The Nazi War on Christmas.

I dove into reading scholarly books because of the atheist claims that "Hitler was a Catholic" or "Hitler was a Christian." After reading Richard Stegman-Gall's "Holy Reich" and Susan Heschel's "The Aryan Jesus" and Kevin Spicer's "Resisting the Third Reich" and Hubert Wolf's "Pope and Devil" and Derek Hastings' "Catholicism and the Roots of Nazism.", my conclusion is that the truth is far more complicated and far more interesting.

Hitler was a political opportunist who was willing to adopt any pose necessary to advance his true mission - his god, as it were - namely, his vision of the destiny of hte German people and his role in that destiny.  Nazism started out in Catholic Bavaria as a political party within the cultural and religious Catholicism of the region.  This phase lasted for only a few years - perhaps three to five prior to the Munich Putsch.  Shortly before, the putsch, Hitler decided that his future lay in breaking out of the minority status that being a "Catholic" regional party would consign the National Socialists to, and he formed an alliance with arch-anti-Catholic Erich Ludendorff and emerged onto the national stage. 

From that point on, Nazism decisively broke with the traces of political Catholicism. Priests were no longer welcome in the Nazi party, Jesuits and "political Catholicism" were linked into a triumverate of all things that were not German, including Jews and Marxists, and the Nazis turned to Protestantism as the sect it favored.  Hitler identified Luther and Frederich the Great of Prussia as model heroes of the German nation, something which appealed to Protestants and was a bete noir to Catholics. Protestant pastors and devout Protestants joined the Nazi party in droves.  On the other hand, the Catholics who joined were lapsed Catholics, such Himmler and Hitler himself.

The broad logic of this was that Protestantism in Germany was inherently nationalistic in a way that Catholicism with its ultramontane allegiance to an Italian Pope could never be. A Nazi party member could be a pious Protestant in a way that he couldn't be a devout Catholic.  Thus, Hermann Goering could claim to be a "good Lutheran" up to the time of his death; Catholics like Himmler, on the other hand, apostized early in their career, and sought more outre religious options, like paganism or occultism or other weird made-up beliefs.

The "Protestant option" came with a price, and that price was remodeling Protestantism into a bizarre version of Christianity as if it had been envisioned by a bad science fiction writer. Thus, the Nazi "German Christian" version of Protestantism stripped the Old Testament out of the Bible, envisioned Jesus as the first Anti-Semitic warrior against the Jews, demanded that Christians of Jewish descent be barred from being pastors and segregated within the local churches, and re-wrote Christian Hymns.

The stripping of the Old Testament from the canon sparked the revolt of Confessing Church, led by of Martin Niemoller, who was a member of the Nazi party, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was not.

Eventually, Hitler and the Nazis, particularly the evil atheist Martin Bormann decided Martin Bormann decided that the Protestant option, even mediated through an "L. Ron Hubbard-like" fantasy filter was too much trouble.  After the war, all of the Christian sects would be broken by the policies that were being implemented against Catholicism.

So, was Hitler a Catholic?  Was he a Christian?  The answer would seem to be: What year are you talkng about? And, it depends on what you mean by Christian.

The clear arc of the Nazi program was anti-Christian insofar as Christianity was an institution or belief system that could oppose the totalizing program of National Socialism.  If it could be modified, castrated, mutated and then incorporated into Nazism, then they were "Christians" of the religion they invented.  If not, they weren't.

But Christianity isn't something that can be re-invented like that.  It has a tradition, history and core text.  In Christ, there is no gentile or Jew, said Paul.  That the Nazis got as far as they did is amazing, but there were limits after which Christianity was not Christian, and those limits had been reached in the early '30s.

Modern atheists like the late Christopher Hitchens can make the claim that the Nazis were Christian, but that mistake was not made by Christians of the period.  No Pasarin points out that Christians of the period lived through a "War on Christmas" that was like no other:

The alleged link between Christianity and Nazism is quickly debunked by a few seconds' thought. Think about it, indeed: how many times, in how many World War II books, in how many documentaries with 1940s footage, have you seen pictures — whether fake poses deliberately prepared for propaganda purposes or simply "innocent", matter-of-fact news shots — of Adolf Hitler or any high-level Nazi official in silent (Christian or other) prayer? Hands joined and/or eyes closed with head down?

How many times have you seen photos of Hitler, Himmler, Göring, Goebbels, or any SS member seated in a pew or even simply appearing inside a church?

That's right, it's like snapshots, or films, of ostriches sticking their necks in the sand: there ain't any.

Pictures of Nazis honoring traditional religion and religious traditions simply do not seem to exist.

(Unless, of course, the presence of the high-level Nazi inside or in front of a given church has nothing to do with religion per se. For instance, there may exist photos of der Führer in front of the Sacré-Cœur cathedral — just like when he poses at the Trocadéro with the Eiffel Tower in the background — but that is as a tourist visiting a foreign capital or, rather, as a war leader visiting a defeated city.)

Now, should the need for more confirmation really exist, we have the 75 Years Ago section in the International Herald Tribune.

It is edifying — to say the least.

1937 — ‘Neo-Pagans’ Target Carols

BERLIN — De-Christianization of famous German Christmas hymns, such as “Silent Night, Holy Night,” is the outstanding contribution to the current holiday season of the rapidly spreading German faith movement or “religion” of National Socialism. In the new versions of the old songs reference to Nazi tenets of race, blood and soil replace familiar words concerning Christ, Child and the like. The accepted English translation of Mohr’s “Silent Night,” stanza three lines two and three is: “The Son of God loves pure light, radiant beams from thy Holy faith.” Equivalent lines in the Nazified version are “German blood, O how laugh the lips of thy children, blessed with joy.”

 

Of course, another reason a Nazi leader might meet with a religious leader might be for reasons of diplomacy with an ally — but again, no pictures seem to exist with any Catholic priest or Protestant preacher, German or foreign
 

I think a fair point to thinking about history is to ask, "what did the people living at the time think was happening?"  It seems apparent that outside observers, like William Shirer, saw paganism in Nazism, not Christianity.

