Tag: New Testament

For Yours Is The Kingdom

Whose kingdom is it? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

When we finish the Lord’s prayer, I will point out that not all manuscripts have this final part, but I intend to cover it anyway. In this final section, Jesus tells of three things that belong to God. The first is the Kingdom. What is that about?

We are here to be servants, but many times, we want to build up our own kingdom. J.P. Moreland has said that Christians are here to serve a name and not to make one. Being in ministry, I understand that to succeed you need to get the word out about what you do. You can’t have a light if you’re not being public in some way.

At the same time, it’s important to realize the Kingdom doesn’t stand or fall on my ministry. If my ministry were to go away, the Kingdom of God would still go on. I make the same remark about our own country of America here. America needs the gospel, but the gospel doesn’t need America.

Years ago when I was on PALtalk, I remember a leader of a well-known internet apologetics ministry being on the microphone in the room and I could tell easily he had a bad cold and it was confirmed when he said it. When he got off the microphone I messaged him and told him to go and rest and get off of PALtalk. He said, “Truth must be defended.” I told him that that is so, but he is not the only one defending it.

Thankfully, he got off of PALtalk at that point, but that is the point. None of us is necessary for the Kingdom. That we get to have a part in the Kingdom is a gift and an honor. God has no obligation to give any of us a great ministry. It’s not about what He can do for us. It’s about what we can do for Him.

It’s not our Kingdom. It’s His. Let’s build it up.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I Affirm The Virgin Birth)

Book Plunge: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in Romans 8

What do I think of Ron Fay’s book published by Fontes Press? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

You can find books on Paul’s Christology, his view of the Lord’s Supper, his view of justification by faith, his eschatology, his pneuamtology, his doctrine of the church, his doctrine of sin, his view of the resurrection, etc. I could go on down the list more if I wanted to. However, how often do you see a book on Paul’s view of the Trinity or at least his doctrine of God?

Fay seeks to change that with this interesting book. In it, Fay looks at Romans 8 and sees what Paul has to say there that indicates at least a proto-Trinitarian understanding of God and to see if the Romans would have seen it the same way. This is not to say that Paul was running around talking about the hypostatic union and quoting the Nicene Creed, but that Paul saw that there was one God and somehow saw the Father, Son, and Spirit as God and did not see them all as one person.

Before even getting to Romans 8 though, Fay looks at the Greco-Roman idea of god. This is not to say that Paul was borrowing from pagan religions, but that Paul spoke a language that would have had a certain meaning to those who came out of pagan religions and were familiar with the concepts, like the Roman Christians. All the while, he would be working with his own Jewish idea of God which Paul would have never abandoned, but would have integrated his new view of Jesus with.

From there, Fay goes on to touch about pretty much every subject in the chapter. He talks about God and creation and God and Law and God and adoption. Again, we could go on and on. Adoption is a key concept since we don’t know as much about Jewish views of adoption as we do about Roman views of adoption and considering a Caesar on the throne had been adopted, the Romans would have understood it.

Then once again, as we went through God and every topic in the chapter, we look at the Son and the Spirit in the same way looking at every topic. It is hard to imagine being even more thorough looking at a single chapter of Scripture. It’s also a great reminder that a look at the historical and social context of a chapter can provide great insight.

Finally, we look at if the Romans would have received this as a look at the Trinity as well and Fay concludes that they would have. Again, the doctrine was worked out over centuries in the church, but the seeds were there.

A caution I would have for every reader though is this is written by a scholar mainly for other scholars. There are many points the layman will not understand, such as Greek words and phrases used that are not translated. This is not to say the reader will get nothing out of it, but some things will be lost. I do not know if Fay is planning a version of this for the average man on the pew, but I certainly think it would be helpful.

Now if you are of the scholarly persuasion and you are reading this, then this will be a helpful book for you to read and one that I hope will spark debate. I would like to see more works on Paul and the Trinity from a scholarly perspective. I hope this is indeed not the end, but the beginning of the discussion.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Lead Us Not Into Temptation

How do we deal with temptation? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

The Lord’s Prayer goes on to ask God to lead us not into temptation. As the joke goes, most of us are pretty good at finding it ourselves. Most of us when we get into temptation have usually got there by ourselves and we’re sunk by it. The first sign you are likely to fall to a sin is that you do not think you can fall to a sin.

