An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part XI (Those Pesky Heretics)

This particular post will be less about what's in The Bible and more about how third and fourth century (and later) theologians attempted to reconcile the inconsistencies and contradictions about Jesus' nature in The Bible. 

By the Second Century it was already established among the vast majority of Christians that Jesus was God. But in what sense was he God? That's where the debates and the branding of other theologians as heretics comes in. The Gospels also make very clear that Jesus was a man, but in what sense was he human? How did his humanity and divinity coexist in one person? Was he half God and half man? Was he God who just appeared to be a man? Was he a man who was "promoted" to Godhood? I want to make clear that the Gospels and Epistles do not make any of this clear. And the answers that eventually led to the doctrine of The Trinity were by no means self-evident. Assumptions made by theologians were just as often based on what they thought was common sense or to avoid infelicitous outcomes. Here are a few of the possible "solutions" to the nature of Jesus that eventually were deemed heresies:

• Adoptionism stated that Jesus did not pre-exist before his birth but was "adopted" as the Son of God at his Baptism (or resurrection, or Ascension)  due to his perfect, sinless life. His reward was resurrection and adoption into "the Godhead". This was put to rest around 200CE, but it seems to me that it has solid scriptural basis. 
• Docetism adherents believed that Jesus only appeared to have a physical human form. They believed that matter was inherently evil and therefore God couldn't have had a physical body. 
• Apollinarianism stated that, although Jesus had a physical, human body, his "nature", or mind, was wholly divine.
• Arianism has been latched onto by modern day non-Trinitarians to support their belief that the early Christians were not Trinitarians. Arius didn't teach that Jesus was not God, but that Jesus, God the Son, was created first by God the Father and that the rest of the universe was then created by the Son. The main difference between Arianism and the version of Trinitarianism that the majority of theologians were adhering to was that the Trinitarians believed that the Son and the Father were "co-eternal", i.e. there was never a time when the Son did not exist, while the Arians taught that the Father pre-existed the Son. This dispute was what spurred the Council of Nicaea. Arians for hundreds of years constituted the majority of Christians outside of Rome and Byzantium. It effectively died out when Charlemagne accepted Catholic Christianity. 
• Nestorianism was a branch of early Christianity wherein their founder Nestorius taught that Mary gave birth only to Jesus' human nature. They argued about the term "Mother of God", preferring the title "Mother of Christ".  Nestorius' followers fled persecution relocating to the Persian Empire where they further developed the idea that Jesus, although one person, had both a human and a divine nature.  Nestorians flourished under the Persians and Nestorian churches continued to exist even after the Muslim conquest of Persia. 
• Monophysites believed that Jesus had only one nature - that his humanity was absorbed by his divine nature. They were the majority in the border regions of the Eastern Roman Empire and had competing bishops and patriarchs when the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem and the surrounding area. 
• Monothelitism was a response to Monophysitism, holding that Jesus had two natures, human and divine, but one "will" - divine. 
• Sabellianism teaches that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one and the same, but are different modes or expressions of a unitary God.

Eventually the doctrine of The Trinity emerged with earlier understandings later being branded as heretical. In it Jesus is described as fully God and fully human as regards both his nature and his will, not half God/half human, not a human who was "promoted" to God. As "God the Son" he existed for as long as God the Father existed and was somehow begotten while having always been begotten. The three "persons" of The Trinity are all equally God, yet distinct. It's complicated, and I doubt that many Christians understand the explanations that their theologians came up with. 

Non-Christians and non-Trinitarian Christians sometimes mock the belief, wondering who Jesus was talking to when he prayed to God, among other things. But do any supernatural religious beliefs make any sense? 

Part XII

An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part X (Short Musings On How Jesus Became God)

In the previous installment I touched upon the change in focus forced upon the followers of Jesus when he was killed, rather than becoming the God-anointed conqueror. As I have pointed out previously, the New Testament is not one seamless narrative, but the work of multiple authors that differ not only in perspective, but were penned at different points in time. Because of this one can see an evolution in the way Jesus' nature was viewed by his followers. 

One of the titles bestowed upon Jesus was "Son of God". While now we interpret that literally - son, a child, a first generation descendent - but the phrase had long held a figurative meaning by Jesus' time. In Genesis and Job the term "Sons of God" apparently refers to angels. The King of Israel is "The Son of God" as is Israel itself at times. The earliest traditions that were enshrined in the Gospels indicate that Jesus became the Son of God. At first it was upon his supposed resurrection as a reward for his faithfulness to God. Later the honor was bestowed on him at his baptism; still later at his birth as seen in Matthew and ultimately, as claimed in John, he was a pre-existing Son of God even before his birth. Running parallel to the evolving timeline of the sonship of Jesus there was a steady change in what being "The Son of God" meant. It went from being a great honor, like the ancient kings received, to a semi-divine status like an angel, to divine status in the same category as God, to being equal with God in authority, to being identical with God. (I recommend How Jesus Became God by Dr. Bart Ehrman for the long version with citations and appropriately placed commas). 

