i taught 'Lost Christianities' in sunday school today

[gravedigger]

anyone heard of the book?

[Martianlander]

Have not. Who wrote it?

[gravedigger]

Bart Ehrman. Ive been a methodist adult ss teacher for years, but i finally got up the courage to present it.

Ehrman is one of the leading authorities on the subject but he fell away from the faith due to the contadictions an evangelical upbringing exemplified.

Its a great book.

[Martianlander]

Thanks-I'm going to look it up.

[Martianlander]

I listened to a little of his interviews on youtube, and he seems to take the position that Jesus was not God's son and uses myth and stories to back up his judgment. I'll admit I haven't had time to do a lot of research but was going to see if you have the same take.

[gravedigger]

I listened to a little of his interviews on youtube, and he seems to take the position that Jesus was not God's son and uses myth and stories to back up his judgment. I'll admit I haven't had time to do a lot of research but was going to see if you have the same take.

He does. His take on Jesus is directly opposed to some of the more fundamentalist claims he learned in the church. His search for the Jesus of history has revealed a much different view of him. By reading Ehrman, i have not had such a change in my view of jesus simply because the validity of jesus teaching, for me, never depended upon some of the things evangelicals claim. Ive also never had a problem wi a GOD revealing himself to man in the man Jesus in whatever way he saw fit.

Erhman, like so many college students have, got his world rocked when scientific fact didnt jibe with the way he was taught.

Im one of those who have no problem believing God used the big bang to create the universe. I also understand that 1st century stories written about Jesus teaching were written to specific groups that held world views that we dont hold today. It didnt make his teaching any less relevant for us today.

Ehrmans books reveal a Christian world much more chaotic than the one i assumed growing up. The battles that caused us to have the new testament we read from today are fascinating. The sheer number of books that were left out of the new testament and why is the point of his study.

But be careful. It is easy to think his study somehow invalidates Christian belief. It does not. It reveals the story of how we arrived at where we are today.

[Prediction? Pain.]

I hadn't heard of this one. Thanks for sharing. What did your class think of it?

If you're interested in the development and doctrinal struggles of the early church, there are a bunch of great books to check out. I've been out of the game for a while, but the first few that come to mind are A History of Christian Thought by Paul Tillich, The Story of Christianity by Justo Gonzales, and On the Incarnation by Athanasius of Alexandria.

Tillich, an existentialist theologian who taught at Union Theological Seminary, Harvard Divinity, and U. Chicago, does a great job of tracing all the different philosophical and theological impulses of Christianity from pre-Christian Greek and Hebrew traditions all the way through the 20th century church. The book can be a little dense here and there, but given the complexity of the ideas he's dealing with, I guess that's to be somewhat expected. If you're interested in the theological battles waged within the church or in the origin of core doctrines, this is definitely something you should check out.

Gonzales taught at the Candler School of Theology at Emory back in the day, and his multi-volume Story of Christianity has been a staple for decades. Clear but comprehensive history of the church. Maybe more accessible than Tillich, though also not solely focused on doctrine.

And if you've been thinking about taking the dive straight into a primary source from the first few centuries of the church that touched on doctrinal conflict, Athanasius' On the Incarnation is for you. In a nutshell, it's a very, very early discussion of the nature of the incarnation and a refutation of a substantial group of early Christians who promoted the idea that Christ was a supreme, created being separate and distinct from God. Athanasius, on the other hand, insisted that Christ was fully God and fully human. For a 1,700 year old book, it reads surprisingly well. (It's also fairly short, so that's a plus.) It's one of the few primary texts that I read for classes in both undergrad and graduate school that I have revisited multiple times since.