“Sure, I love my wife, but it’s just lunch with this female co-worker and I’m not interested in it and we’re both having our break at the same time. What could go wrong? I’m safe.”

Then before too long they’re arranging to meet in a motel together.

“Sure. I can go and do a little bit of drinking. Yeah. I know I used to struggle with alcoholism, but that was years ago. One beer won’t hurt me.”

I have heard this story so many times. It always ends the same way. Years of sobriety go out the window at that point.

“It’s my Dad’s magazine collection and it’s always intrigued me. I’m sure I can handle whatever it is.”

Years later this boy is consistently looking at pornography on the internet. When he marries a woman finally, he has a hard time performing since his mind has been trained to not be aroused by ordinary women anymore.

“The family is in need. I can just cut a little off the books here at work. I’ll pay it back.”

The family is definitely in need years later when he goes to jail for embezzlement.

If we want to win the fight against sin in our lives, we have to ask to not be led into temptation because we know we are weak. If we think we can handle it in our own strength, then it is pride. If we have fallen into pride, then we have fallen into the chief sin and all the other sins will come easier.

This is one reason I have strong rules such as not riding in a car alone or being alone with women who I am not related to. If you are a woman contacting me, I will keep you at a distance to an extent because I do not want to risk ever doing anything to put another relationship between me and my own wife. If I think I cannot fall to that sin, I already have. Why risk it? What’s the gain in it?

Why should we ask God to not lead us into that? Because it not only damages us, but it damages the Kingdom. If we are seeking God’s Kingdom on Earth, our falling into sin makes it less likely that we will see that Kingdom advanced. Every time we sin, we are acting against the Kingdom and serving the other Kingdom instead.

Lead us not into temptation also acknowledges our own weaknesses. It forces us to say that we are not capable on our own. We depend on God for everything, which we do. It doesn’t matter how long we have been a Christian, we still need help. We will always need it.

May we not be led into temptation. May we also not find it on our own.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

As We Forgive Those Who Sin Against Us

How serious is forgiveness? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

You know, up until now, the Lord’s Prayer has been pretty good. You treat God as God. You ask for His Kingdom to come. You seek His daily bread. You ask for forgiveness of your sins. It’s been good. These can be hard, but many of us can like them.

Then right after asking for forgiveness, Jesus changes the game a bit with this saying.

“As we forgive those who sin against us.”

Wait a second.

If I want to be forgiven, I have to forgive them?

You mean that person who cheated me out of that financial deal?

Yep.

You mean that person who was driving drunk and killed my daughter?

Yep.

You mean that person who made false accusations against me and ruined my reputation?

Yep.

You mean that person who sexually abused me in the past?

Yep.

You mean that person who deeply hurt my wife?

Yep.

Do you see a pattern forming here?

There are no exceptions. If we want to be forgiven, we have to forgive. There is no loophole in this. It is like the parable of the unmerciful servant. If you do not forgive, there is reason to think that you do not know forgiveness yourself.

One of the most popular blog posts I have done is one based on a weak atheist meme (Sorry for the redundancy) called Will Your Murderer Be In Heaven? In it, you will find wonderful stories of Christian forgiveness. I urge you to read it.

Now forgiveness doesn’t mean that you return to things as if they never happened. They did. You can forgive the babysitter for hurting your child. You do not have to hire them again. You can forgive the person who sexually abused you. You do not have to go on a car ride with them or be alone with them. It mainly means you are releasing your hostility and anger against them.

In many ways, I honestly do not like this teaching. I think I’m not alone. If someone hurts Allie, the first thing going through my head is not “How can I forgive and show love to them?” The first thought is “Where can I hide the body?”

Some of you have seen me on Facebook with this. I have a zero tolerance policy with those who insult my wife on there. My first action is to immediately go after them for that and make sure everyone knows this is something you don’t do again. I remember being at a conference once and I looked up and from behind, the person in front of me looked exactly like someone who hurt Allie deeply once and I was honestly filled with rage.

