Category: Graduate Work

The Gospels: Seven Reasons to Trust Their Reliability

On By Jovan PayesIn 2022, Ancient Biography, Ancient History, Biola University, Christian Apologetics, College Papers, Early Christianity, Gospel Studies, Graduate Work, Greco-Roman World, Jesus Studies, New Testament, Research Papers, Talbot School of Theology, Theology

In the summer of 1996, I picked up a little green Gideon New Testament and began reading the gospels. At the time I was searching to see if perhaps Jesus would be the help I needed in my personal quest to leave the street gang life, overcome my dependency on illicit drug use, and establish a relationship with God. The experience had a radical impact on my hope of what was possible in my life, that I could be other than what I was, and how I could be reborn into the kingdom of God. A few days after Christmas day, I committed my life to following Jesus. In that nascent period of my emerging faith, I relied on the gospels to “tell me the story of Jesus.”

Since that time, I have immersed myself in the study of the gospels for faith and for hope, for truth, and for the renewing power of the historic Jesus who is the Christ of my faith. However, in that same period, it became clear to me that a number of sources (academic and popular) questioned the historical reliability of the Gospels (and the Bible). In this present paper, I affirm their reliability in a cumulative case, based on seven good arguments that make it more probable than not that the Gospels are historically reliable.[1]

The case will be divided into three categorical units.[2] I begin with four “ground-clearing” arguments to resolve important front-end misgivings regarding the reliability of the gospels. Second, I argue how four compositional conventions demonstrate a remarkably stable environment for writing ancient biographies of a recent figure within living memory. Then, I show how three historical features of the Gospels affirm their reliability. Finally, I offer a summation of what this abbreviated cumulative case affirms regarding the historical reliability of the Gospels.

Cumulative Argument for Reliability

There are two aspects of the present cumulative case for the reliability of the Gospels to consider before moving forward: the method and the goal. The method of a cumulative case is to use a series of individual arguments that are “less than sufficient” to bear the whole burden of a case by themselves, but together argue a compelling case that is reasonable. Former cold case detective, J. Warner Wallace, says it helps others to “see the forest for the trees.”[3] If the overlapping nature of the arguments makes for a reasonable argument, then the goal is to demonstrate that the cumulative case is more probable than the alternatives.

As an illustration, consider the colloquial commonsense argument: “If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, has a bill like a duck, then it is a duck.” These three arguments form a cumulative case that the “bird” is a duck. With this admittedly limited illustration, I point to the commonsense nature of overlapping lines of reasons and evidence, of varying weight, together to offer a big-picture argument.

Presently, then, the seven arguments below overlap to argue positively that it is reasonable and more probable (not just plausible) than not the Gospels are in general historically reliable as an ancient historical biography of a recent religious teacher (Jesus) within the living memory of his disciples. This is a threshold argument. Do the gospels crossover to the category of historically reliable? This is significant since the Gospels are our best available source for any historical picture of Jesus of Nazareth.[4]

Ground Clearing Arguments

The following arguments are treated as “ground-clearing” lines of evidence as they address “front-end” matters of reliability.[5] What extant sources are available for knowledge of Jesus? Has the text of the Gospels been preserved and reliably transmitted? Even if the textual tradition is adequate, are the translations reliable? How early are these Gospels and who wrote them? These are important questions that must be given consideration due to so many misgivings about them in popular circles.[6]

Ancient Sources for Jesus

In the first place, what sources exist to know that Jesus existed and what he said and did? Apart from the Gospels, there is a cache of early ancient non-Christian, often hostile, testimony about Jesus available from Graeco-Roman, Jewish, later Christian, and heretical and apocryphal literature within the first one hundred years.[7] The composite picture of what is known of Jesus from these sources remarkably corroborates with what is found in the four Gospel accounts: Jesus was a Jewish itinerant, miracle-working rabbi in the Roman province of Judea, who many believed was the Messiah; but he was executed under Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius Caesar; his disciples believed he resurrected spreading this belief throughout the Rome. The Gospels remain the best sources for Jesus, but corroboration of their portrayal of Jesus with ancient non-Christian sources is a necessary starting place.

Reliable Transmission

Additionally, skeptic Richard Carrier, a historian of ancient Rome, lists “textual analysis” as the first stage of historical inquiry.[8] This second ground-clearing argument asserts the Gospels pass the “bibliographical test” as part of the reliable transmission of the Greek New Testament from the ancient text to the modern reader.[9] New Testament textual criticism can evaluate, detect, and correct textual corruptions due to the access of textual critics to over 5,800 Greek manuscripts, early ancient translations, and early church quotations.[10] There are two significant variants in the gospels which involve an entire passage (Mark 16:9–20; John 7:53–8:11), but these are the exception. According to Blomberg, we have “upwards of 97% of what the original writers wrote reconstructed beyond any reasonable doubt,” and the remaining 3% affects no Christian doctrine.[11] As an ancient, hand-copied group of books, the Gospels have been reliably transmitted.

Reliable English Translations

As a third argument, standard English Bible translations are sufficiently reliable for the purpose of knowing the deeds, sayings, and passion of Jesus in the Gospels. Translation is the work of transferring the meaning and ideas of words from one language into the language of a receptor language. Biblical scholar Philip W. Comfort notes that a translation “must reliably replicate the meaning of the text without sacrificing its readability.”[12] In translation theory, there are formal equivalence (“word for word”) translations (ESV, NASB), and there are dynamic equivalence (“thought for thought”) translations (NLT, CEB).[13] Additionally, there are optimal equivalence translations that seek an ideal blend of formal and dynamic methods (CSB, NIV).[14] No translation is perfect, but they typically succeed in producing a “reliable and readable” English text.

First-Century Documents

Finally, the Gospels are first-century biographical documents. Although the traditional authorship attributed to the Gospels attributed to them by the earliest Christian claim has been disputed and denied by critical scholarship, the dating given for most of the canonical gospels is within the window of “living memory” for the writing of ancient biographies about a historical figure.[15] Keener defines “living memory” as a time when “some people who knew the subject were still alive when the biographer wrote” their biography.[16] This is an ideal time to write a Gospel given the access to “better sources” and communal accountability to “document” events and sayings than a later biographer would have at their disposal. Scholarly consensus places the publication of each Gospel within the range of “living memory” of the first century. This fits within a literary period of the early Roman Empire in which concern for historical biographical accuracy peaked, roughly between the first century B.C. to the third century A.D.[17]

The Argument from Memory

In Christobiography, Craig Keener marshalls a compelling case that the Gospel biographies have many of the features of the ancient biographies. The following section seeks to condense Kenner’s overall argument. I argue for a remarkably stable environment for historical writing, with a focus on living memory and oral sources, which were adapted to write an ancient biography of a recent figure within living memory with a concern for accurate history telling.[18]

To focus the present argument, the historical preface to Luke-Acts will be used to inform and illustrate these conventions:

Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught. (Luke 1:1–4 English Standard Version)[19]

Luke’s preface elicits the reader to anticipate that a historical narrative is forthcoming and constrained by pre-existing Jesus knowledge. Luke readily demonstrates that a historian’s use of convention to compose history is not incompatible with the doctrine of inspiration.[20] Nevertheless, here the focus is only given to how the Gospels are examples of reliably composed ancient biographical documents using the sources and conventions available to the authors.

Luke illustrates that the early church had a depository of oral tradition available to them extending back to “those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word” (Luke 1:2). The presence of oral tradition alone does not suggest stability, as it could be argued that the further away from Jerusalem over the years, the oral tradition lacked authentic “controls on the content” to prevent corruption.[21] Admittedly, this is a very complex question. It requires an appreciation that one’s memory precedes chronologically “memoir” and “oral tradition,” which brings into focus the question: how reliable was the first-generation memory of Jesus on which the Gospels are written? Part of the answer is found in the strength of the communal memory of the first generation of eyewitnesses to preserve and provide accountability to the transmission of oral tradition even if certain details were distorted, or allowable stylistic changes crept in.[22] That is to say, distortions may occur when forgetting certain details (location, timeframe), but in an organically controlled environment, memory will likely not invent new stories.

Craig Keener argues at length that memory studies “offer no reason to discount” that the Gospels, as ancient biography, “preserve substantial information about Jesus.”[23] Debates occur over how much “core” Jesus is preserved in the Gospels from the source of memory and oral tradition. The skepticism of how much ancients could remember, it should be tempered with contemporary “Westerners” use of memory to reconstruct from their own living memory, despite the natural limitations of organic memory.[24] When it comes to what the earliest disciples should have remembered, memory studies point to an expectation that the collective memory and oral tradition of the disciples should have provided a basic historical portrait of Jesus.

The retelling of the same or parallel events with stylized segments of Jesus’ teaching, the person mentioned, or details omitted, are the kinds of elements that would be found within well a preserved oral tradition and communal memory. This is particularly important for the oral teaching of Jesus in which the oral community cared more for substance (the gist) over the verbatim recollection.[25] Thus, Keener argues, there are good historical grounds for accepting the shared events, themes, teachings, and deeds of Jesus and his inner circle.[26]

Historical Arguments

The present historical arguments affirm the reliability of the Gospels. First, archaeological confirmation situates the realism of the biographical narratives. Second, early Christian letters predating the Gospels include early Christian creedal statements, possible quotations, and allusions to the teaching of Jesus.

Archaeological Corroboration

Archaeology is a precarious discipline as it does not always yield all the desired corroborating evidence for a specific event or person. Nevertheless, “evidence-based apologetics” is linked to the proper use and interpretation of archaeological findings.[27] Excavations from various cities connected to Jesus have illuminated the realism found in the Gospel narratives, but by the nature of the case, they do not confirm the supernatural deeds of Jesus.[28] It is immaterial if one’s horizon believes the Gospels exaggerate these aspects of the historical Jesus or allow for them.[29] There was a time when it was believed that archaeology could only date the birth of Christ but provide little that would illustrate Jesus’ life.[30]

Archaeology has since demonstrated places mentioned exist (e.g., Nazareth), illustrating agrarian life (mill stones, viticulture), living conditions (homes), topography, economics (Roman and Judean coins), and other socio-cultural realities.[31] In 1961, an inscription was found at Caesarea Maritimis confirming externally that Pontius Pilate was the Judean prefect during the reign of Tiberius Caesar. The realism of stories of the twelve disciples traveling by boat in the Sea of Galilee was confirmed in 1986 when a first-century fishing boat was found in the Sea of Galilee. In an impressive find, in 1968 the remains of an early first-century crucified man, named Yehohanan, were discovered in a family bone box (ossuary) found in the northern city limits of Jerusalem. This find illuminates Jewish death customs of the period, that Judean crucified victims as criminals received proper burial rites (like Jesus), instead of the claim of some that the crucified were buried in unmarked mass graves.[32]

Pre-Gospel Allusions in Paul and James

A second historical argument is made from pre-Gospel publication creedal statements, quotations, and allusion to Paul and James the Just. Paul is believed to have suffered martyrdom under Nero in Rome (A.D. 64–67).[33] In Galatians 1:11–2:10, the content of Paul’s gospel is authenticated by the earliest disciples of Jesus. In 1 Corinthians 15:1–8, Paul appeals to a pre-existing creedal statement affirming the death, burial, resurrection, and multiple resurrected appearances of Jesus (Matt 28:1–10; Luke 24:1–49). Additionally, Paul distinguishes his teaching on marital issues from known circulating instruction from Jesus (1 Cor 7:10, 12).[34] In Romans 1:1–6, is found the belief that Jesus is of Davidic lineage (Matt 1:17). In 1 Timothy 5:18, Paul cites what is likely an oral saying of Jesus that is found nearly verbatim in Luke 10:7.[35]

Additionally, James wrote an early epistle to Hebrew Christians. He was executed by high priest Ananus II during the transition from procurator Festus to Albinus (A.D. 62), alluding to the teaching of his brother Jesus.[36] Blomberg demonstrates that no epistle “contains as many passages that verbally resemble the teaching of Jesus” as James, so much so, that some believe James had access at minimum to Matthew’s sermon on the mount (Matt 5–8).[37] The resemblances seem consistent with the fluid nature of oral tradition.

These references from Paul and James, and many other letters, do not alone prove beyond the shadow of a doubt the historical reliability of the Gospels, but they do show how the Gospels fall within the continuity of pre-publication beliefs.

A Summation

The “ground clearing” arguments demonstrate that there is good ancient first-century source material that has been adequately preserved and reliably translated into English for those who would like to know about Jesus. Additionally, the oral tradition techniques and composition with available sources to write ancient history are remarkably stable to deliver the four Gospel biographies of Jesus within living memory. Finally, the external historical reliability of the Gospels is seen in the authentic writings of Paul and James, and archaeological corroboration of the realism and setting of the Gospels. I pray this cumulative case leads someone to believe that the Gospels are reliable so that one day they may come to believe in the Jesus of the Gospels.[38]

Endnotes

  1. To be clear, I do not affirm that these are the only arguments that can be made. Nor have I included all historical “ground clearing” issues (e.g., historical methodology, etc.). I have limited the discussion to these seven arguments due to space and convenience.
  2. These are my personal arrangements of the arguments.
  3. Former cold-case detective, J. Warner Wallace, remarks, “cumulative case arguments are typically built on a number of pieces of evidence, each of which may be imperfect or insufficient when considered in isolation. When examined in totality, however, the case becomes strong and reasonable.” He goes on, “opponents of cumulative cases usually attack the imperfections or insufficiencies they observe in the single pieces of evidence within the larger case. But remember, each individual evidence is admittedly less than sufficient, and this has no impact on whether or not the final conclusion, given the overwhelming nature of the cumulative case, is reasonable.” See, “Intense Investigation,” Forensic Faith: A Homicide Detective Makes the Case for a More Reasonable, Evidential Christian Faith, Logos electronic ed. (Colorado Springs, CO: Cook, 2017), n.p.
  4. Craig S. Keener, Christobiography: Memory, History, and the Reliability of the Gospels (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2019), 11.
  5. The idea of “ground clearing” arguments is taken from a passing statement in a lecture by Craig L. Blomberg on the reliability of the Gospels. The structure of this paper relies on the selective use of Blomberg’s lectures from a Fall 2022 Biola University graduate course titled, “The Reliability of the Gospels.”
  6. Paul Barnett likewise asserts, “our first and most basic step is to identify, date, and assess the historical value of our sources for Jesus Christ” (Finding the Historical Christ [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009], 11).
  7. Craig L. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, 2nd ed. (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2007), 249–280; Barnett, Finding the Historical Christ, 11–64.
  8. Richard C. Carrier, Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus, Kindle ed. (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2012), location 174: “We have to use the methods of textual criticism and paleography to ascertain whether a document we presently have is authentic and accurately reflects its original—since usually only copies of copies exist today.”
  9. John Warwick Montgomery, History, Law and Christianity (1964; reprint, Irvine, CA: NRP Books, 2014), 11–13; Josh McDowell and Sean McDowell, Evidence that Demands a Verdict: Life-Changing Truth for a Skeptical World (Nashville, TN: Nelson, 2017), 46–47.
  10. Blomberg points out it is not a fair use of the textual evidence to suggest the earlier back one goes, there will be an increase in variants (Historical Reliability, 335–36). Still, the earliest extant manuscripts are second-century papyrus fragments of Matthew 23:30–39 (P77) and John 18:31–34 and 18:37–38 (P52), and John 18:36–19:7 (P90) attesting to the early circulation of these books (Philip W. Comfort, Early Manuscripts and Modern Translations of the New Testament [Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1990], 31–71). There are witnesses to Syriac and Old Latin translations of the gospels as early as the second century (Bruce M. Metzger, The Bible in Translation: Ancient and English Versions [Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2001], 25–35). The gospels are cited or alluded to in first-to-second-century patristic literature such as Ignatius, Barnabas, Clement, Polycarp, etc. (cf. Oxford Society of Historical Theology, The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers (reprint, Bellingham, WA: Logos Research, 2009).
  11. Blomberg, Historical Reliability, 332–33; For his alarmist rhetoric see, Bart Ehrman, “The Copyists of the Early Christian Writings” in Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 45–69.
  12. Philip W. Comfort, Essential Guide to Bible Versions (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 2000), 104.
  13. Comfort, Essential Guide, 103–04.
  14. On “optimal equivalence” see “The CSB Translation Philosophy: Optimal Equivalency” (Feb. 14, 2017).
  15. McDowell and McDowell compare the dating ranges of the four Gospels among conservative and liberal scholarship and provide these ranges in Evidence that Demands a Verdict (42–46): Matthew (early 60s–80s; 80–100), Mark (late 50s–late 60s; 70s), Luke (early 60s–80s; 70–110), John (mid-60s–100; 90–100).
  16. Keener, Christobiography, 2.
  17. Keener, Christobiography, 68–103.
  18. Due to the nature of this essay, especially this section, I am arguing the case for reliability without seeking the shortcut of appealing to “Holy Spirit-guided inspiration.” I am fully committed to the doctrine of verbal plenary inspiration. I believe God used the conventions of the day in the production of his written Word.
  19. Unless otherwise noted Scripture quotations are from the English Standard Version of The Holy Bible (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2016).
  20. Blomberg, Historical Reliability, 38, footnote 42: “Luke describes the composition of his Gospel according to the standard process of ancient history-writing–consulting written sources, learning from oral tradition, interviewing eyewitnesses, selecting what is deemed most important for one’s own objectives.” In Keener, Christobiography, 221–39, the two-volume work Luke-Acts is profiled as a mixture of “biohistory” with each book from a sub-category of the historical genre: Luke (ancient biography) and Acts (ancient history).
  21. J. Ed Komoszewski, M. James Sawyer, and Daniel B. Wallace, Reinventing Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 2006), 30.
  22. Komoszewski, Sawyer, and Wallace, Reinventing, 33–36.
  23. Keener, Christobiography, 366.
  24. Keener, Christobiography, 373. Keener points out how memories are not “videocameras… not straightforward, objective records of what happened” (374). They include constant reworking, bias, and conflation, and are vulnerable to suggestion.
  25. Keener notes that verbatim recollection was very rare, and given the sample size of the teaching of Jesus, one should expect the kind of substance-focused material found in the Gospels (385–90). Cf. Darrell L. Bock, “The Words of Jesus in the Gospels: Live, Jive, or Memorex?” in Jesus Under Fire, eds. Michael J. Wilkins and J. P. Moreland (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1995), 74–99.
  26. Keener, Christobiography, 384.
  27. McDowell and McDowell, Evidence that Demands a Verdict, 416.
  28. Blomberg, Historical Reliability, 326–27.
  29. I. Howard Marshall explores what is meant by “historical” as whether a person named x actually existed or whether a historical reference to someone named x is more fiction than history. Additionally, he pursues his project by seeking to go from “I believe in that there was a historical person called Jesus… what, if anything can be known about this person” (I Believe in the Historical Jesus, rev. ed. [Vancouver: Regent College, 2004], 16). C. K. Barrett assesses the uncomfortableness for the modern historian reading pre-scientific literature like the Gospels largely centers on the supernatural elements that do “not so appear in his own experience.” Still, it would be a “bad historical method to rule out a priori… such events” (Jesus and the Gospel Tradition [Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1968], 4). See a more recent discussion on “preunderstanding” horizons in Michael R. Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2010), 38–50.
  30. James H. Charlesworth, “Jesus Research and Archaeology” in The World of the New Testament: Cultural, Social, and Historical Contexts, eds. Joel B. Green and Lee Martin McDonald (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013), 441.
  31. Blomberg, Historical Reliability, 326–31. Charlesworth lists over one-hundred-twenty items ranging from the mundane to the illustrious (“Jesus Research,” 443–45).
  32. Craig A. Evans, “Jesus and the Ossuaries,” Bulletin for Biblical Research 13.1 (2003): 33. The multiply attested “burial tomb tradition” (Mark 15:42–47) has been doubted by various critical scholars, like John Dominic Crossan, who believes crucifixion meant “death-without-burial” and “body-as-carrion” (Who Killed Jesus? [New York: HarperCollins, 1995], 163–68).
  33. For Paul’s death see 1 Clement 5:5–7, 6:1; for context and historical analysis see Sean McDowell, The Fate of the Apostles: Examining the Martyrdom Accounts of the Closest Followers of Jesus (2008; reprint, New York: Routledge, 2015), 93–114.
  34. Blomberg describes this as a “powerful confirmation of the care with which the first Christians distinguished the words of the historical Jesus from later instructions inspired by his Spirit” (Historical Reliability, 287).
  35. Although critics do not list 1 Timothy among Paul’s authentic letters, the arguments are far from definitive and do not make Pauline authorship impossible (Martin Dibelius and Hans Conzelmann, The Pastoral Epistles, trans. Philip Buttolph and Adela Yarbro [Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1972], 1–5; George W. Knight, III, The Pastoral Epistles [1992; reprint, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013], 21–52).
  36. For the death of James the Just see Josephus Antiquities 20.197–200; For context and historical analysis see Sean McDowell, The Fate of the Apostles, 115–34.
  37. Blomberg, Historical Reliability, 292–93.
  38. This “two decision” model is taken from Wallace, Cold-Case Christianity, 255–58.