Of course, since these incremental changes in perception are all recorded in different places in the Gospels and Epistles, what we are left with is a lot of inconsistencies. I'll leave it to another installment to review some of the attempts by theologians to resolve these inconsistencies, but I'll change lanes for a bit to discuss why there are even any inconsistencies to address.

There is a misconception, not only among Christians, but among society in general, that Christianity was a united entity with recognized leaders and organization from Jesus' death onwards. The Catholics maintain that this entity "The Church" was led by Peter the Apostle and his successors, later known as The Popes. The Eastern Orthodox disagreed about the primacy of the Bishops of Rome (the popes) but otherwise agreed that there was a continuity from Jesus to his apostles, to their followers and on to their day. Protestants and other offshoots mostly attempted to reform The Church or return it to its First century roots, but didn't dispute the commonly held belief of a united early church. Even among modern day skeptics there is a belief that a monolithic early Christian Church "edited" The Bible so it would reflect their prejudices and/or political leanings. In fact it was a chaotic collection of competing versions of Christianity with central control only emerging gradually. 

There was no group tasked with maintaining the integrity of the different Gospels, epistles and tracts being copied and recopied and spread around. Nothing prevented copyists, who were usually not professional scribes, from making errors in transcription or from making intentional alterations. This was in addition to the divergent points of view contained in the original writings. Pseudonymity (signing the name of another, more prominent name to one's own writing) was common since acceptance of a Gospel was based almost exclusively on who supposedly wrote it, not whether it made any sense. Several of the epistles attributed to Paul were almost certainly not written by him, including Ephesians, Colossians and both epistles to Timothy. There is no evidence that any of the four canonical Gospels were written by the men whose names are on them. Different regions had their favorites and several writings that are now considered apocryphal were once considered on par with what is now considered scripture. By the time there was a central authority that could have decided what was scripture and what wasn't, all that they did decide was which books would be included in the official canon of scripture without any attempt to harmonize among the various books. An exception to this was Marcion. The leader of an alternate strain of Christianity, Marcion was the first to put together a "canon" of scripture. His "New Testament" included the Gospel of Luke and the (heavily edited) epistles of Paul. It was mainly as a response to him that the group that became the Catholic Church compiled its own list, which we still have today. 

It was only after this point that theologians began to attempt to harmonize the various fragments and make sense of the competing narratives, focusing mainly on the nature of Jesus, eventually formulating the doctrine of The Trinity.

Part XI

An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part IX (Who Is This Jesus Guy Anyway?)

One of the core tenets Christianity is that Jesus is God. But one of the things that you can definitely depend on among Christians and non-Christians alike is that no one really understands what that means and anyone who thinks that they do undoubtedly understands it differently than the theologians who put the doctrine together piece by piece over the course of a couple of centuries. What? Theologians "put it together"! It's right there in The Bible. Except that it isn't. There are statements where it seems clear that Jesus is God (Thomas' cry of "My Lord and my God being the clearest), some that seem to suggest it and some that flat out contradict the idea. Early Christians had to reconcile the contradictions and they way they did it was to create the idea of the Trinity. But the reasons that contradictions even exist was that there were disagreements among earlier Christians regarding who Jesus was. Different Gospel writers had different viewpoints, were writing to different audiences, and had different levels of understanding. Add to that the role of generations of copyists inserting their own ideas into the Gospels, "correcting" unclear passages, or those that contradicted what they believed was the truth. 

The New Testament is not a puzzle, with pieces strewn across the writings of various authors that can be pieced together to come up with the truth, but those various authors all had their own points of view which often are at variance with each other. Which, when you think about it, makes perfect sense. Any group of people, present at the same event, will remember the details differently. With the Gospels we don't even have different eye witnesses disagreeing, we have authors who put together their narratives based on a couple of generations of oral traditions, legendary accretions and myth building. Outside of the "works" based messages attributed to Jesus, as well as his predictions of a coming apocalypse, I believe that anything in The Bible purporting to describe the purpose of his death or his divine nature was added to the record by later followers in order to make sense of events that manifestly didn't make sense. 

Why did Jesus have to die? Was it as the perfect sacrifice to erase the collective sin of mankind inherited from Adam and Eve? Was it to "pay the price" for sin? (The wages of sin is death) Was it to prove that he was a true prophet, since Israel allegedly usually killed its prophets? Was it so he could be resurrected in order to defeat death? Was is to be an example to mankind to show how he was willing to go as far as to be killed in order to do God's will? You can find hints of all these reasonings in The Bible, including reading into Old Testament passages that are reinterpreted to supposedly prophecy his birth, life and death. My view is that Jesus didn't think he was going to killed, he thought God would usher in the end of the world with Jesus himself playing a key role (yes I know there are verses suggesting he knew - I'm reasonably sure these were words put in his mouth by later tradition). It's obvious even from the Gospels that his followers did not expect that he would be killed and that he wouldn't be a  conquering military leader. His followers must have been shocked at how things turned out.

