Cults & Minor Religions

by Craig Branch –

Satan and his demonic forces are real beings who are hell bent on destroying the authority for the exclusive truth-claims of Christianity. He began in the garden with Eve and Adam when he questioned Eve, “Did God say?” and then proceeded to alter what God did say. When Satan tried to tempt Jesus in the wilderness, Jesus kept responding with Scripture, until Satan tried to misuse Scripture to tempt Jesus (Luke 4:1-13). More recently, Satan has prompted a host of serious movements to discredit the Bible along with the life and message of Christ and his disciples.

ATTACKS ON THE BIBLE
In an early issue of Areopagus Journal, I proposed that “the most crucial issue in apologetics and for Christianity as a whole is whether the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments are the true revelation of God.”¹ And I pointed out some of the more significant attacks on the authority of the Bible. To summarize, with the growing acceptance in the scientific community of Darwinian evolution since the early 1900’s, naturalistic materialism began to impact our culture. With this obviously came the dismissal of the revelation of divine creation in the Bible, not only in the culture at large but eventually in many Christian denominations and their seminaries.

Attacks on the authority of the Bible took the form of new methods of Bible study called the Higher Critical Method—developed mostly by leading German scholars such as Hegel, Kant, Schleiermacher, Tillich, Bauer, Bultmann, and more. Among the products of this method was the so-called Documentary Hypotheses (that included the claim that Moses was not the author of the Pentateuch). These critics saw the Bible as man’s pre-science attempt to make sense and purpose in life by adopting and manufacturing religious legends.

In more recent decades, these critical perspectives on the Bible have been brought down out of the rarified air of academic liberalism to common person on the street. This has occurred through the publication of many popular level books and magazine articles from mainstream sources. I have collected many such attacks and prepared apologetic responses on the liberal media’s efforts to undo Christianity. An example of these attacks includes the cover story on the December 20, 1993 edition of U.S. News & World Report, “Who was Jesus? A New Look at His Words and Deeds.” The article begins with this: “Using the tools of modern textural research, archeology and social science, scholars seek to reconstruct a portrait of the historical Jesus, unembellished by nearly 2000 years of church devotional tradition.” And this article was circulated during Christmas!

On Easter Sunday, April 8, 1996, all three of the most popular and prominent news magazines came out with front page attacks on the traditional claims of Christianity. The U.S News & World Report cover stated, “In Search of Jesus: Who Was He? New Appraisals of His Life and Meaning”; Newsweek’s cover read, “Rethinking the Resurrection: A New Debate About the Risen Christ”; and Time magazine’s cover announced, “The Search for Jesus: Some Scholars are Debunking the Gospels…What are Christians to Believe?”

The stories in these magazines all focused on the then new group of scholars affiliated with the infamous Jesus Seminar, especially Robert Funk, Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan. The overwhelming majority of space was given to these scholars, and often the few conservative responses were edited to make it appear that they too are skeptical of the accuracy of the Bible’s accounts or authorship.

Think about this. These three magazines depend on sales and profit for their existence. So did they not take a huge risk of possibly infuriating the 70% of Americans who claim to be Christians by publishing these overt attacks on the Christian faith on Easter Sunday!? Well, unfortunately, they knew where the Church culture was then and now. For example, according to a 2011 Gallop poll, only 30% of Americans interpret the Bible literally. In 1980, that figure was 40%. A 2007 Harris Poll showed only 34% believe the Bible is the actual “Word of God.” In 2009 Barna research showed that the difference between the younger generation and older generation on the Bible’s accuracy is significantly lower. Only 30% of the 18-25 generation strongly believe the Bible is totally accurate compared to 39% of the Busters (26-44), 46% of the Boomers (45-63), and 58% of the Elders (64 plus).

And the onslaught from the secular media continues. U.S. News & World Report has begun an annual Collector’s Edition, and many of these (2004, 2005, 2008, 2009,
2012) are focused on trying to dispel the “Myth of Christianity.” Their front page titles include “Secrets of Christianity: the Real Jesus”; “The Lost Gospels”, and “Secrets of the Bible.” The following quotes from these issues provide the gist of the objectives of these editions:

“Despite early and relatively strong traditions supporting those apostolic connections, most biblical scholars today –from liberal skeptics to conservative traditionalists- agree that there is too little direct evidence to say with certainty that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wrote the
gospels that bear their name.”,²

“During the past six decades, crucial discoveries of ancient and scientific research and new archeological finds have helped to reorient the thinking
about a time that once appeared to be fixed in stone forever.”³

