Top Biblical Scholar Bart D. Ehrman Leaves Christianity

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You're not the only serious student of the Bible. Other people of other Christian faiths are as serious as you are (if not more).

And it is very clear in John that Jesus is depicted as God. Maybe take off whatever glasses you are wearing before you read John.



The word "theos" doesn't always need an article before it for it to mean God.



So God had to create his word in order to start speaking, right?

And yes, the Bible does acknowledge the existence of several fake gods. Are you saying that Jesus is a fake god?



Doesn't concern me much. This doesn't change what John had in mind.

I used to think the book of John was more interesting/original, until i found out the logos idea was taken from other ancient philosophies.

For all of his reported loss of faith in it, it seems Professor Ehrman is still writing books about the bible; [url=http:///www.huffingtonpost.com/bart-d-ehrman/the-bible-telling-lies-to_b_840301.html]this[/url] article in today's Huffington Post seems to be plugging his latest one.

Umm... yes, he's a Biblical scholar. It's his job to write about the Bible.

Actually, it is. The account of the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist, when the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus like a dove. The Holy Spirit descending on the people at Pentecost in the form of flaming tongues, giving them the ability to preach the gospel in other languages. Jesus was conceived of a virgin by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God hovered over the waters after God created the heavens and the earth. If you buy into the gap theory, whatever had been on the earth prior to this point, the Spirit was all that remained. So scripture certainly suggests that the Spirit IS a personal force.

I'm not familiar with the gap theory. I'd appreciate if you explain it to me. I'm not certain how any of the examples mentioned here prove that the Holy Spirit is a sentient being. The Spirit coming down on Jesus or the Christians at Pentecost only says that it "came down." At 1 Samuel 4:5, it says that the Ark of the Covenant "came into the camp" of Israel, but this doesn't mean the Ark was a living creature. Jesus was conceived by holy spirit, but is never called the Son of the Holy Spirit, but the Son of God. There are many impersonal things hovering over water at this very moment, such as oxygen and gravity.

To clarify my point, we never read that the Spirit does anything that a sentient being does. It does not talk, think, or interact in any way. If it is simply a dumb, blind, deaf creature that God sends out to do His bidding, it does not have free will and is therefore lower than humans or angels. Much better, I think, to believe that it is an impersonal force that represents God's Almighty power, through which all things are possible (Matthew 19:26).

Gap theory? The books of Moses are generally unclear about the passage of time. They will describe something, and at the close of one narrative passage will begin a new one by using the word "Now..." Ok, so "now" what? What happened from the time of the previous passage and "Now"? How long exactly did it take to get from then to "now"? If you apply that to Genesis 1:2--"Now the earth was formless..." then you open the possibility that something happened after "In the beginning." It's possible from reading elsewhere that the light of the world was blotted out due to the activity of Satan and his angels and thus the previous "heavens and the earth" became unfit for any further creative work. You might say that the earlier beings, the angels who followed Satan, marred a perfect creation and thus the "heavens and the earth" were redesigned with human beings in mind. Because of this gap, we cannot reliably judge the age of the earth, but it does give us clues about the age of man. "Now," it could be that vs. 1 really is an introductory verse that gives the main idea of the entire creation account. We just don't have a way to know that with any certainty. It just fascinates me to try to imagine what "In the beginning" was really like, and the mere possibility that there was something in the beginning that contrasted with the "Now" statement in vs. 2.

Your argument regarding the Holy Spirit assumes that to be sentient that it necessarily HAS to exhibit certain properties, namely human-like qualities. I reject that the Father is anything like humans, but rather Himself a spirit being who has the ability to take on physical form when He deems it necessary. It is not necessary to assume that any person of the Trinity has free will. Jesus, for example, as God's son is still God and became God in the flesh. But Jesus is nevertheless subservient to the Father. The persons of the Trinity possess equality, but that does not mean they possess sameness. Jesus is compelled to act in accordance to the will of the Father, even to the point of His death. Jesus' will is not His own, but that of His Father. Likewise, neither is the will of the Spirit His own, but rather the will of the Father/Son. The Spirit does communicate the will of the Father. The Spirit does interact, which the examples I gave shows it to do. It was the Spirit that led the kings and prophets of the OT (passages that indicate that Saul was led of the Spirit, but the "Spirit left him" so to speak because Saul acted in disobedience). The Holy Spirit indwells believers and cancels any need for intercession on behalf of the believer.

