Exceptional. Well done. I too find Earman authentic. What drew me to him was my interest in first century Christianity. And the accepted theology. My thinking at the time was that the theology could not evolve or be smoothed over as tme marched on. It had to be locked in stone. His and other historians were useful in that understanding. My critique is two fold. Jesus was important because of his historical importance. At other times and other places his teachings appear on their own. And one has to ask the but for question. But for Jesus would western culture eventually arrive at where we are without Jesus. I think so. The history of moral conduct was always going to arc upwards. And secondly, the main reason Christianity fail is its reliance on the miracles. Without the resurrection no Christianity. Jesus Just another Confucius figure. Or Plato. Christianity another take on stoicism. And we all know that the laws of nature cannot be suspended. Anyone who says otherwise not a serious person.
Full disclosure, I have not read all of your posts, although the ones I have are worth the price of admission. Each time I do read a post, such as this one, I find myself thinking less about the subject at hand and more about where you stand, exactly. My sense is this "deconstruction" journey you're on doesn't necessarily have a destination, so much as the journey is seemingly more away from former things than it is a final destination. To wit, in this this post you wrote you believe in God, and that "Jesus (was) a historical figure, with a "ethical vision." So was Aristotle, Confucius, Ghandi, etc. So I'm left stranded thinking, if you think, that Jesus was just a moral teacher and not also the Son of Man. Because frankly I wouldn't follow anyone, ethical or otherwise, who made such claims about himself unless I believed them to be true. Then again, I may have done exactly what I've been doing, reading into your writings without getting you.
Thanks for the feedback and the kind words! You've read me pretty well, I think. The “deconstruction” doesn't have a predetermined destination, and I'm comfortable with that in a way I wouldn't likely have been even five years ago. What I'm less interested in is swapping one closed system for another. Having been very certain about a lot of things that turned out to be wrong, I've come to appreciate holding things loosely, which, as @Odds and Enns (Peter Enns) argues in The Sin of Certainty, may be closer to the actual nature of faith than the doctrinal confidence we've often mistaken for it.
On the Aristotle/Confucius/Gandhi comparison, you're right to note that. If Jesus is simply a moral teacher among other moral teachers, the comparison holds and you have no particular reason to favor him. My position is more specific than "ethical vision and nothing else." What I think Jesus embodies goes beyond moral instruction into something more like the fullest available disclosure of what God looks like in human form. Whether that requires the classical Nicene ontological claims I hold more loosely than I once did, but I do think he represents something more particular than one moral voice among several in history.
The "son of man" phrase is worth clarifying, since it's almost universally misread in popular usage. It's a Danielic term, drawn from Daniel 7, referring to a heavenly figure representing Israel's vindication before God. The popular reading that "son of man" signals humility or humanity while "son of God" signals divinity is a later interpretive thing. Jesus's use of the phrase is a claim about his role in God's coming Kingdom, and it carries apocalyptic weight that raises the Christological stakes rather than lowering them.
Where I land at the moment is something closer to what Marcus Borg describes as the pre-Easter Jesus (the historical person) and the post-Easter Christ (what the tradition has made of him) are worth distinguishing without confusing the two. Rohr's Universal Christ is adjacent territory. Both keep Jesus as considerably more than a moral teacher without requiring that Nicene orthodoxy is the only legitimate reading of who he was and is. That's the general territory I'm working in. You're right that it's unsettled. I'm not persuaded that unsettled is a problem, though, and it may be the more honest position.
I'm not a trained theologian. I am a follower of Jesus who has read the Bible repeatedly, working to understand what it actually says instead of what people have told me to believe that it says. And I write a Substack sharing what I have learned. I did a series of 3 posts on what I see the Bible saying about heaven and hell, and here is what they boil down to. I do not see any kind of universal salvation in Jesus' teachings. He spoke far too much about certain people being thrown into the fire or into the outer darkness. But I also do not see Christians as being the only ones in heaven, as the Baptist church that we used to attend taught. The Church alone will be Christ's bride, His heavenly temple, and we will share that role with no others. The descendants of Israel will have their own special place in eternity. Not sure where those who are both Jewish and Christian fit into that. But the sheep and goat judgment is not a stand-alone section in the New Testament speaking about people being given eternal life because of what they did while on the earth, and not what they believed. John 5:24-29 and Romans 2:6-11 say the same thing. If you decide to read my posts, you'll see that I still have many, many questions, and most of them probably won't be answered before I die. But I'm okay with that, because what I believe has been in somewhat of a state of flux for the last 42 years. Who I believe in has never changed. God's blessings on you today, Shawn!
