#103 Modern Christianity vs. Ancient Faith + Dr. Jared Byas

Many Christians have been taught that certain beliefs are absolutely essential to being Christian. What if those beliefs are just products of modern culture?

Our beliefs and our traditions came from somewhere. They're not dropped out of heaven. Do we trust the Spirit of God to guide us into all truth or do we not? Maybe it wasn't really ever about the hard lines.

Maybe that's a human thing. We no longer are trying to stand under that God. We are trying to understand God.

Hold on a second. Whoa, how does somebody find the Bible for normal people so they can continue learning? Hello, hello. Welcome to Biblically Speaking. My name is Cassian Bellino and I'm your host. In this podcast, we talk about the Bible in simple terms with experts, PhDs, and scholarly theologians to make understanding God easier.

These conversations have transformed my relationship with Christ and understanding of religion. Now, I'm sharing these recorded conversations with you. On this podcast, we talk about the facts, the history, and the translations to make the Bible make sense so we can get to know God our Creator better.

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I'm your host Cassian Bellino. Question that I wanted to explore today because many Christians have been taught that certain beliefs are absolutely essential to being Christian. You might have a few just kind of coming up for you now.

My question is what if those beliefs are just products of modern culture? They are something that did not exist for Christians 2 ,000 years ago. I explored this thought when I listened to the Bible for Normal People's four-part series on the making of the modern mindset.

And now I have the co-host Jared Byas from the Bible for Normal People here on my show because I want to discuss how much of Christianity today is essential to our core beliefs. Whereas how much is just modern assumptions that we layered on top.

So today we're going to jump into the podcast to explore faith and biblical interpretation and the challenges that many Christians might be facing, especially in scholarship. But if you might not know Jared, exit now.

Go listen to the Bible for Normal People and listen to the amazing show that you have with Pete Enns. But Jared, you are more than qualified to talk on this. I mean, just the four-part series is enough.

But for those that might not know, you have a master's degree in biblical studies from West Chester University. You spent a decade being both a pastor and an adjunct professor. And you have the co-host of an amazing podcast that is crucial to any Christian that might be learning anything about their faith.

Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for giving me an hour of your time. Absolutely. I'm looking forward to it. We've been going back and forth for so long to get this scheduled. So, you know, there's so many things you can talk about that I was like, where did like that was the struggle today.

It was like, where do I nail you down when I get an hour from you? What inspired this four-part series?

I mean, I appreciate the focus on this. This is a little bit more of my background. But it is helping people to understand that our beliefs and our traditions came from somewhere. They're not dropped out of heaven, as much as we wish that were the case, as much as we would want to.

Our theologizing and our beliefs about God and the Bible are very human. And that means they've come from somewhere. And I think it's helpful for us to understand where it came from. Because it helps us to sort of sift through what to keep, what to disregard.

And that's not a knock on the Bible or Christianity.

That just is what it means to be human. Yeah. So what do you mean by the modern mindset? Like where did this way of thinking emerge?

Yeah. So, you know, when I talk about the modern mindset, I'm talking about the way a lot of us in the West instinctively think about things like knowledge, authority, identity, ethics. You know, how do we know what's true?

Who gets to decide these things? Who am I? How do we determine right from wrong? And I think the key thing to understand is that people haven't, as you mentioned, always understand the questions, those questions the way we do.

We tend to assume our way of seeing the world is just common sense. But it's actually the product of a particular history. So before, do you mind if I jump into the history a little bit? It might take a minute.

I love history. Go ahead. This may be a little bit redundant for those who have listened to the series. But as a kind of a summary here, before the modern period, we might call this like the premodern period.

Those four areas, knowledge, authority, identity, ethics, were largely mediated, meaning we got information about them through two institutions, the church and the state. So if you wanted to know what was true, if you wanted to know who you were, where you belong, what your purpose was, how you should live.

These answers came through traditions, authorities, hierarchies that were established by God. So, you know, knowledge, authority, identity. These things were not things that individuals discovered for themselves, but they were received through traditions and structures of Christendom.

