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Christian History

The murder of James Foley, ISIS, and Religions of Peace

by in Christian History, Current Events

While discussing the news of the murder of journalist James Foley at the hands of ISIS, a friend of mine posed to me the question: “What does it say about your religion when you have to kill people who won’t convert?”

If the religion in question is Islam, then Foley’s murder says virtually nothing about Muslim belief. The death of Foley is deplorable. The actions of ISIS are despicable. But atrocities committed by ISIS are no more representative of Muslim belief than the actions of extremist Christians are representative of mainstream Christianity.

What extremist Christians? Surely Christians have never killed those who wouldn’t convert? Surely Christians would never slaughter men, women and children in the name of their faith?

Before we conflate the extremism of ISIS with the entire religion of Islam, let’s keep in mind the checkered history of Christianity.

In The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account, the sixteenth century Spanish historian and priest Bartolomé de Las Casas describes the genocide inflicted by the Christian conquistadors upon the native peoples of Haiti and Cuba (warning, descriptions of graphic violence):
And the Christians, with their horses and swords and pikes began to carry out massacres and strange cruelties against them. They attacked the towns and spared neither the children nor the aged nor pregnant women nor women in childbed, not only stabbing them and dismembering them but cutting them to pieces as if… [Read more…] about The murder of James Foley, ISIS, and Religions of Peace

Baptist pastor on why the Bible supports LGBT equality

by Chuck Queen in Christian History, Christian Issues, LGBT

Of the handful of biblical texts quoted by opponents of same-sex marriage Romans 1:26-27 is the one most often referenced:
For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.
The problem with turning Paul into an anti-gay proponent is that Paul, along with most ancient moralists, would have regarded same-sex relations as an expression of excessive or exploitative sexual behavior by heterosexuals. It is not likely that he would have had any understanding at all of same-sex attraction as a sexual orientation set early in life.

For Paul to have known about sexual orientation is about as likely as for him to have known about atoms and electrons. He would have been totally unaware of the distinction between sexual orientation, over which one has no choice, and sexual behavior, over which one does. Paul (and everyone else in his day) most likely believed that everyone was straight. The idea of sexual orientation or the possibility of same-sex committed relationships were not even on his radar.

On the basis of Romans 1:26-27 it is common for anti-gay proponents to argue that same-sex marriage denies the natural order. This is such a weak and misguided argument. It certainly sounds lame when… [Read more…] about Baptist pastor on why the Bible supports LGBT equality

‘Good’ Demons Vs. ‘Bad’ Angels

by Don M. Burrows in Christian History

I’m a huge fan of the CW show Supernatural. In fact, one could write an entire series of posts on the theological masterpiece it is for exploring the human condition even amidst its fantastical plots.

For those who are unaware, the show focuses on two brothers who hunt supernatural monsters, though the majority of seasons have been preoccupied with the battles between demons and angels, apocalypses, and the rivalries of Lucifer and his archangel brothers. For anyone invested in Christian mythology and interested in the explorations of good and evil, the existence or absence of God, or the postmodern bending of moral absolutes, the show is a must.

So when my dissertation recently afforded me the chance to write a lengthy footnote on ancient demonology, I was (super)naturally stoked. My graduate minor is in religious studies, so any chance to intersect it with my major research interest (the ancient novel – and they’re more related than some may think) is met with atypical enthusiasm at this stage in the writing game.

In the show Supernatural, demons are said to be the damned souls of humans who have returned to earth from Hell. Now, I don’t actually believe in that sort of thing, but I don’t “believe” in talking dragons or emotional robots either, so bear with me.

For most of us raised in traditional Christian mythology, this probably screams as a sort of error. We all know, after all, that demons are of course the fallen angels who rebelled with… [Read more…] about ‘Good’ Demons Vs. ‘Bad’ Angels

Black Saturday: Satan, Hades, and the Beginnings of Hell

by Don M. Burrows in Christian History

Oft forgotten amid the Holy Week observances of Palm Sunday, Maundy-Thursday, Good Friday and then Easter is Holy Saturday, or Black Saturday, the day Jesus supposedly lay in the tomb after his crucifixion on Friday and prior to his resurrection on Sunday.

But this day worked on the imagination of early Christians in fantastic ways. In the Apostles’ Creed is the statement that Jesus “descended into Hell” as it is often translated into English. But in the Greek it is κατελθόντα εἰς τὰ κατώτατα, or “going down into the lowermost parts,” and in Latin something almost identical, descendit ad inferos, or “he descended to the lower ones/places.” This is not necessarily Hell, because such a concept was not fully worked out yet. It was rather the netherworld or underworld of Greco-Roman mythology, the conception of which would eventually provide us with the imagery most commonly associated with Hell.

The most fascinating account of Jesus going down to the underworld has been handed down in the Gospel of Nicodemus, an apocryphal work that includes the Acts of Pilate (yes, that Pilate, whose ahistorical contrition in the Gospels is later elaborated to the point that he becomes canonized in some Christian sects) and Christ’s Descent into Hell. The older, out-of-copyright translation of Nicodemus by M.R. James is available in many places online. But the more updated and much less baroque translation by J.K. Elliot is far superior.