Works Cited

Barnett, Paul. Finding the Historical Christ. After Jesus, volume 3. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009.

Barrett, C. K. Jesus and the Gospel Tradition. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1968.

Blomberg, Craig L. The Historical Reliability of the Gospels. 2nd edition. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2007.

Bock, Darrell L. “The Words of Jesus in the Gospels: Live, Jive, or Memorex?” in Jesus Under Fire, edited by Michael J. Wilkins and J. P. Moreland, 74–99. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1995.

Carrier, Richard. Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus. Kindle edition. Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2012.

Charlesworth, James H. “Jesus Research and Archaeology” in The World of the New Testament: Cultural, Social, and Historical Contexts, edited by Joel B. Green and Lee Martin McDonald, 439–66. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013.

Crossan, John Dominic. Who Killed Jesus? Exposing the Roots of Antisemitism in the Gospel Story of the Death of Jesus. New York: HarperCollins, 1995.

Dibelius, Martin, and Hans Conzelmann. The Pastoral Epistles. Translated by Philip Buttolph and Adela Yarbro. Herm. Edited by Helmut Koester, et al. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1972.

Ehrman, Bart D. Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why. New York: HarperCollins, 2005

Evans, Craig A. “Jesus and the Ossuaries.” Bulletin for Biblical Research 13.1 (2003): 21–46.

Keener, Craig S. Christobiography: Memory, History, and the Reliability of the Gospels. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2019.

Knight, George W., III. The Pastoral Epistles. NIGTC. Edited by I. Howard Marshall and W. Ward Gasque. 1992. Reprint, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013.

Komoszewski, J. Ed, M. James Sawyer, and Daniel B. Wallace. Reinventing Jesus: What the Da Vinci Code and other Novel Speculations Don’t Tell You. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2006.

Licona, Michael R. The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2010.

Marshall, I. Howard. I Believe in the Historical Jesus. Revised edition. Vancouver, BC: Regent College, 2002.

McDowell, Josh, and Sean McDowell. Evidence That Demands a Verdict: Life-Changing Truth for a Skeptical World. Nashville, TN: Nelson, 2017.

McDowell, Sean. The Fate of the Apostles: Examining the Martyrdom Accounts of the Closest Followers of Jesus. 2015. Reprint, New York: Routledge, 2018.

Montgomery, John Warwick. History, Law and Christianity. 1964. Reprint, Irvine, CA: NRP Books, 2014.

Wallace, J. Warner. Cold-Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels. Colorado Springs, CO: Cook, 2013.

_____. Forensic Faith: A Homicide Detective Makes the Case for a More Reasonable, Evidential Christian Faith. Colorado Springs, CO: David C Cook, 2017.

Family Ministry: Evaluating Garland on “Power and Roles”

On By Jovan PayesIn 1 Timothy, 2017, Christian Leadership, family, Family Studies, Freed-Hardeman University, Genesis, Graduate Work, Jesus Studies, Mark, marriage, Marriage Studies, Research Papers, Women Studies

In the December 2015 issue of the Gospel Advocate magazine, my article, “The Widows Church of Christ” was published.[1] It focused on my experience one summer filling in at a small congregation near Freed-Hardeman University that at the time was composed exclusively of women and widows. In the piece, I briefly retold a conversation I had with one of the sisters there, rehearsed a few biblical examples of areas of women’s evangelistic involvement, and discussed women’s role in the assembly.

A reader called my attention to share her disagreement with the following few lines:

Scripture shows that Christian women prophesied and prayed in New Testament times (1 Corinthians 11:5; Acts 22:8-9), taught the Word of God accurately (Acts 18:26), and brought people to salvation (2 Timothy 1:5; 3:14-15). Christian women also served one another in many diverse ways (1 Timothy 5:2; Titus 2:3-5; Acts 9:36-43). Too, Christian women were patrons, fellow workers for the truth, and “house church” hostesses (Romans 16:1-16).[2]

She disagreed with my assessment, but not because the early church used women in its ministry. She said, “I disagree because we [i.e. women] are stupid.” I responded, “Who told you women are stupid?” She matter-of-factly responded, “we are.” I flatly denied her claim. I do not know who taught her this, all I know is that an entire life in the church has not changed her mind. Unfortunately, this has not been my only experience.

Many women in church ask me to speak on their behalf about ideas. Why? It is not because they are shy, but because they are “women” and women have no “right to share” ideas about the church. Perhaps it is not fair to put all the blame on the church. However, if the church truly embraces a culture of female dignity and equality as image-bearers of God, and equality as recipients of salvation (Gal 3:26-28), then it would be hoped that our sisters and fellow heirs in Christ should have a better perception of themselves as women in the church and society, and as wives and mothers in the home.

The issue at hand may be reduced to one word —power. Who has the power and who does not in the family, the church, in the world? Who should? Furthermore, what is power, and is it an innate quality or something else. The late Diana A. Garland (d. 2015), former dean of the Baylor School of Social Work at Baylor University, discusses power in detail within the sociological perspective of marital relationships and the impact of biblical interpretation in a chapter of her insightful volume, Family Ministry: A Comprehensive Guide.[3]

In it, she provides a working definition of power, explores Jesus’ teaching about power in Mark 9:33-37, summarizes gender roles in the home within the American context of the last century, and offers her interpretations of certain key biblical passages (Gen 1-3; Col 3:18-19; Eph 5:21-33, 1 Pet 3:1-6; 1 Cor 7, etc). It is argued here that Garland has presented a cohesive argument regarding power and Jesus’ teaching about power, but they are not complete discussions. Furthermore, Garland presents a brief social-historical summarization of gender roles which reflects a hierarchy —a model of marital headship— that has a built-in “inferiority of women” point of view. Garland’s interpretive trajectory is built on this framework.

This is problematic because Garland generalizes this viewpoint as one that is shared across cultures and eras, which it is not; moreover, she proceeds an attempt to dispel the notion that the biblical references of marriage and family headship do not teach an “inferiority of women” model. Garland offers an egalitarian framework, but although she raises important concerns, I believe a complementarian framework is a better-supported framework for matters of church work.

Definition of Power

Defining Power

In the first place, it is important to understand Garland’s point of view on power, gender roles, and hierarchy.[4] Garland provides a working definition of power that is helpful as a starting point for the present discussion and builds her discussion of power with M. Weber’s words in mind: “the probability that one person is able to exert his or her will despite resistance from others.” Such power may be an influence on another “whether or not that influence is resisted or even recognized by any of the actors.” From this it is suggested that power is not best thought of as a personal characteristic but instead as an influence from relational dynamics; thus, “power is,” Garland concludes, “a dynamic in all family relationships. We are always attempting to influence one another.”

While she regards power as ultimately “neutral” she points out that this relationship influence may be used for good (protect the vulnerable) or for ill (take advantage of the vulnerable).

Power and Gender Hierarchy

Garland paints a picture of a community and culture which shapes a power dynamic within the family that has historically given men more power in marriage than women.[5] Similarly, family theorists David H. Olson and John DeFrain suggest: “Tradition has dictated that considerable power go to the males in the family,” and add the caveat, “but women often have more power than they or anyone else admit.”[6] Still, Garland argues that culture and economics have played a historic role in reinforcing certain gender roles in the home and the workforce.

For example, Garland argues that in “traditional” homes husbands earned a living for the family, and gave their wives “an allowance,” and the wife, in turn, managed the emotional and interpersonal relationships of the home. As an extension of the prevailing culture, the church followed suit by emphasizing strong hierarchal gender roles where men had authority and power, while women were expected to submit and obey their husbands in keeping with a military-type paradigm of authority and submission.[7]

Vulnerable and Inferior Women

This unavoidably led to what Garland speaks of as a view of hierarchy—or headship—with a built-in “inferiority of woman” model. In this view, women are vulnerable, in need of protection, in need of structure, and in need of a man to insulate them from the attacks of Satan.[8] She cites Judith Miles as her “poster child” of this viewpoint, who argues in her own work, “I was to treat my own human husband as though he were the Lord, resident in our own humble home.”[9] Consequently, she would never question her husband on anything because such was to question the Lord himself.

Unfortunately, not only did some hold that women were theologically vulnerable, but some even advocated women were emotionally not “up to the task” of ministry. The rise of a liberation movement of women stems was therefore a response to this form of hierarchy model that held an implied inferiority view of women. As the woman’s liberation movement emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, the church, according to Garland, was threatened by the rise of demands by women for better (egalitarian) family relationships.

This is Garland’s starting point: a historically rigid view of hierarchy and gender roles in society and the home as reinforced by society and church, which not only implied an “inferior woman” model but in many cases overstated the headship of man.

Inferiority Illustrated

Garland’s portrayal should not be dismissed out of hand as it relates to the American church. The relationship between culture and church is not always easily discernible. The church has been affected by this type of “inferior women” hierarchy and has been reaping the whirlwind of this type of gender oversimplification. A few examples are in order.

Roy H. Lanier, Sr., in his Contending for the Faith column, “The Problem Page,” once responded to a letter from an elder’s wife.[10] Her problem focused on her husband’s mistreatment and undermining of her maternal role based on stereotypical female “problems” (emotional and biological). His dismissive treatment of her had now trickled down to their children. Lanier’s response was extensive and centered on a demonstration from Ephesians 5:21–33 that headship does not permit, nor condone, such treatment. Lanier argued, “it is obvious that her husband does not love her as Christ loves His church.”[11]

In F. Dale Simpson’s 1972 book on leadership, Simpson addressed the problem of women in the mission field: “most married missionaries have to overcome the resistance of their wives to go to a foreign mission field.”[12] Therefore, while

women are biologically stronger than men… are as intelligent as men and more careful about details… women are not as temperamentally suited for carrying out the great commission as men.

F. Dale Simpson, Leading the First-Century Church in the Space Age

Simpson offers only his experience and his opinion about the temperament of women in the mission field.

Long-time missionary and educator, Earl D. Edwards, provides a correction based on several behavioral studies.[13] Edwards rightly points out that different genders tend to have differences that are present at birth and socially amplified; yet, such gender-specific roles (functions) are gender differences and are not a reflection of gender inferiorities or superiorities.[14]

The Struggle is Real

In short, Garland is addressing a real problem about church culture and power, and how it relates to women and wives. It strikes at the heart of a woman’s worth in the home and in the church, and in ministry in general. The church would be wise to hear her call to be alert to this problem. However, Garland does not reject a simply abusive hierarchal power within the marriage as expressed in certain stereotyped gender roles. She clearly rejects any hierarchy with a power structure within marriage—i.e., male headship is not biblical and therefore not normative biblical teaching.

Jesus’ Teaching on Power

In the second place, Garland moves toward a brief exploration of Jesus’ teaching about power in Mark 9:33–37 and uses it to frame her discussion of power dynamics within two broad Christian family contexts: gender roles and discipline.[15] 

And they came to Capernaum. And when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you discussing on the way?” But they kept silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. And he sat down and called the twelve. And he said to them, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” And he took a child and put him in the midst of them, and taking him in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.” (Mark 9:33–37 ESV)

In this passage, Jesus’ illustrates and demonstrates the true use of power in light of the fact that the disciples had been arguing over “who was the greatest” (Mark 9:34).[16] The passage is, then, a corrective focused on “how his followers should use what they have to serve others rather than exalt themselves.”[17] Indeed, greatness is measured in service, in welcoming the smallest, least powerful, to the most vulnerable of society (Mark 9:35). Unfortunately, the disciples still did not retain the lesson since Jesus must correct them again (Mark 10:13–14); yet, Garland sees Jesus’ point as follows:

Rather than using your power to benefit yourself, use it to serve and benefit others. Order your life as Christians by protecting and caring for those most at risk of others abusing their power.[18]

Diana Garland, Family Ministry

Garland affirms that Jesus “used his own power to care for them” by completing the passion of the cross which he predicts three times (Mark 8:31; 9:30–31; 10:32–34). Power is never conserved for oneself but instead is the instrument to serve others. Elsewhere Jesus says, 

The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you. Rather, let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves. (Luke 22:25–26).

Garland’s Miscue

What appears to be lacking in Garland’s treatment of power in Mark 9:33–37 is the broader literary concern with discipleship in the kingdom of God which begins in Mark 8:26 and ends in Mark 10:52.[19] This is not a small matter because, in Mark 8:34, Jesus frames the discussion of true discipleship: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

To follow Jesus means to submit to his plan, to submit to one’s role in the kingdom of God. “Discipleship… comes then with the commitment to humility and self-denial, rejection and suffering.”[20] The hard lesson the disciples continued to fail to appropriate is that the kingdom of God is at the disposal of others—especially the vulnerable—is the transformative experience of discipleship. Thus, power and one’s role are interwoven. Jesus demonstrates this by submitting to his role as God’s servant on the cross (Luke 22:42).

The matter is not simply about power and influence, for Mark 9:33–37 and Mark 10:13–16 teach that discipleship includes one’s submission to God’s transforming kingdom. It is not that Garland is wrong, but that her framing appears incomplete which, for the attention given to her work overall, is a significant oversight.

Overgeneralizations on Power and Gender Roles

In the third place, Garland generalizes that power and gender roles have been male-dominated across cultures and eras, which it is not.[21] This is an important drawback. The American church may be influenced by the surrounding culture and societal gender role expectations (even as traditional roles are presently eroding), but extrapolating from it that all cultures share a similar or comparable power structure along gender lines in families is problematic.

Cultural Anthropology

Not all cultures share the same expectations for gender roles. For example, Paul G. Hiebert, anthropologist and missionary, writes,

while most societies place some responsibility on the father for rearing the child, this is not universal. But the biological and social dependency of an infant on its mother is recognized in all social societies.[22]

Paul G. Hiebert, Cultural Anthropology

It appears that certain biological relationships (mother-child) have built-within them influences that exert power on behaviors, and while they may manifest differently in various cultures, they do not imply inferiority or lack of equality. These relationships, do, however, create forms of power management that can create a displacement of power. This is a vital element to evaluate Garland’s overarching premise that power exercised implies the inferiority of one influenced by another.

The Psychology of Parental Authority

Psychologists David G. Myers and C. Nathan DeWall describe that within parent-child relationships authority, or, power, is observable in three parenting styles: authoritarian, permissive, and authoritative.[23] The extent to which parents try to control their children is, “the most heavily researched aspect of parenting.” Parents either “set rules and expect obedience” (authoritarian) which tends to affect their children’s social skills and self-esteem. Or, they “give in to their children’s desires” (permissive) which tends to develop children who are agreeable and immature. And, parents who “are both demanding and responsive” (authoritative) tend to produce children who are well-rounded emotionally and socially.

A parent’s use, abuse, or nonuse of power can tend to have drastically different outcomes. The presumed element here in these relationships is that a parent is in a hierarchal relationship with their children (cf. Eph 6:1-4), and within this relationship, power is being managed and applied. Garland’s overarching point is that this is in principle antithetical to Jesus’ teaching on power, but power and role are inseparable. 

Family Power Management

Olson and DeFrain explore the wide range of “family power” management which is of significance here. According to them, “family power is the ability of one family member to change the behavior of the other family members.”[24] And while Garland concedes that “power” and “influence” are morally neutral, she approaches the subject of gender roles, power, and marriage from a morally negative point of view. Yet, as Olson and DeFrain point out, power —particularly family power— is a complex, dynamic interactive feature of a family system. Everyone in a family has power and everyone exerts it on the other member of the family. Even infants, according to Garland, have power. Yet, Garland suggests that a male headship hierarchy historically has mitigated women’s power in the marriage relationship, and therefore, empowers men and silences women, encouraging male power and delegitimizing female power and influence. Garland is not wrong if painting with broad strokes.

Marital Hierarchy

Garland’s argument that the removal of the hierarchy in male-female roles in marriage and family, and therefore must be applied to the church, is problematic.

Garland attempts to dispel the notion that the biblical references to marriage and family headship do not teach an “inferiority of women” model. The creation account in Genesis 1–3 “provides,” according to Garland, “the primary foundation for a hierarchical understanding of husband-wife relationships.”[25] The order of creation does not prove male headship nor female submission; instead, Garland proposes that the pre-fall notation of “them” in Genesis 1:26–31 suggests shared dominion, shared identity, and a shared name. Moreover, the woman was not simply a “helpmeet” (KJV), but instead, is a soul-mate helper who is a “bone-and-flesh mirror image of the man who remains incomplete without her.”[26]

The Hebrew term ‘ezer certainly points to a “help” that comes from someone strong (Gen 2:20), as it is used in “warrior-esque” passages (Deut 33:29; Ezek 12:14), and is even used to describe God (Exod 18:4; Psa 121:1–2, 8). Thus, this is not a chain-of-command relationship where Eve is the weaker and more vulnerable of the two.