But then around, you know, the 1500s, 1600s, 1700s, the Renaissance era that you might be familiar with, something began to shift. And folks like Erasmus Locke, even like Isaac Newton, who a lot of people have heard of, helped create a new confidence in human reasoning.

And so eventually Reason, kind of capital R, Reason replaced the church as the primary authority for answering life's biggest questions. So, you know, instead of asking what's been handed down to us through these institutions and traditions that we can trust, we started asking, what can we know through observation, logic, evidence, rational inquiry?

So authority moved from these external institutions, the church and the state, to the reasoning individual. And this all comes to a head with a philosopher named Rene Descartes in the 1600s. He had this project that he was trying to answer this question like, what can I know with certainty?

And that's an important word for the making of the modern mindset. What can I know with certainty? And that gives us this obsession with foundationalism or foundations. Kind of, we're looking for this undoubtable starting place that builds up certainty in most everything that we know.

So all of that is kind of what I mean by the modern mindset, kind of the belief that knowledge, identity, ethics, and even authority can be grounded in Reason rather than tradition. And the belief that Reason can and will give us this objective certainty.

Yeah.

And we'll get into a little bit as far as like, what are some of the things that we hold true to Christianity that we kind of see like objectively within Reason, this is what makes Christianity Christian.

But maybe it's just something that loses the God at the center of it. And I think that you made a clear distinction there as far as like, the difference is Tradition and Reason. Because I always think like 2 ,000 years ago, this is so different than how like an ancient Eurasian Israelite or an ancient Jew would approach Faith.

Would you say the core difference would be they base their understanding of Christianity, of their God, of their Faith in Tradition versus we have approached it from a more objective, reasonable?

I don't know if I would frame it as the key difference. I mean, I think there's a lot of little differences. But I mean, you know, if we go back and think about how the ancient Jewish tradition or even the early church into the New Testament would have thought about things.

I mean, if we think just using the word certainty and maybe behind it, the idea of truth. So I wouldn't put it as Tradition against Reason as much in some ways. But I think we go back far enough. I want to get a little more granular, I think, because the concept of truth that we see even in the Hebrew Bible, which is typified by the Hebrew word emet, which if we look at that word and how it's used, it's not so much about correct information.

And I think that's really important when we think about the modern mindset is even the word truth in the ancient world was a relational, sometimes even a spatial term. You know, it really this this Hebrew word emet really conveyed things like firmness, being firm, being reliable, being faithful, being stable.

So we still get remnants of this in English when we say like staying true to your word or staying true to your spouse. That's not abstract truth or belief. That's very relational and concrete. And then if we kind of move fast forward to the New Testament, we have the Greek word aletheia, which often has this like semantic range of something being revealed or unhidden, which is literally the root of the word aletheia is to be unhidden.

And again, neither of those emet or aletheia really are the same as what we mean by truth today. And the opposite of truth back then wasn't false because we think it's true or it's false. But for them, it was true or it was deceptive.

Again, it's a more like relational way of thinking about it. To be true wasn't to be kind of right about the facts, but it was to not deceive. So, of course, that doesn't mean they weren't interested in like reality, but they didn't really separate these categories like fact, history, myth, science, symbol.

Those are kind of our filing cabinets, if you will, not theirs. So I think that's an important way of thinking about it.

Which is crazy because you you would think, you know, and this is just my perception of it, of like if I'm an ancient Near Eastern Israelite and I'm experiencing something that is inherently not true to the faith, like maybe like a pagan god or, you know, something, you know, I would say today, like, that's not real.

That's not true. That's not God. But you're saying that they would maybe perceive that as like that's deceitful in the honest, truthful way I want to live. Like, yeah.

Yeah, it's much more relational, right? It's kind of between people. So whenever you're saying you weren't being true, it's not that you're like, it's not that you're making up things. It's that you weren't being truthful with me, right?