What does Scripture command me to do?

Forgive them.

I hate it sometimes. I really do, but I have to work on that. I have to work on sacrificing my hostility towards them.

Something important I recommend also is not going up to a person and saying “I forgive you.” Instead, wait and talk to them first if need be about it. See if they ask it first. If they don’t ask for forgiveness, don’t suddenly pronounce it. That can rob them of the gift of repentance. However, you should be in the spirit of forgiveness even if they don’t ask it and in your own heart have forgiven the person. It will be a much better gift to them to get to ask forgiveness and hear you say it.

And as Lewis says, Jesus gives us no loopholes. If we do not forgive, then we will not be forgiven. He means what He says. It is a high calling to us and we’d best follow it as Christians.

Think about that person today. Ask for help forgiving them. Realize that if you were at the foot of the cross with this person, it would be ridiculous to tell the Lord about everything that person did to you. You have done worse to God.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Too Good To Be False

What do I think of Tom Gilson’s book published by DeWard Publishing? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Sometimes we hear some news and we think it would be wonderful, but then we conclude that it is too good to be true. Rarely do we ever consider the opposite. What if something was too good to be false? What if Jesus was just someone like that?

Tom Gilson has an interesting hypothesis that not much has been done with in history, but I think needs some serious looking at. In it, he points out that the character of Jesus is really one unlike anyone else in history either fictional or non-fictional. There are some people that could come close, but we realize many of their faults and failures and they themselves do.

Jesus is someone who shows up and never asks for advice, never claims to be learning something new from a dialogue, seems to know everything that is going on, never apologizes for anything, never relies on anyone else for any claim that He makes, etc. Now if you take anyone who is like that on paper you would consider them insufferable to be around and you would not want to be around them. However, Jesus is not like that. Many people who read the Gospels love the figure of Jesus. They think He’s incredible. Bart Ehrman in his latest book refers to Jesus as one of the three great figures He wants to meet.

Not only that, but Jesus is also claiming to be God incarnate in the Gospels and yet still, we don’t see Him acting in such a way that we might expect. We don’t see Him raining down judgment or acting aloof to the culture. We still see attributes that are remarkably human.

This is Gilson’s fascinating hypothesis. If Jesus did not exist as presented in the Gospels, we should be seeking to meet the people who created Him because they are the greatest geniuses of all time. How is it also that if the skeptics are right, all these stories changed drastically over time, but they came together to show this figure of remarkable insight and character that is unparalleled in all of fiction and history? Note the inclusion of fiction in there. No one has created a figure like Jesus. Possibly the closest is Aslan in the Chronicles of Narnia, but perhaps he is also given limited time for just that figure. If Lewis had to write a whole story where Aslan is acting on most every page, I suspect it would be impossible for even him.

If we could not create this figure, then there is only one conclusion. We did not create Him. Jesus is real. Not only is He real, we need to hold Him in the proper awe He deserves. We have become so familiar with the figure of Jesus that we haven’t considered just how shocking He is.

Gilson’s thesis is an amazing one and I hope to see more engagement with it. It would be incredible to see what someone like Bart Ehrman would say to it. I hope it gets out in the world of academia all the more.

One thing I would like to see added for future editions of the book if they come is that the idea is fascinating, but I would like to see something on how to present it in a debate. Perhaps it could even be a mock written debate that has been set up. How would Gilson use this in evangelism and how would he suggest that I use it? If we use it, how should we use other arguments alongside it, such as arguments about the resurrection and the dating and veracity of the Gospels?

This is a book to be taken seriously by Christian and skeptic alike. I look forward to seeing more that comes out concerning it.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Daily Bread

What does it mean to ask for daily bread? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

My family and I aren’t rich. Growing up, we never were either. Today, I know what it definitely means to live on a balanced budget more than ever. We have money that we can store up to an extent, but it’s still very rough. Any time we get a donation, I get personally very excited.

That’s probably nothing compared to the average person in the times of Jesus though. You were to ask for your daily bread. In that day, you didn’t have plastic to wrap your bread in. The temperature in your house could not be managed by a thermostat. You didn’t have any freezers to preserve food or any refrigerators.