Another dose of that Old-Time Religion...

...coupled with another massive dose of historical ignorance.

Last seen comparing Thomas Aquinas and all Christians prior to 1517 to children, C. Michael Patton offers his flock the final word on "The Rise of the Roman Catholic Church."

Here is what I taught last Tuesday at the Credo House.

In order to be a good Protestant, you must be a good anti-Catholic. I am not Catholic. I am Protestant. There are many doctrines of the Roman Catholic church that I am against, but there are many things that I appreciate about them.

Both Protestants and Roman Catholics have our lineage in the catholic church. Yes, I just said that. I am catholic, but not Roman Catholic. I’ve got some info for you: If you are a Christian, you are catholic too. This differentiation between catholic and Roman Catholic is part of a solid Protestant polemic against Roman Catholicism. It normally drives Roman Catholic apologists crazy, since it undermines their belief that they are the one true church. But it is true; Protestants are catholic Christians, but not Roman Catholic Christians. The word “catholic” was used very early to describe the church. It simply meant “universal,” describing the church’s universality. The church is not exclusive to Gentiles, Jews, Greeks, Romans, those in the East, or those in the West. The church that Christ built is universal, or “catholic.”

However, there was an institutional arm of the catholic church that eventually became known as the Roman Catholic church, complete with its own hierarchy, doctrines, and liturgical distinctives. The type of institutionalization that eventually characterized the Roman Catholic church is one of the major issues the Protestants battled against, believing that it had corrupted the catholic church to the core, even obscuring the Gospel itself. We now call it the Roman Catholic church due to its identification with the “seat of Rome.” This seat, according to the Roman Catholics, is the perpetual seat of ultimate authority that Peter passed on. It is known today as the papacy, which is the office of the Pope. The Pope sits in the seat of Rome, having the infallible authority to guide and direct the church in matters of faith and practice. He, along with the magisterium, form the institution and can, through “ordinary” or “extraordinary” means, intervene in church life and doctrine in a binding way. If a heresy arises in the church, the institution can condemn it, thus securing the faith of the church. Intervention rarely takes place (though this is debated), but this infallible safeguard can theoretically step in at any time and protect the church from corruption.

Patton offers a singularly non-historical recitation of history. He offers no names, no dates, no development of concepts, although he does illustrate his points iwth stick figure drawings, which are de rigeur if you are going to learn the Big Thoughts.

For example, Patton authoritatively tells his readers that the Roman Catholic Church grew out of the institutional arm of the catholic church. As if the cathedrals and bishops and priests just walked off one day leaving their congregations behind.

When did this happen?

Well, it didn't, obviously. The Catholic Church was the people and the bishops. St. Ignatius in 120 AD recognized this when he counseled Christians that they were to stay with their bishops. St. Clement understood this when he explained in the 80s or 90s that the apostles had appointed successors in order to prevent schism:

Chapter 44. The Ordinances of the Apostles, that There Might Be No Contention Respecting the Priestly Office.

Our apostles also knew, through our Lord Jesus Christ, that there would be strife on account of the office of the episcopate. For this reason, therefore, inasmuch as they had obtained a perfect fore-knowledge of this, they appointed those [ministers] already mentioned, and afterwards gave instructions, that when these should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed them in their ministry. We are of opinion, therefore, that those appointed by them, or afterwards by other eminent men, with the consent of the whole church, and who have blamelessly served the flock of Christ, in a humble, peaceable, and disinterested spirit, and have for a long time possessed the good opinion of all, cannot be justly dismissed from the ministry. For our sin will not be small, if we eject from the episcopate those who have blamelessly and holily fulfilled its duties. Blessed are those presbyters who, having finished their course before now, have obtained a fruitful and perfect departure [from this world]; for they have no fear lest any one deprive them of the place now appointed them. But we see that you have removed some men of excellent behaviour from the ministry, which they fulfilled blamelessly and with honour.

But what did he know? He just knew the apostles. He didn't have the benefit of the internet.

Patton's refusal to deal with dates and his mythmaking is his way of dealing with history. He incorporates both the "historical amnesia" technique and the "infantilization" technique; the latter he does explicitly when he explains that the Catholic Church developed its idea of the magisterium in order to protect its members from the Bible and its Great Big Threatening Ideas:

This is where history takes an interesting and definitive turn. It is not unlike our desire to protect our children. There are two extremes. One extreme locks the children up in the house and thows away the key in order to protect them from all harm (like I am tempted to do!). Nothing wrong with the intentions here. The other extreme lets their children run wild, believing they have to learn the ways of the world in order to learn to protect themselves. Again, intentions good. As the church began to face more and more dangers, as doctrine was continually manipulated, as teachings that did not fall in line with Scripture or the church’s historic interpretation of Scripture were put forth, the church began to institutionalize itself. In other words, we brought all the children in the house and locked the door.

So, there you are. Once again, Patton views all Christians - except maybe that weirdly anonymous and non-existent group who didn't make up the "institutional arm" of the catholic church - as children who are scared of independent thought, God, rainbows and puppies.

*Sheesh*

How do Protestants manage to ignore 1,500 years of history?

They do what Mark Driscoll does in this post where he drains St. Patrick of any residual Catholicism and makes him sound like your typical 21st Century mega-church pastor, i.e,. like Mark Driscoll.

Driscoll writes:

Saint Patrick is technically not a saint, as he was never canonized by the Roman Catholic Church. Additionally, Patrick was not actually Irish. Rather, he was an Englishman and a Roman citizen, who spoke Latin and a bit of Welsh.

Nonsense. St. Patrick is "technically" a saint and he was "technically" canonized inasmuch as he is on the Roman calendar of feast days, which is what it means to be "canonized."

Driscoll might be confusing the modern system for centralized determinations of canonization with the fact that in the Fifth Century determinations about holiness were decided more locally. If so, he needs to make that explicit, rather than appealing to the anti-Catholic phobia of his readership with half-truth.

