luke made it abundantly clear what his intentions were: to set forth a historical secondary account based on the testimony of the eyewitnesses themselves. Aslan contradicts this claim but provides no footnotes, no additional reading of any kind. His notes section for chapter three is devoid of any comment on these claims, which implies that he expects his reader to take his word for it. But because he is making a truth claim that contradicts an earlier truth claim, the burden of proof is on Aslan.

Read the next part here: Answering Zealot Part 4

Part 1 of this response series: Answering Zealot by Reza Aslan (introduction)

Part 2 of this response series: Answering Zealot by Reza Aslan (Author’s Note)

Answering Zealot by Reza Aslan (Author’s Note)

In part 1 of this blog series, I laid the groundwork for why I decided to read the book Zealot by Reza Aslan and to respond to it here. Check out that post for a synopsis of the book.

My goal is not to completely change the mind of anyone who reads Zealot and believes it. Rather, I want to make it clear that there are problems with Aslan’s thinking that are discernible even to the layperson. It becomes clear, even in the introduction, that he does not approach his scholarship without an agenda. If I can just make you a little uncomfortable as you swallow the claims of his book, then I will be content.

My response today is to the Author’s Note at the beginning of the book. Zealot opens with the line “When I was fifteen years old, I found Jesus.” What follows is a short explanation: Aslan was at an evangelical youth summer camp in Northern California. He credits the beautiful surroundings with cultivating an environment where “given enough time and stillness and soft-spoken encouragement, one could not help but hear the voice of God.”

There is much to be said about the culture of evangelical youth camps from about the 70’s to at least the 00’s, and not all of it is flattering. I attended many an evangelical youth camp and conference as a teen, and I can attest to the fact that they can be the perfect environment for producing false converts. I would characterize as “false converts” those who raised their hand in response to an invitation to “accept Jesus into your heart”, prayed a repeat-after-me prayer, then went back to life as usual without any change in lifestyle that would support the claim of an internal heart change. The term “false convert” isn’t meant to disparage or call into question the sincerity of anyone who raises their hand in such fashion. It’s simply the truth that irresponsible evangelism can produce people who think they are now disciples, but whatever they’re following isn’t the Jesus of scripture. Often it’s a Jesus of their own design… often of the larger culture’s design.

Although I don’t for a second question the sincerity of the people who ran those camps and conferences that I was a part of, they were excellent at producing emotional experiences that caused us to feel as if we’d had an encounter with God. Some of that may have been real for some people- I could not possibly say. As for me, most of my “experiences” during those times were peer pressure and whipped up emotion. I sit here at 30 as a serious Christian, in theology pretty much Reformed and holding to traditional historic doctrine, but I don’t credit my growth to a single camp or conference I attended.

Aslan goes on to reveal that having been raised in a family of “lukewarm Muslims and exuberant atheists”, he received the story of Jesus with gladness. From the outset, however, there are a few issues I want to address with regard to his “gospel presentation.” I will produce it here in its entirety, all emphasis added is mine:

“Two thousand years ago, I was told, in an ancient land called Galilee, the God of heaven and earth was born in the form of a helpless child. The child grew into a blameless man. The man became the Christ, the savior of humanity. Through his words and miraculous deeds, he challenged the Jews, who thought they were the chosen of God, and in return the Jews had him nailed to a cross. Though he could have saved himself from that gruesome death, he freely chose to die. His death was the point of it all, for his sacrifice freed us all from the burden of our sins. But the story did not end there, because three days later, he rose again, exalted and divine, so that now, all who believe in him and accept him into their hearts will also never die, but have eternal life.”

These responses are perhaps a little nitpicky, but I expected, (fairly, I think,) that a book written to undermine the entire premise of a worldwide 2 millennia-old religion would have worked just a little harder to make sure it’s accurately representing the foundational orthodoxy. I understand that Aslan experienced a very certain flavor of evangelism, but his brief synopsis of the gospel message surprised me.

Became the Christ: The term “became” implies that he wasn’t when he started out. I am going to give the benefit of the doubt and assume that he meant he “became” as in he “entered into his ministry, before which he simply worked a quiet life as a skilled laborer.” “Christ” means “anointed one”, a title used in the old testament for high priests and kings. According to traditional Christian belief, Jesus was the Christ from the second he was conceived. He entered his ministry at the age of 30. He did not have to do anything to become the Christ. Rather, his actions proved that he was.

