I Get Interviewed On Freethinker Podcast About Mythicism, Atonement, and Gnosticism
- Inquiry Question: “If Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet predicting the soon end of the age, why the major emphasis on personal and societal growth and transformation?”
“meretrix pudicam:” “The harlot rebuketh the chaste.” (proverb referenced by Athenagoras of Athens)
Here is an abridged transcript of the interview:
Q1 – Why do you think that Luke goes against the standard model of the atonement (or penal substitutionary model)?
I tend to think Luke is actually the most conspicuous case of what is generally going on in Mark and Paul. Ehrman writes:
- It is easy to see Luke’s own distinctive view by considering what he has to say in the book of Acts, where the apostles give a number of speeches in order to convert others to the faith. What is striking is that in none of these instances (look, e.g., in chapters 3, 4, 13), do the apostles indicate that Jesus’ death brings atonement for sins. It is not that Jesus’ death is unimportant. It’s extremely important for Luke. But not as an atonement. Instead, Jesus death is what makes people realize their guilt before God (since he died even though he was innocent). Once people recognize their guilt, they turn to God in repentance, and then he forgives their sins. (Ehrman, 2017)
I think this is ultimately what we also see with Paul and Mark. Just as Luke has the transformation with the soldier saying of the crucified Jesus “This was an innocent man,” Mark has the soldier say “truly, this was God’s son,” which according to my reading is the soldier giving Jesus respect for voluntarily being wrongly horribly tortured and executed to show us our inner corrupt nature and inspire repentance – the enraged crowd, corrupt religious elite, and indifferent to justice Pilate in all of us who killed God’s specially chosen son who God sent to restore the Davidic throne (though God’s real plan was the death and resurrection). [1]
Penal substitution makes no sense as an interpretation of the cross: how does it serve justice to punish an innocent child in Africa for the crimes of a felon in Chicago? If something is obviously senseless to us, we should be wary about believing the original Christians ascribed to it. This is also part of the reason I disagree with the mythicism of Price, Carrier, etc, because if Christ was crucified in outer space by demons and was never on earth, the central point of the transformative nature of the cross evaporates. How does such a death inspire my self-realization and repentance?
Basically what I’m arguing is that I think Jesus’ words from the cross in Luke are really informative: “Father forgive them. They don’t know what they are doing (Luke 23:34).” So, from that quote, (i) the one point is that the issue is about forgiving sins rather than punishing them. And, (ii) the other point is that the people can’t see that they are sinful, so the veils over their eyes need to be lifted so they can truly see themselves for what they are and repent. [2] Forgiveness is powerless without repentance, like a wife who continually forgives a spouse who won’t stop cheating. This is basically what I’m trying to argue against the penal substitution interpretation of the cross that says Jesus died in our place to pay our sin debt.
Q2 – Do you think that the real Jesus would have approved of The Council of Jerusalem’s decision to take circumcision’s off the ‘to do list’ in order to become a Christian (even Paul had to think about what the Judaisers were saying and later meet with the Apostles ?
Q3- Do you think the Gnostic movement began in the 1st Century?
I’ll answer these together. Paul felt he had a gospel that was appropriated from the Jerusalem bunch (Corinthian Creed), but also was uniquely his. Paul writes:
- 25 Now to God who is able to strengthen you according to “my gospel” and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages 26 but is now disclosed and through the prophetic writings is made known to all the gentiles, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith— 27 to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever! Amen (Romans 16:25)
The “my gospel” of Paul seems to be that the Christ’s death awakened the law written on our hearts on our hearts, Jews and Gentiles (see Romans 2:14-15):
When gentiles, who do not possess the law, by nature do what the law requires, these, though not having the law, are a law to themselves. 15 They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, as their own conscience also bears witness
To understand this, we need to go back to Jeremiah. Jeremiah’s prophecy is to the Jews in exile. This was a prophecy to the Jews, but Paul expanded it with the law written on the hearts of the gentiles:
- 31 The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 32 It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. 33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will “write it on their hearts,” and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 No longer shall they teach one another or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more. (Jeremiah 31:33-34)
Notice how the last line isn’t about people being made to pay for their sins, but rather God forgiving. So, Paul took this idea but expanded it saying it was not just a prophecy for the Jews that Jesus fulfilled, but a covenant with all people who always had the law written on their hearts dormantly, so there was no need for the difficult transition for gentiles to become circumcised Jews to become Christians. The death of Christ awoke the law written on our hearts because we wrongfully killed him, and so inspired repentance – what Paul called a circumcision of the heart. This fits in nicely with the argument that Mark was using Paul (the idea of the transformation of the Roman soldier in Mark and Luke / for Carrier on Marks use of Paul see https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/15934).