Thank you for engaging seriously with this piece, and for sharing your own work. The honesty in your comment and your posts is obvious, and the humility about unresolved questions is exactly right. I think we're in similar territory there.
A gentle pushback on the texts you cite, though. Romans 2:6-11, which you offer as context for Matthew 25, doesn't add a confessional criterion. Its thesis is that God "will repay according to each one's deeds," and the recipients of eternal life it describes are "those who by patiently doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality." No faith statement appears there. Commentators have been wrestling with how Romans 2 fits Paul's broader argument about faith precisely because it sounds, on its face, a great deal like Matthew 25! The forced harmonization is a traditional Protestant read, and it's understandable, but the texts themselves don't make it so cleanly.
John 5:24-29 is more layered. It holds both the faith criterion (verse 24) and the works criterion (verse 29, "those who have done good, to the resurrection of life") without clearly resolving how the two relate to each other. The orthodox Protestant tradition has never fully settled it.
The essay's argument was taxonomic rather than primarily soteriological. The question wasn't who gets to heaven but what the label "Christian" actually tracks as a descriptor of practice in the world we live in. Matthew 25 anchors that question because its criterion is behavioral and identity-blind. Whether that criterion stands alone in the New Testament's full argument about salvation is a separate and harder question.
I don't think we're as far apart as the comment might suggest. You're wrestling honestly with the same texts. I just think the resolution is harder than the traditional Protestant reading allows.
As I said, Shawn, I'm not a theologian, and I had to look up "taxonomic" and "soteriological." I would probably put you in the same bind if I started talking about ordinary differential equations (retired math teacher). It's not surprising that we (as a whole church) don't completely know what to do with these texts that I brought up. But what we can't do is to ignore them or explain them away because they don't agree with something that we desperately want to believe is true, and I think that a great many people do just that. But thank you for your insights on them. On to your taxonomy.
I can't remember which of C.S. Lewis' books it was, but he talked about how the word "Christian" was becoming as meaningless as the word "gentleman" had become, as people started using "gentleman" as a compliment rather than as a description of a person who owned land. My own conclusion is that there are those who claim to be Christian, who have been told that they are Christian, but, as Jesus told us in the Sermon on the Mount, will be awfully surprised to find out that they aren't Christians. Why? Well, in Matt. 7:12 we are told that treating others as we want to be treated IS the Law and the Prophets. Eleven verses later Jesus says that He will tell those who think that they are Christians but aren't that they practice lawlessness. Apparently they don't treat others in the way that they want to be treated. Then He immediately goes into talking about those who hear Him and obey, and those who hear Him and don't obey (which also includes His commands to forgive, to not judge, and to not condemn). The Great Commission includes our teaching these new disciples to obey the things that Jesus has told us to do. And then there is John's recollection of what Jesus told the disciples after the last supper. John 14:21-24 and 15:1-17 are just rich in talking about our need to obey Jesus.
Reading the Didache is so like reading the Sermon on the Mount, giving me the idea that central to their beliefs in the early church was that they would obey Jesus. In Tertullian's Apology he eventually gets around to describing the behavior of Christians. He then says that some will say that there are Christians who don't behave these ways. And his response is that the church no longer considers those who don't obey Christ's commands to be Christians any longer.
I think that it is hard to make a case that a person is a Christian if they do not obey the things that Jesus has told us to do (and not to do). The reason behind my Substack is to make people aware of what we, as Christians, are asked to do, what we are asked to obey, and to encourage people to take this seriously. If you take obeying Jesus seriously, Shawn, then we are completely on the same page, no matter what little or big differences we may have in understanding exactly how everything all works out. God's blessings on you today!