Thought they were the chosen of God: They were the chosen of God, according to the entire canon of scripture. The Jews were not mistaken on this count as Aslan seems to imply. This is an important distinction, because there is a massive storyline threaded from the Old Testament to the New in which God sets apart the nation of Israel to be his chosen people by making promises to Abraham, freeing the nation of Israel from slavery in Egypt, entrusting them with the Mosaic Law, establishing them in the promised land, and then allowing them to cycle through periods of disobedience and discipline, obedience and favor according to the promises he had already made. And yet the temple, the sacrifices, and the feasts were all “shadows” (Hebrews 10:1) pointing to the fulfillment of the greatest promise given to Adam and Eve in Genesis 3:15- “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” According to the beliefs held for the last 2,000 years of historic Christianity, Jesus is the fulfillment of that promise.

It may seem like such a minor nitpick, but the implication that the Jews were not the chosen of God, but simply thought they were, unravels, without a grounds to do so, the narrative the groundwork of which is laid in the very opening lines of scripture. I want to give Aslan every benefit of the doubt, but his Author’s Note from start to finish makes me believe that he isn’t content to allow the evidence to speak for itself, but feels the need to discredit Christianity with his characterization of it.

Accept him into their hearts: this is unhelpful “Christianese”. Nowhere in scripture, neither the old testament or the new, is anyone commanded to “accept Jesus into their heart”. This is an invention of man, and unhelpful as long as it muddies the picture of what true salvation looks like. Rather, we are called to repent and believe. Jesus himself called people to repentance and belief in the gospel (Matthew 11:20, Mark 1:15, Luke 13:3). John the Baptist, who prepared the way for Jesus, called for repentance (Matthew 3:8, Mark 1:4, Luke 3:8). The epistles consistently call for a faith in the words and work of Christ that is grounded in repentance.

Can you call it “accepting Jesus into your heart” and truly be saved? Yes, absolutely. I only highlight it here because it is not the way that Christianity has historically framed the call to salvation, and it may be characteristic of a shallow understanding of Christian theology, particularly soteriology- the study of salvation.

Aslan continues on to divulge that he himself comes from a family of “lukewarm Muslims and exuberant atheists” who fled Iran after the revolution that resulted in the replacement of the government with an Islamic Republic. To Aslan, to be Muslim and to be Persian were inextricably linked, and because the violence of the revolution led to the Aslan family leaving as refugees, they left behind their religion when they left behind their homeland. Aslan then reveals that to him, “Jesus, on the other hand, was America… accepting him into my heart was as close as I could get to feeling truly American.”

This is a strange and telling statement that reveals a bit more about what was underlying and framing Aslan’s conversion. Although Christianity has been the most culturally accepted religion of America for the past 200 years, that status is waning rapidly. One of the reasons I felt the importance of responding to this book was my concern about how Aslan would characterize Christians and Christianity. To an “outsider” reading his book, the way he describes Christianity will sound like what they understood from a cultural perspective, and they’ll accept it at face value. But I hope my reaction to the phrase “accept Jesus into your heart” will point you toward a different truth that Dean Inserra recently identified in depth in the book The Unsaved Christian: every major religion has a cultural impact in the place where it is most prevalently found, but not all who claim the title “Christian” actually believe in the core doctrines of historic Christianity to the point where their lives reveal actions and attitudes that are slowly changing to more closely reflect the Christ of scripture and less those of the culture- even “religious” culture. I am not making a claim about the genuineness of Aslan’s belief when he first claimed to be a Christian, but I am calling into question his characterization of Christianity as a whole and asking the reader to consider that not everyone who seems to be a Christian outwardly is actually one inwardly. And statements like this one, that “Jesus was America” seem to perhaps betray a desire on the part of a young teen, not so much to become right with God, but to fit in with the dominant culture he found himself a part of. This is an understandable desire- imagine a so-called Christian expat teen finding themselves living in a foreign country and being entranced by the beauty of the country’s dominant religion.

A few more responses to quotes from the introduction before I end this post:

“The more I probed the Bible to arm myself against the doubts of unbelievers, the more distance I discovered between the Jesus of the gospels and the Jesus of history- between Jesus the Christ and Jesus of Nazareth.” – The traditional Christian view is that the bible is a cohesive whole (though not chronological from front-to-back)  that points to the historical Jesus, the Christ, from start to finish (John 5:39). We draw no distinction between Jesus of Nazareth and Jesus the Christ, for they are one and the same. I am truly curious about how one could draw this conclusion, that Jesus of Nazareth is not the Jesus presented in the gospels, by “probing the bible” as a teenager. Aslan does not elaborate.