Want some food? Sorry. You have to work. There’s no going down the street to the local supermarket where there’s an abundant supply of food. I grew up in a rural town, but not too far from us was the city where we could go to supermarkets. My roommate in seminary was not like that. When he first walked into a supermarket in Charlotte, he was shocked at all that he saw.

In Jesus’s day though, you had to work things off and if your neighbor gave you some food, well, you were in his debt then. You would owe him. There was no give for the sake of giving like that. If only honor was expected back, that was a big deal and the person would get honor.

Jesus still tells us to ask for daily bread. We don’t ask for weekly or monthly or yearly bread. We ask for daily bread. We trust in God to provide for us day by day.

Does that mean we can’t store up things today or have savings or manage wealth? Not at all. Yet even still, we have to realize we could lose it all at any time. The richest man in the world could possibly have all his money hacked away from him.

Regardless of how rich or poor you are, you are still to rely on God. You are to trust Him. Jesus tells us this later in the sermon. Birds get fed and the flowers are dressed. Seek first the Kingdom and His righteousness and we’ll get everything else.

Daily bread reminds to rely on God daily. I may go and get bread from on top of our refrigerator today to fix a sandwich, but I should be grateful that today I don’t have to go out and do all the work to make that bread. It’s a gift and I should be thankful to God who provides all the knowledge to make bread and the resources and for the people willing to do the work.

Tomorrow will take care of itself somehow.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Did Constantine Change The New Testament?

Is the favorite bad boy of ancient history at it again?

When talking about Christian history, it seems like every vile and evil thing in church history goes back to Constantine. Before too long, I’m anticipating I will hear that Constantine was responsible for the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Salem Witch Trials. Most people have no real historical idea of what Constantine did and just know what they have read about him in popular media.

Yesterday I was talking to an atheist on Facebook who gave me the line of “Who knows what Constantine took out of the New Testament?” Well, anyone who knows anything about church history and textual criticism knows the answer to that question. Nothing.

You don’t have to take my word. Listen to what Bart Ehrman says on his blog.

One of the reasons I’m excited about doing my new course for the Teaching Company (a.k.a. The Great Courses) is that I’ll be able to devote three lectures to the Arian Controversy, the Conversion of the emperor Constantine, and the Council of Nicea (in 325 CE). It seems to me that a lot more people know about the Council of Nicea today than 20 years ago – i.e., they know that there *was* such a thing – and at the same time they know so little about it. Or rather, what they think they know about it is WRONG.

I suppose we have no one more to blame for this than Dan Brown and the Da Vinci Code, where, among other things, we are told that Constantine called the Council in order to “decide” on whether Jesus was divine or not, and that they took a vote on whether he was human or “the Son of God.” And, according to Dan Brown’s lead character (his expert on all things Christian), Lee Teabing, “it was a close vote at that.”

That is so wrong.

There are also a lot of people who think (I base this on the number of times I hear this or am asked about it) that it was at the Council of Nicea that the canon of the New Testament was decided. That is, this is when Christian leaders allegedly decided which books would be accepted into the New Testament and which ones would be left out.

That too is wrong.

So here’s the deal. First, the canon of the New Tesatment was not a topic of discussion at the Council of Nicea. It was not talked about. It was not debated. It was not decided. Period. The formation of the canon was a long drawn-out process, with different church leaders having different views about which books should be in and which should be out. I can devote some posts to the question if anyone is interested (I would need to look back to see if I’ve done that already!).

https://ehrmanblog.org/widespread-misconceptions-council-nicea-members/

For Constantine to do this, he would really have to know more about the New Testament than we do today. He would have to know where every copy of every New Testament manuscript could be found and then he would have to have soldiers or other servants who could go and track down all those copies and somehow either destroy them or edit them so that no hint of them was left behind. It they were destroyed, then there could be no evidence that this happened since we cannot point to evidence that was destroyed.