Driscoll also writes:

Upon returning home, Patrick enrolled in seminary and was eventually commissioned as a pastor. Some years later, God spoke to Patrick in a dream, commanding him to return to Ireland to preach the gospel and plant churches for the pagans who lived there.

Right, "commissioned as a pastor."

Or more accurately, "ordained as a priest" by a Catholic bishop.

Driscoll writes:

The Roman Catholic Church had given up on converting such “barbarians,” who were deemed beyond hope.

Nonsense and hypocrisy.

Unlike Protestantism, which until the mid-nineteenth century universally held that the "Great Commission" did not pertain to the post-apostolic age (See e.g., McGrath's, Christianity's Dangerous Idea), Catholicism has always held that the church had an obligation to preach to the ends of the Earth.

Also, Patrick was sent into Ireland to become the first bishop with the support and at the orders of his Catholic superiors, and he was not the first Catholic missionary to Ireland:

Patrick was not necessarily the first missionary to Ireland. His main ambition was to become Ireland's first Bishop, but his monastic superiors did not believe he was adequately qualified for the position and passed him over in favor of Palladius. Palladius' mission lasted only a short time due to the fierce opposition of a Wicklow chieftain and abandoned the sacred enterprise after about a year.

It was Germanus who commended Patrick to Pope Celestine. It was only shortly before his death that Celestine gave this mission to Patrick and on that occasion bestowed on him many relics and other spiritual gifts, and gave him the name "Patercius" or "Patricius". Patrick, returning from Rome, received the tidings of the death of Palladius, and traveled to the nearby city of Turin where he received episcopal consecration at the hands of its great bishop, St. Maximus. He quickly hastened to Auxerre to make preparations for the Irish mission.

Driscoll concludes:

Patrick gave his life to the people who had enslaved him, until he died at 77 years of age. He had seen untold thousands of people convert, as between 30-40 of the 150 tribes had become substantially Christian. He trained 1000 pastors, planted 700 churches, and was the first noted person in history to take a strong public stand against slavery.

"Trained pastors" and "planted churches."

Well, I guess Driscoll has to speak in the vernacular of his readership, who might become disturbed if they read "ordained priests" and "established Catholic churches."

The serious point is that this is the technique that permits modern, historically ignorant people to retroject their own assumptions and culture back into the past. This is the technique that permits "bible Christians" to look back to First Century Judeah and see nothing more surprising than what they would expect to see in their Clovis mega-church.

But the past is a different country. The past should be different, it ought to be unsettling, and uncomfortable, and jarring. It ought to make us look at our own time from a different perspective. Just as we learn, and thereby grow, by being exposed to the customs of different countries, we ought to learn, and thereby grow, by being exposed to the customs of different times.

Shorter conclusion: A large portion of the Christian past was Catholic - deal with it.

Via Mark Shea.

Pretty Amazing.

Vatican reports discovery of undiscovered Origen documents.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican newspaper reported Tuesday that 29 previously unpublished homilies said to be the work of one of the most important and prolific early church fathers have been discovered in a German library.

The 3rd Century theologian Origen of Alexandria is considered to have played a critical role in the development of Christian thought. Pope Benedict XVI, himself a theologian, dedicated two of his 2007 weekly church teaching sessions to the importance of Origen's life and work.

Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said that despite Origen's importance, few of his original texts remain in part because he was condemned by the Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in 553.

The newspaper said an Italian scholar, Marina Molin Pradel, discovered the homilies in the Bavarian State Library in April while reading an 11th Century Byzantine code. She noticed that some homilies were similar to a Latin translation of Origen's work. After further study, the newspaper said, she concluded the originals were his.

The library did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment Tuesday.

First Century Fragment of Mark?

Dan Wallace discusses the still-officially-undisclosed discovery of a purported first Century fragment of Mark:

At my debate with Bart Ehrman (1 Feb 2012, held at UNC Chapel Hill) over whether we can recover the wording of the New Testament autographs, I made the announcement that a probable first-century fragment of Mark’s Gospel had been recently discovered. I noted that a world-class paleographer had dated this manuscript and that he was pretty darn sure that it belonged to the first century. All the details will be coming out in a multi-author book published by E. J. Brill sometime in 2013. Several newspapers and magazines have covered the story already. John Farrell, writing for Forbes, wrote a brief article on it, followed up by an update (now incorporated with the first article). He is working on a third article that will discuss new technology that may help us to be more precise in our dating of the manuscript. In particular, there is a newly developed carbon-14 dating method that does not destroy the object it is dating. That’s always a good thing when it comes to ancient manuscripts! The inventor is Professor Marvin Rowe of Texas A & M. His assistant, Dr. Karen Steelman, wrote her dissertation on this new procedure. I met with both of them recently and discussed the possibilities of using this technology for dating ancient manuscripts.

You can see the Forbes article here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnfarrell/2012/02/27/fragments-of-marks-gospel-may-date-to-1st-century/. Stay tuned for follow-ups! In the meantime, the best attitude for all to have is “wait and see.” Über-exuberance or dismissive skepticism are both unwarranted responses based on the information supplied so far. But when the fragment is published along with six other early New Testament papyri (all from around the second century), the scholarly vetting will do its due diligence. It should be fun!

I've been meaning to take this issue up with my Evangelical Christian friends...

...but how do you square an interest in Mixed Martial Arts with your Christian morality?

In his review of "Warrior," Steven Greydanus writes:

Warrior is being marketed to Christians as well as MMA fans. If that strikes you as a counterintuitive combination, think again. MMA is becoming increasingly popular in evangelical circles as a way of connecting to men. Churches organize outings to fights, and, in some cases, even have programs for training fighters. From an eye-opening article by a former cage fighter who went on to enroll in divinity school, I learn that there are companies with names like Jesus Didn’t Tap that market Christian MMA apparel, while websites like AnointedFighter.com promise to help you “master your walk with Christ while mastering the martial arts.”