OK, Shawn, you got me - this is the most interesting & trenchant comment of the current Christian scene I've even seen. If I am not fully signed up for your blog, I will do so now. Marc marcb4673@gmail.com
Exceptional. Well done. I too find Earman authentic. What drew me to him was my interest in first century Christianity. And the accepted theology. My thinking at the time was that the theology could not evolve or be smoothed over as tme marched on. It had to be locked in stone. His and other historians were useful in that understanding. My critique is two fold. Jesus was important because of his historical importance. At other times and other places his teachings appear on their own. And one has to ask the but for question. But for Jesus would western culture eventually arrive at where we are without Jesus. I think so. The history of moral conduct was always going to arc upwards. And secondly, the main reason Christianity fail is its reliance on the miracles. Without the resurrection no Christianity. Jesus Just another Confucius figure. Or Plato. Christianity another take on stoicism. And we all know that the laws of nature cannot be suspended. Anyone who says otherwise not a serious person.
Full disclosure, I have not read all of your posts, although the ones I have are worth the price of admission. Each time I do read a post, such as this one, I find myself thinking less about the subject at hand and more about where you stand, exactly. My sense is this "deconstruction" journey you're on doesn't necessarily have a destination, so much as the journey is seemingly more away from former things than it is a final destination. To wit, in this this post you wrote you believe in God, and that "Jesus (was) a historical figure, with a "ethical vision." So was Aristotle, Confucius, Ghandi, etc. So I'm left stranded thinking, if you think, that Jesus was just a moral teacher and not also the Son of Man. Because frankly I wouldn't follow anyone, ethical or otherwise, who made such claims about himself unless I believed them to be true. Then again, I may have done exactly what I've been doing, reading into your writings without getting you.
Thanks for the feedback and the kind words! You've read me pretty well, I think. The “deconstruction” doesn't have a predetermined destination, and I'm comfortable with that in a way I wouldn't likely have been even five years ago. What I'm less interested in is swapping one closed system for another. Having been very certain about a lot of things that turned out to be wrong, I've come to appreciate holding things loosely, which, as @Odds and Enns (Peter Enns) argues in The Sin of Certainty, may be closer to the actual nature of faith than the doctrinal confidence we've often mistaken for it.
On the Aristotle/Confucius/Gandhi comparison, you're right to note that. If Jesus is simply a moral teacher among other moral teachers, the comparison holds and you have no particular reason to favor him. My position is more specific than "ethical vision and nothing else." What I think Jesus embodies goes beyond moral instruction into something more like the fullest available disclosure of what God looks like in human form. Whether that requires the classical Nicene ontological claims I hold more loosely than I once did, but I do think he represents something more particular than one moral voice among several in history.
The "son of man" phrase is worth clarifying, since it's almost universally misread in popular usage. It's a Danielic term, drawn from Daniel 7, referring to a heavenly figure representing Israel's vindication before God. The popular reading that "son of man" signals humility or humanity while "son of God" signals divinity is a later interpretive thing. Jesus's use of the phrase is a claim about his role in God's coming Kingdom, and it carries apocalyptic weight that raises the Christological stakes rather than lowering them.
Where I land at the moment is something closer to what Marcus Borg describes as the pre-Easter Jesus (the historical person) and the post-Easter Christ (what the tradition has made of him) are worth distinguishing without confusing the two. Rohr's Universal Christ is adjacent territory. Both keep Jesus as considerably more than a moral teacher without requiring that Nicene orthodoxy is the only legitimate reading of who he was and is. That's the general territory I'm working in. You're right that it's unsettled. I'm not persuaded that unsettled is a problem, though, and it may be the more honest position.
Hi Shawn, you said that N.T. Wright offers the most rigorous version of this objection… is there a book of his you recommend to read on this? Thanks.
I'm not a trained theologian. I am a follower of Jesus who has read the Bible repeatedly, working to understand what it actually says instead of what people have told me to believe that it says. And I write a Substack sharing what I have learned. I did a series of 3 posts on what I see the Bible saying about heaven and hell, and here is what they boil down to. I do not see any kind of universal salvation in Jesus' teachings. He spoke far too much about certain people being thrown into the fire or into the outer darkness. But I also do not see Christians as being the only ones in heaven, as the Baptist church that we used to attend taught. The Church alone will be Christ's bride, His heavenly temple, and we will share that role with no others. The descendants of Israel will have their own special place in eternity. Not sure where those who are both Jewish and Christian fit into that. But the sheep and goat judgment is not a stand-alone section in the New Testament speaking about people being given eternal life because of what they did while on the earth, and not what they believed. John 5:24-29 and Romans 2:6-11 say the same thing. If you decide to read my posts, you'll see that I still have many, many questions, and most of them probably won't be answered before I die. But I'm okay with that, because what I believe has been in somewhat of a state of flux for the last 42 years. Who I believe in has never changed. God's blessings on you today, Shawn!
https://thebiblereader.substack.com/p/heaven-and-hell
https://thebiblereader.substack.com/p/heaven-part-1
https://thebiblereader.substack.com/p/heaven-part-2
Thank you for engaging seriously with this piece, and for sharing your own work. The honesty in your comment and your posts is obvious, and the humility about unresolved questions is exactly right. I think we're in similar territory there.