Garland provides a view of these passages that are cohesive and within reason of the evidence, but it is in Genesis 3:16, where the trouble lies. Garland argues that change after the fall is not a curse from God, but instead a pronouncement by God of how the relationship between Adam and Eve will now be.

In her view, God is being descriptive, not prescriptive. This is not an edict that imposes a new hierarchical relationship based on gender. Observe Garland’s argument that the fall

results in dire consequences for their relationship: the husband now shall rule over the wife. This new development implies that it was not what God had originally determined for their relationship. The dominance of the husband in Genesis 3:16 is described, not prescribed… it is the consequence of their joint disobedience.

Thus, the idea of hierarchical gender relationships is nothing but “a perversion of God’s intention in creation. The partnership has been destroyed. Sin disfigures the good God offered us.“[27] A variety of authors have offered a similar take in recent years. Linda L. Belleville, for example, is certainly at the forefront of pressing this interpretive option against the traditional view of male headship from Genesis 2–3.[28] Belleville, likewise affirms:

male rule finds no explicit place in the Bible’s theology at all. Adam’s sin is noted (Rom 5:12-19; 1 Cor 15:20-22), as is Eve’s deception (2 Cor 11:3; 1 Tim 2:14). But the man’s rule over the woman is not cited even once (not even for the husband-wife relationship). The simple fact is that male rule does not reappear in the OT. The woman is nowhere commanded to obey the man (not even her husband), and the man is nowhere commanded to rule the woman (not even his wife).[29]

Belleville likewise suggests that Genesis 3:16 is a statement of the natural outcomes of the husband-wife relationship to follow due to the “fallen condition” of the world.

Garland, Headship, and the Biblical Narrative

It is the view taken here, in response to Garland––and to some degree Belleville––that Genesis 1:1–2:3 and 2:4–25 do provide the foundation for the traditional view of gender roles and should be regarded as normative.[30] The account of day six in Genesis 1 is a broad-picture passage. It speaks to the equality shared between man and woman as a distinct created order, or class, that is made in the image of God, and for this reason, have a human responsibility together to “have dominion… Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen 1:26–28). But, when day six is given an expanded view in 2:4–25, the foundation for how human power is to be managed is explained—it is to be done in a relationship with someone just like Adam.

This power and influence are managed between husband and wife (2:20–24). And while the family power style is not explained in Genesis 2, Genesis 3:16 becomes an informative model of the way the husband-wife relationship exists outside the garden due to sin as God punished Adam (3:17–19) and the serpent (3:14–15), so God punishes Eve (3:16).

Problems with the Descriptive View

The argument that God is only describing how things will be, clearly undermines several theological themes which begin at this point. These are not mere descriptions of the fallen world.

First, God declared the serpent’s dust-filled days but also that he will feel the consequence of a crushed head by “the woman’s” offspring. This is not descriptive, this is a proclamation of Divine action and judgment upon the serpent, and salvation for humanity (John 16:11).

Second, God declared that Adam would face further hardship in the production of food and nourishment. Adam already understood work. He knew how to til and maintain the vegetation of the garden since day six (2:15). Whatever is forthcoming outside the garden for him is new and punishment for his sin. They are consequential.

And finally, God addresses Eve’s actions with further pain associated with childbearing and nuance to the relationship between her and her husband. When God says, “I will surely” do this and that, it must be interpreted as a consequence. The most pertinent here is the following, “Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you” (Gen 3:16b).

The curse upon Eve is clearly speaking of a matter of power management within the husband-wife relationship. It is the same vocabulary and issue of power management in Genesis 4:7 with Cain and his personified anger who desired to control Cain. Cain must rule over its desire. Moreover, the language is found again in the Song of Solomon, where the bride turns this “curse” into a wedding vow, “I am my beloved’s, and his desire is for me” (Song 7:10). Contrary to Belleville’s claim that the “simple fact is that male rule does not reappear in the OT,” the Bible does recognize implicitly male headship.

Biblically Grounded Patriarchy is Never Condemned

Interestingly, Old Testament scholar Bruce K. Waltke points out that of all the social injustices mentioned by the prophets of Israel, patriarchy is never mentioned among them. Following Abraham Heschel, he argues:

They challenged the injustices of their culture. The prophet is an iconoclast, challenging the apparently holy, revered and awesome beliefs cherished as certainties, institutions endowed with supreme sanctity. They exposed the scandalous pretensions, they challenged kings, priests, institutions and even the temple.[31]

Waltke is probably correct when he argues that the problem that often affects interpretation is the definitions of concepts of patriarchy and equality brought to bear on the texts of Scripture. Eve was every bit Adam’s equal. They both shared the power and authority over the creation given to them by God. That power was to be worked out in their marriage in some form of family power style.

In Genesis and throughout the rest of the Bible, the family power structure to manage power is a hierarchy, with the husband as head of the wife and as Christ head of the church (Eph 5:23). Yet, such headship does not exist in a vacuum. A husband’s headship does not exist properly without being sacrificial, loving, or nourishing. Neither does it embrace a tyrannical hold on his wife. He is to be as self-sacrificing as Jesus was and is for the church. If the husband is head of the wife as Christ is head of the church —his bride— then one should be careful in calling headship structure “a perversion of God’s intention” and a “partnership” destroyed as Garland has. For this reason, her work and view would be detrimental to family ministry.

Endnotes

  1. Jovan Payes, “The Widows Church of Christ,” Gospel Advocate 157.12 (Dec 2015): 29–30.
  2. Payes, “Widows Church of Christ,” 30.
  3. “Power and Roles” is chapter 11 in Diana R. Garland, Family Ministry: A Comprehensive Guide, 2d ed. (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2012), 370–411.
  4. Garland, Family Ministry, 370. All proceeding quotations in this paragraph are from page 370.
  5. Garland, Family Ministry, 372.
  6. David H. Olson and John DeFrain, Marriages and Families: Intimacy, Diversity, and Strengths, 4th ed. (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2003), 213. Power, control, and authority are continuously exercised in families, and struggles for personal power in families are exceedingly common. 
  7. Garland, Family Ministry, 372.
  8. Garland, Family Ministry, 373.
  9. Ibid.
  10. Roy H. Lanier, Sr., “An Elder’s Wife has a Problem,” 20 Years of the Problem Page (Abilene, TX: Quality, 1984), 1:177–81.
  11. Lanier, “An Elder’s Wife,” 178.
  12. F. Dale Simpson, Leading the First-Century Church in the Space Age (Abilene, TX: Quality Printing, 1972), 121–22. 
  13. Earl D. Edwards, “The Role of Women in the Work and Worship of the Church,” Protecting Our Blind Side: A Discussion of Contemporary Concerns in churches of Christ (Henderson, TN: Hester Publications, 2007), 255–57.
  14. Edwards, “Role of Women,” 156–57.
  15. Garland, Family Ministry, 371–72.
  16. Unless otherwise stated all Scripture quotations are taken from the English Standard Version of The Holy Bible (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2001).
  17. Garland, Family Ministry, 371.
  18. Garland, Family Ministry, 371.
  19. Jovan Payes, “Leaders Stand Up for the Weak,” In My Place: The Servant Savior in Mark, ed. Douglas Y. Burleson (Delight, AR: Gospel Light, 2015), 376–77.
  20. Payes, “Leaders Stand Up,” 376.
  21. Garland, Family Ministry, 372–92.
  22. Paul G. Hiebert, Cultural Anthropology, 2d ed. (1983; repr., Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1999), 197.
  23. David G. Myers and C. Nathan DeWall, Psychology in Everyday Life, 3rd ed. (New York, NY: Worth Publishers, 2014), 84.
  24. Olson and DeFrain, Marriage and Families, 213.
  25. Garland, Family Ministry, 374.
  26. Garland, Family Ministry, 376.
  27. Garland, Family Ministry, 376–77. Emphasis original.
  28. See Linda L. Belleville, “Women in Ministry: An Egalitarian Perspective,” Two Views on Women in Ministry, rev. ed., ed. James R. Beck (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005), 21–103.
  29. Belleville, “Women in Ministry,” 31.
  30. Bruce K. Waltke, “The Role of Women in the Bible,” Crux 31.3 (Sept 1995): 29–40; reprinted in Bruce K. Waltke, The Dance Between God and Humanity: Reading the Bible Today as the People of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013), 457–75.
  31. Waltke, “The Role of Women in the Bible,” 30.

Bibliography

Beck, James R. Editor. Two Views on Women in Ministry. Revised edition. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005.

Edwards, Earl D. Protecting Our “Blind Side”: A Discussion of Contemporary Concerns in churches of Christ. Henderson, TN: Hester Publications, 2007.

Garland, Diana R. Family Ministry: A Comprehensive Guide. 2d edition. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2012.

Hiebert, Paul G. Cultural Anthropology. 2d edition. 1983. Repr., Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1999.

Lanier, Roy H., Sr. 20 Years of the Problem Page. 2 volumes. Abilene, TX: Quality Publications, 1984.

Myers, David G., and C. Nathan DeWall. Psychology in Everyday Life. 3rd edition. New York, NY: Worth Publishers, 2014.

Olson, David H., and John DeFrain. Marriages and Families: Intimacy, Diversity, and Strengths. 4th edition. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 2003.

Payes, Jovan. “Leaders Stand Up for the Weak.” Pages 375–81 in In My Place: The Servant Savior in Mark. Edited by Douglas Y. Burleson. Delight, AR: Gospel Light, 2015.

_____. “The Widows Church of Christ.” Gospel Advocate 157.12 (Dec 2015): 29–30.

Simpson, F. Dale. Leading the First Century Church in the Space Age. Abilene, TX: Quality Printing, 1972.

Waltke, Bruce K. The Dance Between God and Humanity: Reading the Bible Today as the People of God. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013.

_____. “The Role of Women in the Bible.” Crux 31.3 (Sept 1995): 29–40.

Marcion and the Formation of the New Testament Canon

On By Jovan PayesIn 2005, Bibliology, Church History, Freed-Hardeman University, Graduate Work, New Testament, New Testament Canon, Patristics, Theology1 Comment

This paper discusses one particular complex external historical figure in the history of the shaping of the New Testament canon: Marcion of Sinope (c. AD 85–160) and his influence. Did Marcion create the idea to form a New Testament canon?

This is principally a historical exploration; however, there are numerous theological aspects that must be reflected upon and critiqued in order to have a functional and accurate understanding of Marcion’s role.

Factors and Dynamics

The history of the biblical canon is home to many overlapping complexities. The study of these aspects reveals the richness of canonical development, especially when one differentiates between the histories of the Hebrew and the Christian canons respectively.[1] 

Canonical development can be studied from a theological vantage point, taking into account theological motives for the collection of books; however, such theological motivations must also be placed in a historical framework.[2] On this point, note Nicolaas Appel: “the mystery of Scripture and faith of the Christian community go hand in hand. The canon of Scripture and human history cannot be separated.”[3] The development of the canon combines theology and history, consequently, one’s approach must of necessity intertwine these two factors.

These dynamics of theology and history may be described as internal and external factors. Church historian, Everett Ferguson, differentiates between these somewhat intuitive concepts:

The conviction of a new saving work of God in Christ, its proclamation by apostles and evangelists, and the revelation of its meaning and application by prophets and teachers, led naturally to the writing of these messages and their acceptance as authoritative in parallel with the books already regarded as divine. External factors did not determine that there would be a New Testament canon nor dictate its contents. However, external factors influenced the process of definition and likely hastened that process.[4]

(Ferguson, “Factors”)

The external factors are largely seen as “debates in the post-apostolic church” where the matter was how to find the “voice of revelation and authentic Christianity” in the midst of doctrinal controversy. Thus, as a matter of course, external factors helped in the “definition of the boundaries of right belief”–orthodoxy.[5]

Marcion’s influence in the church came about for several reasons and is not limited to his gnostic tendencies. Marcion rejected a large number of canonical works: the entire Old Testament, and all of the New Testament canon except for eleven edited documents (Luke, Romans-2 Thessalonians, Philemon). In essence, in creating a list of authoritative books it may be said that he created a canon, though likely this was a list of edited documents that represented his particular view of Christianity. Historically, Marcion’s list is considered the earliest “canonical list” of the new Christian community.[6] Consequently, a discussion has arisen, questioning if Marcion is “the father” of canonical development.

Marcion’s early second-century A.D. formation of a collection of authoritative documents affirming Christian faith is chronologically significant.[7] Until Marcion’s time, the post-apostolic church does not appear to have outlined a collection, consequently, some scholars believe that Marcion initiated the contours of the New Testament canon. Others believe a better explanation is that Marcion merely sped along a pre-existing process. After all, the theological principle of the canon was well understood among Jewish Christians, having a canonical set of books of their own.[8]

Additionally, the apostles’ oral preaching and written instruction to the churches demonstrated their authority.[9] But what shall be here presented is that from a practical point of view, a fluid form of a “canon” existed in the late first century and early second century, even if quantitatively incomplete.[10] If this can be shown, then Marcion is not the creator of the idea of the Christian canon.[11]

Marcion of Sinope (c. AD 85–160)

Background

One cannot understand Marcion’s role in the formation of the canon without consideration of his life and beliefs. Church historian, Philip Schaff, remarks that Marcion was raised in a Christian tradition in Pontus near the Black Sea; in fact, his father was a bishop of Sinope in Pontus.[12] Despite being zealous and sacrificial, “due to some heretical opinions,” Schaff observes, he “was excommunicated by his own father, probably on account of his heretical opinions and contempt for authority.”[13]

After leaving Pontus, Marcion traveled to Rome (A.D. 140–155), joined Cerdo (a Syrian Gnostic), and popularized his views among the various Italian churches during his preaching tours.[14] It was during this period that Marcion made a name for himself in Christian history, as he advanced his Christian-based Gnostic teaching, and edited a corpus of New Testament works. Bruce Metzger notes that Marcion was eventually excommunicated in Rome for his heretical views.[15] This move only solidified Marcion as a significant heretic of his time, so much so, that Edwin Yamauchi ranks him among the top eight Gnostic heretics of the second and third centuries.[16]

A Gnostic Heretic

Marcion is “known” as a Gnostic heretic of the ancient church, but one must be cautious regarding such labels. Harold Brown provides one particular strong reason why. Brown distinguishes between the gnostic movement  –“a widespread religious phenomenon of the Hellenistic world at the beginning of the Christian Era”– and the Christian manifestation of this movement designated Gnosticism (lowercase g, versus uppercase G).[17] Brown’s distinction is noteworthy as the Christian gnostic movement, Gnosticism, was “a response to the widespread desire to understand the mystery of being: it offered detailed, secret knowledge of the whole order of reality, claiming to know and to be able to explain things of which ordinary, simple Christian faith was entirely ignorant.”[18]

As a fundamental aspect of this belief, existence was viewed as “a constant interplay between two fundamental principles, such as spirit and matter, soul and body, good and evil.”[19] But the gnostic worldview and its Christian mutation are not monolithic.

Edwin Yamauchi notes that Marcion “was not a typical Gnostic. He stressed the need of faith rather than gnosis. But his attitude toward the Old Testament was typically Gnostic.”[20] Thus, Marcion was not always fully aligned with other Gnostic ideas. Despite this distinction, it is noteworthy to see how Irenaeus (b. AD 130), a contemporary critic of Marcion, describes Marcion’s influence and placement among the gnostics in the church.

Irenaeus places Marcion within the stream of Cerdo, a second-century gnostic teacher:

Marcion of Pontus succeeded him [Cerdo], and developed his doctrine. In so doing, he advanced the most daring blasphemy against Him who is proclaimed as God by the law and the prophets, declaring Him to be the author of evils, to take delight in war, to be infirm of purpose, and even to be contrary to Himself.[21]

(Against Heresies 1:27:2)

Irenaeus affirms a connection between Cerdo and Marcion flavored with “passing of the heretical torch” overtones. Justin Martyr (c. AD 100–165) regarded him as one who “the devils put forward” (1 Apology 58); moreover, Irenaeus reports that, “Polycarp himself replied to Marcion, who met him on one occasion and said, ‘Dost thou know me?’ ‘I do know thee, the first-born of Satan’” (Against Heresies 3.3.4).

Ferguson suggests patristic descriptions like these of Marcion are rather important because it demonstrates how the early church remembered him; he was a heretic, not a benchmark in canonical development.[22]

Assessing Marcion’s Theology

Unfortunately, Marcion’s work does not exist in any extant manuscript. Outside of his prologues found in Latin New Testament texts, his views are only extant by references in the works of others.[23] Marcion’s only known work is called Antitheses (“Contradictions”), which served in an introductory capacity to his collection of documents.[24] It is not all sure what exactly was in Antitheses; consequently, as Bruce Metzger words it, “we have to content ourselves with deducing its contents from notices contained in the writings of opponents – particularly in Tertullian’s five volumes written against Marcion.”[25] Extant patristic authors who paid particular attention to Marcion are Justin Martyr (1 Apology), Irenaeus (Against Heresies), and Hippolytus (Refutation of All Heresies).

Christian historians are left to boil down Marcion’s beliefs. Schaff suggested three points at the maximum.[26] John Barton, however, reduces his theology in a two-fold manner.[27]

In Schaff’s summary of Marcion’s religious views, he acknowledges his Gnostic influences and beliefs but qualifies that Marcion was also a firm believer in Christianity as the only true religion. Still, it must be reminded that it was Marcion’s version of Christianity which he thought was the only true religion. Schaff writes:

Marcion supposed two or three primal forces (archaí): the good or gracious God (theòs agathós), whom Christ first made known; the evil matter (húlē), ruled by the devil, to which heathenism belongs; and the righteous world-maker (dēmiourgòs díkaios), who is the finite, imperfect, angry Jehovah of the Jews.[28]

(Schaff, History of the Christian Church 2.484).

Marcion, though, rejected the “pagan emanation theory, the secret tradition, and the allegorical interpretation of the Gnostics,” the typical gnostic tenets of Pleroma, Aeons, Dynameis, Syzygies, and the suffering Sophia.[29] These are the various ways in which Marcion did not stand in the same grouping as other Gnostics of his era. Yet, in short, on Schaff’s evaluation, Marcion believed in the good God of Jesus, an evil material universe, and that the Old Testament God was a finite imperfect world-marker. These are clearly on the grid of Gnosticism.