For the other question, Gnosticism is the idea that besides other ways, salvation most properly comes through gnosis or secret knowledge. This is what Paul taught, that what was at issue was a mystery hidden since the beginning of the world (1 Cor. 4:1, Rom. 16:25,26). The mystery is that God wrote the law on the hearts of Jews and gentiles, and this was a true test of your heart because the crucifixion of God’s specially chosen one Jesus activated this inner divine spark, and so your response to Christ determined whether you had been crucified with Christ in that your heart was circumcised. This notion of special knowledge is also conspicuous in Mark who has Jesus say even the disciples didn’t completely have it:
- 11 And he said to them, “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything comes in parables, 12 in order that ‘they may indeed look but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand; so that they may not turn again and be forgiven.’ ” 13 And he said to them, “Do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand all the parables? (Mark 4:11-12)
I think this is good evidence that the salvation through the cross and resurrection was not even on Jesus’ radar during his lifetime, as the disciples wouldn’t have gotten violent at the arrest of Jesus if the crucifixion/resurrection was ever part of the plan. McGrath makes the point that the writers wouldn’t have invented the idea of the disciples being violent at the arrest. You see the writers inserting ideas about Jesus predicting his death and resurrection, which is fun apologetics but hardly historical.
I don’t think the historical Jesus would have thought of himself as anything other than a failed messianic claimant. The disciples wouldn’t have gotten violent at Jesus’ arrest if the plan was for Jesus to die. The cross/resurrection theology was invented after Jesus died, and I think Jeremiah 31:33-34 I mentioned before is probably a pretty good window into what James, Peter, and the Jerusalem bunch were advocating, and where Paul appropriated from them, yet diverged. Jesus fulfilled the Law by teaching it’s essence as love of God and neighbor, and redefined love to emphasize love of enemies and those who persecute you (Matt 5:43-48). This reversed the Greek notion of love with Achilles and the love/eros of endlessly seeking honor and glory. Love does not pursue so as to temporarily satisfy, but rather bestows value, so that even those some might find undesirable are loved: the ground of care for widow, orphan, stranger, and enemy. This is a law written on the heart, a transformed heart.
Of course, the idea of awakening the divine spark within through Christ’s death certainly resonates with Gnosticism. Great Gnostic scholar Elaine Pagels says:
- Abandon the search for God and the creation and other matters of a similar sort. Look for him by taking yourself as the starting point. Learn who it is within you who makes everything his own and says, “My God, my mind, my thought, my soul, my body.” Learn the sources of sorrow:, joy, love, hate . . . If you carefully investigate these matters you will find him in yourself
Ecclesiastes 3:11 declares that God has “set eternity in the hearts of men.” In Luke 17:21, Jesus proclaims, depending on how you translate it, that “The kingdom of God is within you,” and “all flesh will see the salvation of God.”
Regarding the death of Socrates and thanking Asclepius for the poison because of the transformative effect Socrates’ death would have on society (we no longer execute people for being a nuisance/gadfly), this phenomenon had led some (e.g., St. Ambrose) to conclude that Plato had actually heard the prophet Jeremiah when in Egypt: Conversely, Gmirkin argues for a late date for Jeremiah and that the Platonic/Socratic flavor of Jeremiah as the Deuteronomistic literary stereotype of the persecuted prophet in Jeremiah draws on Greek antecedents, notably the portrait of Socrates in Plato’s writings.