“The bedrock of evangelical Christianity, at least as it was taught to me, is the unconditional belief that every word of the Bible is God-breathed and true, literal and inerrant.” – Aslan at least makes the concession that this is the way evangelical Christianity was taught to him. I wonder if he ever entertained the thought that perhaps what he received was well-intentioned and genuine, but not entirely accurate? If every word of the Bible is literal, then God literally has feathers, and is also a literal rock, a literal tower, and a literal shield. If I told you that God is truly and actually a literal shield that one could strap to their forearm, you’d laugh at me. “But I’m just taking the bible literally!” I’d say. And you’d say “But obviously the bible is filled with different genres, and part of a historically consistent, honest and accurate interpretive method is to recognize when you’re reading poetry, when you’re reading apocalypse literature, and when you’re reading a letter addressed to a group of people.” And you would be right.

Statements like this concern me, because even if Aslan doesn’t intend to, he is very subtly discrediting Christians by implying that on the whole they take every word of the bible literally. Using the phrase “unconditional belief” helps to paint this picture of a American Christian who is stubborn and perhaps even blind to the “real” truth that is right in front of them.

“The sudden realization that his belief is patently and irrefutably false, that the Bible is replete with the most blatant and obvious errors and contradictions- just as one would expect from a document written by hundreds of hands across thousands of years- left me confused and spiritually unmoored.” – The note I have written here in my Kindle is just a big ???

That is an extraordinary claim, and yet Aslan sees no reason to provide evidence of any sort. There are no footnotes here to point toward outside sources that can confirm “irrefutably” what he clearly believes to be true. The most disappointing part of this narrative that Aslan was a young bright-eyed Muslim teen who accepted Jesus into his heart only to read the bible for himself and immediately and “suddenly” understand that it was “replete with the most blatant and obvious errors” is that for 2,000 years there has been a growing canon of robust and satisfying answers to what can easily be perceived as “errors” and “contradictions”. Did he do any research into those explanations? Did he really think that millions of people across time and culture, hundreds and thousands of miles and years apart were content to just shut their eyes and cover their ears to the blatant and obvious errors, even to the point of horrific persecution, torture, and death by the thousands?

In case you’re interested in exploring just a small portion of the answers offered to accusations of contradictions and errors in the Bible, http://defendinginerrancy.com is an excellent and fascinating resource to begin with that I use often for my own personal study.

“[After I discarded my faith] I continued my academic work in religious studies, delving back into the Bible not as an unquestioning believer but as an inquisitive scholar.” The author has convinced me with this phrase that he is making a concerted effort here to mischaracterize believing Christians as intellectually dishonest, unthinking, and unquestioning. This simply could not be further from the truth.

Read the next part here.

Answering Zealot by Reza Aslan (introduction)

Recently I had a friendly exchange with a former high school classmate who commented on a post I had shared by the inimitable Samuel Sey called If Silence is Violence, Jesus is a Sinner. In this particular historical moment there is an argument making the rounds that when it comes to issues of racism, silence is complicity. Not just complicity, in fact, but violence itself in that the silence allows violence to go unchecked. I don’t want to engage with this argument at length right now because it isn’t my purpose for writing this post. But I think I understand what’s at the root of the claim: nobody wants to be guilty of the Bystander Effect, which I believe we all saw happening before our eyes as the nation collectively recoiled at the horror of George Floyd’s death. So the argument goes, we are all bystanders, and when we see injustice being perpetrated we have a moral obligation to speak up or act. I agree with this latter premise. Jesus’s parable of The Good Samaritan, the Golden Rule, and the Second Greatest Commandment all make it abundantly clear: if you see someone in need, you are morally obligated to help them.

Samuel Sey’s argument posits that during his time on the earth, Jesus himself was not particularly vocal about the literal systemic oppression being visited upon the Jews at the hands of the occupying Romans. He had a different mission entirely- and so while he preached the good news that the Kingdom of God was at hand and called on sinners of every stripe to repent and believe, and while he broke bread with the tax collectors and prostitutes and healed the blind, the possessed, and the infirm, he did not launch a political revolution against the (very real, and sometimes very awful) oppressors of the day.