John Barton argues compellingly, however, that Marcion was in error in two large ways, each of which revealed how he viewed the Bible. The first is found in how he interpreted the God of the Old Testament:

[Marcion] had rejected the Old Testament as having any authority for Christians, arguing that the God of whom it spoke, the God of the Jews, was entirely different from the Christian God who had revealed himself in Jesus as the Savior of the world; indeed, it was from the evil creator-god of the Old Testament that Jesus had delivered his followers.[30]

John Barton “Marcion”

Justin Martyr similarly declares, Marcion teaches

his disciples to believe in some other god greater than the Creator. And he, […], has caused many of every nation to speak blasphemies, and to deny that God is the maker of this universe, and to assert that some other being, greater than He, has done greater works.[31]

(First Apology 26)

The second problem Marcion was in his truncation and editorial work on his collection of New Testament documents.[32] Irenaeus wrote:

[Marcion] mutilates the Gospel which is according to Luke, removing all that is written respecting the generation of the Lord, and setting aside a great deal of the teaching of the Lord, in which the Lord is recorded as most dearly confessing that the Maker of this universe is His Father. […]. In like manner, too, he dismembered the Epistles of Paul, removing all that is said by the apostle respecting that God who made the world.[33]

(Against Heresies 1:27:2)

As Tertullian writes, “Marcion expressly and openly used the knife, rather than the pen,” demonstrating that Marcion had a theological purpose for his “final cut.” Such “excisions of the Scriptures” was made, Tertullian explains, “to suit his own subject matter” (Prescription Against Heresies 38).[34]

In Barton’s view, Marcion rejected the Old Testament and accepted Jesus Christ and Christianity apart from Hebrew influences. He did not reject the notion that the God of the Old Testament existed. In fact, he firmly believed that he did. “The problem,” as Barton observes, “was that his creation was evil, and he himself therefore was a malign being; it was precisely the role of Jesus and of the Unknown God now revealed in him, to deliver humankind from the malice of the evil Creator.”[35] The rejection of the Old Testament must be qualified because Marcion accepted its divine origin, only that it is the result of an evil god.[36]

Marcion’s so-called “canon” was, in essence, a product of his version of the Gospel message, namely that “the good news of Jesus and the salvation brought by him” showed that the Old Testament was “the utterances of an evil being.”[37] Yet, his action to establish what he believed to be the authentic “gospel” also “cut” a line in the sand. Retrospectively, his actions affected the history of the Christian canon.

Marcion’s Collection and the Canon

Marcion’s Collection

F. F. Bruce observed that Marcion became the “first person known to us who published a fixed collection of what we should call the New Testament books.”[38] Whether or not others had done so before Marcion is irrelevant, Bruce asserts, as there is no knowledge of any other list.[39]

Marcion’s Antithesis was a treatise on the incompatibility of “law and gospel, of the Creator-Judge of the Old Testament and the merciful Father of the New Testament (who had nothing to do with either creation or judgment).”[40] This led to his bipartite collection (Gospel and Paul). As framed by Tertullian, Marcion composed of a mutilated version of Luke and “dismembered” parts of Paul’s epistles, which were all subject to his editorial “knife.”[41] This collection appeared and began to be circulated around A.D. 140 at the earliest, and possibly A.D. 150 due to a late edition of Luke.[42]

Marcion’s collection of the Gospel and Paul included an edited Gospel of Luke and a reduced Pauline corpus composed of Romans, 1–2 Corinthians, Galatians, Laodiceans (i.e., Ephesians), Philippians, Colossians, 1–2 Thessalonians, and Philemon. This was Marcion’s “canon.” But what is canon?

What is Canon?

The word “canon” (kanōn) has three basic meanings which play, as Harry Gamble observed, some role in the conception of the canonization of Scripture.[43] Deriving from the literal origin of being a reed of bulrush or papyrus, the Greek word kanōn came to denote for the craftsman a “measuring rod,” a “rule,” or simply put “a tool for measurement or alignment” hence “straight rod.”[44] The literal meaning gave way to metaphorical usage in keeping with the concept of standardization, thus canon became also synonymous with “an ideal standard, a firm criterion against which something could be evaluated and judged.”[45] Canon also came to mean “a list” or “a catalog” which seems to have been based on the calibration marks on the reed stick.[46]

All these uses of the canon have also found their way into the broader limits of the liberal arts for identifying unparalleled standards, but when it applies to sacred literature “canon denotes a list or collection of authoritative books.”[47] Canonical Christian literature as Scripture means these works are “the rule of faith” (regula fidei) and “the rule of truth” (regula veritatis); and as such, they are governing normative standards of apostolic faith with inherent value.[48]

It would be a mistake to think of a book that had to wait to be on a list to be regarded as canonical, or representative of faith and truth. As will be noted, canonicity is a qualitative threshold, not a quantitative one. It would be a mistake to think that simply on the grounds of Marcion’s list there were no other books recognized as possessing canonical status.

The Emerging Qualitative Canon

There is sufficient evidence to demonstrate that a fluid form of a canon existed–albeit quantitatively incomplete–in the late first century and the early second century.[49] Two passages that are particularly noteworthy are 2 Peter 3:15–16 and 2 Timothy 4:11–13, for they demonstrate that Paul’s letters were already being collected in the first century. Even if a pseudepigraphic near-second-century view of these epistles is correct, which is still a matter of dispute, the documents are still primary witnesses to the collection process of New Testament documents during this era.[50]

Factors Hindering the Formation of the Canon

Before evaluating what 2 Timothy and 2 Peter bring to the discussion of Marcion’s role in the formation of the New Testament canon, it appears vitally important to remember that there were various factors that hampered the collection process.

Dowell Flatt, Bible Professor of New Testament studies (Freed-Hardeman University), notes that there are at least seven important factors that hampered the canonization process of the New Testament.[51] First, the Old Testament was employed authoritatively and interpreted Christologically by the early church, consequently, “it did not immediately appear that another set of books would be needed.”

Second, the early church was still under the shadow of the Lord’s presence, and many of them would feel “no need for a written account of his life.”

Third, eyewitnesses (apostles and close disciples) to the Lord’s life and work were still alive (1 Cor 15:6); consequently, this adds to the strength of the second point.

Fourth, oral tradition was a vital element in the early Jewish make-up of the early church, and “as strange as it might sound to modern ears, many Jewish teachers did not commit their teachings to writing.” Oral tradition was important even around 130 A.D. for Papias felt that “the word of a living, surviving voice” was more important than “information from books.”[52] Some of the importance placed upon oral tradition is due to the expense of books, and illiteracy; and that Jesus did not write or command his disciples to write a word.[53]

Fifth, the nature of many apostolic writings was letters, not literary works, so is it understandable that “such writings” as the letters “were slow to be fully recognized as Scripture.” Sixth, the belief in a realized eschatology in the first century had “some influence” in hampering of the canonization process.

Seventh, the divinely inspired would speak a prophetic word, and while this was available the church was in no need of a written record per se (Flatt 139). Kurt Aland observes the second-century church, living beyond this blessing, “began to carefully distinguish between the apostolic past and the present.”[54]

King McCarver adds an eighth factor. There was no “ecclesiastical organization” that “composed or established the canon,” but instead the slow reception of these works at various intervals, across a large geographical region, of the early church was the context of the early sifting process before the councils.[55]

Evidence from 2 Peter and 2 Timothy

If Peter is the author of 2 Peter, which the author believes there is sufficient evidence to suggest he is, then the 2 Peter would be dated in the early 60s of the first century (before his traditional martyrdom in A.D. 65). Should 2 Peter be late, the epistle is typically dated to the end of the first century. This is principally due to the strong verbal allusions in the Apostolic Fathers, particularly in 1 Clement (A.D. 95–97) and 2 Clement (A.D. 98–100).[56] The latest reasonable date for 2 Peter is A.D. 80–90, generally argued for by Richard Bauckham, who views the letters as non-Petrine.[57]

In a similar fashion, if Paul is the author of 2 Timothy then it would generally be accepted to be also written in the first century (A.D. 55-60s), before his martyrdom, traditionally under Nero (A.D. 68). However, as W. Kümmel asserts, being a proponent of pseudepigraphic authorship of the pastorals (1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus), if 2 Timothy is not Pauline then it was probably penned around the “beginning of the second century.[58]

With these relevant items in mind, attention is now given to 2 Timothy and 2 Peter.

2 Peter 3:14–17

2 Peter 3:14–17 is the capstone of a moral argument set forth in the epistolē, rising from both apostolic theology and eschatology. The text may be translated as follows:

[14] Therefore, loved ones, since you wait for these things be eager to be found by him as spotless ones and blameless ones in peace; [15] and consider the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as also our beloved brother Paul (according to the wisdom entrusted to him) wrote to you,[16] as also by all [his] letters addressing these things in them, in which it is hard to understand some things, which those who are ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction as also the remaining Scriptures. [17] You therefore, loved ones, knowing in advance, be on your guard, in order that you may not be carried away from [your] firm footing by the error of lawless people. (Author's Translation)

Of particular interest here is the vocabulary employed in verses 15–16, for it is very clear that the author of 2 Peter is employing the authoritative weight of the Apostle Paul and the group of his letters (pásais epistolaís, “all [his] letters”) to support his argument. Moreover, the false teachers, characterized as being “ignorant” (amatheís) and “unstable” (astēriktoi), are twisting (strebloúsin) Paul’s words and the “remaining Scriptures” (tàs loipàs graphàs) to their “destruction” (apōleian).

The language itself bears very close similarities with canonical language; basically, language which recognizes normative revelation.[59] Conceptionally, the author of 2 Peter is appealing to an inspired holy prophet (i.e., Paul 3:15; cf. 1:20–21; 3:2), the normative Scriptures of the Hebrews (3:5–6), and himself implicitly as one who can identify the “prophetic word” (1.19). Despite one’s views towards the authorship of 2 Peter this simple observation must not be overlooked. Neyrey, who questions the validity of the argument here, recognizes that this may be a claim of “legitimacy […] There is only one tradition of teaching of God’s judgment and Jesus’ parousia.” This has the double effect of authenticating 2 Peter’s argument, while “automatically discrediting” the false teachers.[60]

Richard Bauckham likewise agrees that the author, whoever he is, “wishes to point out that his own teaching (specifically in 3:14–15a) is in harmony with Paul’s because Paul was an important authority for his readers.”[61] The appeal to a normative standard is definitely a necessity in order to demonstrate the validity of the argument. Is that not a canonical concept?

If the author of 2 Peter is employing normative, or standard theological argumentation based upon authoritative figures (Paul and the Old Testament) the implication is that the false teachers are not. Even if they are, the false teachers are so misconstruing Paul and the Old Testament’s affirmations that they are “torturing” them, to the point of making them appear as if they teach something that they do not (strebloúsin); thus, the audience is to understand that there is a normative standard.[62]

The language of the passage is again revealing. Paul is regarded as one who was endowed with wisdom (dotheísan autō sophían), which is a natural allusion to his direct reception of revelation elsewhere synonymously described (1 Cor 2:11–13 lambánō; Gal 1:12–17 apokalúpseōs).[63] The Pauline letters, however many are referred to, are saturated by this wisdom, but are subject to the false teacher’s interpretive methods, and since they are torturing them this behavior leads to their own destruction.

It seems that this destruction stems from the fact that Paul’s letters and tàs loipàs graphàs (“the remaining Scriptures”) in some way share the same character.[64] 2 Peter 3.16 connects this torture of tàs loipàs graphàs to their destruction as well, meaning that the same kind of punishment awaiting those who distort the meaning of Paul’s letters is awaiting those who twist the “rest of the Scriptures.”[65] This refers to the Old Testament Scriptures[66]; even Bauckham, who is opposed to Petrine authorship, concedes at the least that “it would make no sense to take graphàs in the nontechnical sense of ‘writings’; the definite article requires us to give it its technical sense” though he conceives of other books in the author’s purview.[67] Likewise, Earl J. Richard observes, “that the author means to include in this category the OT Scriptures is obvious, but beyond that it is unclear what Christian works would have been thus labeled.”[68]

From these observations, the proposition is advanced that the author of 2 Peter grounds his argumentation in a reference to accepted authority (tradition, or standard). This authority is threefold:  his prophetic office as an apostle; the Apostle Paul’s pásais epistolaís; and the Old Testament. Regardless of the position taken on the authorship question of 2 Peter, the method of argumentation is generally transparent despite some criticism of the validity of the logic within 2 Peter 3:15–16, particularly the admission of the difficulty of Paul’s treatment of some matters.[69] As a document existing before Marcion’s influential era, it poignantly addresses its audience with canonical overtones, demonstrates boldly that Marcion could have not fathered the notion of a New Testament canon, for the Peter appeals to the canon of the Hebrew Bible and a fluid Pauline canon-corpus.

One of the main arguments for 2 Peter 3.15-16 is that there is a Pauline corpus of indefinite size (pásais epistolaís), that both the author and his audience were aware of. Therefore, some consideration of an early Pauline corpus must be given. Some working theory of how Paul’s letters were collected and then circulated must be formulated. It is argued here that the process was both gradual in scope and immediate to Paul. The basis for this belief is grounded in slow circulation among the churches, the typical secretarial duty to make copies, and the arrival and usage of the codex.[70] McCarver observes that the occasional nature of the epistles highlights the point that there was some specificity to a given locale, and consequently as other churches desired copies the “exchange and copying” was gradual.[71]

Randolph Richards, while arguing for an unintentional collection, provides evidence that Paul would have had a copy of any letter in which he employed a secretary.[72] It appears to have been a standard secretarial task to make a copy for a proficient letter writer, and then place it within a codex for safekeeping, which in turn would be a depository for later publication if desired. A codex then became a warehouse for a penman; it would allow the neat copying of helpful phrases or expressions for another letter. Likewise, the secretary would have a copy of the letters for records. Thus, Richards argues that the codex became a practical matter, which ultimately became a pivotal matter in the formation of a Pauline corpus.[73]

2 Timothy 4:11–13

Despite the work being considered pseudonymous by many scholars, 2 Timothy 4:11–13 contributes to this discussion. The text reads:

[11] Luke alone is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me for ministry. [12] Tychicus I have sent to Ephesus. [13] When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, also the books, and above all the parchments. (Holy Bible, ESV)

The term “parchments” (membránas) is rather interesting since Paul, according to Richards, “is the only Greek writer of the first century to refer to membránai, a Roman invention.”[74] Parchment codices were used to retain copies of letters for future use to prepare rough drafts of other letters later written to be dispatched.

Interestingly, Richards ponders how this passage is affected if 2 Timothy is non-Pauline, and says that it only affects the explicit claim by Paul, but one can still “contend for Paul’s retaining his copies in a codex notebook solely because of customary practice.”[75] If 2 Timothy is Pauline, it would not be too much longer before Peter would arrive in Rome, if he had not been in Rome already.

Richards speculates fairly that “if Paul retained copies, then in the early 60s there was possibly only one collection in existence – namely, Paul’s personal set of copies.”[76] In connection the Peter and 2 Peter 3:15–16, Richards writes:

The possibility of Peter’s being aware of these [Paul’s person set of letters] or even having read them would be remote unless one postulate, as early traditions do, that Peter and Paul were both in Rome in the early 60s. In such a case, Peter a was in the only place where he could have seen copies of Paul’s letters. It is not unreasonable then to suggest that Peter would not have reviewed what had been written to churches in Asia Minor by Paul before he himself wrote to them, particularly if he was aware that some were confused by Paul’s letters.[77]

Richards, “The Codex and the Early Collection of Paul’s Letters”

Such evidence appears compelling, however, it must be regarded as probable. Despite some of the speculative nature of the reconstruction, Richards’ theory holds up rather strongly with what would have taken place if the traditions of Paul and Peter are correct, and further addresses in a realistic fashion how Peter would have had access to a corpus of Paul’s letters. To say the least, 2 Timothy bolsters the argument made here that there was the beginning of a New Testament document collection earlier than Marcion’s canon.

In light of these points, Simon J. Kistemaker makes a contributing observation that adds bulk to the view that the documents themselves were intrinsically authoritative, but it took time for the church universal to sift through this tremendous body of literature and come to an agreement. Kistemaker argues that the church was accepting a qualitative canon until it accepted a quantitative canon:

“The books themselves, of course, have always been uniquely authoritative from the time of their composition. Therefore, we speak of a qualitative canon in early stages that led to a quantitative canon centuries later. The incipient canon began to exist near the end of the first century. The completed canon was recognized by the Church near the end of the fourth century.[78]

Kistemaker, “The Canon of the New Testament“

Consequently, as has often been maintained, “the church did not create the canon,” but instead, developed from the bottom of the post-apostolic church structure to the top in the various councils to give focused attention to the authenticity of these works.[79]

Assessment

What may be said then regarding Marcion’s role in the formation of the New Testament Canon? Marcion does take a large place in New Testament canonical discussions. C. F. D. Moule poses several possibilities: “was Marcion’s [canon] the first canon, and is the orthodox canon the catholic [i.e. universal] Church’s subsequent reply? Or did Marcion play fast and loose with an already existing canon?” Moule’s answer: “There is at present no absolutely conclusive evidence for the existence of a pre-Marcionite catholic canon. Marcion may have been the catalyst […]. We cannot be certain.”[80]

However, because of the evidence above, it appears that there is more reason to suggest that Marcion was a catalyst to speed along what had been taking a slow time to develop.

Despite Marcion being the “first person known to us who published a fixed collection,”[81] that propelled the church at large to collect an authoritative set of Scripture,[82] the only way, as Ferguson argues, that it can be accepted that Marcion created the canon is possible, is “only by not recognizing the authority that New Testament books already had in the church.”[83] Metzger frames the situation well:

If the authority of the New Testament books resides not in the circumstance of their inclusion within a collection made by the Church, but in the source from which they came, then the New Testament was in principle complete when the various elements coming from the source had been written. That is to say, when once the principle of the canon has been determined, then ideally its extent is fixed and the canon is complete when the books which by principle belong to it have been written. (Metzger 283-84)[84]

Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament

Truly, if the New Testament documents are going to be canonical, then they must have been such due to their inherent value which was theirs as they were completed by God’s spokesperson.