Yes, Jesus is called the Son of God. But that doesn't mean that God cannot act through the third Person to cause a virgin to conceive.

Not sure why you mentioned the Ark of the Covenant--the difference is that the Ark is a material object created by the hands of man at the instruction of God. Saying that it "came into the camp" is not the same as describing something living.

Genesis tells us that God created man in His image. God doesn't have a physical body with arms and legs and a face per say, but we must have something in common with Him, or we are not in His image. Jesus was a man, born of a woman, and never claimed to be anything else until after his resurrection, at which point he was no longer human. The Holy Spirit doesn't appear to have anything in common with humankind.


Which is it? Are the three one and the same, with the same will? Or are they three beings in One God? If they are three different beings, then they should have different thoughts, causing slight differences in personality. If they are one and the same, then Jesus was in fact God-in-the-flesh walking the earth. If that is so:

who resurrected him?
who kept the universe in motion while God was dead?
how did man manage to kill God?
who did Jesus pray to? (John 17)
why did Jesus seek information that he apparently didn't know? (Mark 9:21)
why did Jesus request something from God that wasn't God's Will, then stating "but not as I will, but as you will." (Matthew 26:39)

These are important questions that must be answered. I don't wish to stumble anyone in their faith, but faith must be tested at times. It must be proven true. If we cannot come up with satisfying, logical answers to these questions, we must discard what we think we know and look at different solutions.

+1

Some "gottcha" points just seem so intriniscally stupid.

I expect such lame false analogies from iamnotaparakeet, but you, Orwell??! ! There's a sea of difference between a senile former public intellectual stating that they believe in Deism and then allowing some manipulative Christian fundies to Ghostwrite one of their books while being utterly unable to coherently talk to reporters on the subject and an active biblical scholar with full faculties giving a very persuasive case (while still publishing peer-reviewed papers on the subject matter, as Nobelcynic noted).

No, God doesn't have a physical body, although He does have the ability to manifest Himself in physical form as it suits His purpose. But we are in possession of a spiritual form, a "soul." We also possess a form of God's intelligence and His creative potential.

God's "image" seems to me to refer most often to a physical object that optimally reflects God in physical form, the same way other religions worshipped "idols" or "images." We are in God's image because we are LIVING beings, just as He is living, and thus we completely fulfill the function of God's representatives on earth. While God commanded other beings to come into existence, Man is a "special creation" because he is formed of the dust of the ground and God breathed life into his nostrils. There are any number of ways in which Man is said to be made in God's image, but I find this one to be the most significant.


And yet conceived through the actions of the Holy Spirit, not the "seed of man." Jesus escapes the evil nature of us "sons of Adam" and is thus the perfect atonement sacrifice. If Jesus was "just a man," he would never have been qualified for giving His life for the atonement. People lay down their lives for others all the time, but that does not mean that their lives can pay the penalty for all mankind forever. The Holy Spirit, while distinct from the Father and the Son, is also like the Father in that He is a spirit being and like Jesus in that He inhabits the physical body. The Spirit indwells believers and takes part in forming the body of Christ, i.e. the Church, uniting all believers in that Body. Jesus described the Spirit as "the comforter." How Jesus send someone to comfort us if that person is not a person? We have a relationship with God through the intercession of Jesus. But we may also speak directly to God because He lives in us in the person of the Spirit. They are Three. They are distinct. And yet they are all One.