A gentle pushback on the texts you cite, though. Romans 2:6-11, which you offer as context for Matthew 25, doesn't add a confessional criterion. Its thesis is that God "will repay according to each one's deeds," and the recipients of eternal life it describes are "those who by patiently doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality." No faith statement appears there. Commentators have been wrestling with how Romans 2 fits Paul's broader argument about faith precisely because it sounds, on its face, a great deal like Matthew 25! The forced harmonization is a traditional Protestant read, and it's understandable, but the texts themselves don't make it so cleanly.
John 5:24-29 is more layered. It holds both the faith criterion (verse 24) and the works criterion (verse 29, "those who have done good, to the resurrection of life") without clearly resolving how the two relate to each other. The orthodox Protestant tradition has never fully settled it.
The essay's argument was taxonomic rather than primarily soteriological. The question wasn't who gets to heaven but what the label "Christian" actually tracks as a descriptor of practice in the world we live in. Matthew 25 anchors that question because its criterion is behavioral and identity-blind. Whether that criterion stands alone in the New Testament's full argument about salvation is a separate and harder question.
I don't think we're as far apart as the comment might suggest. You're wrestling honestly with the same texts. I just think the resolution is harder than the traditional Protestant reading allows.
As I said, Shawn, I'm not a theologian, and I had to look up "taxonomic" and "soteriological." I would probably put you in the same bind if I started talking about ordinary differential equations (retired math teacher). It's not surprising that we (as a whole church) don't completely know what to do with these texts that I brought up. But what we can't do is to ignore them or explain them away because they don't agree with something that we desperately want to believe is true, and I think that a great many people do just that. But thank you for your insights on them. On to your taxonomy.
I can't remember which of C.S. Lewis' books it was, but he talked about how the word "Christian" was becoming as meaningless as the word "gentleman" had become, as people started using "gentleman" as a compliment rather than as a description of a person who owned land. My own conclusion is that there are those who claim to be Christian, who have been told that they are Christian, but, as Jesus told us in the Sermon on the Mount, will be awfully surprised to find out that they aren't Christians. Why? Well, in Matt. 7:12 we are told that treating others as we want to be treated IS the Law and the Prophets. Eleven verses later Jesus says that He will tell those who think that they are Christians but aren't that they practice lawlessness. Apparently they don't treat others in the way that they want to be treated. Then He immediately goes into talking about those who hear Him and obey, and those who hear Him and don't obey (which also includes His commands to forgive, to not judge, and to not condemn). The Great Commission includes our teaching these new disciples to obey the things that Jesus has told us to do. And then there is John's recollection of what Jesus told the disciples after the last supper. John 14:21-24 and 15:1-17 are just rich in talking about our need to obey Jesus.
Reading the Didache is so like reading the Sermon on the Mount, giving me the idea that central to their beliefs in the early church was that they would obey Jesus. In Tertullian's Apology he eventually gets around to describing the behavior of Christians. He then says that some will say that there are Christians who don't behave these ways. And his response is that the church no longer considers those who don't obey Christ's commands to be Christians any longer.
I think that it is hard to make a case that a person is a Christian if they do not obey the things that Jesus has told us to do (and not to do). The reason behind my Substack is to make people aware of what we, as Christians, are asked to do, what we are asked to obey, and to encourage people to take this seriously. If you take obeying Jesus seriously, Shawn, then we are completely on the same page, no matter what little or big differences we may have in understanding exactly how everything all works out. God's blessings on you today!
This had me shouting hallelujahs all the way through. Thank you.
OK, Shawn, you got me - this is the most interesting & trenchant comment of the current Christian scene I've even seen. If I am not fully signed up for your blog, I will do so now. Marc marcb4673@gmail.com
Thanks so much for reading, Marc! Much appreciated.