In the end, it is argued in agreement with E. Schnabel, that while Marcion may be the first known person to have put together a list of books in the canonical sense, which provoked the church “to draw up its own list,” he did not, however, create the fundamental idea of that a book (or list of books) could be authoritative (i..e, canonical)–an idea which had existed in earlier Christian times.[85]

Endnotes

  1. Eckhard Schnabel, “History, Theology, and the Biblical Canon: An Introduction to Basic Issues,” Them 20.2 (1995): 19–21.
  2. Wilber T. Dayton, “Factors Promoting the Formation of the New Testament Canon,” JETS 10 (1967): 28–35.
  3. Nicolaas Appel, “The New Testament Canon: Historical Process and Spirit’s Witness,” TS 32.1 (1971): 629.
  4. Everett Ferguson, “Factors Leading to the Selection and Closure of the New Testament Canon: A Survey of Some Recent Studies,” in The Canon Debate, edited by Lee M. McDonald and James E. Sanders (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2002), 295.
  5. Ferguson, “Factors,” 309.
  6. F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are they Reliable? 5th ed. (repr., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 22.
  7. F. F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1988), 134.
  8. Milton Fisher, “The Canon of the New Testament,” The Origin of the Bible, ed. Philip Comfort (Wheaton: Tyndale, 2003), 65.
  9. Fisher, “Canon of the New Testament,” 69.
  10. Simon J. Kistemaker, “The Canon of the New Testament,” JETS 20 (1977): 10.
  11. Schnabel, “History,” 19.
  12. Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church (1858–1867; repr., Peabody: Hendrickson, 2002), 2:484.
  13. Schaff, History, 2:484.
  14. Ibid.
  15. Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997), 90.
  16. Edwin Yamauchi, “The Gnostics and History,” JETS 14 (1971): 29.
  17. Harold O. J. Brown, Heresies: Heresy and Orthodoxy in the History of the Church (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2000), 39.
  18. Brown, Heresies, 39.
  19. Brown, Heresies, 40.
  20. Yamauchi, “Gnostics and History,” 29.
  21. All Ante-Nicene Fathers quotations are taken from Ante-Nicene Fathers, edited by Alexander Robertson and James Donaldson (1885; repr., Peabody: Hendrickson, 2004).
  22. Ferguson, “Factors,” 309-10.
  23. This is much like how the views of Porphyry, the neo-platonic antagonist of Christianity, are known (Bruce, Canon, 141).
  24. Metzger, Canon, 91; Ferguson, “Factors,” 309.
  25. John Barton, “Marcion Revisited,” The Canon Debate, edited by Lee M. McDonald and James E. Sanders (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2002), 341–54. 353; Metzger, Canon, 91.
  26. Schaff, History, 2.484.
  27. Barton, “Marcion Revisited,” 341.
  28. Schaff, History, 2.484.
  29. Schaff, History, 2.484-85; Yamauchi, “Gnostics and History,” 30-33.
  30. Barton, “Marcion Revisited,” 341.
  31. Justin Martyr, First Apology 26. Translated by Marcus Dods and George Reith in Ante-Nicene Fathers, edited by Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature, 1885). Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight.
  32. Barton, “Marcion Revisited,” 341.
  33. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1:27:2. Translated by Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut in Ante-Nicene Fathers, edited by Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature, 1885). Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. 
  34. Tertullian, Prescription Against Heresies 38; David W. Bercot, ed., “Marcion,” A Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs (1998, reprint, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2000), 420.
  35. Barton, “Marcion Revisited,” 344.
  36. Barton, “Marcion Revisited,” 345.
  37. Ibid., 345.
  38. Bruce, Canon, 134.
  39. Ibid., 134.
  40. Bruce, Canon 136
  41. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1:27:2; Tertullian, Prescription Against Heresies 38.
  42. Thomas D. Lea, and David Alan Black, The New Testament: Its Background and Message, 2nd ed. (Nashville: Broadman, 2003), 73; Merrill C. Tenney and Walter M. Dunnett, New Testament Survey. Rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 408; Metzger, Canon, 98.
  43. Harry Y. Gamble, The New Testament Canon: Its Making and Meaning (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), 15–18; BDAG 507–08.
  44. Gamble, Canon, 15; MM 320.
  45. Gamble, Canon, 15
  46. Gamble, Canon, 15
  47. Richard N. Soulen and R. Kendall Soulen. Handbook of Biblical Criticism, 3rd ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 29.
  48. Cecil M. Robeck, Jr., “Canon, Regulae Fidei, and Continuing Revelation in the Early Church,” Church, Word, and Spirit:  Historical and Theological Essays in Honor of Geoffrey W. Bromiley, edited by James E. Bradley and Richard A. Muller (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 70; Gamble, Canon, 16–17; Linda L. Belleville, “Canon of the New Testament,” Foundations for Biblical Interpretation, edited by. David S. Dockery, Kenneth A. Matthews, and Robert B. Sloan. Nashville: Broadman, 1994. 375: Lea and Black, The New Testament, 70–71.
  49. Kistemaker, “Canon,” 13.
  50. D. A. Carson, Douglas J. Moo, and Leon Morris, An Introduction to the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992), 367–71, 433–35.
  51. The main list of this section comes from Dowell Flatt, “Why Twenty-Seven New Testament Books?” Settled in Heaven: Applying the Bible to Life, edited by David Lipe (Henderson, TN: Freed-Hardeman University, 1996), 139; cf. James A. Brooks, Broadman Bible Commentary, edited by Clifton J. Allen (Nashville: Broadman, 1969), 8:18–21.
  52. Paul L. Maier, translator, Eusebius: The Church History – A New Translation with Commentary (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1999), 127.
  53. On illiteracy see Alan Millard, Reading and Writing in the Time of Jesus (Sheffield, England: Sheffield, 2001), 154–84. On the point that there is no explicit command by Jesus to write biblical books see D. I. Lanslots, The Primitive Church, Or The Church in the Days of the Apostles (1926, reprint, Rockford, IL: Tan Books, 1980), 102–09.
  54. Kurt Aland, “The Problem of Anonymity and Pseudonymity in Christian Literature of the First Two Centuries,” JETS 12 (1961), 47.
  55. King McCarver, “Why Are These Books in the Bible? – New Testament,” God’s Word for Today’s World:  The Biblical Doctrine of Scripture, edited by Don Jackson, et al. (Kosciusko, MI: Magnolia Bible College, 1986), 88; Kistemaker, “Canon,” 13.
  56. Michael W. Holmes, editor, The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004), 23, 104; Robert E. Picirilli, “Allusions to 2 Peter in the Apostolic Fathers,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 33 (1988), 57–83.
  57. Richard J. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter (Waco, TX: Word, 1983), 157–58.
  58. Werner Georg Kümmel, Introduction to the New Testament, translated by Howard Clark Kee (Nashville: Abingdon, 1986), 387.
  59. D. Edmond Hiebert, “Selected Studies from 2 Peter Part 4: Directives for Living in Dangerous Days: An Exposition of 2 Peter 3:14-18a,” BSac 141 (1984): 336.
  60. Jerome H. Neyrey, 2 Peter, Jude: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 250.
  61. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 328.
  62. BDAG 948.
  63. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 329.
  64. Hiebert, “Selected Studies,” 336; Thomas R. Schreiner, 1, 2 Peter, Jude (Nashville: Broadman, 2003), 397–98; L&N 1:61.
  65. BDAG 602; W. Günther H. Krienke, “Remnant, Leave,” NIDNTT 3:252.
  66. Raymond C. Kelcy, The Letters of Peter and Jude (Abilene, TX: Abilene Christian University Press, 1987), 162; Tord Fornberg, An Early Church in a Pluralistic Society: A Study of 2 Peter, translated by Jean Gray (Sweden: Boktryckeri, 1977), 22; Krienke, “Remnant, Leave,” 252.
  67. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 333.
  68. Earl J. Richard, Reading 1 Peter, Jude, and 2 Peter: A Literary and Theological Commentary (Macon, GA: Smyth, 2000), 390.
  69. Luke T. Johnson, The Writings of the New Testament: An Interpretation (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986), 443–44; Richard, 1 Peter, Jude, and 2 Peter, 388; Neyrey, 2 Peter, Jude, 250.
  70. McCarver, “Why Are These Books in the Bible?,” 88; E. Randolph Richards, “The Codex and the Early Collection of Paul’s Letters,” BBR 8 (1998): 155–66.
  71. McCarver, “Why Are These Books in the Bible?” 88.
  72. Richards, “The Codex,” 158–59.
  73. Richards, “The Codex,” 162–66.
  74. Richards, “The Codex,” 161.
  75. Richards, “The Codex,” 159–62.
  76. Richards, “The Codex,” 165.
  77. Richards, “The Codex,” 165–66.
  78. Kistemaker, “Canon,” 13.
  79. Kistemaker, “Canon” 13; McCarver 88-90; Flatt 140-42
  80. C. F. D. Moule, The Birth of the New Testament (London: Black, 1973), 198.
  81. Bruce 134
  82. Edward W. Bauman, An Introduction to the New Testament (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961), 175.
  83. Ferguson, “Factors,” 309–10.
  84. Metzger, Canon, 283–84
  85. Schnabel, “History, Theology,” 19.

Bibliography

Aland, Kurt. “The Problem of Anonymity and Pseudonymity in Christian Literature of the First Two Centuries.” Journal of Theological Studies 12 (1961): 39-49.

Appel, Nicolaas. “The New Testament Canon: Historical Process and Spirit’s Witness.” Theological Studies 32.1 (1971): 627-46.

Barton, John. “Marcion Revisited.” The Canon Debate. Eds. Lee M. McDonald and James E. Sanders. Peabody: Hendrickson, 2002. 341-54.

Bauckham, Richard J. Jude, 2 Peter. Word Biblical Commentary. Vol. 50. Gen. eds. David A. Hubbard and Glenn W. Barker. Waco, TX:  Word, 1983.

Bauman, Edward W. An Introduction to the New Testament. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961.

(BDAG) Bauer, Walter, F.W. Danker, William F. Arndt, and F. Wilbur Gingrich. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and other Early Christian Literature. 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.

Belleville, Linda L. “Canon of the New Testament.” Foundations for Biblical Interpretation: A Complete Library of Tools and Resources. Eds. David S. Dockery, Kenneth A. Matthews, and Robert B. Sloan. Nashville: Broadman, 1994.

Bercot, David W. Editor. A Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs. 1998. Reprint, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2000.

Brooks, James A. Broadman Bible Commentary. Vol. 8. Ed. Clifton J. Allen. Nashville: Broadman, 1969.

Brown, Harold O. J. Heresies: Heresy and Orthodoxy in the History of the Church. Peabody: Hendrickson, 2000.

Bruce, F.F. The Canon of Scripture. Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1988.

—. The New Testament Documents: Are they Reliable? 5th ed. Leicester/Grand Rapids:  InterVarsity/Eerdmans, 2000.

Carson, D.A., Douglas J. Moo, and Leon Morris. An Introduction to the New Testament. Grand Rapids:  Zondervan, 1992.

Dayton, Wilber T. “Factors Promoting the Formation of the New Testament Canon.” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 10 (1967): 28-35.

Ferguson, Everett. “Factors Leading to the Selection and Closure of the New Testament Canon: A Survey of Some Recent Studies.” The Canon Debate. Eds. Lee M. McDonald and James E. Sanders. Peabody: Hendrickson, 2002. 295-320.

Fisher, Milton. “The Canon of the New Testament.” The Origin of the Bible. Ed. Philip Comfort. Wheaton: Tyndale, 2003. 65-78.

Flatt, Dowell. “Why Twenty Seven New Testament Books?” Settled in Heaven: Applying the Bible to Life. Ed. David Lipe. Annual Freed-Hardeman University Lectureship. Henderson, TN: Freed-Hardeman UP, 1996. 138-45.

Fornberg, Tord. An Early Church in a Pluralistic Society: A Study of 2 Peter. Trans. Jean Gray. Sweden:  Boktryckeri, 1977.

Gamble, Harry Y. The New Testament Canon: Its Making and Meaning. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985.

Hiebert, D. Edmond. “Selected Studies from 2 Peter Part 4:  Directives for Living in Dangerous Days:  An Exposition of 2 Peter 3:14-18a.” Bibliotheca Sacra 141 (1984): 330-40.

Holmes, Michael W. Ed. The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations. Rev. ed. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004.

Johnson, Luke T. The Writings of the New Testament:  An Interpretation. Philadelphia:  Fortress, 1986.

Kelcy, Raymond C. The Letters of Peter and Jude. The Living Word Commentary:  New Testament. Vol. 17. Ed. Everett Ferguson. Abilene, TX:  Abilene Christian UP, 1987.

Kistemaker, Simon J. “The Canon of the New Testament.” Journal of Evangelical Theological Society 20 (1977):  3-14.

Krienke, W. Günther H. “Remnant, Leave.” New International Dictionary of the New Testament Theology. Vol. 3. Ed. Colin Brown. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1978. 247-54.

Kümmel, Werner Georg. Introduction to the New Testament. Trans. Howard Clark Kee. Nashville: Abingdon, 1986.

Lanslots, D. I. The Primitive Church, Or The Church in the Days of the Apostles. 1926. Reprint, Rockford, IL: Tan Books, 1980.

Lea, Thomas D., and David Alan Black. The New Testament:  Its Background and Message. 2nd ed. Nashville:  Broadman, 2003.

(L&N) Louw, Johannes P., and Eugene A. Nida. Eds. Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains. 2nd ed. New York: United Bible Society, 1989. 2 vols.

Maier, Paul L. Trans. Eusebius:  The Church History – A New Translation with Commentary. Grand Rapids:  Kregel, 1999.

McCarver, King. “Why Are These Books in the Bible? – New Testament.” God’s Word for Today’s World:  The Biblical Doctrine of Scripture. Don Jackson, Samuel Jones, Cecil May, Jr., and Donald R. Taylor. Kosciusko, MI: Magnolia Bible College, 1986.

Metzger, Bruce M. The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997.

Millard, Alan. Reading and Writing in the Time of Jesus. Sheffield, England:  Sheffield, 2001.

Moule, C.F.D. The Birth of the New Testament. London: Black, 1973.

(MM) Moulton, James H., and George Milligan. The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament. 1930. Peabody:  Hendrickson, 1997.

Neyrey, Jerome H. 2 Peter, Jude:  A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. Anchor Bible. Vol. 37 C. Gen. ed. William F. Albright and David Noel Freedman. New York: Doubleday, 1993

Picirilli, Robert E. “Allusions to 2 Peter in the Apostolic Fathers.” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 33 (1988):  57-83.

Richard, Earl J. Reading 1 Peter, Jude, and 2 Peter: A Literary and Theological Commentary. Reading the New Testament Series. Macon, GA:  Smyth, 2000.

Richards, E. Randolph. “The Codex and the Early Collection of Paul’s Letters.” Bulletin for Bulletin Research 8 (1998):  151-66.

Robeck, Cecil M., Jr. “Canon, Regulae Fidei, and Continuing Revelation in the Early Church.” Church, Word, and Spirit:  Historical and Theological Essays in Honor of Geoffrey W. Bromiley. Eds. James E. Bradley and Richard A. Muller. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987.

Robertson, Alexander, and James Donaldson. Eds. Ante-Nicene Fathers. Vols.1, 3-4. 1885. Peabody: Hendrickson, 2004.

Schaff, Philip. History of the Christian Church. Vols. 1-3. 1858-1867. Peabody: Hendrickson, 2002.

Schnabel, Eckhard. “History, Theology, and the Biblical Canon: An Introduction to Basic Issues.” Themelios 20.2 (1995): 16-24.

Schreiner, Thomas R. 1, 2 Peter, Jude. The New American Commentary. Vol. 37. Gen. ed. E. Ray Clendenen. Nashville: Broadman, 2003.

Soulen, Richard N., and R. Kendall Soulen. Handbook of Biblical Criticism. 3rd ed. Rev. and expanded. Louisville: WJK, 2001.

Tenney, Merrill C., and Walter M. Dunnett. New Testament Survey. Rev. ed. Revised by Walter M. Dunnett. Grand Rapids/Leicester: Eerdmans/InterVarsity, 2001.

Yamauchi, Edwin. “The Gnostics and History.” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 14.1 (1971): 29-40.

The Humanity of Jesus the Son

On By Jovan PayesIn Christology, Graduate Work, Hope International University, Jesus Studies, Patristics, Theology

The phrases Jesus Christ, the Christ of faith, the Jesus of history, and Jesus the Divine Son all reflect significant themes pertaining to the central figure of the New Testament, Jesus of Nazareth. These concepts fall within a specialized area of theology known as Christology, which is a systematic “study of Christ” based on the full biblical picture derived from scripture.

A bit more formally, this field of study speaks to the Christian endeavor to map Jesus’ placement within “time and eternity, humanity and divinity, particularity and universality.” It answers how the life of a seemingly benign first-century Jewish rabbi could be so “relevant for all people and all times” (McGrath 2017, 207).

The present discussion maps Jesus’ Son-relationship in the triune unity of God, and the nature of his humanity. It then reflects on how the humanity of Jesus is relevant to the Christian’s personal walk before God.

Jesus the Son and the Trinity

The Trinitarian Formula

The divinity of Jesus is established in many passages of the New Testament. For example, Matthew closes with an appearance of Jesus where he affirms his authority “in heaven and on earth.” With this authority, he commissions his disciples for an international burden, 

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (28:18–19 NRSV). [All Scripture references are from the New Revised Standard Version unless otherwise noted.]

Three themes are clear in this passage: Jesus’ divine authority, discipleship made in baptism, and the trinitarian language of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In the early generations of the church, the above trinitarian formula would represent a highly nuanced concept of monotheism affirmed to be in continuity with the “one God” of the Hebrew Bible.

What forced early Jewish Christians to accept this nuanced view of monotheism? The answer: the character and nature of Jesus did. It is not subversive of the “oneness” of God (Deut 6:4) but depends on the New Testament’s clarification that the “one God” is not a simplistic model. As the clarification argues, the Divine Son is not God the Father, nor is he the Holy Spirit. This raises tough questions that the historical church has discussed in earnest and in conflict for generations.

How do we map this out theologically?

The Divine Son Portrayed

We turn to the presence of Jesus and how He is portrayed in relation to the Father and the Holy Spirit.

In the first century, the prologue to the Fourth Gospel (John 1:1–3, 14) affirms that the person and nature of Jesus is the driving force to reshape the whole biblical landscape of the concept of God (Gen 1:1; Exod 20:11). 

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being... And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John 1:1–3a, 14)

Jesus not only pre-existed as the lógos at the time of creation (John 1:1), but he also “emptied” (ekénōsen) himself to take on the “form [morphē] of a slave”—a human (Phil 2:6–7). Leaning heavily on John 1:14, the Alexandrian theologian, Athanasius, concluded that this “human body” was taken by this same “Word of God” (Placher 2003, 184).

On this view, there was no room within this theology for Arius’ affirmation that Jesus the Son—the Word—was a created being who subsequently became divine. This view reduced Jesus to a creature impotent to redeem humanity (McGrath 2017, 217–19).

The Divine Association

As McGrath (2017, 214) chronicles, the divinity of Christ was one of the first major theological battles of the early church as it sought to hammer out its understanding of the contours of a very genuine human being in Jesus who, at the same time, was portrayed as being more than a mere human. The “battle” was not over the deity of Christ as such (that was established), but how to understand the relationship between his humanity and his divinity.

The divinity of Jesus was therefore accepted as true as his humanity—as affirmed in Chalcedon (AD 451)—which means that the question left to map out was the relationship between Jesus and the Father and the Holy Spirit.