This repeated message in popular material has created a growing market for books in the same genre. Where before these kinds of books had a very limited readership, now many are making the best-seller lists. One of the earlier books was one by retired Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong, Rescuing the Bible From Fundamentalism (1991). But since then there have been many more. For example Robert Funk, head of the Jesus Seminar, wrote The Five Gospels (1993) and Honest to Jesus (1996). Dan Brown’s wildly popular The Da Vinci Code (book and movie) claimed to be based on factual, accurate (and hidden) history about the origins of Christianity. This
book has opened the door for more exposure to older books like Elaine Pagels’s The Gnostic Gospels, which claims that a set of new age or Gnostic gospels, like the Gospel of Thomas, were early texts that were suppressed in power plays by a group that overpowered the Gnostic “Christians” in the development of the Canon of Scripture. All of these currents began to build a tsunami of doubt on the foundations of the Christian faith.

Fortunately, there have been many scholarly responses to the Jesus Seminar and these other skeptical attacks that point out both their bias and their fatal flaws (See the
list of recommended resources on page 6).

LOST CHRISTIANITIES?
The main focus in this issue of the journal picks up on another recent challenge to biblical authority. It has to do with the claim that there were conflicting and competing groups of early Christians, all with their own scriptures and their own perspective on the identity and message of Jesus. According to this view, these groups included the “orthodox” camp that eventually won out in the struggle to define Christianity, the Gnostics that produced the so-called Gnostic Gospels, and the Ebionites, an early Jewish form of Christianity.

The newest champion of this claim is Bart Ehrman, head of the Religion Department at the University of North Carolina. The liberal media and skeptical groups strongly promote Ehrman partly because of his personal history. Ehrman was formerly an evangelical, having graduated from the conservative Moody Bible Institute and earning a degree at conservative Wheaton College before earning his doctorate at the very liberal Princeton Theological Seminary. He claims now to be an agnostic.

Because of his defection from conservative, historical Christianity, and his academic credentials, the liberal media has adorned him with many platforms, especially as he produces book after book attempting to undermine the faith.4  Ehrman has appeared regularly on NPR, John Stewart’s the Daily Show, National Geographic, and in the Washington Post, USA Today, N.Y. Times, Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, CNN, and the Discovery Channel.

Ehrman claims that, besides our traditional New Testament books, there were many “biblical” letters and Gospels, all claiming apostolic authority, written during the same
time-frame. He further argues that the various movements or communities that produced these divergent books were all claiming historical orthodoxy.

This journal’s contributors correct these false claims. Dr. Robert Yarborough, New Testament professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, begins with “Was Orthodoxy
an Historical Invention?” He presents a good overview of the debated issue saying that the writings of Walter Bauer and his pupil Bart Ehrman have convinced many “that Christianity before the fourth century was just a jumbled mass of diverse and warring factions, with little to no doctrinal commonality that could claim historical continuity with Jesus and the apostles.” Dr. Yarborough goes on to establish the basis for orthodoxy, referring the reader to numerous thorough and scholarly books refuting the skeptics’ error-ridden claims, and makes a compelling empirical case for the early historicity and validity of the four Gospels, early orthodoxy, and the later arrival
of the heretical movements.

Our second article is “What Did the Early Christians Believe? An Examination of Claims There Was No Early Christian Orthodoxy,” by Dr. Darrell Bock, Research Professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. Dr. Bock responds to the distortions about the early collection of Biblical texts, and gives significant detail on the timing and acceptance of the true gospels and the lateness and distortion of the false (missing) gospels.

Lastly, Robert Bowman, Research Director of the Institute for Religious Research, contributes, “Who Were the Ebionites and the Gnostics?” Bowman traces the history and beliefs of these early heresies in contrast with true historical Christianity.

Craig Branch is the director of the Apologetics Resource Center, Birmingham, Alabama.

Notes
1 See http://www.arcapologetics.org/veritas/veritas-2002-01.htm .
2“Who wrote the Bible?,” U.S. News & World Report, Mystery’s of Faith (February 3, 2004), 46.
3“A Need to Know Him,” U.S. News & World Report: The Real Jesus (February 7, 2012), 41.
4 Among Ehrman’s books are Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (New York: Harper One, 2007); Lost Christianities: The
Battles for Scripture and the Faiths we Never Knew (Oxford University, 2005); Lost Scriptures: Books That Did Not Become the New Testament (Oxford University,
2005); and The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot: Betrayer and Betrayed Reconsidered (Oxford University, 2008).

(First published in Areopagus Journal Vol. 12 No. 1 – Lost Christianities?)