You were deceiving me. So most often that if we can read it through that relational lens, again, part of the modern mindset is this very hyper individualistic. Like I have the reason and me and the facts are there for anybody to grab.

In the ancient world, it was much more about faithfulness to each other, right? Reliability with each other. That's more of what it meant to be true. In general, truth was seen in that context, not can we get at the truth?

So where this plays out in the way we think about our Bible is we come to like Genesis and we say, did it really happen? Because that's the kind of truth that we have learned to expect and to hold in higher regard.

That's our priority. And the ancient world didn't prioritize that question that it was because it felt irrelevant. It felt abstract and doesn't have anything to do with me. What I want to know is, are you going to be truthful to me?

Are you going to be faithful to me? Are we going to be in community in a way we can trust each other, right? That was a way more important question than did it really happen, right? Interesting.

Because I would say today we are farthest from the truth given how much time has passed between like the living breathing God and now 2 ,000 years later, the fact that we hold so fast to like objective truth and what's happening versus like being faithful.

Like if anything, we should be the most like what you just described today because we have the least amount of hard evidence to like connect us to the truth. So that's that's crazy that that's just the way they thought.

And do you think that was just like a product of like science at that time? It's like, well, that's how we measure truth is like it relationally.

I mean, I think that's a that's a very modern way of thinking about it. I would almost say maybe they had something that we've lost, and that is a focus on relationship. Oh, things are about how we relate to one another, that that's actually more important than the question.

Did it really happen? The fact that we privilege that is a product of the modern mindset. And the fact that we see our way as better than that way is also a product of the modern mindset, right?

Totally. No, initially, I'm like, well, who cares how it makes me feel if it's wrong? And I believe what's wrong because it feels truthful. Then I'm just like diluting myself into a reality that doesn't exist.

But to them, it sounds like even living that way wouldn't result in delusion. It resulted in high quality relationships. It's relationships.

That's what was most important. Now, there is something to the fact that I think their consciousness wasn't didn't have the capacity to think in these abstract categories. I think that's it's different.

The ancient ancient people just thought differently than we do. But I would hesitate to put them down and say our way is better because I do think there's something to thinking of truth relationally, especially we practice a faith that's built on relationship.

And so I think we can actually have a lot to learn about how our modern mindset is critiqued by an ancient way of thinking of truth. And as I talk about this in my book, Love Matters More, where I set out to write a book on truth.

And it turns out that in the ancient way of thinking, truth is way more related to love than we often assume. We sort of pit those apart. But if truth is being truthful to you, it's being faithful to you in a relational way, then those are two sides of the same coin.

When I'm true to you, I'm loving you well, instead of thinking about it as if we get the facts right and we don't have to care about how we treat other people. Interesting.

What would you say would be like a modern version of that? And like in a relationship, does that version of a relationship today, it doesn't matter of like, I didn't get you flowers on our anniversary.

Like what matters isn't the yes or no to that question. I did or I didn't. What matters is I showed up for you. Is that like a super watered down version of what you're saying?

I mean, I think that gets a little more complicated in terms of what an analogy would be. I think part of the challenge is modernity is the water we swim in. And so in some ways we can't go back. There isn't a way to like go back to before.

So it's a matter of once you see it, you can't unsee it kind of thing. It's shaped us, right? We're molded into a pretty individualistic focus on the facts, what really happened. It's very intuitive to us.

And so I think for me, the key is just realizing that's not how it's always been. There is actually a distance between our modern mindset and the ancient mindset. So that we're not, what I would say, disrespecting the Bible by putting all these modern assumptions onto it.

There's a lot we can have in a relationship with the text if we actually recognize the differences rather than assuming we're the same.

Christian Identity Markers as a Response to Threat

That's a perfect segue into my next topic is kind of understanding like how we confuse current Christianity. Because like just being on this journey, like I know that being in a podcast, it shapes you from the inside out.