We've seen how, even in modern times, predictions failing to come through seldom dissuade the committed from their path of belief. How many "prophets", even in our lifetime, have predicted the end of the world, or, even in the realm of politics, that Donald Trump would be restored to the presidency sometime in 2021. Explanations need to be made to fit the new reality into the old predictions.

Part X

An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part VIII (Why I Believe - Or Disbelieve - As I Do)

You may have noticed that these posts are not scholarly works. I don't go into exhaustive detail or cite sources. Other people have done a much better job than I have ever done in putting together a coherent view of The Bible from the point of view of someone who doesn't consider it God's Word. I strongly recommend the works of Dr. Bart Ehrman who has written such works as Misquoting Jesus, Lost Christianities, Heaven and Hell, and How Jesus Became God among many others. 

Before I continue with my opinions of The Bible, especially the Gospels and Epistles, from an agnostic viewpoint, let me give you a brief tour of how my opinion of The Bible has changed in my lifetime. The blog series "So, You Want to Join a Cult" covers most of this ground:  

https://aesduir.blogspot.com/2019/10/so-you-want-to-join-cult-part-i.html

I grew up in an Irish-Catholic family on the very edge of New York City in a neighborhood that was overwhelmingly Catholic, mostly Irish and Italian. There were a few Protestant churches, and there was a significant Jewish presence, but Catholicism was very much the default in this neighborhood, dominated by two Catholic parishes, St. Pius X and St. Claire's. We went to church every Sunday and attended Catholic grade school. As was usual with lay Catholics, at least in that era, we didn't trouble to much about doctrine or theology and left that stuff to the priests. I was familiar with the broad outlines of the Gospels and the major themes of the Old Testament, but really didn't think about religion at all. It was like the air - it was just there.

In my teens I visited some local Protestant churches. While I noticed some differences in the services, the broad outline was the same, or at least seemed that way. More to satisfy my curiosity than anything else I studied non-Christian religions, but it was more of an intellectual study and never really took. 

When I was fourteen I worked as a clerk in a financial firm in the financial district of lower Manhattan. There I encountered a variety of street corner preachers and began to hear about some of the beliefs of Evangelical/Fundamentalist Christianity such as "the rapture" and the concept of becoming "born again". Still no changes in my overall belief system, but I was starting to entertain some serious challenges to my worldview. During my freshman year of college I encountered The Way.  I eventually became convinced this group was a cult (again, see the link to Part I of "So, You Want to Join a Cult"), not so much their , beliefs but their practices. Their theology was for the most part similar to the strain of Evangelical Protestantism known as dispensationalism. Their claim to fame in theological terms was that, unlike almost all Christians, they did not believe that The Bible supports the belief that Jesus was God. A slightly less controversial position (although not unheard of) was that upon death you did not proceed to heaven or hell (or purgatory for Catholics) but were in a kind of sleep until the "return of Christ". 

What attracted me to this group was that they appeared methodical in their study of The Bible and were able to cite specific verses to support all of their beliefs. I was with this group from 1978-2001, with a hiatus in the 90's and was very much a true believer. I believed that The Bible, in its original texts, was divinely inspired by God. The Way taught that, utilizing certain commonsense methods, one could easily determine God's will - The Bible, they taught, interpreted itself. 

In 2000 the (married) top leader had been expelled after conducting an affair with a married woman. This caused me to question, not The Bible itself, but some of the things that this particular leader had been teaching that, to put it mildly, were "out there". I compiled a long list of things where the leader's teachings were at odds with what the founder of The Way had taught. My questioning got me kicked out of the group. 

I became aware of many offshoots from the original group that had split off during the leadership crisis that accompanied the founder's death in the late 80's. Despite all of them using the same "keys to interpretation" in their understanding of The Bible they were coming up with wildly differing conclusions. I started to see that even the founder's theology didn't really stand up to the self-interpreting Bible model and that his own conclusions were his own and not necessarily the only possible conclusions to be made utilizing the "keys to interpretation". I briefly considered returning to mainstream Christianity, but it didn't take long to see that no one had a reliable grasp of "The Truth" and even though most denominations believed that they were right and everyone else was wrong, they were all using the same Bible to come to different conclusions. 

It was at that point that I determined that there was no objective reason to elevate The Bible and Christianity over any other system of belief. This didn't mean that I had decided that it was definitely wrong, but that there wasn't any reason to assume that it was right either. I wasn't mad at God (something I was accused of), I just wasn't convinced that he existed, and if he did, at least not necessarily in the form that Christianity claimed he did. 

This is the path that I have walked that got me to the point where I see The Bible as just another book. At best a collection of books and letters and essays and pamphlets outlining men's opinions about God, the world, Jesus and morality. 

Part IX