There is sometimes a dispute over what it means for Jesus to be a sacrifice. If we look at the Leviticus 16 background for the sacrifice imagery in the Letter to the Hebrews, we see there are two animals involved. The blood of the sacrificed animal doesn’t provide vicarious atonement, but rather sanctifies and allows God to dwell amongst a sinful people. On the other hand, the sins of the people are put on the other animal, the scapegoat, and it is released into the wilderness. Obviously, Jesus is the sacrificed animal, not the scapegoat. The idea with the law in people’s hearts is Christ’s sacrifice provides the occasion to awaken the law written on your heart and inspire repentance. Recall the passage from Jeremiah about the new covenant law being written on people’s hearts. *** God is powerless to forgive unless the people repent. Otherwise, it’s like a wife who is forever forgiving and giving second, third, etc chances to a cheating spouse who won’t stop cheating.
Similarly, James McGrath points out the gospel of John is interesting because when John says Jesus takes away the sin of the world, he doesn’t call him a scapegoat, but a lamb, specifically a Passover lamb. There doesn’t seem to be a connection between atonement for someone’s sins and the Passover sacrifice, but if we see it as a collective with sin enslaving the Jews in Egypt Christ’s death points to transformation from being in bondage/enslaved by sin. It has nothing to do with Christ dying in our place to pay God our sin debt – as though we had ever done anything (the vast majority of us) that warrants capital punishment! Lambs never take away sins as a purging sacrifice in the Jewish tradition. Perhaps what is being referred to is God’s prerogative to forgive completely apart from the sacrificial system. In John, Jesus is the ultimate Passover Lamb because he provides an exodus for the entire cosmos, but takes away sins in the sense that he represents God and God has that prerogative to forgive aside from sacrifice. In his upcoming book, prof Andrew Rillera is going to argue that phrase in John doesn’t occur in LXX but it appears with ἀφαιρέω. Rillera thinks it’s referring to the divine prerogative to eliminate sins w/o sacrifice in Exod 34:7, 9; Num 14:18; Isa 27:9; Sir 47:11.
ENDNOTES
[1] See: https://secularfrontier.infidels.org/2022/04/some-good-friday-reflections/
[2] There has been question by a few as to whether the forgiveness prayer of Luke 23:34 was originally in Luke, or rather if it was inserted by a later scribe, because it is missing from some ancient manuscripts. Ehrman provides a convincing argument that the prayer was authentic to Luke. Ehrman comments:
- The verse (found only in Luke) coincides perfectly with Luke’s own portrayal of Jesus as calm and in control in the face of his death, more concerned with the fate of others than himself; it shows Jesus in prayer, a distinctive emphasis of Luke, long recognized; the prayer itself embodies the motif of “ignorance”, a notion used throughout Luke-Acts to account for Jesus’ unlawful execution. (This preceding argument is meant to show that it is likely that Luke himself wrote the verse, that it did not originate with a scribe inserting it into the text.) see /bad-link/?goto=https://ehrmanblog.org/did-jesus-pray-father-forgive-them-from-the-cross/
For further analysis, see my two peer reviewed essays
(A) The Justified Lie by the Johannine Jesus in its Greco-Roman-Jewish Context: https://infidels.org/library/modern/john-macdonald-justified-lie/
And
(B) A Critique of the Penal Substitution Interpretation of the Cross of Christ:
Also, for the other 4 blog posts in this series, see
On Matthew and Isaiah 53:
And on The Law Written On Our Hearts:
https://secularfrontier.infidels.org/2022/05/the-law-written-on-our-hearts/
And on being Washed In The Blood of Christ:
https://secularfrontier.infidels.org/2022/05/washed-in-the-blood-of-christ/
On Christology and John the Baptist:
For further analysis, a discussion about these issues in relation to a critique of the Christ Myth Theory are being held at the Internet Infidels Discussion Board thread here:
https://iidb.org/threads/the-christ-myth-theory.26137/
Finally, for the connection between the cross of Paul and that of Mark, see this post on the Roman Soldier at the cross in Mark:
https://secularfrontier.infidels.org/2022/06/the-roman-soldier-at-the-cross-in-mark/
and
https://secularfrontier.infidels.org/2022/06/the-transformations-of-the-roman-soldiers-at-the-cross/
CONCLUSION:
AFTERWORD: https://secularfrontier.infidels.org/2022/06/afterword-the-christ-myth-theory/