It must be said that pugilism has a long history in Catholic culture: boxing in Catholic boys’ clubs, for instance. Given sufficient safeguards to minimize the risk of serious injury, pugilism and martial arts are compatible with Catholic morality.

Professional boxing and MMA, though, raise serious moral concerns. The fundamental goal in boxing is to degrade your opponent’s capacity to defend himself, either by battering him into an impaired state or, if possible, delivering a knockout blow. MMA adds grappling techniques and allows for other ways of winning, such as submission holds and tapouts, but incapacitating one’s opponent remains a highly desirable goal.

This is morally different, for instance, from injuries incurred in football, which may be serious enough to warrant moral concern but are not a direct goal of the game itself. In football, a tackle trying to prevent the quarterback from making a throw may have to knock down a guard to do it, or he may be able to dodge past him; either way, in principle what counts is whether or not the quarterback makes the throw, not who does or doesn’t get hurt in the process. (That’s not to say that players never directly try to harm one another, or that serious injuries don’t occur regardless of intentions — only that points aren’t awarded based on who has been harmed.)

In professional boxing and MMA, incapacitating your opponent means you win and he loses. I see no way to avoid the conclusion that this is repugnant to the Fifth Commandment and the obligations of charity, potentially gravely so, particularly when multiplied by the incessant punishment and harm that professional fighters endure over years of training and competition.

Though concessions to safety have been made in MMA’s development from the early days of Ultimate Fighting, there is still too much of the spirit of the Roman gladiatorial blood sport in both MMA and professional boxing. One can respect the skill and courage of the fighters, but the big winners are corporate bosses who grow wealthy on fighters, trading away their well-being for the entertainment of patrons whose money drives the whole machine.

MMA disturbs me.  As Greydanus points out, its violence is the antithesis of Christian charity. Further, it disturbs me as a sign of a possible return to a "blood and circuses" mentality.  And it particularly disturbs me that Christians are embracing MMA when early Christians opposed gladiatorial games on Christian principles.  It's as if we are rejecting Christian distinctives in our rush to embrace Pagan values.

Persecution of Baptists in History.

This is an encyclopedic compilation of the Protestant persecutors of the Baptists.

Amazon book Review: Dissenting from the Orthodoxy of Post-Modernism.

The Heresy of Orthodoxy: How Contemporary Culture's Fascination with Diversity has reshaped our understanding of Early Christianity by Andreas Kostenberger and Michael Kruger.

My review.


In recent years, a new "orthodox" understanding of early Christian history has been midwifed by popular culture through outlets like the Discovery Channel, the National Geographic Channel and the History Channel and through popular books like "The Da Vinci Code." The new "orthodoxy" presents a vision of early Christianity as beginning in a state of disorganized, spiritual, fissiparous "Christianities" that cooperated with each other in the milieu of the Roman Empire until at some point - probably with the conversion of Constantine - one of the "Christianities" became simply "Christianity," at which point it erased the memory of the earlier stage when all "Christianities" were equally legitimate.

For many modern people, this "new orthodoxy" is intuitively correct, i.e., it feels right. The success of "The Da Vinci Code" and the fact that there is an audience for cable television's regular unveiling of purported archeological or textual discoveries that purport to overturn the "old orthodoxy" is evidence that a lot of people are somehow "primed" for the "many Christianities" view Christian history.

The chief spokesperson today for the "many Christianities" school is Professor Bart Ehrman. Ehrman is a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He has a calm and relaxed demeanor with a sight Southern drawl and a background that includes a period when he was a "born again" Christian and went to Moody Bible Institute, until he moved into liberal Christianity and, then, into open agnosticism, apparently because of his realization that the Bible he read wasn't actually published by God. Like another great convert - St. Paul - he has used his "conversion story" to vouch for the sincerity of his position and to impress people with his apparent detachment from a personal agenda.

Ehrman has used his position as a Southern, former-fundamentalist turned professor or religious studies to perform the role of providing scholarly support for the "many Christianities" theory. Over the last ten or fifteen years, Ehrman has made it his project to provide talking points to cable television documentaries about purported explosive new findings about Christianity and the Christian texts and to publish books touting such "new findings" in order to advance the "new orthodoxy" of "many Christianities" discussed above. In a number of venues, Ehrman has popularized the notion that the form of Christianity that has a historical continuity with modern Christianity was merely "proto - orthodoxy" which competed with other "Christianities" that could have lost and, thereby, lost its orthodox designation.

The "dirty secret" behind Ehrman and other's "many Christianities" school of religion is that the scholarship on which it is based is not "secret" and it is not "new" and it is trivial to the extent that it is accurate, and wrong to the extent that it might overturn the historic orthodox understanding of Christianity, facts which even Ehrman admits when pressed. Hence, Ehrman's view that there were "many Christianities" - and that historic Christianity was a minority in parts of the Roman Empire - goes back to the "Bauer Thesis" advanced by Walter Bauer in the 1930s. Similarly, although Ehrman points to "other Gospels," he has acknowledged that those "other Gospels" were written too late to be reliable and that "the four Gospels are therefore our best sources for trying to establish what Jesus himself said and did." Ehrman, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. Likewise, Ehrman admits when pressed that virtually all the purported textual variations are insignificant to determining the original text, and that for the handful where the original text cannot be recovered with certainty, none affect Christian doctrine or belief (apart presumably from the extremely literalistic, fundamentalist understanding of how the Bible was written and propagated that Ehrman seems to have held in his youth.)

Kostenberger and Kruger's project in "The Heresy of Orthodoxy" is to address the factual and historical presumptions of the "new orthodoxy," paying particular attention to Ehrman's contributions, and to sketch an explanation for why this "new orthodoxy," which actually has so little scholarly support has such traction with the public. The authors are extremely successful in carrying out their project. The book is a valuable resource for pulling together the current state of knowledge about Early Christianity. For example, Ehrman's confident assertion that orthodox Pauline - Nicene Christianity was a minority position in parts of the empire, Kostenberger and Kruger point out that this is based on the 80 year old and discredited "Bauer Thesis," which lacked - and still lacks - any empirical support and is, in fact, discredited by actual data.