And being on this journey, I'm like, okay, what does it mean to be Christian? How do I, you know, biblically speaking is like the basis of like, what does the Bible say? And how do I obey that? I have a whole episode where it's like, should I be participating in Jewish feasts and festivals and fasts?

Like, is that what it actually means to be Christian? But like in today's world, that's not cool or normal. So we don't, but I should be. And so within that thought is very similar to what you were saying of like, there is a confusion of the Christianity that we have today with the framework that we've inherited.

Because I feel and like, this wasn't real to me until it was pointed out through the making of the modern mindset. But like, there are central truths to Christianity that we, whether we like to admit it or not, we think are central to our Christianity.

And if we were to say, oh, I actually, that's fine. I can let that one go. Suddenly, it's like, well, then do it. Is it even Christianity? Or is it this like fast and loose thing that I can easily write off things?

And to add clarity for those that have no idea what I'm talking about. And please add more. But it's, you know, if you don't believe in biblical inerrancy, you're not Christian. If you think the Bible has errors in it, you're not actually Christian.

If you don't have a moral framework, you're not Christian. You have to always be honest. And maybe that's not the right one. But like even me, I'm like questioning it. Like, which one is not completely true?

Or if you don't have a particular view of sexuality, you're not Christian. That one blew my mind because I'm like, no, we have to. We have to think this way. What if I think the other way? So how did you nail these down?

Like, walk me through that thought process because I am still on the other side of the fence. I'm not on your side yet because I'm like, no, no, I can't let these go. I am not a good Christian if I'm like suddenly flexible about these things.

Yeah.

Well, maybe I'll start with a little story from the history of biblical scholarship. And then let's maybe move to how these things are kind of identity markers. And have they always been identity markers because they're just true?

Or can we see a shift? And the reason I want to start with the history of biblical scholarship is because it's interesting to see how our modern assumptions have affected scholarship around the Bible.

So our notion of salvation through, you know, let's just talk about something simple like salvation here quick. But there was a certain perspective on Paul and what Paul is trying to get at. And he writes in Romans and Galatians about salvation.

And it seemed pretty clear that he was arguing against a Jewish faith that was based on the law and based on works. And he was fighting for grace. And so we have this huge dichotomy of grace versus works.

And Paul is really on the right side of that in terms of grace. And so we read Romans and we read Galatians and we read these Pauline epistles through this lens of grace versus works. Modern biblical scholars and historians realize, well, first of all, it's because we didn't really have a context of what the Jewish religion was like at the time.

We didn't have a lot of context outside the Bible. So we didn't know. We only had the text. And then, you know, 1940s come along and we discover these 900 manuscripts in these caves in Qumran called the Dead Sea Scrolls.

And now all of a sudden we have an explosion of data and information that tells us what Jewish religion looked like around the time of Jesus. And it just exploded what we knew about what we call the Second Temple period.

And now we start looking back at these interpreters from the 1600s and 1700s and 1800s who were so certain about what Paul was talking about. And we realize it turns out that reflects a lot more on Martin Luther and his fights with the Catholic Church than it really did Jewish religion at the time of Jesus.

So Martin Luther was so big on grace because the Catholic Church in the 1500s had become so keen on works. So really, Martin Luther's arguing against the works based Catholic Church of the 1500s, not really against the Jews of his day, but he just read it against the backdrop because we didn't have these Dead Sea Scrolls.

We didn't really know what the religion was. And he was Paul's kind of using this language. And so after that emerges something you might have heard of called the New Perspective on Paul. Have you heard of the New Perspective on Paul?

No, no. It's a movement in biblical scholarship over the last, say, 40, 50 years. It came out not to get too nerdy, but it started with a man named E .P. Sanders, who wrote a book called Paul and Palestinian Judaism, where he finally kind of takes all these Dead Sea Scroll data and information from the last 30 years.

And he puts it into practice and says, it turns out Paul wasn't talking about law versus grace. He was talking about who's in versus who's out. That's actually the center of what Paul's talking about.