People who say this really demonstrate that they don’t know what they’re talking about and play their hand. It was kind of ironic since this was in a conversation where I said too many atheists online refuse to read what disagrees with them. I stand by that. This is not to say that none of them do, but when I meet an atheist who actually engages, it’s a refreshing exception.

So what evidence is there Constantine edited the New Testament? Really, none. It’s a popular myth in the world of internet atheism and really, internet atheism does itself no service as saying it is a position of reason and evidence. To paraphrase Jesus, these people honor reason with their lips, but their heads are far from it. If you are such a person, you owe it to yourself to read contrary thought and see where you might be wrong.

And if you don’t, you don’t have a commitment to reason and evidence. You have a commitment to your own personal faith.

No. Constantine did not edit the New Testament. He did not determine the vote at Nicea. He did not pick the NT canon. None of those are true. If you are an atheist who wants to go about eliminating what you see as myths, start with your own house first.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Your Will Be Done

What does it mean to do God’s will? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

So many Christians today want to find God’s will for their lives.

Should I get married? Who should I marry? What job should I take? Should I go to college and if so, what should I major in? So many decisions are about finding the will of God.

Is this what the Bible means when it speaks about the will of God?

No. This is a highly personalized idea. Let’s consider the first one about marriage. Assuming marriage is even for you, the Bible in a book like Proverbs lays out criteria. Since one should marry in the Lord, a Christian should marry a Christian. When speaking of a wife, the book mentions the kinds of qualities to look for. Don’t marry a nagging wife is one example. Marry a woman who fears the Lord. (Or a man if you are a woman)

Somehow, we got this strange idea that when we got to the New Testament, God decided to jettison wisdom and was going to tell us all what to do and we needed to find a way to get these secret messages from God. We are to look for clues, often ones that reside in our feelings and emotions, and from there try to determine what God is telling us. Scripture may be used, but apparently, it’s not as reliable as those feelings and emotions.

As you can imagine, I think this is a bunch of bunk. I see nothing in Scripture about it and it only showed up in our time of individualism. This kind of thinking really makes us very self-centered Christians.

Not only that, if God has a specific will for our lives like that, we’ve already screwed it up definitely. Also, if any one other person has screwed up their lives, they’ve ultimately done it for everyone. If you are to marry one specific person, then that means that if you marry the wrong one, both of your intended spouses have to marry the wrong one and then all their intended spouses have to marry the wrong one and on and on it goes.

It also causes the wrong focus. What we should be looking at the most is what kind of spouse we are going to be. What kind of employee are we going to be? What kind of student are we going to be?

“But how will I know what God wants for my life?”

It’s very easy. I can tell you definitely what God’s will is for your life and I have no hesitation in doing so. God’s will is to conform you to the likeness of Christ. The best thing to do when examining an action and if you should do it is to ask if it will conform you to the likeness of Christ.

When we pray for God’s will to be done, we are not praying that we will find some specific individualized will, or at least we shouldn’t pray that. We are praying that God will make the universe the way He wants it to be. How He wants us to be is to be conformed to the image of Christ. He wants us to be like Jesus.

You have plenty on that in Scripture.

Go try following that instead.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Your Kingdom Come

What does it mean to want the Kingdom to come? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Do we really want the Kingdom to come?

I mean, let’s think about it. If we’re Christians, we know the right answer we’re supposed to say is yes. We want God to rule this Earth. We want Him to be the one in charge. We want Jesus to be acknowledged as king. We say we want that.

Do we really?

To pray for His kingdom to come also means something else. Ours doesn’t. Most of us struggle with an inflated view of ourselves and that can be even if we’re really negative. We are often not just moderately dumb or ugly or unlikable or anything like that. No. We are the worst of the worst. If anything goes wrong in our lives, it’s our fault.

When we pray this prayer though, we are supposed to be willing to forsake our own little kingdoms. This is God’s kingdom. We don’t want to be the ones in charge of our lives anymore. We want God to be in charge.

That also means we have to be willing to get rid of the sin in our lives. We have to drop that pornography habit. We have to stop that overeating. We have to be willing to give up gossiping about our neighbors. We can’t keep on thinking about that woman who isn’t our wife.

Do we really want that?