Unnecessary assumption. If Jesus is subject to God's will, and if Jesus is subordinate to God's will, then Jesus is not free in the truest sense. He must follow God's will. If He IS God, He can follow God's will perfectly. The Holy Spirit is subordinate to Christ and must follow Christ's will and, thus, the Father's. If they are all one and the same, it makes perfect logical sense.

Also, slight differences in personality aren't necessarily due to being different beings. Apparent differences in personality can also arise due to differences in function. The end goal is the same, and the three parts interact to bring about that result. A watch is a watch, even if the internal parts are distinctly different.


He resurrected Himself, being God Himself AND having the power to do so.

Why assume God died? If God is spirit, what happens to God in the flesh is irrelevant to the rest of creation. This question reeks of modalism, and it is a question long answered and teachings to the contrary deemed heresy.

Again, if God is spirit, man cannot destroy Him. Man can only destroy the flesh. God has the power to revive the flesh if He chooses.

The Father. But again, it isn't necessary to think that one Person of the Trinity cannot interact with the other Persons.

False assumption. Jesus is one with the Father, and thus also possesses the Father's omniscience. Therefore, questions such as these are not for His benefit, but for that of those who witnessed the miracles Jesus performed. To suggest that Mark 9:21 is an attack on Jesus' omniscience is to take the entire passage of Mark 9:14-29 out of context.

If God takes on humanity, which was essentially what being God in the flesh means, then the subordinate Person of God (Jesus) is subject to those elements that make Him also human. The part of Jesus that made Him a physical being as well as spiritual still faced the reality of facing death, something God Himself had never taken part in. Something that is interesting about this passage is if the disciples were asleep when He made the request, how did they know He made it? At least one disciple not mentioned was likely present, as it doesn't seem probable that Jesus would have revealed this information after-the-fact as He might have with the temptation account. If I understand correctly "the disciples" in question were Peter, James, and John, but no mention is made that these disciples were taken exclusively. So the words of Jesus might not JUST have been directed towards them, but as an example to those onlookers who did remain awake that the Christian ideal is to remain in complete submission to God's will and not their own. So why not, if Jesus is the Son of God AND God, provide the perfect or ideal example to sinful humans what devotion to the Father should look like? How better to show them if the Person in question is God Himself?

You ran into God the other day and you are able to tell us all this as a fact?


ruveyn

I'm not sure where to go with this. What I hear is that God the Trinity is three different persons and yet are all the same. This makes God an anomoly which occurs nowhere else in the physical or spiritual universe. It defies the logic He granted us and cannot be explained in a meaningful way, as we have no other examples of a trinity found in nature. It cheapens Jesus' death because he wasn't really dead, only a portion of Him was. It cheapens Jesus' resurrection because it was unnecessary; God the Son could've stayed dead and it wouldn't matter. It creates a roundabout reasoning where statements like: "the Holy Spirit is subordinate to Christ...they are all one and the same" are taken as truth. It means that the Israelites, God's chosen people for some 1500 years, didn't have a true understanding of His nature, believing Him to be One God and having no concept of a Trinity. It has ramifications for how we understand a family to be. After all, if God the Father and God the Son are equals, then every father and son should be equal. Finally, it creates a non-debate where anything either of us says can be countered by the other without much sense. (Who resurrected God? God did.)

This concludes my argument, as I can only now repeat my past arguments. I promise you that I am sincere and wish to please God. I am a Christian and believe that Jesus Christ died for all of our sins. But I do not believe in the Trinity, instead believing that God the Father and Jesus the Son are two separate beings entirely. I hope that I've inspired any who read this to look beyond their preconceived notions and seek proof, facts, and logic.

Not everything regarding the God and the Bible is "easy." I don't pretend that everything makes perfect sense to me, although there are a lot of things that make perfect sense to me but doesn't make sense to anyone else. I'm comfortable with that. But being difficult does not make it untrue.

