I know,
I know. It’s a shocking title, at least
for me. However, that was not my
intention. This is a confession—I really
do pray for Bart Ehrman. If you are not
sure who Bart Ehrman is, you can find out more about him on his personal website or his faculty profile
page. In short, Dr. Ehrman grew up in a
conservative Christian environment and pursued a calling to ministry and
theological scholarship. However, after
graduating from the prestigious, conservative, evangelical Wheaton College and attending
the equally prestigious although more mainline and liberal Princeton Seminary,
Ehrman suffered a crisis of faith where he essentially rejected the Christian
faith of his youth and embraced a form of quasi-agnosticism. I say quasi-agnosticism because his belief system
is really hard to categorize classically.
He believes in God and accepts that Christ lived on earth; however he
has rejected the Christian Church as the continuation of Christ’s mission. Through his writing, he openly and ferociously
criticizes the church for reinterpreting Jesus for political gain, for forging
canonical works, and for causing worldwide religious oppression. Just from this alone, some of you may
understand why I pray for him.
However,
none of the above is why I pray for him.
I pray for him for another reason—two, in fact. First, I am thankful for Bart Ehrman, and
others like Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan who are fellow members in the “Jesus
Seminar” movement with Ehrman, because they compel me to study. Paul instructed Timothy to study diligently
so that he could proclaim the truth to those seeking it (2 Timothy 2:15). In a world that stands for nothing and
therefore falls for anything, I must continually evaluate my theology in light
of the Bible and the traditions of Christianity (both accepted and unaccepted). Therefore, when asked, I can give an answer
for what I believe (1 Peter 3:15-16). I
thank God for Bart Ehrman because he compels me to be a better student of
Scripture and history.
Second,
I pray for Bart Ehrman because I can see me in him. I agree with Tom Long when he suggests that
Ehrman, in response to Ehrman’s book God’s
Problem, “misses God.”[1] Like Long, I think Ehrman wants to believe in
God and embrace the Christian faith. He certainly
spends his life in the Christian realm. Yet
he wants a Christian faith that presents God to him in a way that does not
insult his intelligence. To be honest, I
resonate deeply with this. I, too, have quietly
struggled long and hard with my faith, with how I understand God and
faith. I wonder what I would find if I really
plumbed the depths of my theology, if I listened to the “deep that calls to
deep” (Psalm 42:7). What would I find? Would it frighten me? Would I like what I find? Maybe there is nothing behind the curtain
after all. Unlike Ehrman, I am not
afraid of rejecting my faith in God. It means
too much to me. And this is why I pray
for Bart Ehrman—because I do hope he will, someday and in his own way, find his
way back home to the God who created him to be so passionately intelligent.
[1]Thomas G. Long, What Shall We Say? Evil, Suffering, and the
Crisis of Faith (Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2011), 27.