The truth is, our actions will answer for us. If we really want the kingdom to come, we will be willing to sacrifice those actions that we know are opposed to the kingdom. If we do not want the kingdom to come, we will keep acting like we are the ones who determine right and wrong and we are the ones who will see our own will be done.

This also is not a Democracy or a Republic coming our way. This is a monarchy. This is not something that we will vote on or campaign for. Jesus is a king and what the king says goes. It is absolute.

Today, our every action will show in some way what we want. Do we think our way is best or do we think the way of Christ is the best? We can say with our lips the right answer all we want, but actions do speak louder. I hope mine will show I want the Kingdom the most, but I fear too often they will show the other way. Perhaps that is where we need to encourage one another.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Heaven and Hell

What do I think of Bart Ehrman’s latest published by Simon and Schuster? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Generally, I have enjoyed reading through Bart Ehrman books. I thoroughly disagree, but I like the books. However, when I read the one before this, The Triumph of Christianity, I found myself walking away disappointed. There just didn’t seem to be anything there like the last ones. I started reading Heaven and Hell when it came out, got caught up in other books, and it was just awhile before I came back. Perhaps it seems more like Ehrman is moving away from Jesus to an extent and going to other areas in history and philosophy and there just doesn’t seem to be as much there. I can’t say entirely.

This book is a look at the formation of the doctrine of the after-death, as I prefer to call it, in Christian thought. Ehrman starts with the way the pagans in the world viewed death. From there, he goes to the Old Testament and then to Jesus and on to Paul and looks as well at Revelation. From then on, he looks at the church throughout history and then gives some concluding remarks on how he views heaven and hell.

This also leads to questions of the nature of heaven and hell. Again, these are more theological and philosophical questions so it could be that this just isn’t Ehrman’s area and so it seems more like just personal opinion at that point. However, there are some interesting points worth noting in the book.

Ehrman does show that in the pagan world, generally speaking, resurrection was not a good thing. The body was a prison to be escaped. Thus, resurrection in the Jewish or Christian sense also did not fit in.

For many skeptics who think that resurrection was the Jews copying from Zoroastrianism, which shows up on the net at times, Ehrman cannot agree, which is refreshing. As he says:

More recently scholars have questioned a Persian derivation for the Jewish doctrine because of certain problems of dating.1 Some experts have undercut the entire thesis by pointing out that we actually do not have any Zoroastrian texts that support the idea of resurrection prior to its appearance in early Jewish writings. It is not clear who influenced whom. Even more significant, the timing does not make sense: Judah emerged from Persian rule in the fourth century BCE, when Alexander the Great (356–323 BCE) swept through the eastern Mediterranean and defeated the Persian Empire. But the idea of bodily resurrection does not appear in Jewish texts for well over a century after that.

Ehrman, Bart D.. Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife (pp. 104-105). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

Also, on a humorous note, he gives the story of how in an account Jesus said people would hang by their teeth in Hell over fires. Some disciples asked “What if someone has no teeth?” Jesus would then reply, “The teeth will be provided!” This was a joke done by a professor not to be taken seriously.

Also, for those discounting the Gospels as sources for Jesus, Ehrman has the following:

Even the most critical scholars of the New Testament agree that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are by far our best sources of information for knowing about the historical Jesus.

Ehrman, Bart D.. Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife (p. 150). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

Unfortunately though, at times he lapses back into his more fundamentalist days of reading the text. As commenting about Mark 9:1 where Jesus says some standing here would not taste death before they saw the Kingdom of God come in power:

Jesus is not saying that people will go to heaven. He is saying that some of his disciples will still be alive when the end comes and God’s utopian kingdom arrives on earth. Or, as he says elsewhere, when his disciples asked when the end of the world would come: “Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away before all these things take place” (Mark 13:30, emphasis added).

Ehrman, Bart D.. Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife (p. 154). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

As I have argued, Jesus nowhere says when the Kingdom comes, it will be a utopia immediately. Jesus does not speak of the end of the world either, but of the end of the age. As an Orthodox Preterist, I’m convinced Jesus’s prediction was stunningly accurate.