The only way to do this is by evaluating Scripture (Jenson 2003, 194). Despite certain reservations, Jenson argues clearly that Peter’s application of the divine title “Lord” from Joel 2 (kyrios LXX) to Jesus in Acts 2:33–34 (kyrios) demonstrates that

the risen Christ, without violation of God’s singularity, does what only the God of Israel himself does, and that he does this precisely by virtue of his situation with the God of Israel. (2003, 194)

Jensen in Essentials of Christian Theology (2003)

Jensen points out that the emerging notion of association that comes from the word “with” points to the “inescapably observable fact” that the biblical narrative is framed by three divine characters in its drama (2003, 195): the God of Israel, Jesus his Son, and the life-giving Spirit of God.

Agreeing with Jenson (2003, 196), Jesus should not be viewed as a mere successive mode of God’s presence in time (modalism) or as the Father’s subordinate agent with the Spirit in time (subordinationism). Instead, Jesus maintains an eternally mutual and reciprocal relationship with the Father and the Spirit. For this reason, ancient Christians used an analogy inspired by the theater, that is to say, that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit although three in persona (mask) are one in Divine substance. Another model is found in Martin Buber’s I-You relationship model (McGrath 2017,179–80).

Understanding the Humanity of Jesus

What, then, goes into mapping this theological tension of the Son and the Trinity?

Mapping the nature of Jesus’ humanity—in balance with his divinity—requires great caution. The traditional doctrine of the incarnation (literally, “becoming bodily”) affirms both the full humanity of Jesus and his divinity. Any attempt to isolate what is organically interwoven in the person and work of Jesus runs a high risk of distortion.

Overcompensating to account for the humanity of Jesus has typically been met with the “stamp” of heresy. Three, in particular, are Ebionism, Arianism, and Docetism (McGrath 2017, 214–20). 

The roots of Ebionism are Jewish. It framed Jesus through the lenses of a human prophet, as called and anointed by the Holy Spirit. As a low Christology, Jesus is only a “spiritually superior” human. This does not align with the picture of his eternal pre-existence as Creator.

Plotted on another point on the map is Arianism (named after Arius), which called into question the “fully divine” and “fully human” affirmation due to an irreconcilable application of the Greek notion of divine impassability and the doctrine of the incarnation. God cannot be both changeable (fully human) and transcendent (fully divine), therefore, the incarnation strikes at the perfect nature of the one God. Jesus must therefore be a “superior created being” with nothing divine to report. This failed to account for the actual testimony of the gospels where in fact this is possible.

Meanwhile, Docetism affirmed, with its hardline separation of God and the present evil world of matter (due to its gnostic foundation), the divine incarnation of John 1:14 was nothing more than “pretend.” The heresy’s name (or tendency) is derived from the Greek word dokéō (“to seem”) affirming Jesus only “seemed” to have a body in which he suffered and died, making the incarnation “into a fake” (Placher 2003, 183). Scripturally, the work of Christ is dependent on the fully human (Luke 24:38–39) and fully divine Jesus manifested in the death of the cross and resurrection from the dead (Rom 1:3–4).

Similarly, the opening line of 1 John affirms the humanity of the “Word of Life”: “what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands” (1:1).

Likewise, in the second century CE, Ignatius of Antioch (ca. 35–ca. 110) stressed his concern to the Christians of Trallia that they should guard against (“be deaf,” kōphóthēte 9.1) anything which undermines the humanity of Christ with the following words:

Jesus Christ, who was of the family of David, who was the son of Mary; who really was born, who both ate and drank; who really was persecuted under Pontius Pilate, who really was crucified and died while those in heaven and on earth and under the earth look on; who, moreover, really was raised from the dead when his Father raised him up, who—his Father, that is—in the same way will likewise also raise us up in Christ Jesus who believe in him, apart from whom we have no true life. (“To the Trallians” 9.1–2)

Ignatius of Antioch, “To the Trallians” 9.1-2

The example of Ignatius is interesting because it is early and strongly affirms Jesus’ human form, “who really” (hos alethōs) an adverb repeated four times to assert what is true, actual because it corresponds to what is really so (BDAG 44). For Ignatius, Jesus actually was born, ate and drank, persecuted, crucified and died, and raised from the dead. Ignatius saw denying the humanity of Christ as subversive to the soteriological (the saving, redeeming) and eschatological (end times, fulfilling) work of Christ.

What Does This Mean?

What then does it mean for the Christian that God became flesh to redeem us in the person of Jesus Christ? Two extremes must be cautioned against here. One extreme is to moralize the life of Jesus (1 Pet 2:21), and as such reduces Jesus to a mere good teacher. Another extreme is to make Jesus’ life and teaching into a disjointed symbolic presence of God (i.e., Paul Tillich).

The humanity of Jesus provides me with a great deal of assurance as a believer that God knows through Christ the human plight. Jesus has “assumed all” and can, therefore “heal all” of humanity (Placher 2003, 184). When the “name” Immanuel (“God is with us”) is given to Jesus (Matt 1:23) the associated promise is that “he will save his people from their sins (Matt 1:21). God’s presence in the human child to be born provides a personal locus that can be isolated to time, space, and history.

For all humans, it then becomes quite clear that God is joining the human continuum to reconcile not only “us” but also “the world to himself” in Christ (2 Cor 5:18–19). Paul’s application has massive personal repercussions, 

“if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (5:17)

The humanity of Jesus is not simply a modal expression of God, but God entering into time and space to save, forgive, reconcile, and renew humanity and creation.

It provides the seedbed to take the particular localized Jesus and affirm his enduring value for all humans for all time. As Ignatius wrote, God “will likewise also raise us up in Christ Jesus who believe in him, apart from whom we have no true life” (“To the Trallians” 9.2).

Truly, the humanity of the God-Man Jesus is relevant for the Christian’s personal walk before God because it is the seedbed for all our hopes, especially, hope for the resurrection (1 Cor 15:12–19).

Bibliography

(BDAG) Bauer, Walter, Frederick W. Danker, W. F. Ardnt, and F. W. Gingrich. 2000. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. 3rd edition. Chicago: University of Chicago.

Ignatius. 1999. “The Letters of Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch.” Pages 128–201 in The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations. 2d edition. Edited and revised by Michael W. Holmes. Grand Rapids: Baker Books.

Jenson, Robert W. 2003. “Does Jesus Make a Difference? The Person and Work of Jesus Christ” Pages 191–205 in Essentials of Christian Theology. Edited by William C. Placher. Louisville, Kent: Westminster John Knox.

McGrath, Alister E. 2017. Christian Theology: An Introduction. 6th edition. Maldon, Ma: Wiley Blackwell.

Placher, William C. 2003. “Does Jesus Make a Difference? The Person and Work of Jesus Christ” Pages 183–91 in Essentials of Christian Theology. Edited by William C. Placher. Louisville, Kent: Westminster John Knox.

Did Paul Hallucinate the Resurrection?

On By Jovan PayesIn 1 Corinthians, 2021, Biblical Criticism, Christian Apologetics, Early Christianity, Graduate Work, Jesus Studies, Paul's Letters, Research Papers, Resurrection, Theology1 Comment

[Note: This paper has been published. Go to the end of the article to download the published version.]

The historical bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the foundation of orthodox Christianity. The apostle Paul asserts, “if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” (1 Cor 15:14).[1] One argument skeptics, like former Catholic Priest and Jesus Seminar scholar John Dominic Crossan, use to counter the force of the historical claim of a bodily resurrection of Jesus is to say that the early Christians experienced hallucinations.

I intend to demonstrate the early Christian claim of Jesus appearing bodily after his resurrection­, as reflected in Paul, is the best explanation for the resurrection appearances of the New Testament over Crossan’s hallucination theory.

I first critique the hallucination theory of Crossan for contradicting the bodily resurrection language of the New Testament. Second, I demonstrate how Crossan’s trance mechanism for a hallucination imposes an anachronistic understanding on Paul’s words. Finally, I dispute Crossan’s denial of the falsifiable of the bodily resurrection of Jesus.

Early Christians Believed in a Bodily Resurrection

The language of the miracle claim asserts that Jesus resurrected and appeared bodily to his disciples (John 20:27; Luke 24:39). However, a secular worldview primed by naturalism demands an alternative explanation of “what really happened” to Jesus other than a bodily resurrection.[2] The horns of the dilemma were posed by David F. Strauss (1808–1874), “either Jesus was not really dead, or he did not really rise again.”[3] However, all the details of passion-week Friday, such as, scourging, dehydration, crucifixion, etc., make any interpretation Jesus did not die to be “at odds with modern medical knowledge.”[4] The category of hallucination, as an explanation theory, is a popular attempt to claim the disciples hallucinated the bodily appearances of Jesus, and mass hysteria then spread their claim. As Dale C. Allison, Jr., frames it,

it was not the empty tomb that begot the hallucinations but hallucinations that begot the empty tomb.[5]

Dale C. Allison, Jr., Resurrecting Jesus (T&T Clark, 2005)

The charge is ancient. In the third-century AD, Origen of Alexandria (d. 254) combatted Celsus’ second-century claim that the disciples suffered a “delusion.”[6]

Another pushback against the orthodox view of a bodily resurrection is that it is just a fictional myth that developed over time as a result of a personal hallucination of Paul. To establish this claim, liberal Bible critic Crossan introduces the writings of two early non-Christian historians (Josephus and Tacitus) which he believes limit “what happened both before and after Jesus’s execution.” [7] Crossan argues their religious profiles of the Christian movement lack mention of the resurrection. Additionally, the Gospel of Thomas speaks of the “living Jesus” and the Epistle of Barnabas is void of resurrection talk. Crossan believes this evidence affirms that early Christian faith did not need to believe in a post-mortem appearance of Jesus. He further claims that Paul uses his experience of Jesus appearing to him (1 Cor 15:8) to give him the gravitas to be the equal of all the apostles in a political powerplay.[8]

Crossan’s novel hallucination theory also requires that the present passive indicative verb ōphthē, translated “appeared” in most translations, actually means “revealed.” This would be a culturally conditioned “trance” where Paul experienced an “altered state of consciousness” and used this personal experience to stabilize the infighting in the Corinthian church.[9] Crossan’s theory requires the church to have completely misread Paul’s testimony by taking his personal experience for apostolic orthodoxy. Crossan’s theory offers a “growth-politics” twist to the category of the hallucination theory.

The words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:3–11, however, do not support Crossan’s theory. In fact, this passage is a test-case of the united shape of the earliest Christian tradition concerning the resurrection appearances of Jesus.[10] The minimal facts theory of apologist Gary R. Habermas provides a firm critical foundation to respond to Crossan. The minimal facts theory is a critical approach that uses “the minimal, best-established facts surrounding the appearances” of Jesus that even Bible critics grant “to determine what really happened after Jesus’ death.”[11] Habermas has established four historical facts.

First, there is very little controversy that Paul wrote 1 Corinthians, as even Crossan dates the letter to AD 53–54.[12] Second, Paul’s articulation of the gospel predates him, “I delivered to you… what I also received” (1 Cor 15:3). Here Paul affirms the normative nature of what he is preaching. Third, Paul received this “tradition” anywhere between AD 32–38, less than a decade after the crucifixion.[13] Fourth, this reception of the creed occurred during Paul’s Jerusalem information gathering “visit” (cf. historéō) with Peter and James (Gal 1:18–20) and anchors his tradition to the early Jerusalem church.[14]

Bible critical scholar, A. M. Hunter (1906–1991), argues that Paul claims in this passage “a very early Christian summary” of what the united apostolic voice affirms about the gospel and Jesus resurrection appearances (15:11);[15] namely, “that Christ died for our sins… that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day… and that he appeared” (15:3–5). The bodily death and resurrection appearances of Jesus legitimizes the existence of the Christian faith, for “in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (15:20; cf. 15:6, 14). There is no powerplay. Paul is in fact arguing from within the earliest Christian tradition and meaning of resurrection appearance. This is a substantial point since Crossan’s theory offers a reinterpretation of the early Christian tradition which cannot be sustained internally.

Ultimately, a naturalistic argument forces Crossan’s hand to redefine what is a resurrection and how one experiences it. Resurrection was not, according to N. T. Wright, a generic term for “life after death” but instead “the second stage in a two-stage process of what happens after death: the first stage being nonbodily and the second being a renewed bodily existence… Paul really did believe in the bodily resurrection” (cf. 1 Cor 9:1).[16] It is precisely this firm belief in the bodily resurrection that invalidates Crosson’s theory for Paul, and is in conformity with other the New Testament descriptions of the bodily resurrection appearances of Jesus.[17]

Beyond the evidence of Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 15:3–11 of multiple eyewitnesses there are the public resurrection expectations and appearances in the Gospels; moreover, there are the resurrection creedal statements in the sermons of Acts.[18] It points to a clear unified belief among the earliest Christians that Jesus rose bodily from the dead and appeared in a renewed bodily existence. Bodily existence is the expected concept non-believers were to understand as the Christian view of the resurrection, as Judean Procurator Festus explains to Herod Agrippa II, “a certain Jesus, who was dead, but whom Paul asserted to be alive” (Acts 25:19; Acts 17:32). The New Testament evidence affirms, then, the early Christian claim that Jesus was a live again.

No Mechanism for Hallucination

As we shall argue, there are no cause for Paul to need a hallucination. Such a theory redefines the unified Christian claim of the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Crossan, keenly aware that Paul provides the earliest creedal statement, posits that Paul is the key for all the New Testament internal evidence. For Crossan what really happened is Paul was desperate to have a trance experience of the resurrection. He theorizes the Easter tradition developed over the years into its current boundaries of the canonical New Testament. Crossan offers “apparition–which involves trance” as the alternative dissociated state in which he believes Paul experienced resurrection.[19]

Based on the work by Erika Bourguignon on “dissociational” states, Crossan affirms trance to be “a human universal” that may be a culturally trained and controlled experience by one’s social and religious expectations.[20] Crossan’s reading of Paul’s words is an eisegetical fallacy importing a modern socio-religious model of an “altered state of consciousness” into Paul’s experiences to establish his political equality with the other apostles.[21] Again Crossan claims, “Paul needs… to equate his own experience” with the apostles to establish “its validity and legitimacy but not necessarily its mode or manner.”[22] Crossan’s methodology is problematic on this point.

However, there are three major problems with Crossan’s hallucination theory. First, Crossan imports an anachronistic definition into the use ōphthē in Paul’s words. It should be noted with significance that in the Greek Old Testament ōphthē is used in appearances of God (i.e., theophanies) to Abraham, and clearly to Abraham in bodily form where he ate with the Lord (Gen 18:1).[23] Paul was quite familiar with Genesis as he makes substantial arguments about justification by faith with the stories of Abraham in Galatians and Romans. To posit a modern theory while ignoring this Old Testament tradition of the verb, “he appeared,” ignores the textual evidence. Furthermore, it calls into question the validity of Crossan’s exegetical methodology.

Second, he exchanges his own meaning for Paul’s intended meaning of the verb ōphthē.[24] Crossan’s claim puts the power of the trance in Paul’s hands, but Paul’s verbal word choice indicates the appearance was out of his hands. Greek scholar, Daniel B. Wallace, reminds in grammatical instances like this, “volition rests wholly with the subject [Jesus], while the dative noun is merely recipient [Paul].”[25] It is Jesus who “appeared.” Paul did not conjure a “revelation” of Jesus.

Third, Crossan’s portrayal of Paul as desperate for apostolic power does not agree with Paul’s own success in Judaism prior to his conversion and call. He writes,

I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely jealous was I for the traditions of my fathers. (Gal 1:13b–14)

Paul had the pedigree of a rising Jewish leader (Phil 3:4–8). There is no explainable mechanism which accounts for exchanging this advancement in Judaism for the trials of following Christ outside of an actual appearance of the resurrected Jesus which he did not initiate in a trance. Paul joins the pre-existing united voice of the apostolic witnesses, other earlier skeptical witnesses (non-believing siblings of Jesus), and the large groups seeing Jesus post-burial. Crossan’s theory do not adequately take these elements into account. Furthermore, Habermas’s minimal facts theory renders his mechanism historically implausible since its critical timetable places Paul as recipient, not creator, of the bodily resurrection confession.

Paul’s Claim was Falsifiable

This conclusion then leads to question of falsifiability. The early Christians claimed a dead man lived again. Writing about twenty years after the resurrection Paul asserts there were many eyewitnesses who could verify or falsify his claim that Jesus rose bodily. Paul wrote, “I delivered to you…what I also received” (1 Cor 15:2) and proceeds to outline six lines of eyewitness testimony evidence: Cephas, the twelve, over five hundred, James, all the apostles, and Paul. The most audacious claim is that Jesus appeared “to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep” (1 Cor 15:6). Paul’s submission invites investigation into the genuineness of the resurrection of Jesus and is essential to Paul’s argument for the validity of the gospel. Paul’s claim to have “seen the Lord” is falsifiable (1 Cor 9:1). Even Crossan understands the surface argument of this passage, and observes, “no Jesus resurrection, no general resurrection; or, no general resurrection, no Jesus resurrection.”[26] He does not however believe it.

Crossan believes that it would be impossible to falsify the traditional empty tomb and resurrection stories. When asked whether “the empty tomb” was historical, Crossan emphatically responds, “No.” Crossan expands,

“I doubt there was any tomb for Jesus in the first place. I don’t think any of Jesus’ followers even knew where he was buried–if he was buried at all.”[27]

John Dominic Crossan in Who is Jesus? Answers to Your Question About the Historical Jesus (Westminster John Knox, 1996)

From Roman sources Crossan argues the Roman expectation for the crucified was the denial of both body and burial.[28] To the point, Crossan says, the “final penalty was to lie unburied as food for carrion birds and beasts [i.e., animals that eat decaying flesh].”[29] Crucifixion meant, then, “death-without-burial” and “body-as-carrion”; consequently, there was little likelihood of Jesus’ body making it off the cross let alone into the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea (Mark 15:42; Matt 27:1–61).[30] It would likely take “bribery, mercy, or indifference” to get the Romans to release the body over to a Jew seeking to avoid violating Jewish protocols of burying the hung (Deut 21:22–23).

Such a “hope” would be the exception, for only one contemporary crucified body remains have been found where thousands have been so executed; as such, it “is not history.”[31] This clearly undermines the Gospel tradition of the empty tomb where Jesus had been buried.

Crossan’s historical reconstruction of customary expectations and practices is a strong counterargument against falsification by the presentation of the cadaver of Jesus. If there is no body which survives the cross, there is no body to be buried, and therefore the Christian claim cannot be falsified. However, Crossan cannot historically rule out that Jesus was buried as Mark affirms. He can only suggest burial would be highly unlikely. Crossan’s alternative depends on advancing a legendary basis for the burial of Jesus. Yet, William Lane Craig responds this “would ignore the specific evidence” in Jesus’ case.[32] As established by the “minimal facts” critical theory, the creedal statement in 1 Corinthians 15:3–5 is very early. Furthermore, this four-line creedal formula affirms crucifixion, burial, resurrection, and then appearance.