Kostenberger and Kruger's book divide into 8 chapters in 3 parts.

Part 1 is entitled "the Heresy of Orthodoxy and the Origins of the New Testament."

Chapter 1 is entitled "The Bauer-Ehrman Thesis: Its Origins and Influence." In this chapter, the authors describe the "Bauer Thesis," which is defined as "the view that close study of the major urban centers at the end of the first and early second centuries reveals that early Christianity was characterized by significant doctrinal diversity, so that there was no "orthodoxy" or "heresy" at the inception of Christianity but only diversity--heresy preceded orthodoxy." In the 1970's, the Bauer thesis gained some scholarly acceptance, and, starting in the late 1979, the Bauer Thesis went mainstream with the publication of Elaine Pagel's "The Gnostic Gospels."

Chapter 2 is entitled "Unity and Plurality: How Diverse was Early Christianity?" In this chapter, the authors examine the factual underpinnings for the Bauer Thesis. Examining the literature concerning different regions of the Roman Empire - Asia Minor, Egypt, Edessa and Rome - the authors argue persuasively that heresy could not have preceded orthodoxy. For example, for Bauer's claim that Marcionism preceded orthodox in Edessa is undermined by the fact that Marcionism didn't appear until the mid-Second Century, which would mean that there was no Christian presence in Edessa for at least a century before Marcionism's arrival. In addition, the form of Marcionism assumes a familiarity and acceptance of Pauline Christianity. Marcionism was an outreach to Christians, not to pagans.

Chapter 3 is entitled "Heresy in the New Testament how early was it?" The authors examine the New Testament texts for evidence of heresy in the First Century. The author's conclusion is that orthodox Christianity agreed on central doctrines, including the Lordship of Christ. In contrast, the heretic identified in the New Testament did not have a common doctrinal core or make a claim that their beliefs derived from Christ or his apostles.

Part 2 is entitled "Picking the Books: Tracing the development of the New Testament Canon."

Chapter 4 is entitled "Starting in the Right Place: The meaning of canon in the Early Christianity." From a historical standpoint this chapter is the most questionable, albeit from a theological viewpoint it is quite interesting. The authors' thesis is that the fact of the establishment of a new covenant in Christ, mandated the establishment of a new canon. This argument may make a lot of sense from the author's theological commitment, but from a historical standpoint, the question would be whether the early Christians understood this proposition as normative for them. The authors argue that there is evidence for such an understanding, but historical evidence seemed weak.

Interestingly, although the authors seem to be writing from a Protestant background, their argument seems generally consistent with the Catholic position of canonicity outlined in Verbum Dei. In Verbum Dei, the Second Vatican Council postulated that the inspired texts of the canon were inspired without regard to the Church, but that the Church was entrusted to recognize and safeguard the texts. In other words, canonicity is a matter of community. Texts may be inspired in the abstract, but they cannot be recognized as inspired unless the real community of Christians recognizes them as inspired.

Chapter 5 is entitled "Interpreting the Historical Evidence: The emergence of canon in Early Christianity." This chapter seemed far more successful than the prior evidence. The authors utilize the historical evidence of non-canonical sources that quoted canonical texts to argue that long prior to the first listing of canons, church fathers were accepting or rejecting texts based on the universality, apostolicity and orthodoxy of the texts. Further, the accepted texts were being used on a regular basis in "public readings" such that the tradition recognized canonicity long before any text listed what books were canonical.

Chapter 6 is entitled "Establishing the Boundaries: Apocryphal Books and the Limits of the Canon." This chapter hits hard the fashionable argument that "non-canonical" gospels could have been accepted as canonical but for the narrow-mindedness of early church fathers. The authors point out that the canon was never "wide-open" where alternative texts could have fit in. In fact, texts that could not be traced to the apostles were regularly rejected howevermuch they might have supported orthodox positions.

Also, in this chapter, the authors make the fair point that the Gospel of Thomas - a favorite of the "many Christianities" school - was never included on any canonical list and there is no evidence of its existence prior to the mid-second Century.

Part 3 is entitled "Changing the Story: Manuscripts, Scribes and Textual Transmission."

Chapter 7 is entitled "Keepers of the text: How were texts copied and circulated in the ancient world?

This is a very useful resource concerning the important role that Christian texts played in the life of the Christian community. The authors recognize that Christian texts were read in public liturgy on a regular basis - which certainly would have meant that incidental errors would be discovered and corrected than would have been the case if the texts were copied and put on a book shelf to be read by individuals. The authors also describe the professionalism attendant to the copying and publication of the books which provides a guarantee against gross and frequent mistakes.

Chapter 8 is entitled "Tampering with the text: Was the New Testament text changed along the way." In this chapter, the authors take on Ehrman's tendentious special pleading that the Christian texts contain manifold errors by pointing out the undisputed fact - which even Ehrman acknowledges when he isn't grandstanding - that we actually have the accurate contents of the original Christian texts.

The authors conclude with the fair question as to how such an empirically discredited theory as the Bauer-Ehrman Thesis could have such widespread acceptance, amounting to taking the place of "conventional wisdom." Their theory is that post-modernism has permeated culture such that the average person innately understands that there is no such thing as "truth." Hence, since there is no "truth," moderns start with the presumption that all truths are equally valid. Hence, there is a built in audience for the Ehrman thesis, no matter how weak its factual support.

This is clearly a very useful book for people who want to know more than they get from the normal sources of "pop theology."

Another excuse to ignore all of Christian history between Paul and Martin Luther.

Who really needs to pay attention to the history of Christianity prior to 1517 because those people really didn't grow up until Martin Luther?

C. Michael Patton illustrates his (tentative) way of thinking about the history of Christianity as being the equivalent of a person growing up, complete with the rebellious and immature ways of thinking characterized by the "Dark Ages," which didn't end until 1517.

So, apparently, all of Christian intellectual developmet from St. Augustine through St. Thomas Aquinas gets swept into a pigeon-hole called the "Dark Ages," where they are completely labeled "not sufficiently mature" for serious Christians. 

