Wednesday Wander
The security bug Heartbleed is described as like going away on vacation not knowing the front door lock was broken and anyone could break in. It reminds me of Donald and Sybil, who never locked the doors at night; and whenever they drove to Ohio where he grew up, they always left the house unlocked so people could come and go, bring things over, borrow whatever. Seems to me that leaving for Ohio they always left the back door standing open. Leaving the doors unlocked was part of the life they knew in Apalachicola. Some folks would have considered it most unneighborly to lock the doors. In those days, the front door to Trinity Church was never locked, the church always open. When I grew up here in Panama City, it would have been thought very odd to lock the door of your car when you parked on Harrison Avenue to go shopping at J. C. Penney, or Fisher-Stinson Hardware, or to a movie at the Ritz Theatre. But it seems to me we did lock our doors at night, I’m not sure. It wouldn’t have mattered, all the windows were open anyway.
“The age you grew up in” is no reality but a state of mind far removed from the creation God gave us when He said, “Let there be... ” and left us in charge.
Monday when I walked in the door, Linda was in the next room ironing and, as usual because there’s no TV in that room, she was listening to Public Radio. The voice I heard was Bart Ehrman, a New Testament scholar and professor of religious studies at Chapel Hill. I have several of his DVD sets of N.T. lectures and have used several of his many books in my Bible study classes, including two or three years ago exchanging communications with him about which particular book I should use in a Tuesday morning Bible study class. Some of his textbooks, which I have on my office shelves for borrowing by anyone, are used in religion classes at Yale.
Not so much Bart’s beliefs, but his research, knowledge, views, intelligence, history and experience of life, and publications are part of the body of wisdom, collection of brainwork, along with such as Yale University Open Courses online, that I have enjoyed and do enjoy in my quest to be faithful to the proverb “Seek the Truth, Come Whence It May, Cost What it Will” inscribed in the lintel over the library door of one of the seminaries I attended thirty something years ago. Being afraid of discovery and new knowledge and the views of others is not one of my traits, so I wander at will. I say “not so much Professor Ehrman’s beliefs,” because, true to Steve Jobs’ advice “Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking” * I can form my beliefs as well as Bart or anyone else can arrive at beliefs. It’s my observation in life that every author, who writes or does other art work such as filmmaking, whether it be St. Paul, or "pseudo-Paul," or the anonymous author of the Gospel according to Mark, or whoever wrote Luke/Acts, or Matthew, or the Gospel according to John (Lazarus?), or Samuel Clemens/ Mark Twain, or the author of Genesis, or Athanasius or Arius or the author of The Robe, or Mel Gibson with The Passion of the Christ -- every author has an agenda -- where agenda is not a sinister word charged with value and judgment, but an aspect of literature and the arts. Sensing the agenda, and what Bible scholars sometimes call "occasion for writing" -- every one of Paul's letters is "occasional" -- brought on by some occasion in the life of one of his churches -- is fully as important to understanding authors and their writing as is reading and understanding their words on their pages. Or watching their film as we this Lent are watching The Robe.
Where on earth is Bubba wandering with this? I’d intended to think about Bart Ehrman, but got distracted by glancing first at Google News and spotting that article about Heartbleed, and wandered off yet one more time again. At this age, wandering doesn’t bother me in the least -- being 78 is my useful excuse for whatever I choose to excuse about myself. Ehrman also has a history of wandering, that fascinates me, no scholar but a Bible student in earnest.
Bart Ehrman began life as a fervent Christian literalist fundamentalist intending to be a preacher but turned to academics instead. Through education, Moody, Wheaton, Princeton, research, and life, he worked his way quite thoroughly and all-inclusively through the modern Christian faith experience, including a stint as an Episcopalian, popping to the surface as an agnostic, as he self-describes. Again, counter to the panic of the ignorant, agnostic is not atheist, agnostic is two Greek words meaning “not” and “know.” Some might call agnosticism the logical understanding of Hebrews 11:1. How did Bart Ehrman who traveled from evangelical right wing believer end up agnostic? He, along with many down through the ages, failed, or refused, to rationalize the problem of theodicy, why bad things happen to good people in God’s creation.
Bart’s reasoning is farther traveled, further developed, than that of my late N.T. professor at Gettysburg, who defined himself in class one day -- we were studying the miracles of Jesus -- as a total skeptic who made the personal decision, never again to be visited, that he would accept the Resurrection, this single event as a one time act of the Pantokrator. Professor (his name eludes me this morning) was like most theologians and Bible scholars in my observation, whose faith shades their exploration, colors their reasoning, and rationalizes their conclusions -- the word can be “apologetics.” Professor Ehrman has thrown up his hands at his inability to understand, and refusal to rationalize, a God in whose creation an innocent child can die of -- let’s say, a malignant brain tumor. Only to mention but not to go into the problem of prayer influencing the Creator of a universe such as ours.
Or why/how we perceive a God whose sense of justice is so paramount, even above grace, that justice must be served, sin punished, even to the extent of God’s own self becoming human to suffer death on the cross as the only way to justification and salvation for humans whom God created. I know an Episcopal priest who cannot stand Bart Ehrman, knows him first hand (as I do not except in one exchange of emails), and cannot stand him. I don’t know whether that priest's dislike is personal from the contact he had with him in an educational setting, or is his reaction as a former Roman Catholic whose theological conclusions are as faith based apologetics as Ehrman’s are other.
Enough. I'm not even going to edit before pressing Publish. Out, damn Spot.
TW+