I did it again. I picked up yet another book by Bart Ehrman – an agnostic professor for New Testament. In his youth, Ehrman was an evangelical “born again” Christian, who believed in the inerrancy of the Bible. When he went to seminary, he began to realize “that my former views of the Bible as the inerrant revelation from God were flat-out wrong” (page xi). However, it was not the scholarly research that eventually made Ehrman an agnostic, but the problem of evil and suffering in the world, along with his conclusion that God does not do anything about it.

In his latest book, Jesus, Interrupted, (I don’t understand the title of the book), Ehrman talks about “historical-critical problems with the Bible: contradictions in details, discrepancies on major points of view, authors claiming to be apostles when they weren't, historical problems in the reconstruction on the life of Jesus, and so on” (page 226). All these “problems” are not new. They are at least 200 years old, if not older.  Because of the textual variations between manuscripts, Ehrman concludes that the Bible is “a very human book, not a divinely inspired one” (page 222). Furthermore, the selection of the New Testament canon is the result of human church leadership. With this in mind, one might wonder why an agnostic still keeps teaching New Testament to undergraduate students in college. Ehrman, though, does not see a dilemma between being an agnostic and teaching the “most important book in the history of Western civilization” (page 282). “It [sc. the Bible] is the most widely purchased, the most thoroughly studied, the most highly revered, and the most completely misunderstood book – ever!” And he adds, “Why wouldn't I want to study it?”

Even though I do not necessarily care for Ehrman's publications, or theology, I can agree with him for the most part in his recent book as an academic, but not as a pastor. As an academic, I, too, applied the historical-critical method in interpreting Scripture. I, too, have studied “historical facts” in seminary, including the writing of the Bible. The Bible did not fall down from heaven. The first written reports about Jesus' life and ministry started some 20 years after his death (Paul's letters). In the case of the Gospels, it is even 40 to 60 years. The Apostles did not sit down and write their accounts thinking that their words might be collated in a tome of sacred writ. It wasn't until around AD 370 that we have the first complete record of the 27 canonical books of the New Testament. Since we do not possess the original New Testament, but only copies, there are thousands of manuscripts, which contain a number of textual variations. (Although, I think that Ehrman underestimates the importance of oral tradition and the accuracy of the copyists.)

By looking at this scholarly “evidence,” we might want to surmise that the Bible was the result of an entirely human process. Yet, as a pastor, I think the wonderful thing about the Bible (and God's grace) is that God made use of sinful and faulty human beings to write down his Word. As I look at the books that did not “make it” into the canon, I cannot help but think that the Holy Spirit was at work in the process of selecting our Holy Scriptures. Even if we did not have a Bible (and had to rely on the spoken word only), I choose to believe that our faith in Jesus Christ would have survived throughout the ages. After all, “Faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes from the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). Jesus Christ, our Lord, is the incarnate Word, which was with God from the beginning, long before there was the written Word of God. Conversely, this written Word of God, as it is contained in the Bible, points us to our salvation, which we have in Christ. It is in that sense “that the Bible is the only authoritative source for knowing divine truth that God [and Christ] reveals to us.”

The Bible does not only tell us what God has done for us, or what God still does for us. The Bible also assures us of what God will continue to do for us. This is something one cannot come to understand through a historical-critical reading of the Bible, but only by believing that God's Word and promises are true. Or, with words from the Prophet Isaiah (40:8), “The word of God will stand forever.”

May the Word of God continue to empower you to faithful and fruitful service. In Christ's name,
Bjoern E. Meinhardt, Pastor