Never mind that the Dark Ages ended prior to the 1000 A.D., or that by the 12th Century, Europe was building great cathedrals and had a university system and unrivalled in the world.

I don't doubt that this way of thinking represents the authentic thinking of many American protestants, for whom the period between approximately 60 A.D. and 1517 (or, more likely, the founding of their local church by "Pastor Bob" in 1985) is a dark and obscure period.  Most Americans do conflate the "Dark Ages" with the "Middle Ages," because of the succesful polemics of Protestants and Secular Humanists who wanted to distinguish their "enlightened" age from a darker time. 

Likewise, I had a Baptist law partner who had no embarrassment in telling me, as a matter of simple fact, that Catholicism was "transitional paganism," which meant that the period from Christ to the discovery of the "pure Gospel" by Martin Luther was a long, long period of a pagan culture evolving into true Christianity.

Likewise, this model contains the core theology of American secularism - a belief in progress.  Under the American view of progress, development is always upward, nothing abandoned in the past had any value, and the goal of all history was to lead to us.

Obviously, this model is a cartoon, a caricature that reassures, rather than challenges its adherents to learn some actual history.

N.T. Wright on the "New Perspectives on Paul."

"Pope and Devil" by Hubert Wolf.

For anyone interested in the Pius Wars – the argument that Pius XII was somehow complicit with the Holocaust by virtue of his alleged silence or other actions – or for anyone who has read the execrable John Cornwell’s “Hitler’s Pope” – “Pope and Devil” by Hubert Wolf is an essential resource for arriving at a balanced assessment of the issues. Wolf’s book largely refutes Cornwell’s specious arguments by meticulous attention to archival material released in 2003.

Not all of the relevant material have been released, but in 2003, the papacy of Pope John Paul II, released files relating to the nunciature – the diplomatic representatives of the Vatican – in Munich and Berlin during the period 1922 – 1939, as well as files relating to the Vatican’s interaction with these nunciatures. This information was not available to Cornwell, and essentially disproves Cornwell’s thesis that Pius XII, as Secretary of State Pacelli, pulled the strings that resulted in the Catholic Center Party supporting the Nazi Enabling Act. The proof is established by correspondence between Pacelli and the nunciatures indicating Pacelli’s opposition to the Center Party’s decision to dissolve itself.

Wolf also brings balance and depth that is missing from Cornwell’s Manichean good- liberal versus evil- conservative story. Thus, Wolf describes the case of the Amici Israel, which was an association of Catholic priests, including bishops and cardinals, that in the late 1920’s was committed to eradicating anti-semitism within the Catholic Church. Part of the agenda of Amici Israel was to eliminate the Good Friday prayer’s reference to “perfidious Jews.” This project was unsuccessful, and Amici Israel was suppressed, not because of anti-semitism, but because of a party of anti-liberal, conservative irredentists within the curia, led by Cardinal Merry De Val, who opposed anything that smacked of “modernism.” The point of the story is that the Catholic Church, and particularly its bureaucracy, has not ever been monolithic. There were parties within the church with their own agenda, entirely unrelated to the agendas that people like Cornwell want to find. Hence, the blanket accusation by Cornwell, Goldhagen and Carroll that the Church, pope and curia have all been anti-semitic is simply wrong.

Moreover, irony is a constant of history. One of the results of the Amici Israel affair was that the papal was that the decree of dissolution of Amici Israel in March of 1928 contained a clear condemnation of racial anti-semitism long before Kristalnacht. (p. 120.)

Wolf’s chapters generally are as follows:

Chapter 1 – Neutralizing Evil? Vatican Prescriptions for Germany (1917 – 1929).

Between 1917 and 1929. Wolf points out that the Vatican’s decision to reach out to Nazi Germany was not unusual or unexpected; it had reached out on three separate occasions to conclude a concordat with Stalinist Russia. (p. 9.) No one views those efforts as recognizing the legitimacy of the Soviet Union.

What was particularly interesting in this chapter was the fact that the up until the Weimar Republic, German states – including Protestant German states – were directly involved in selecting Catholic bishops. In Berlin, the Protestant state was able to choose which candidates would be put to the local church from which it could choose a bishop. Even though Weimar Germany, saw many German states give up their control over the Catholic Church, this movement was not entirely complete, and the concordat process was intended to cement the separation of church and state.

Not surprisingly, the bishops that were selected under the prior arrangement tended to be more conciliatory to the state, including the Nazi state, than the bishops selected by Rome after the concordat was signed. Galen and Von Preysing were both bishops who became known for being anti-Nazi stalwarts who would not have been chosen under the prior system.

Not surprisingly, this fact completely escapes Cornwell’s potted history.

Chapter 2 – Perfidious Jews? The battle in the Vatican over Anti-Semitism.

This chapter covers the interesting, relatively unknown and important Amici Israel affair.

Chapter 3 – The Pact with the Devil? The Reichskonkordat (1930 – 1933.)

This chapter covers the circumstances leading to the execution of the concordat between Nazi Germany and the Vatican.

Contrary to Cornwell’s unsubstantiated claims that the perfidious Pacelli single-mindedly engineered the Nazi police state, Wolf’s scrutiny of the dispatches between Pacelli and the nunciatures show that Pacelli was outside the loop, and that the Center Party and German Catholic bishops were running their own shows.

Chapter 4 – Molto Delicato? The Roman Curia and the Persecution of the Jews.

This chapter addresses the many petitions to Pius XI to speak out and condemn Nazi persecutions of the Jews. Wolf describes how both Pius XI and Pius XII desired to speak out against anti-semitism, and encouraged others to speak out, but believed that because of their position as leader of the worldwide church were required to maintain a position of public neutrality.

Chapter 5 – Dogma or Diplomacy? The Catholic Worldview and Nazi Ideologies (1933 – 1939).

In this chapter, Wolf looks at the compatibility of Catholic and Nazi ideological claims and concludes that those claims were not compatible. In reaching this conclusion, Wolf outlines the various occasions when the Catholic Church condemned core Nazi doctrines as being incompatible with Christianity.