Interesting also is what Ehrman says about 1 Cor. 15.

And so, for Paul, there will indeed be a resurrection. It will be bodily. But the human body will be transformed into an immortal, incorruptible, perfect, glorious entity no longer made of coarse stuff that can become sick, get injured, suffer in any way, or die. It will be a spiritual body, a perfect dwelling for life everlasting. It is in that context that one of the most misunderstood verses of Paul’s entire corpus occurs, a verse completely bungled not just by many modern readers but throughout the history of Christianity. That is when Paul insists: “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 15:50). These words are often taken—precisely against Paul’s meaning—to suggest that eternal life will not be lived in the body. Wrong, wrong, wrong. For Paul it will be lived in a body—but in a body that has been glorified.

Ehrman, Bart D.. Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife (p. 182). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

Ehrman also thinks the beast in Revelation 17 is the same as the beast that came out of the sea in Revelation 13. I disagree with this. Looking at the passage, it talks about a great harlot and the beast himself actually attacks this harlot after a time. Who is the harlot? Look at your Old Testament. One nation is repeatedly referred to as a harlot and that’s Israel. Israel would work with the Beast for a time, (Being Nero) in killing Christians, but in turn, the Roman Empire would eventually turn on the harlot, as Israel was destroyed in 70 A.D.

Yet at the end of this look on Revelation, Ehrman gives a paragraph that aside from the opening remark could easily be said in any evangelical church. As many preachers I know would say, “That’ll preach!”

Even if parts of the vision are difficult to unpack and explain and others simply do not cohere, the author’s main points are clear. His overarching message is that God is ultimately sovereign over this world, even if it doesn’t seem like it. We may live in a cesspool of misery and suffering, and things may be getting progressively worse. But God is in charge, and it is all going according to plan. Before the end, all hell will indeed break loose, but then God will intervene to restore all that has become corrupt, to make right all that is wrong. Good will ultimately prevail.

Ehrman, Bart D.. Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife (p. 230). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

In the end, where does Ehrman fall? While he rightly tells us to try to avoid emotional reasoning, it’s hard to not see this in his response.

Even though I have an instinctual fear of torment after death—as the view drilled into me from the time I could think about such things—I simply don’t believe it. Is it truly rational to think, as in the age-old Christian doctrine, that there is a divine being who created this world, loves all who are in it, and wants the very best for them, yet who has designed reality in such a way that if people make mistakes in life or do not believe the right things, they will die and be subjected to indescribable torments, not for the length of the time they committed their “offenses,” but for trillions of years—and that only as the beginning? Are we really to think that God is some kind of transcendent sadist intent on torturing people (or at least willing to allow them to be tortured) for all eternity, a divine being infinitely more vengeful than the worst monster who has ever existed? I just don’t believe it. Even if I instinctually fear it, I don’t believe it.

Ehrman, Bart D.. Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife (pp. 293-294). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

Of course, this would all depend on how you view heaven and hell. I have written about my views elsewhere. Ehrman does say he doesn’t think this is what God is like. While I don’t think it’s accurate to say God is actively torturing people or even allowing it, seeing as I think torture and torment are two different things, I have to wonder that it’s incredible that Ehrman is willing to take the risk. Seriously, if Heaven is possibly there to gain and Hell is possibly there to avoid, I think it behooves anyone to seriously consider the question and when you decide, it needs to be more than “I just believe it” or “I just don’t believe it.” Some might think Christians should then read other religions as well. I have personally read the Mormon Scriptures and other of their books, the Koran, the Tao Te Ching, and the Analects of Confucius.

Overall, there is some good stuff in the book, but there seems to be something missing. I can’t help but see an Ehrman who I think after all these years is still searching. Perhaps a book on the afterdeath is coming as Ehrman is seeing himself getting older and thinking about these questions a lot more. I still hold out hope that one day he will return to the Christ he has since rejected. I am pleased when in the end he says three of his great heroes are Dickens, Shakespeare, and Jesus. He would love to get to meet them in an afterdeath.

I am sure Jesus would love to meet Ehrman also.

Hopefully, it will happen, and on good terms.

In Christ,
Nick Peters