The issue at hand is that many individuals who would probably not self-identify as Christians yet perceive some authority in the teachings of the historical Jesus. This is made clear by a recent effort to use a select number of those teachings (taking them out of context) to support their personal views about the most morally acceptable way to respond to the current civil and political upheaval. If I’m being vague, it’s because that’s really not what I’m here to talk about today and I don’t want to get into it, but here’s just one example.

don’t make memes like this please

All of this introduction is to give some background to the discussion I had with my classmate. She recommended a book called Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan. She asked me to read it with an open mind. Here is the synopsis from Amazon:

“From the internationally bestselling author of No god but God comes a fascinating, provocative end meticulously researched biography that challenges long-held assumptions about the man we know as Jesus of Nazareth. Two thousand years ago, an itinerant Jewish preacher from Galilee launched a revolutionary movement proclaiming the “Kingdom of God”, and threatened the established order of first-century Palestine. Defying both Imperial Rome and its collaborators in the Jewish religious hierarchy, he was captured, tortured and executed as a state criminal. Within decades, his followers would call him the Son of God. Sifting through centuries of mythmaking, Reza Aslan sheds new light on one of history’s most influential and enigmatic figures by examining Jesus within the context of the times in which he lived: the age of zealotry, an era awash in apocalyptic fervor, when scores of Jewish prophets and would-be messiahs wandered the Holy Land bearing messages from God. They also espoused a fervent nationalism that made resistance to Roman occupation a sacred duty. Balancing the Jesus of the Gospels against historical sources, Aslan describes a complex gure: a man of peace who exhorted his followers to arm themselves; an exorcist and faith healer who urged his disciples to keep his identity secret; and the seditious ‘King of the Jews’, whose promise of liberation from Rome went unful lled in his lifetime. Aslan explores why the early Church preferred to promulgate an image of Jesus as a peaceful spiritual teacher rather than a politically conscious revolutionary, and grapples with the riddle of how Jesus understood himself. Zealot provides a fresh perspective on one of the greatest stories ever told. The result is a thought provoking, elegantly written biography with the pulse of a fast-paced novel, and a singularly brilliant portrait of a man, a time and the birth of religion.”

He states in an FAQ provided on the page that “Regardless of whether you think of Jesus as a prophet, a teacher, or God incarnate, it is important to remember that he did not live in a vacuum. Whatever else Jesus was, he was, without question, a man of his time. This is true for all of us.” I agree wholeheartedly with this, and I’m intrigued by Aslan’s claim that although he was an “evangelical Christian” for several years and then deconverted and returned to Islam, he is himself zealous for the Jesus he has discovered in his studies (that is true of many who don’t hold to historic Christianity). I want to engage in good faith, although I confidently disagree with his assertions from the outset.

Who is able to come to the topic of the historical Jesus with a truly open mind? As the trilemma most famously popularized by C.S. Lewis in the book Mere Christianity puts it, you can believe that Jesus is either a liar, a lunatic, or Lord. He has not left us any other options. We all come with our biases. My bias is that I am a Christian who believes that Jesus was not simply an interesting historical person, but God in the flesh and the Savior of the world as well as the reigning King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

So I don’t know how much of an open mind I can promise, but after several days of thought I decided that I have been given a unique opportunity here to engage firsthand with an influential book that opposes my views, and I need to give the book a fair shake. I expect (hope) that others will engage with Christianity with genuine intellectual honesty, and so I’m going to make a concerted effort not to be a hypocrite and to go ahead and do the same. A little light golf-clap applause here would be appreciated.

I don’t expect much more readership than my mom (hi mom), but in case you’re inclined to follow my slow progress through Zealot, I’ll be taking notes on my Kindle app during the 30ish minutes it takes to get my daughter to go to sleep at night, and my goal is to share not just my own thoughts but also to research whatever questions the book raises for me.

I am not an expert in textual criticism, nor have I spent “two decades of rigorous academic research into the origins of Christianity” as Aslan (who has a baller last name of which I am very jealous) says he has. However, if I can’t personally go toe-to-toe with every grenade Aslan lobs against the orthodox Christian view of the historical Jesus, I think I know of some people, much smarter than I, who can, and I will be pulling from their expertise liberally.

I will jump into the actual introduction to the book (which I’ve already highlighted and notated quite a bit) in my next post because WOW, I’ve written nine paragraphs and not yet said anything.

Read the next part here.