Right Reason

Is it true that Christianity was a pacifist movement for the first few centuries of its existence?

“Most serious scholars of church history today agree that for the first three centuries of the Christian church, Christians rejected not only emperor-worship and idolatry but also participation in the military.”

This quote was taken from a fairly unknown website. I picked it just because it reflects a confidence that a lot of Christians I have spoken to appear to have: The confidence that everyone who knows about this knows that the first few centuries of church history reveals that Christians were pacifists, and that got messed up later when theologians like Augustine compromised the teachings of Jesus with the worldly ways of violence.

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The evidence now suggests that the “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” is almost certainly a fake.

Not long ago I offered some thoughts on the alleged discovery of a previously unknown Gospel, referring to Jesus’ wife. It is a very brief fragment, but it bears similarities to already known Gnostic writing. Even if it was everything that Dr Karen King claimed it to be, it would still only have been a work from the fourth century that was arguably first written in the late second century, at a time when plenty of far-fetched gnostic writings were being produced. Not exactly earth shattering. However, quite a number of scholars at the time had serious doubts that this fragment was even as interesting as that, suspecting that it was nothing more than a much later forgery, written to look like an earlier gnostic work but in fact simply plagiarising the Gospel of Thomas.

Those suspicions have now been resoundingly confirmed: the fragment is almost certainly a fake. I say “almost certainly” because of course it’s nigh-on impossible sometimes to prove such things with 100% certainty, but we now have about as much certainty as anyone could hope for. Not only does the alleged Gospel fragment strongly resemble the Gospel of Thomas in terms of language and content (however brief), but it contains an unusual typo – the very same typo that an online version of the Gospel of Thomas contained.  For more detail, see the analysis over at Mark Goodacre’s NT Blog.

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Got a good link to share? Have a look at my links page and see what’s there: Other blogs on theology, philosophy, biblical studies and related subjects. There’s also a section for organisations or websites that aren’t blogs, but which are still focused on these subject areas. There’s also a section for blogs that aren’t necessarily directly about academic theology or philosophy, but which are still intelligent blogs in some way connected to the themes explored at this site. These might include things as diverse as music, mental health, spirituality, education, physical wellbeing or art, and I would expect blogs in this category to look at these issues from a broadly (orthodox) Christian point of view – the more academic blogs need not always do this.

If there’s a link that you think fits well on the list, this is the place to suggest it! (You can also do this any time by contacting me.) The kind of blogs that I’m looking for need to be well-written, they should be designed to promote irenic discussion (angry rants have their place in the world to be sure, but I’m not looking for blogs that are full of them) , and they will ideally not be too partisan (for example, if it’s a Christian blog I prefer that the owners do not demand on pain of heresy that contributors adhere to the catechism of the Catholic Church, or all of the Westminster Standards – I’m an ecumenical kind of guy, and if it’s an atheist blog, make it a respectable one – citations of Richard Carrier or “Acharya S” will not help their cause). I do make the occasional exception for the sake of fairness, including blogs that I both disagree with and which I think are somewhat partisan, but are interesting nonetheless. I’ll leave it up to you to guess which ones they are!

Let’s have your suggestions! I make no promises to include anything, but if you don’t ask, you never know. 🙂

Are morally assessable actions the same just if they have the same evil outcome? I don’t think so. I think this misses at least one important aspect of moral thinking, one that I call moral horror.

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Time for a change of scene! Over the next little while I’ll be experimenting with a few different looks for the blog.

Keep calm and carry on.

Suddenly, everyone is linking to news articles about an allegedly shocking new discovery that turns our view of the historic Jesus on its head. The caption under the photo at Stuff reads: “A previously unknown scrap of ancient papyrus written in ancient Egyptian Coptic opens the debate about whether Jesus was married.”

Well actually, no it doesn’t. No new debate is opened, no important new evidence has been discovered. Business is really continuing as usual. But in the view of some, the new discovery will be of much interest, as it contains the words, “Jesus said to them, ‘my wife.”

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