Wolf also tackles a “talking point” advanced by Christopher Hitchens that since the Church didn’t put “Mein Kampf” on the Index of Forbidden Books, it must in some sense have endorsed Nazism. Wolf points out that although Mein Kampf was not placed on the Index, Alfred Rosenberg’s “The Myth of the Twentieth Century,” which was viewed as the key ideological treatise on Nazism was put on the Index. Wolf concludes that the reason Mein Kampf was not indexed was due to the curia placing diplomacy ahead of doctrine, particularly with respect to a book “written by a head of state who had come to power through legal means and with whom the Vatican had just signed an agreement binding under international law.” (p. 264.) On the other hand, “the dangerous opinions to be found Mein Kampf [were] refuted in the syllabus of the Congregation of Studies and contrasted to the true Catholic doctrine in the encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge.” [p. 270.] In other words, the Church compromised short of placing Mein Kampf on the Index, but it was clear to all that the noxious teachings of Mein Kampf were condemned.

Finally, similar constraints prevented the excommunication of Hitler – which in 1938 Mussolini, of all people, was advocating. [p. 270.] As Wolf concludes the book, “Pronouncing a Reich chancellor and head of state anathema was simply out of the question. Hitler remained a member of the Catholic Church until the day he died. Like the pope, even the devil could be Catholic.”

All in all, this is a readable and balanced book that examines the real world nuances facing real people in real history, which is a far cry from the comic book version of history that is currently so popular.

Philosemitism and Christian History

Innocent II -  On the Jews: Decree of 1199

We decree that no Christian shall use violence to compel the Jews to accept baptism. But if a Jew, of his own accord, because of a change in his faith, shall have taken refuge with Christians, after his wish has been made known, he may be made a Christian without any opposition. For anyone who has not of his own will sought Christian baptism cannot have the true Christian faith. No Christian shall do the Jews any personal injury, except in executing the judgements of a judge, or deprive them of their possessions, or change the rights and priveleges which they have been accustomed to have. During the celebration of their festivals, no one shall disturb them by beating them with clubs or by throwing stones at them. No one shall compel them to render any services except those which they have been accustomed to render. And to prevent the baseness and avarice of wicked men we forbid anyone to deface or damage their cemetaries or to extort money from them by threatening to exhume the bodies of their dead....

What brought this up was my helping my youngest daughter with her history homework.  Her class is studying the Crusades, and she informed me that her teacher had taught her that Pope Innocent had launched the Fourth Crusade at Constantinople in order to take gold and wealth back to Rome.

Utter rubbish.  Innocent excommunicated the Crusaders who took part in the sack of Constantinople and Zara.  From his letters, we know that Innocent forbade an attack on Constantinople:

None of you should therefore dare to assume that it is permissible for you to seize or to plunder the land of the Greeks, even though the latter may be disobedient to the Apostolic See, or on the grounds that the Emperor of Constantinople has deposed and even blinded his brother and usurped the imperial throne.

I pointed out language from a book that rebutted that notion, and cautioned her that much of what she learns about the Catholic Church from her teachers will probably be derogatory misinformation.

Review - "The Aryan Jesus."

Susannah Heschel's "The Aryan Jesus" makes a nice complement to other recent books on the Nazi Christian phenomenon, such as The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945 by Richard Steigman-Gall and "Catholicism and the Roots of Nazism: Religious Identity and National Socialism" by Derek Hastings. All three books discuss the Nazi relationship with Christianity. The Hastings and Steigman-Gall books demonstrate that Nazi approach to Christianity was to incorporate a particular strand of post-modern or liberal Christianity. As is typical of post-modern or liberal Christianity, the Nazi approach to religious identity identified the Jesus it wanted to discover - an Aryan fighter against the Jews - and then used the techniques of modern scholarship to find that Jesus. From Steigman-Gall and Hastings, we learned that insofar as the Nazis were Christian, their Christianity was essentially a heretical version of Christianity that would have been unrecognizable in its Marcion-like willingness to amputate such "Jewish" aspects of Christianity as the Old Testament.


Heschel's book offers a nuts and bolts view of how that amputation took place under the Nazi regime. Her focus is on the Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on the German Church and its academic director Walter Grundmann. Heschel does the heavy lifting of demonstrating the role that the Institute had in "dejudaizing" the Protestant German Christian churches by such expedients as publishing a bible without the Old Testament and which removed other indications of Christ's Jewish origins, publishing hymnals in which old hymns were made "Teutonic" and holding conferences dedicated to proving that Galilee, and therefore, Jesus were Aryan.

An issue which seemed to concern Heschel is, how important were the activities of the Institute? The Institute was closely identified with the German Protestant Church of Thuringia, rather than with a national body, and it never achieved its dream of becoming the agency which officially mediated Nazism to Christianity and Christianity to Nazism. In fact by the end of its short life (essentially 1939 to 1944), the Nazis had distanced themselves from Christianity, such as by refusing to permit Nazi regalia from being used in Christian services, or allowing the Institute to identify its journal with the Nazi party, and the leaders of the Institute, including Walter Grundmann, had been drafted to serve as soldiers in the German army.

The issue of significance remains somewhat open for me. I think that Heschel made her case by pointing out the large number of "German Christian" (i.e., pro-Nazi) local churches and the control of the German Christian "sect" over various state churches as compared with the Confessing Churches (i.e., those local churches that resisted a full Nazi take-over of the Protestant German Church.) The Institute seems to have been a pillar of support for the German Christian sect and, so, a significant player in what might have been a significance development in Christian theology, and one which certainly shows how a significant development in Christianity - i.e., liberal Christianity - could go so very wrong.

