A major rupture occurs in the Christian faith regarding the divinity of Jesus ~ virgin birth, resurrection, ascension and the like ~ and whether belief in those supernatural events is mandatory to be a “Christian.” Or, can you still be a “Christian” without adopting a literal interpretation of events described in the Bible?
Growing up in Kansas in the 1950s, best-selling author and scholar Bart Ehrman was a born-again Christian who went off to college to study Scripture in detail and thus reinforce his already-strong faith. But the more he studied the historical reality of the Bible, the more disenchanted he became. He eventually wrote the influential 2005 Misquoting Jesus and now his Jesus Interrupted is hitting the best-seller list.
Salon.com recently interviewed Ehrman on his spiritual pilgrimage and the implications of his studies. Here are a couple of questions and answers from that interview. If the topic interests you, I suggest reading the entire interview.
Q: I take your point that there are many sophisticated Christians who don't believe that everything in the Bible is literally true. And yet, in order to be a Christian, one has to subscribe to the fundamental tenets that are in the Bible. That's not really an option, is it?Well, you know, part of it comes down to a debate over what really is a Christian. A lot of sophisticated Christian thinkers, theologians and biblical scholars would say that you shouldn't have an essentialist understanding of Christianity. You can't just define Christianity and then gauge whether somebody is that or not. I have friends who don't believe that Jesus was physically raised from the dead. But they still call themselves Christian, and they still believe Jesus is divine. They have a different understanding of what it means to be Christian from an evangelical understanding of what it means to be Christian.Q: But isn't that view not only different from the evangelical one but outside mainstream Christian beliefs?
It probably is, although people who hold this claim would say that it's also the view of the early Christians. And so they would claim some historical continuity with the earliest forms of Christian belief. Christianity is just a widely diverse phenomenon. That's why I wrote the last chapter in the book, "Is Faith Possible?" I'm against the idea of thinking that Christianity is just one thing and that you have to toe the line or else you can't be a Christian anymore. I want people to feel free to accept the historical conclusions that scholars have come to, and not feel like they can't accept these because they can't be Christians.
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