The burial of Jesus was essential to the creed and Mark’s reference to it is substantial corroboration. First, the “assured results” of critical scholarship considers Mark the earliest gospel as it is the most “bare bones” narrative of Jesus.[33] Second, the Passion week narrative includes Jesus’ rejection and crucifixion. Third, Mark introduces Jesus’ burial in Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb from which he resurrects. Mark retains the burial tradition.[34] Crossan’s methodology is prejudicial because it rules out, beforehand (a priori), the established testimony of the earliest claim of the Christians: Christ was buried, was raised, and he appeared.

Conclusion

This paper affirms the bodily resurrection of Jesus over the challenge raised by the hallucination theory developed by Crossan. The language of the New Testament asserts that Jesus resurrected and appeared bodily to his disciples, to unbelievers, and to many others. Crossan claimed that the resurrection from the dead was not a main element of the Christian faith. However, a critical examination of the words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:3–11 verifies that the primary and earlier Christian creedal tradition which teaches that Jesus arose bodily and appeared. There is no other normative belief in the New Testament than Jesus resurrected from the dead.  

Second, Crossan’s trance mechanism for a hallucination imposes an anachronistic understanding on Paul’s words. The alternative theory offered by Crossan that Paul had a dissociative hallucination-trance experience to gain religious political power is based on seriously flawed exegetical methodology. There is ultimately no proper mechanism for Paul’s conversion to Christianity and his claim of seeing the resurrected Jesus, when he was living a successful Jewish life as a persecutor of the church. Paul’s claim that he saw the Lord resurrected must be taken seriously.

Finally, I asserted the early Christian claim of a bodily resurrection would have been falsifiable by the cadaver of Jesus. Crossan’s claim that Jesus’ body would likely never have survived nor made it to a burial actually is self-defeating because he cannot rule out known exceptions. In Jesus’ case, there were elements to his story that made it possible for Jesus to be taken off the cross and buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. This is in keeping with the earliest Christian claim regarding his burial.

Endnotes

  1. Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from the English Standard Version of The Holy Bible (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016).
  2. Gary R. Habermas explains that a naturalist theory for the resurrection draws “from a host of philosophical backgrounds, the basic idea is to suggest an alternative explanation in place of divine causation… ‘Jesus didn’t rise from the dead. What really happened is (fill in the blank).’” Habermas, “The Late Twentieth-Century Resurgence of Naturalistic Responses to Jesus’ Resurrection,” Trinity Journal 22 (2001): 180.
  3. David F. Strauss, The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, 4th edition, translated by George Eliot (London: Sonnenschein, 1902), 736. The longer form: “a dead man has returned to life, is composed of two such contradictory elements, that whenever it is attempted to maintain the one, the other threatens to disappear. If he has really returned to life, it is natural to conclude that he was not wholly dead; if he was really dead, it is difficult to believe that he has really become living” (735–36).
  4. William Edwards, Wesley J. Gabel, and Floyd E. Hosmer, “On the Physical Death of Jesus Christ,” Journal of the American Medical Association 255.11 (1986): 1436.
  5. Dale C. Allison, Jr., Resurrecting Jesus: The Earliest Christian Tradition and Its Interpreters (New York: T&T Clark, 2005), 204. Allison offers seven categories and sub-categories of resurrection appearance hypotheses each with different psychological catalysts (199–213).
  6. Origen Contra Celsum 2.60: “But Celsus, unwilling to admit any such view, will have it that some dreamed a waking dream, and, under the influence of a perverted imagination, formed to themselves such an image as they desired. Now it is not irrational to believe that a dream may take place while one is asleep; but to suppose a waking vision in the case of those who are not altogether out of their senses, and under the influence of delirium or hypochondria, is incredible. And Celsus, seeing this, called the woman half-mad,— a statement which is not made by the history recording the fact, but from which he took occasion to charge the occurrences with being untrue.”
  7. Josephus Antiquities 18.63; Tacitus Annals 15.44. cf. Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), 161–62. Italics added.
  8. Crossan, Jesus, 166.
  9. Ibid., 167; 87–88.
  10. The following four arguments presume the work of Gary R. Habermas, “The Resurrection Appearances of Jesus,” In Defense of Miracles, ed. R. Douglas Geivett and Gary R. Habermas (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1997), 264.
  11. Habermas, “Resurrection Appearances,” 262.
  12. Possibly later, like 64. Stephen Neill and Tom Wright, The Interpretation of the New Testament: 1861–1986, 2nd edition (New York: Oxford University, 1988), 308; Crossan, Jesus, 163.
  13. C. H. Dodd argues that Paul’s first visit to Jerusalem was “not more than seven years after the Crucifixion,” The Apostolic Preaching and Its Developments (reprint, New York: Harper & Brothers, n.d.), 16.
  14. William R. Farmer, “Peter and Paul and the Tradition Concerning ‘The Lord Supper’ in 1 Cor 11:23–26,” Criswell Theological Review 2.1 (1987): 122–28; Habermas, “Resurrection Appearances,” 265–67.
  15. A. M. Hunter, Jesus: Lord and Saviour (reprint, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1978), 99. John Dominic Crossan argues that Paul went to great pains to validate his own apostleship, yet, it was not the voice but a competing voice among many regarding the importance of the resurrection, Jesus, 159–92.
  16. N. T. Wright and John Dominic Crossan, “The Resurrection: Historical Event or Theological Explanation? A Dialogue,” The Resurrection of Jesus: John Dominic Crossan and N. T. Wright in Dialogue, ed. Robert B. Stewart (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2006), 17.
  17. 1 John 1:1–4; John 20:1–21:24; Acts 1:1–3, 2:29–32.
  18. Expectations: Matt 28:8–20; Luke 24:13–52; John 20:10–23, 26–30, 21:1–14; Mark 16:6–7; statements: 1:1–3; 2:23–24, 32; 3:15; 4:10; 10:41; 13:30–34; 17:31; 23:6; 24:21; 26:8, 23.
  19. Crossan, Jesus, 160–61. Italics are original.
  20. Ibid., 87–89.
  21. Ibid., 166–67; Acts 9:3–4, 22:6–7, 26:13–14.
  22. Ibid., 169.
  23. Genesis 12:7; 17:1; 18:1; 26:2, 24.
  24. The following argument is based on Daniel B. Wallace’s discussion of the dative + the present passive indicative form of ōphthē in the New Testament in his Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996), 165, footnote 72; “horáo,” Walter Bauer, Frederick W. Danker, William F. Ardnt, and F. Wilbur Gingrich A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 719.
  25. Wallace, Greek Grammar, 165. What Wallace says for Paul applies equally to all listed in 1 Corinthians 15:5–8: Cephas and the twelve, the “more than five-hundred,” and James and the apostles. Crossan, Jesus, 164.
  26. John Dominic Crossan and Richard G. Watts, Who is Jesus? Answers to Your Question About the Historical Jesus (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1996), 122.
  27. Suetonius, Defied Augustus 13.1–2, Tacitus, Annals 6.29.
  28. John Dominic Crossan, Who Killed Jesus? Exposing the Roots of Antisemitism in the Gospel Story of the Death of Jesus (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 160.
  29. Crossan, Who Killed Jesus, 163. In Crossan’s perspective, Joseph of Arimathea is purely a construct of Mark’s imagination; see his discussion on Luke 23:50–54 and John 19:35–42.
  30. Crossan, Who Killed Jesus, 163–68.
  31. Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1998), 208.
  32. Donald Guthrie, New Testament Introduction, 4th ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1990), 150.
  33. Strobel, Case for Christ, 209.

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Prayer and Fasting in the Greek of Didache 8.1-3

On By Jovan PayesIn Didache, Early Christianity, Fasting, Freed-Hardeman University, Graduate Work, Greek Grammar, Greek Studies, Patristics, Prayer, Research Papers, Spiritual Formation

In 1873 a manuscript was discovered by Philotheus Bryennios at Constantinople dating from the mid-11th century (AD 1056), though its tradition is believed to be of much earlier origin.[1] Due to certain political problems it was not published for ten years; however, once it began to be studied the Didache became generally known as “being the most important literary discovery in patrology made in the nineteenth century.”[2]

In fact, “the Didache (‘The Teaching’), as it is usually known today, is a ‘handbook,’ or manual of Christian ethical instruction and church order.”[3] It is believed that such instruction was offered to each candidate for church membership prior to baptism.

Although the text maintains a basic “literary unity,” the divergent interests and approaches of the materials strongly suggest, “more than one writer is at work here.”[4] One the one hand, the vocabulary and grammar is not extremely difficult; on the other hand, the theological insights from this early Christian document can become complex, particularly when a reconstructed community is conceptualized.

Exegesis of the Greek Text

8.1 (And) let your fasts not stand with the hypocrites, for they fast on the second and on the fifth day of the week, but you fast during the fourth day and during the Sabbath preparation day.[5]

The instruction logically moves from the prior discussion of baptism and the new converts’ requirement of fasting, to a capsulated discussion of fasting and prayer. Draper disagrees, affirming that Didache 8.1-3 is an “interruption to the logical progression of the liturgical section of Didache, in which baptism is followed by the Eucharist.”[6] However, Αἱ δὲ νηστεῖαι ὑμῶν μὴ ἔστωσαν μετὰ τῶν ὑποκριτῶν begins with the post-positive δὲ, connecting the logical flow between 7.1-4 and 8.1-3, and should not be viewed as adversative nor as an interruption.[7] Instead, it is a necessary discussion in connection with prospective converts.

The fasts (Αἱ + νηστεῖαι) are the first concern of this chapter, and they are particular fasts – they belong to the readers (ὑμῶν) who are preparing for baptism (Did. 7.4). This is the genitive of possession. The fasts that they are to perform must be expressly free from hypocrisy; moreover, this conclusion is drawn from μὴ ἔστωσαν μετὰ τῶν ὑποκριτῶν, where the author(s) of the Didache prohibit fasting (thus, an imperatival prohibition) that is μετὰ τῶν ὑποκριτῶν. This prepositional phrase is very descriptive, for it describes “the company in which an activity or experience takes place”; hence, the readers must refrain from joining the group of “hypocrites” (whoever they may be) when they fast.[8]

The prohibition against joining the hypocrites is given specificity by the post-positive γὰρ where it functions as a guide to understanding how to refrain from joining the company of hypocrites when fasting and praying. There seems to be more to the usage of γὰρ than at first glance. If it were simply a matter of explaining that the hypocrites fast on certain days of the week then this conjunction is unnecessary; however, it makes more sense that it takes on a “guide-to-an-ethical-methodology” based upon a cause for the instruction, even if it is too focused upon externals (i.e. specific days of the week).[9] It leads the potential converts to a methodology that allows them to avoid fasting which “coincides with those of the hypocrites” – μετὰ τῶν ὑποκριτῶν (Did. 8.1).[10] In order to express this ethical instruction, Robert Kraft renders the section, “do not let your fasts fall on the same day as ‘the hypocrites.’”[11]

The teacher(s) explain how these prospective converts can avert fasting in the same company as the hypocrites, by explaining that the hypocrites in question fast (νηστεύουσι; present of fact) on δευτέρα σαββάτων καὶ πέμπτῃ.[12] There is considerable discussion regarding who these hypocrites are. On the one hand, most see this as a reference to Pharisees because of the parallel instruction of Jesus in Matt 6:16-18; meanwhile, on the other hand, it is viewed as a reference to Christian Jews who are still partial to the pharisaical traditions.[13]

Aaron Milavec spends considerable time evaluating the evidence for the former, and argues heavily that Matthew and the Didache use the term hypocrisy differently and there is no solid evidence within rabbinic sources that the Pharisees distinguished themselves by fasting.[14] Furthermore, “when Did. 8.1 is compared with Matthew, one quickly detects that the Didache has an agenda and an internal logic quite distinct from that of Matthew’s Gospel.”[15] Be that as it may, from a grammatical and linguistic approach it is inconsequential. The fact of the matter is, the hypocrites fast on δευτέρα σαββάτων καὶ πέμπτῃ, and it is these days that are to be avoided by the soon-to-be-baptized-reader. These days are the second (δεύτερος)[16] and the fifth (πέμπτος)[17] days of the week (σάββατον[18]).

The reader learning which days to avoid is then given a glance into the future (cf. future tense of νηστεύσατε), where they see the days of the week they are going to designate for fasting (τετράδα καὶ παρασκευήν). This idiom for days of the week has been also clarified by Kraft as “Wednesday and Friday,”[19] but such is unnecessary. Consequently, Milavec’s translation is preferred. The post-positive δὲ is adversative, moving away from the days “the hypocrites” occupy for fasting, the δὲ functions to enhance the reader’s understanding that they are to take on the new ethic imposed by the future, but imperative in force, νηστεύσατε (you will fast).

8.2a (And) do not pray as the hypocrites but as the Lord ordered in his good news.

As is characteristic of the imperative, the verb assumes its own subject, being the person(s) who are either to do the express action of the verb, or if negated avoid the action of the verb. Here, there is another negated imperative (μηδὲ προσεύχεσθε) “you are not to pray […]”; however, the idea is incomplete because syntactically it is connected to ὡς οἱ ὑποκριταί “just as the hypocrites.” The idea of “praying” is supplemented by the phrase “just as the hypocrites”; hence, it can be argued that οἱ ὑποκριταί is functioning in an adverbial capacity to μηδὲ προσεύχεσθε. It goes without saying that praying is not what is being denied; instead, and more to the point, it is the type of praying characteristic of the hypocrites which is being denied.

“The hypocrites” almost serve as a biblical caricature of examples of how not to commune with God as a public servant of God (Matt 6:5-7). “The hypocrites” almost serve as a biblical caricature of examples of how not to commune with God as a public servant of God (Matt 6:5-7). Little wonder, that the author(s) contrast this how the prospective converts are not to pray, with a citation to the Gospel of the Lord (ὁ κύριος ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ αὐτοῦ).

This is perhaps the strongest argument that the Pharisees are seen as being equivalent to “the hypocrites”; however, there is no need to be literal since even the name Pharisee can be used figuratively for hypocrites. Be that as it may, the context of the Lord’s admonitions regarding prayer, as particular in Matthew, which has the high verbal agreement with Did. 8.2, has made Pharisee and hypocrite equivalent terms. The main rationale for the Lord’s condemnation is that they make public displays of religious devotion “to be seen by men” (Matt 6:5).

The contrasting ἀλλ’ emphasizes the transition from what not to do, towards the recommended orthodoxy, which is based upon an authoritative tradition. The ground for the moral instruction on prayer is what the Lord commands: ὡς ἐκέλευσεν ὁ κύριος ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ αὐτοῦ. This translates, “as the Lord commanded in his Gospel [or gospel message, good news]”; commanded, ἐκέλευσεν (+ dative), stresses the fact that Jesus himself required the fundamental aspects of proper prayer in his teaching ministry.[20] It is not just theoretical, the instruction may be found in the Lord’s Gospel (or gospel message, good news).

The phrase ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ αὐτοῦ, within itself does not demand that the command is dependent upon a written source especially since it has its divergences.[21] In fact, several scholars believe the following prayer is, though having strong parallels with Matthew 6:9-13,[22] an independent tradition and may have been relied upon by Matthew.[23]

8.2b Pray thus: Our Father, the one in heaven, your name be made holy, you kingdom come, your will be born upon earth as in heaven,

The phrase οὕτω προσεύχεσθε is the resulting imperative calling attention to the reader that they are to “offer prayers” in a certain fashion. The fashion is very closely paralleled with Matthew; however, as Lake discusses there are four divergences between Matthew and the Didache: τῷ οὐρανῷ, τὴν ὀφειλὴν, ἀφίεμεν, and the doxology ὅτι σοῦ ἐστιν ἡ δύναμις καὶ ἡ δόξα εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας.[24] It takes the totality of Did. 8.1-3 for Lake to affirm:

These three sections, on fasting, on prayer, on the Lord’s Prayer, cannot be separated from each other. They point at least to similar local conditions; but the two former rather weaken the probability that the Lord’s Prayer is a direct quotation from our Matthew.[25]

Kirsopp Lake, The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers (1905)

What these differences between Matthew and the Didache suggest is, according to Lake, is nothing too substantive, they simply point to a more complex study of dependency. On this issue Milavec’s investigation on this particularly complex issue led him to conclude that there is no necessary proof that one borrowed from the other.[26] Similarly, according to Lake, these differences between Matthew and the Didache point to a broader sense of dependency (i.e., oral, proverbial) since vocabulary similarities and divergences, and the omission of similar Matthean tensions are absent, and so “the proverbial character of the saying reduces the weight which must be attached to verbal similarity.”[27]

The prepositional phrase ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ functions as an adjective to ὁ “the one,” suggesting a prepositional phrase functioning in the attributive position; hence, just as ὁ ἄγγελος ὁ καλός translates “the good angel” or “the angel, namely the good one” the opening part of this prayer is attributive in structure: “Our Father [vocative Πάτερ], the one, namely in heaven.” The prayer Did. 8.2b.3 parallels the aorist imperative verbals of Matthew 6:9c-10:

Didache 8.2Matthew 6:9c-10Translation (AT)
ἁγιασθήτω τὸ ὄνομά σουἁγιασθήτω τὸ ὄνομά σουyour name be sanctified
ἐλθέτω ἡ βασιλεία σουἐλθέτω ἡ βασιλεία σουlet your kingdom arrive, 
γενηθήτω τὸ θέλημά σουγενηθήτω τὸ θέλημά σουyour desire come to pass,
ὡς ἐν οὐρανῷ καὶ ἐπὶ γῆςὡς ἐν οὐρανῷ καὶ ἐπὶ γῆςas in heaven so also on earth
Chart: Textual Parallels

The verbal parallels are striking. However, the usage of this tradition is different in its scope when compared to Matthew’s purpose of this prayer. The Didache has more of a liturgical and ceremonial baptismal preparations, emphasizing the specific wording of the prayer. Jesus, on the others hand, encouraged a well-balanced spiritual and personal prayer life anchored in intimacy with God rather than public fanfare (Matt 6:5-6).[28]

From the perspective of Matthew’s Gospel, the three sets of imperatival verbs are particularly interesting, each bearing a unique concept.[29] Following Jack P. Lewis’ observation, it is clear that the first is clearly a benediction of God greatness (ἁγιασθήτω τὸ ὄνομά σου), the second, stresses a recognition of God’s sovereignty (ἐλθέτω ἡ βασιλεία σου), and the third, accepts God’s will in any area it is to be accomplished (γενηθήτω τὸ θέλημά σου). It is difficult, therefore, not to impose Matthew’s contextual message upon the Didache; however, because there is a liturgical purpose for this prayer, it does stand in contradistinction to Matthew’s use.