I felt that Heschel was not very good in explaining how Protestant Christians of any sort could be persuaded to jettison the Old Testament and otherwise tamper with the language of the Bible. Heschel devotes a few pages to a kind of psychological/sociological explanation of anti-semitism in order to explain that the German Christians really weren't that different from earlier Christian Germans, but this goes nowhere near to explaining how a substantial number of Protestants could be persuaded to adopt a proposal rejected by Christianity during the Second Century when Marcion first raised the idea. I would have been interested in hearing about the roots of the "History of Religions" school - from which the Institute theologians drew their academic background - in order to see if things like the elimination of the Old Testament were a radical departure from their intellectual foundations and, if not, how they justified that move.

Heschel also pointed out the effect "race science" had on the German study of the Bible during the Institute years. I wanted to understand what these people thought they were doing. For us moderns the very idea of "race science" is "crazy" and those who are engaged in "race science" ought to be institutionalized. Obviously, this is a temporally parochial attitude - those scholars didn't think they were crazy. They thought they were using cutting edge science, just like a modern liberal Christian might think that incorporating the findings of physics into their interpretation of the Bible isn't crazy. Unfortunately, apart from being opportunistic Anti-Semites, I never got a real feel for how these scholars justified themselves.

The theme of opportunism seems to be the conclusion that lies just under the book's surface. Heschel points out how certain of the Institute theologians were second-rate or otherwise not properly qualified for their positions, but were advanced because they had the correct attitudes. In a particularly fascinating section on the post-Nazi history of the Institute's theologians, Heschel points out how comfortable Grundmann was with turning into a spy for the Communists in Communist East Germany, albeit while retaining his anti-Semitic prejudices. In fact, the post-war history is almost the most interesting part of the book - or, perhaps, horrifying is a better word - as Heschel points out that the Institute's Nazi theologians were able to avoid censure, but in fact were able to retain their positions. As she points out, often pro-Nazi theologians and pastors were preferred by their former adversaries in the Confessing Church because they could be "controlled" better because of their Nazi associations.

I was originally going to give this book three stars, but after a conversation with someone about Deitrich Boenhoffer, I realized how much the book had taught me about the Confessing Church's adversaries, and, so, I am giving it four stars.

Constantine

From Peter J. Leithart's "Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christianity."

"[Constantine] could be witty in conversation.  When the Novatian bishop Acesius opined that someone who sinned mortally should be barred from the sacrament, Constantine cracked, "Place a ladder, Acesius, and climb alone to heaven."

Defending Constantine.


This book is definitely going on my "to get and read" pile - Peter Leithart's "Defending Constantine - The Twilight of Empire and the Dawn of Christianity."

N.T. Wright's endorsement has me sold on the book:

“Too many people, for far too long, have been able to murmur the awful word Constantine, knowing that the shudder it produces will absolve them from the need to think through how the church and the powers of the world actually relate, let alone construct a coherent historical or theological argument on the subject.”

Leithart, by the way, is a scholar and Presbyterian pastor who was under a great deal of controversy for his support of "Federal Vision," which means nothing to me, but was apparently "too Catholic" for the Presbyterians to long endure.  Here is Leithart's blog.

Forgotten Histories.

Interesting stuff.  Mark Shea points to this link on the history of the Parthenon and the tendency of Modernity, i.e., The Enlightenment and Thereafter, to suffer amnesia or a decided lack of curiosity about the thousand year period between the Classical Age and itself.

Shea observes:

One of the many bitter fruits of the Endarkenment was the tendency to skip over the Age of Christian Europe as the "middle ages". That meant, the "age between pagan Europe when things were cool, and now, when things are again becoming cool by becoming less Christian". That prejudice remains with us today, which is why nobody thinks of the Parthenon as a great Christian Church or considers the possibility that there is anything interesting about the Greeks after Pericles. The snow job of the Endarkenment was extremely effective.

The article points out:

All this, and some other evidence I have not yet mentioned, prove that the Parthenon was one of the most important sites of Christian pilgrimage in Byzantium; I would place it fourth after Constantinople, Ephesos, and Thessalonike. Moreover, there is now every reason to think that it was far more important as a church in Byzantium than it had ever been as a temple in antiquity -- or whatever it had been exactly in antiquity to begin with: its precise religious use is a matter of controversy.

And:

The apogee of the Christian Parthenon in Byzantium was in the twelfth Century (but this may be due to the survival of more evidence from then than from previous periods). We hear of a festival –probably annual -- celebrated in honor of the Theotokos that drew people to Athens from far and wide, and also of a miracle of divine light inside the Parthenon, probably a lamp whose flame never died. The orators of the period who wrote about Athenian affairs played rhetorically on this theme of the divine light, varying its imagery and drawing

And:

   

Obviously, more is at stake in all this than a few misunderstandings about Byzantium: the entire history of the Parthenon has to be rewritten. I am referring specifically to the ancient-modern polarity, according to which the Parthenon was a glorious temple that celebrated all that was good about classical antiquity (democracy, philosophy, humanism, etc.); it was then neglected by the benighted Byzantines, who were superstitious Christians, and effectively had no history for over a thousand years, only then to have its true worth discovered” in modern times with the birth of the nation and the emergence of scientific scholarship and archaeology.
     Our (heretical /orthodox) alternative to this alleged history has a different geometry. First, we have to acknowledge that the Parthenon was not regarded in antiquity as anything so special. Few of the extraordinary things that have been said about it in modern times are even so much as hinted at in ancient sources, and when they are they do not refer to the Parthenon exclusively. The building was never placed on the list of ancient “wonders.” There were too many far more magnificent structures in the lands around the Mediterranean that contended for that honor, though they were later destroyed and so no longer pose a challenge.
     As far as we can tell, the Parthenon was never associated with any ideal, whether democracy (it only happened to be built by one, but could have been built just as well by a tyrant), philosophy, humanism, or what not. Unlike in Byzantium, we know of no one in antiquity who traveled to Athens to see it or pray in it. It wasnot even an especially important religious site in the classical age, and seems to have been used as a treasury.
      No ancient source that talks about the “sights” of Athens singles out the Parthenon among the many other sights. Into it the famous light of the Attic sky, the bright color of the building itself, the shining virtues of the city’s learned bishops in this period, and so on.