Probably… [Read more…] about Black Saturday: Satan, Hades, and the Beginnings of Hell

The Earliest Picture of Jesus on the Cross

by in Christian History

As we remember the Crucifixion today, it’s important to also remember the extraordinary tradition of our Christian faith, and the centrality of Christ’s death and resurrection to Christians throughout history.

We can glimpse a bit of the historical importance of the crucifixion through early Christian depictions of that event. The absolute earliest visual depictions of Jesus’s crucifixion exist in the form of a symbol called the staurogram.

This is a staurogram:

The symbol was used by early New Testament scribes when writing about Christ’s death: within the text itself, they substituted the staurogram in place of the words “cross” and “crucifixion.”

The monogram comprises two letters from the Greek word stauros, meaning “cross.” In Greek that word looks like this:

You take from that word the letter T (that is, the tau), and the letter P (the rho), combine them, and you have the staurogram—which is also a pictogram of a person on a cross. Brilliant, no?

Though the tau-rho symbol was used as an abbreviation prior to Christianity, Christian scribes appropriated it for their own needs and imbued it with theological significance, using it in late 2nd- and early 3rd-century New Testament manuscripts such as P45, P66, and P75.

You can see the staurogram in this image of John 19:15-20, from the manuscript P66. I’ve highlighted the three spots on this page of the manuscript—much of which, as you can see, is missing—where it… [Read more…] about The Earliest Picture of Jesus on the Cross

The Methodists, slavery, and homosexuality: is history repeating itself?

by Don M. Burrows in Christian History

I grew up United Methodist. I was baptized and confirmed United Methodist, and remained a Methodist until my early adulthood, when I attended the Disciples of Christ briefly before joining my current denomination (the United Church of Christ).

One of the main reasons I have not considered rejoining the UMC in recent years is because of its stance on GLBT matters: in short, the current (2012) Book of Discipline states that… [Read more…] about The Methodists, slavery, and homosexuality: is history repeating itself?

When Jesus and Satan shared a name

by in Christian History

Halloween is gone till next year.

Speaking of the devil, did you ever wonder why he’s named Lucifer? There are two competing theories about that:

Theory #1: Lucifer is not the name of the devil.
Isa­iah 14:12 describes the fall of a Baby­lon­ian king (How you have fallen from heaven, / morning star, son of the dawn! / You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations!) The original Hebrew word used for “morning star” there is הֵילֵל (helel). When, in 400 A.D., Jerome translated the Bible into his masterful Latin-language Vul­gate edition, he translated helel into lucifer, a Latin word meaning “the morning-star; the planet Venus.” Later, early Eng­lish trans­la­tions, such as the King James Version, kept the word lucifer right where Jerome had it—only this time they capitalized it, transforming it into a proper name. So then we got, How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! …

Here’s where it gets interesting. In the Vulgate, the word lucifer appears again. This time it’s in 2 Peter 1:19, where it is clearly denotes Jesus. Well, the KJV translators didn’t want to do there with that word what they had done with it back in Isaiah—they didn’t want to call Jesus Lucifer. So for they reverted back to the original translation of the word, and in 2 Peter 1:19 the world was given “… until the day dawns and the morning star… [Read more…] about When Jesus and Satan shared a name

Making sense of … well, God destroying the world

by in Christian History

Let’s briefly take a look at one of the knottiest textual problems in the New Testament: 2 Peter 3:10.

For the purposes of this discussion, we’ll set aside issues of canonicity (hotly-contested) and authorship (not Peter) and simply focus on the text of this single verse.

The NIV renders 3:10 as:
But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.
For this same text the NASB reads:
But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up.
As you can see, the final verb differs in each translation. Why? Because the NIV’s “laid bare” is a translation of the Greek εὑρεθήσεται, which literally means “will be found,” while the NASB is translating κατακαήσεται, which literally means “will be burned up.” This isn’t a subtle difference: it’s a matter of two completely different words with completely different meanings. So where do those words come from?

Many of our earliest and best Greek manuscripts, including Codex Sinaiticus (א‎, 4th c.), Codex Vaticanus (B, 4th c.), Codex Mosquensis (Kap, 9th c.) and Codex Porphyrianus (Papr, 9thc.) read “εὑρεθήσεται” — “will be found.”

But another manuscript tradition, which includes Codex Alexandrinus (A 5th c.), 048 (5th c.), 049… [Read more…] about Making sense of … well, God destroying the world

The Spirit vs. the Letter: Biblicalism and Conscience

by Don M. Burrows in Christian History

Imagine a contentious public issue, rending not only America, but American Christendom, in two. In this battle are two sides: one which maintains and asserts a literal, straightforward reading of the Bible to maintain its position, the other which argues that its side is supported by the spirit, even if sometimes not the letter, of the Bible.

If what comes to mind is America’s continuing culture wars over gender and sexuality, and how the law and the church should approach them, my guess is you’re not alone. According to public polling, the issue of acceptance for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals is trending toward inclusion, and many mainline Protestant denominations are reflecting this movement.… [Read more…] about The Spirit vs. the Letter: Biblicalism and Conscience