Principally, observe that while Matthew stresses a spiritually fresh prayer life and expression (Matt 6:5-8), as opposed to endless repetitions of words (6:7-8), the Didache actually encourages repetition (Did. 8.3). Draper argues extensively that the community responsible for the final form of the Didache emphasizes external matters of purity for the purpose of maintaining public purity. Draper writes, “the instructions provide for Christian behaviour [sic] in the crucial and public areas of fasting and prayer which would differentiate them from their opponents.”[30]

8.2c give us this day our loaf that is coming, and forgive us our debt at the final judgment as we likewise now forgive our debtors,

In the analysis of this particular section of the Didache prayer, it is noticeable that there are two changes from the Matthew prayer of the Lord. Following the research of Milavec, the theological scope and worldview changes possibly towards a more focused eschatological perspective.[31] It is significant that the verbs in the petitions of the Didache prayer are all aorist imperatives, even the ones paralleled to Matthew (paralleled: ἁγιασθήτω, ἐλθέτω, γενηθήτω, δὸς, ἄφες, ῥῦσαι, and one divergent form ἀφήκαμεν). Milavec makes an eschatological argument, and suggests that all the aorist imperatives suggesting a one-time future action on the part of God must be eschatological in scope.[32]

Consequently, images such as bread (τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν) and eating are metonymy for a banquet in the kingdom (Luke 6:21, 14:15, 22:29-30; Matt 8:11; Rev 7:16).[33] Forgiveness within and for the Christian community is, in the Didache prayer, a future promise rather than a present reality and will be judged as a single action.[34] The pressing matter, however, is not to prove or disprove if the Matthew prayer reflects similar nuances in its eschatology. It is enough to understand that the Didache community was firmly aware of their eschatological worldview. 

8.2d-3 and do not lead us into the trial of the last days but deliver us from that evil because your is power and the glory forever. [8.3] Three times within the day pray thus.

This is the final appeal in the aorist construction; however, in this case, the Didache prayer appears to digress from Milavec’s thesis regarding the aorist imperative stressing an eschatological outlook. Specifically, εἰσενέγκῃς is a subjunctive. The distinction within itself does not rule out the larger eschatological implications raised by Milavec, especially since ῥῦσαι, “you are to deliver,” is an aorist imperative verb. Milavec approaches the phrase, καὶ μὴ εἰσενέγκῃς ἡμᾶς εἰς πειρασμόν, and argues that since all the other Aorist Imperatives demand a one time eschatological fulfillment, then it follows this aorist subjunctive still finds resolution in the over arching argument.[35]

The contrastive ἀλλὰ blusters Milavec’s argument since what is really being pleaded for is deliverance from evil (ῥῦσαι ἡμᾶς ἀπὸ τοῦ πονηροῦ), not the pastoral hand of God shepherding his children from πειρασμόν (trials). However, what Milavec finds as evidence for a tribulation, can be potentially argued for as praying with an eschatological worldview, where these Aorist Imperatives – since they are timeless – may view the person’s life until the eschatological end.[36]

One of the unique parts of this section of the Didache 8.2 is the doxology, which is its major divergence from the Matthean prayer. As Kirsopp Lake stingingly remarks:

The peculiar form of the doxology does not agree exactly with any of the forms known to occur in the authorities for the text of Matthew.

Kirsopp Lake, The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers (1905)[37]

This has been the continued opinion of the editors of the eclectic Greek Testament texts that the Matthean prayer ends with πονηροῦ. Bruce Metzger observes that the major textual witnesses are late which include the doxology (9th century), the major textual witnesses which omit the doxology are early, and the witnesses which include it are not uniform and appear to be intentional expansion of the prayer when reappropriated for external liturgical use (as in The Didache, etc.).[38] Thus, the association of this doxology with Matthew’s prayer is ancient but it does not have the textual support to be included in the body of the prayer (contra the KJV and Received Text traditions for Matthew 6:13b).

At any rate, the shift given by ὅτι in a very practical sense closes the petitions offered by the potential convert, who acknowledges that “the power and glory belong” to the Father “into the depths of eternal.” The author(s) of the Didache return to their orthodox imperatival thrust: “You will pray like this three times a day.” The present imperative προσεύχεσθε returns the instructive balance to this section of the Didache which continues its “catechism” training for the one interested in joining the Christian community associated with this manual.

Conclusion

In summation, the Didache is a profound find in the field of Patristic Studies, providing insights into the community or communities to which it addressed. The syntax and vocabulary is not at all particularly difficult, it appears to be written at a very basic level.

The section examined demonstrated that there was a strong desire for the early Christians to visibly and practically be separate from any public association with hypocrites. Not even the days of the potential convert could or should coincide with the days which hypocrites fast upon. The references and citations of traditions found within the New Testament (quotations probable but not always necessary), coupled with the possible “new slant” contextualized by the author(s), brings a theological complexity that must be sifted and sorted out before a proper exegesis of the sections can be accomplished.

Endnotes

  1. Dates have ranged from AD 70, late second century, and even the third century; however, Kraft suggests that a secure date is the sometime within the fourth century somewhere near Egypt (Robert A. Kraft, “Didache” ABD 2:197).
  2. Francis X. Glimm, “The Didache or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles,” The Fathers of the Church, ed. R. Joseph Deferrari (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of American Press, 1969), 167-68.
  3. Michael W. Holmes, “Didache” DLNT 300.
  4. Clayton N. Jefford, Kenneth J. Harder, and Louis D. Amezaga, Reading the Apostolic Fathers: An Introduction (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2003), 35.
  5. The translation in the headings is taken from Aaron Milavec, The Didache: Faith, Hope, and Life of the Earliest Christian Communities, 50-70 C.E. (New York: Newman, 2003). Other translations will be noted. All uncredited translations are my own (AT).
  6. Jonathan A. Draper, “Christian Self-Definition Against the ‘Hypocrites’ in Didache 8,” Society of Biblical Literature 1992 Seminar Papers, ed. Eugene H. Lovering, Jr. (Atlanta, GA: Scholars, 1992), 364.
  7. The primary Greek text used for this study is from Michael Holmes, ed., The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2004), and Kirsopp Lake, The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 1, LCL (London: Heinemann, 1919).
  8. BDAG 637.
  9. BDAG 189.
  10. Holmes, Apostolic Fathers, 259.
  11. Kraft, “Barnabas and the Didache,” 165.
  12. Kraft translates this expression as: “Monday and Thursday” (“Barnabas and the Didache,” 165), but we follow Milavec’s lead due to his literalness. Kraft’s translation does bring this idiom into modern parlance. It is preferable to leave it as is (Milavec), since it can be understood apart from accommodation to modern convention similarly done in the New Testament (Matt 28:1-2; Mark 16:1-3; Acts 20:7; 1 Cor 16.1-2).
  13. Glimm, “The Didache,” 177.
  14. Milavec, The Didache: Faith, Hope, and Life, 301-03.
  15. Milavec, 302.
  16. Did. 2.1 uses a similar expression, “the second commandment of the teaching is […]” (Holmes, Apostolic Fathers, 252); that is, this is the second of a series of commandments.
  17. Moulton and Milligan provide an example of this sequential use: “showing the housing conditions of the time, we may cite P Fay 3115 (c. a.d. 129) where a woman applies to the keepers of the archives at Arsinoe for leave to alienate πέμπτον μέρος, “the fifth part” of certain house property belonging to her” (MM 502).
  18. BDAG lists both the singular and plural forms of σάββατον referring to a period of seven days, and any numeral connected to it represent that particular day of the week (910).
  19. Kraft, “Barnabas and the Didache,” 165.
  20. MM (340) lists the aorist active indicative κελεύω + the dative construction rare and list one New Testament example from the Received Greek Text and the King James Version of Matthew 15:35 (κελεύω + dative), whereas, the UBS4 reads παραγγείλας. The sense of urging to the point of a command is reasonable in such cases.
  21. Kirsopp Lake, “Didache,” in The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers (Oxford: Clarendon, 1905), 28-29. As will be developed in this paper, Lake observes a noticeable dependence of Did. 8 on Matthew 6 along with variations.
  22. Glimm points out that Matthew 6:9-13 and the Did. 8.2 agree against the parallel passage in Luke 11:2-4 (“The Didache,” 178).
  23. Draper, “Christian Self-Definition,” 632. Milavec has argued convincingly that despite their similarities, they are not enough when considering the influence of orality within the early church; furthermore, the divergences of theological emphases between Matthew and Didache argue against dependence (The Didache: Faith, Hope, and Life, 694-739).
  24. Lake, “Didache,” 29.
  25. Lake, “Didache,” 29.
  26. Milavec, The Didache: Faith, Hope, and Life, 695-739.
  27. Lake, “Didache,” 27.
  28. Jack P. Lewis, The Gospel According to Matthew (Abilene, TX: Abilene Christian University Press, 1984), 2:101.
  29. Lewis, Matthew, 2:101-02.
  30. Draper, “Christian Self-Definition,” 374.
  31. Aaron Milavec, The Didache: Text, Translation, Analysis, and Commentary (Collegeville: Liturgical, 2003), 66.
  32. Milavec, The Didache: Text, 65.
  33. Milavec, 66.
  34. Milavec, 66.
  35. Milavec, 66.
  36. Milavec, 66.
  37. Lake, “Didache,” 29.
  38. Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2d ed. (Germany: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2001), 13-14.

Selected Bibliography

(BDAG) Bauer, Walter, F. W. Danker, William F. Arndt, and F. Wilbur Gingrich. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and other Early Christian Literature. 3rd edition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000.

Draper, Jonathan A. “Christian Self-Definition Against the ‘Hypocrites’ in Didache 8.” Society of Biblical Literature 1992 Seminar Papers 31. Edited by Eugene H. Lovering, Jr. Atlanta, GA: Scholars, 1992.

Glimm, Francis X. Translator. “The Didache or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles.” Pages 165-84 in vol. 1 of The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation. Edited by R. Joseph Deferrari. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1969.

Holmes, Michael W. Editor. The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations. Revised edition. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2004.

_____. “Didache, The.” Pages 300-02 in Dictionary of the Later New Testament and Its Development. Edited by Ralph P. Martin and Peter H. Davids. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1997.

Jefford, Clayton N., Kenneth J. Harder, and Louis D. Amezaga. Reading the Apostolic Fathers: An Introduction. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2003.

Kraft, Robert A. “Barnabas and the Didache.” In vol. 3 of The Apostolic Fathers: A New Translation and Commentary. Edited by Robert M. Grant. New York: Nelson, 1965.

_____. “Didache.” Anchor Bible Dictionary. Vol. 2. Edited by David Noel Freedman. New York: Doubleday, 1992.

Lake, Kirsopp. The Apostolic Fathers. Vol. 1. LCL. Edited by E. Capps, T. E. Page, and W. H. D. Rouse. London: Heinemann, 1919.

_____. “Didache.” Pages 24-36 in The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers. Oxford: Clarendon, 1905.

Lewis, Jack P. The Gospel According to Matthew. Vol. 1. LWCNT 2. Edited by Everett Ferguson. Abilene, TX: Abilene Christian University Press, 1984.

Metzger, Bruce M. A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament. 2d edition. Germany: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2001.

Milavec, Aaron. The Didache: Faith, Hope, and Life of the Earliest Christian Communities, 50-70 C.E. New York: Newman, 2003.

_____. The Didache: Text, Translation, Analysis, and Commentary. Collegeville: Liturgical, 2003.

(MM) Moulton, James H., and George Milligan. Vocabulary of the Greek Testament. 1930. Repr., Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1997.

(UBS4) Aland, Barbara, et al. Editors. Greek New Testament. 4th revised edition. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2001.

Does the Holocaust Disprove God’s Existence?

On By Jovan PayesIn Biola University, Disteleology, Essays, Graduate Work, Holocaust, Moral Argument, Problem of Evil, Talbot School of Theology

In the Spring of 2002, I enrolled in a Humanities course called, “Holocaust Films.” We watched hours of first-account documentaries and interviews of survivors. The horrors captured on film of charred human remains, human pyramids in the gas chambers, and the emaciated bodies of the survivors will haunt me forever.

Despite these images, my faith in God has never wavered; however, the same cannot be said for others who argue that the moral evils of the Holocaust prove that God does not exist.

I will briefly respond to this common argument by demonstrating, first, that this argument is self-defeating. Second, I will also show that the existence of God still holds, and then finally, propose that God’s people approach suffering with faith and empathy.

The Argument is Self-Defeating

First, it is important to establish that the logic of this argument is self-defeating. The argument is that the moral evil of the Holocaust disproves (is incompatible with) the existence of God; however, objective moral conclusions like this are ultimately dependent on the existence of God for it to have real meaning. In other words, the conclusion (God does not exist) denies the source of moral objectivity which makes this argument hypothetically possible. The argument implodes on itself and illustrates the inconsistency of the atheistic worldview.

What does it matter morally if the Holocaust happened if God does not exist? For the French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) we are only left with two options regarding moral values. They are either “expressions of personal taste” or “byproducts of sociobiological evolution and conditioning.”[1] In this view, moral subjectivity is the currency of the realm which makes it impossible to provide an objective moral criticism that would condemn Adolf Hitler’s actions during the Holocaust and commend Mother Teresa’s altruistic ministry. In the end, “all that remains is subjective, personal opinion.”[2]

The atheistic worldview cannot provide ultimate meaning or significance, the ultimate value, or the ultimate purpose. They live in an indifferent universe in which objective moral affirmations are inconsistent with their worldview.

God Exist, So Does Evil

Second, the present argument against God’s existence offers an unequivocal example of evil in the world, but it does not invalidate nor outweigh the preponderance of evidence for the existence of God. The argument presumes that God should have intervened so that such a horror would not have happened, but since the genocide of the Holocaust occurred God must not exist. This falls back on a traditional argument that attacks the attributes of God, namely, his power, his knowledge, and his love.

In short, since evil exists and is real, God cannot be omnipotent, omniscient, or omnibenevolent. These attributes should demand God to intervene but since he has not, God must not exist.

Norman Geisler and Ronald Brooks point out that the argument suppresses the assumption that God is not doing anything at all about evil, but such an assumption cannot be proven. Instead, Geisler and Brooks argue that even though evil is not yet defeated, it does not mean that it will never be defeated.[3] For example, Christian theism provides the cross of Christ as the greatest of good acts possible that will outweigh all the evil that has ever been (1 Cor 15:54–55; 2 Pet 3:11–13).[4]

The work and resurrection of Jesus Christ is evidence that God exists and is acting until all is resolved.

Additionally, the cumulative evidence from natural theology provides sufficient reason to believe that God exists.[5] The following arguments support God’s existence.

  • The cosmological argument affirms the application of the law of causality to our finite universe which states that “every limited thing is caused by something other than itself.”
  • The teleological argument affirms the application of design and information in the natural world demands an intelligent designer.
  • The moral argument affirms that the universal sense within humanity that there are moral things that ought to be, versus what ought not to be, implies a moral lawgiver.
  • From these arguments, the ontological argument demonstrates that this God necessarily exists to bring into existence the finite created world.

Evil certainly exists but as these arguments demonstrate so does God.

Faith and Empathy

Third, no amount of logical explanation can account for a world in which God exists and suffering occurs that makes suffering any less painful or evil. For that matter, who wants an explanatory discourse while in the throes of inconsolable pain? Even when searching for God or meaning, evil feels so overwhelming that God feels distant or dead in its presence.[6] How people respond to suffering and evil “determines whether the experience is one of blessing or blight.”[7]

The Bible provides a path forward: we need a strong understanding of who God is and we need a strong demonstration of human empathy.

The book of Job recounts the story of a righteous sufferer (his children killed, livestock taken, servants killed, and struck with an illness) who is accused of hidden wrongdoing by his “friends” (“miserable comforters,” 16:2) who plead for Job to repent of his sin(s) (1:1–3:26; 4:1–31:40). Job proclaims his innocence from any crime that would demand such punishments. He also demands God’s presence to solve this inequity. Ultimately, the Lord appears to Job and gives him a grand tour of the complexity of the cosmos which demonstrates the grandeur of God, His infinite management of the universe, and humanity’s lack of control of the wild of the earth (38:1–42:6). This moves Job to recant his arrogant charges against God’s righteousness.

Job positively illustrates God is present with us when we experience suffering that cannot be escaped (39:1–4). It also illustrates what bad company looks like (16:2), showing that God’s people would serve others better with pastoral empathy, to “weep with those who weep” (Rom 12:15). As Garrett DeWeese points out,

people “don’t need a theological lecture. They don’t need a philosophical discussion of the evidential problem. They need the emotional support.”[8]

Transcript: “Solving the Problem of Evil”

Conclusion

The existence of God may appear incompatible with evils like the Holocaust. However, in a world where God does not exist, suffering has no moral meaning or significance and renders the present argument moot. Furthermore, there is no reason to presume that God is not acting to end evil and this is seen in the work of Jesus. This God is clearly seen in the natural world around us.

Finally, logic may prove helpful for the critic and the curious, but it is faith in a sovereign God and empathy towards those who suffer that will matter to those who suffer today.

Endnotes

  1. Quoted in William Lane Craig, ““Transcript: The Absurdity of Life Without God” (Class lecture, Defending the Faith course of Talbot School of Theology, La Mirada, CA, n.d.).
  2. Francis J. Beckwith and Gregory Koukl, Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air (1998; repr., Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2005), 20; Norman L. Geisler and Ronald M. Brooks, When Skeptics Ask: A Handbook on Christian Evidences, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2013), 33.
  3. Geisler and Brooks, When Skeptics Ask, 58.
  4. DeWeese, “Transcript: Solving the Problem of Evil” (Class lecture, Defending the Faith course of Talbot School of Theology, La Mirada, CA, n.d.).
  5. The arguments are taken from Geisler and Brooks, When Skeptics Ask, 9–19.
  6. I thought of Elie Wiesel’s thoughts, “‘Where is God now?’ And I heard a voice within me answer him, ‘Where is He? Here He is. He is hanging here on these gallows.’” Quoted in DeWeese, “Transcript.”
  7. DeWeese, “Handout: Solving the Problem of Evil” (Class lecture, Defending the Faith course of Talbot School of Theology, La Mirada, CA, n.d.), 10.
  8. DeWeese, “Transcript.”

Bibliography

Beckwith, Francis J., and Gregory Koukl. Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air. 1998. Reprint, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2005.

Craig, William Lane. “Transcript: The Absurdity of Life Without God.” Class lecture, Defending the Faith course of Talbot School of Theology, La Mirada, CA, n.d.

DeWeese, Garrett. “Handout: Solving the Problem of Evil.” Class lecture, Defending the Faith course of Talbot School of Theology, La Mirada, CA, n.d.

––––––. “Transcript: Solving the Problem of Evil.” Class lecture, Defending the Faith course of Talbot School of Theology, La Mirada, CA, n.d.

Geisler, Norman L., and Ronald M. Brooks. When Skeptics Ask: A Handbook on Christian Evidences. Rev. edition. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2013.