Take the entire realm of physical science, for example. I have no hope of ever understanding every minor operation of universal fundamentals in my lifetime, and perhaps not even in a thousand lifetimes. It is too difficult for me. I have no idea how a physical particle can be both a particle and a wave at the same time. I'm sure there are those here who can explain it away as though it were common sense. But I have no way of understanding how the movements of a particle in one place can affect the movement of another elsewhere and have no connection. But because it is difficult does not make it impossible.

The God/Trinity concept is not difficult for me to understand or conceive, yet I lack the words to adequately describe how it can be. The Three Persons of the Triune God are present throughout the Bible--God the Father leading those faithful to Him in the OT, the Spirit guiding priests, kings, and prophets, and "the Angel of the Lord" who is also called "the Lord" as well as the person of God in the flesh manifest in Jesus. While the word "Trinity" is not in the Bible, the doctrine of the Trinity is NOT unbiblical.


Yes we do. Water exists in three phases--solid, liquid, and gas. As a matter of fact, given a certain combination of temperature and pressure, it can exist in all three phases simultaneously. Three forms, yet the same. Interesting, is it not?


Straw man. You're assuming modalism. Such need not be the case. If Jesus and God are one, there is nothing wrong with "a portion" of God being dead. And as I've said before, God and Jesus both exist in spirit. The spirit by nature cannot be destroyed, only the flesh. It was not God who died (in spirit form), but rather the person of God-in-flesh (Jesus) who died merely a physical death.

Human beings are no different. The spirit continues beyond the flesh. If Jesus was just an ordinary man, then His death wouldn't really have counted for anything, i.e. no power to save. The resurrection proves that there is life beyond the grave and that one day there will be a resurrection for all believers. Whatever the "pecking order" is in heaven, whatever the truth is, it is true whether we currently understand it or not. But by no means does the Holy Spirit being equal to the Father/subordinate in function or subordinate to Jesus, or however you want to look at it, diminish the significance of the death and resurrection of our Savior.


Who does? The Bible reveals that God gave the Israelites what they NEEDED. They believed that anyone who saw the face of God would fall dead. Yet when God manifested Himself in physical form, people could see His face and not His glory and still live. I don't even believe I have a "true understanding" of His nature, merely the aspects that are most relevant to me as a sinful human being formerly destined for an eternity absent from God's presence. I know what I NEED to know. The rest is up to faith. It was no different then than it is now.


What? Just because they hadn't developed a word for it? I think God has gradually revealed Himself to us over time, and I think He continues to do so. As long as revelation is not in conflict with scripture, I have no problem with that. "Test the spirits..."


What's wrong with that? My son is my son. He came from me, and when I'm gone he IS me being all that is left. I'm a physical person, though, and our spirits are only human. I'm training and disciplining him to grow up to be another person like myself. Where ever he goes, and who ever he interacts with, he is a reflection of me and how I taught him. He knows me and can speak for me. How much more the Son of God for the Father!


Are we talking about resurrecting a spirit being or a physical being? Christ's body was nothing more than a body. It takes an act of God to restore life in its completeness as in the resurrection. The spirit does not cease to exist, therefore it is need not be resurrected. Christ was resurrected in bodily form and ascended to heaven in the body. It's a picture of what will happen to us one day.


The only "proof" and "facts" we have occur between church orthodoxy/tradition and the Bible itself. All that is left is for God to reveal himself to believers through the person of the Holy Spirit, evidenced by how believers live their lives. I believe in Christ. But I'm not going to set out to "prove" God in any kind of empirical or wholly naturalistic way except to say that the creation is evidence of a Creator. If you're being honest, you have to concur. I can't reach up and pull down Christ in bodily form to prove who Jesus is, I can only function as part of His body on earth and hopefully do, in my own inadequate way, what pleases the Father for me to do.

In terms of logic, however, who are we to say that we can even approach a comprehension of God's logic? Surely that of a Supreme and Superior Being must exceed the limits of our own. It borders on arrogance if we surmise God's logic is necessarily everything like our own.