Polar Ecclesiology

Some scholars have thought that the Ebionites may have held views very much like those of the first followers of Jesus, such as his brother James or his disciple Peter, both leaders of the church in Jerusalem in the years after Jesus' death. James in particular appears to have held to the ongoing validity of Jewish law for all followers of Jesus. His view, and evidently that of the Ebionites later, was that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah sent from the Jewish God to the Jewish people in fulfillment of the Jewish law. Therefore, anyone who wanted to follow Jesus had to be Jewish. If a gentile man converted to the faith, he had to be circumcised, since circumcision always had been the requirement of a male to become a follower of the God of Israel, as God himself demanded in the law (Genesis 17:10-14).

Jesus Interrupted
Chapter Six: How We Got the Bible
by Bart D Ehrman

Apparently Dr. Ehrman didn't take the Acts 15 letter into account when he wrote his opinion about James, the brother of the Master and head of the Jerusalem Council. Otherwise, he's almost describing a group who I would term as "proto-Messianic Jewish". These are Jews who believed that Jesus (Yeshua) was the prophesied Messiah and that the Messiah taught nothing that was inconsistent with Jewish cultural and religious practice and lifestyle. Dr. Ehrman further states that the:

...Ebionites were strict Jewish monotheists. As such, they did not think that Jesus was himself divine. There could be only one God. Instead, Jesus was the human appointed by God to be Messiah. He was not born of a virgin: his parents were Joseph and Mary, and he was a very righteous man whom God had adopted to be his son and to whom he had given a mission of dying on the Cross to atone for the sins of others.

OK, I don't know of any Messianic Jewish groups who publicly identify with the description of the Ebionites given by Dr. Ehrman, but it is interesting that this New Testament scholar and rather prolific writer does describe a group of early "Jewish Christians" who hold a set of beliefs and an "identity" substantially similar to modern Messianic Jews. Of course, their theology, according to Ehrman at least, is not consistent with Bilateral Ecclesiology in that they did not believe Gentiles could be disciples of the Jewish Messiah without becoming circumcised; that is, without converting to Judaism.

Interestingly enough, Ehrman says that Paul disagreed with the Ebionites and insisted...that the God of Jesus was the God of all people and that gentiles did not have to become Jewish to follow Jesus. Ehrman goes on to say that Paul believed that faith in the death and resurrection is what allowed a person to have right standing with God, not keeping the law, but that Paul believed this true for Jews and Gentiles alike. His writing paints a picture of two different viewpoints in the early Church (and there were many more, according to Christian scholars), one adhered to by the Jewish Ebionites who held to a very Torah-based, Jewish view of Jesus as Messiah, and the other by Paul and his followers, who believed (again, according to what is in Ehrman's book) that the law was no longer relevant to either Jewish or Gentile followers of Jesus.

Modern Messianic Judaism splits the difference by saying Paul believed (more or less) like the Ebionites as far as Jesus being the Messiah and that Jews should continue to live by the Torah, but that the Torah was not applicable or relevant to non-Jewish believers.

I don't want to get much more involved in the details since to do so would be to write a blog post as long as Ehrman's book. However, it is interesting to take a look at the New Testament through the eyes of a Gentile (and formerly Christian) New Testament scholar and see his take on those bits and pieces of information Messianic Judaism reorganizes as Bilateral Ecclesiology. Ehrman describes more of a "polar (opposite) ecclesiology" represented as two competing groups of Christians. In fact, based on the various writings and perspectives of the different "Christianities" existing in the first and into the second century C.E., there were a number of different theologies running around out there, some stating that Jesus was divine and others saying not.

I found some of Ehrman's opinions and findings consistent with what I previously read in Richard Rubenstein's When Jesus Became God. Both Ehrman and Rubenstein have concluded that much of what we understand as the theological foundation of the Christian church today, including the issues of Christ's divinity, the Trinity, the meaning of the death and resurrection, and other core beliefs, weren't solidified in the Church until the Nicene Council in the early 4th century C.E. According to both these men, there is no evidence of a widespread worship of Jesus as God prior to this period in history, nor a final selection of canon for the Bible. This allowed Gospels and letters we do not have in our modern Bibles to be considered, at least by some groups, to be just as authoritative as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (and the Gospel of John is thought to have been "developed" by a Gentile "johannine community" after the destruction of the Temple, to support a much less Jewish perception of Jesus than seen in the other Gospels).

I'm not saying I buy everything these authors are selling, but I do believe that the Bible is a document that must be read and considered as much through the lens of faith and the Spirit as through the mind and intellect. The value of reading the works of men like Ehrman and Rubenstein is that they have the ability to bend and stretch us in ways we wouldn't be willing to do for ourselves. They also present ideas and opinions you won't typically hear from the pulpit of a Church or the bema of a Messianic Synagogue.

At this point, I've finished Erhman's book and am ready to pursue my next "reading assignment". I consider what Ehrman wrote and what he teaches to be valuable, not because I always agree with his perspective, but because he allows us to remove what you might consider our "rose-colored glasses" so that we can see our Bible with all of its warts, scars, and wrinkles. This is what the Bible looks like when we view it through the lens of historical-critical analysis, which is the method Ehrman and other Bible scholars use to examine the Biblical texts.

Dr. Bart Ehrman and Jesus Interrupted is only one step in my walk of faith, but Ehrman and his writing is an important step. As people of faith, we must confront the teachings and logic of those people who do not share our faith (Dr. Ehrman was previously a Christian but now describes himself as an agnostic) or our view of the Bible. We can learn much from how he sees the Word of God and how he, and scholars like him (and Ehrman readily admits that most of his peers are Christians) explain where the Bible came from and what they think it means.

I will write one more blog dedicated to my experience reading Jesus Interrupted, specifically about Erhman's opinion of whether or not, in light of his understanding of the Bible, a person can continue to have a viable faith. His answer may surprise you.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.