He's talking about how are Gentiles a part of God's family? Do they have to become Jewish first or can they just stay Gentiles? How does that work? And so now you have these scholars who start saying maybe this identity marker of what it means to be Christian isn't based on proclaiming grace above law or grace above works.

Maybe it's about how we determine who gets in and who gets out. And then you start to read the New Testament, you realize, you know, passages like Acts 15 are about Jews versus Gentiles, who gets in versus who gets out.

You start reading Paul and you realize against the backdrop of the context, that was the central questions of the day, not how does one get saved? That was not at all. That was not the question of the day.

That wasn't the center. That wasn't the identity marker of how do you get saved? That wasn't the question. That's the question of the 1500s. And then we took that and we retroactively put it back onto the New Testament.

And for 400 years of scholarship, we just kept hammering on how does one get saved as the central tenet of our faith? And it turns out the central question Paul and the early Christians were asking were not how do you get saved?

It was what do we do with the rest of the world now that the gospel has been spreading outside of Judaism?

I feel like I have to like reread the New Testament now.

All that to say, now kind of coming back to these identity markers, you know, I think the short philosophical answer is that identity markers emerge when communities feel threatened. There are ways that we start to put up these posts when we feel threatened.

And so it's no surprise that the identity markers that you've mentioned, inerrancy, moral frameworks, particular views of sexuality, came as a response to cultural pressure. The church felt threatened.

And so now we start to put up these identity markers. Not that they always were identity markers, but they come as a reaction to threat, which makes sense, right? So I don't put up a fence until I think there's a threat from my neighbor.

When there's a threat, then I put up the fence. And that's what we have in particular, these three instances around inerrancy and moral frameworks and views on sexuality. But the early church, those specific identity markers were more like, is Jesus Lord?

Are Gentiles fully included? How do Christians relate to the Roman Empire? Those were more of the identity markers in the early church. And I can talk about how each of those emerged if you want, but I'm going to stop because I've kind of nerded out there for a minute.

I mean, I do want to hear it from their perspective. But I also, the other side of that question is like, then what do I do with, okay, if the question is, are Gentiles in or not? Because that's me. But what about a Gentile who has received salvation?

But the whole sexual identity thing, the whole inerrancy thing, don't those still hold weight when it comes to salvation? Or is it something where it's like, you're in or you're out? I mean, that's like what the Bible is answering, is how do you get in?

And once you're in, you're in. It's not a fragile faith where these beliefs that, yeah, maybe or maybe not, are going to really make a difference. Because I think that like the goal for me and anybody who might be listening is like, no, I want to get as close to the sun as possible when it comes to God.

I don't want to, I don't want much of a margin of like, if these don't matter, that's great. That's not who the original Bible was really written for, nor does it really like matter to those authors. So it shouldn't matter now.

Or is it something where it's like, no, these matter.

Definitely don't overlook. Well, and I think what you just hit on is the history of interpretation. And it is the traditions, generation after generation that we wrestle with. The question becomes what now are the centers that wouldn't have been there 2000 years ago?

And the problem becomes if you only have the Bible, you don't have an answer to that question because they weren't central 2000 years ago. Right. Right. So we have to do that work as a community of faith.

We have to actually believe that it is Christ in us, the hope of glory, that we actually do have this spirit. Right. So in John, when Jesus promises things, Jesus promises that he would send the spirit to guide us into all truth, not a perfect inerrant Bible.

And so do we actually trust that the spirit is going to guide us into all truth as a community? Or do we just want to rely and pretend that this book from 2000 years ago addressed all of the things that will ever come up as to what is in the center of our faith?

Hold on a second.

Whoa. OK, I think that does a lot more like that has a much bigger impact than I think you realize. Like that is such like a safety net. That's like a wide cushion for like faith and questions. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. God thought about that one.

It's big, right? I mean, these are big questions. I mean, when you ask about inerrancy, I mean, I think you did a good job of picking out those things that really do seem to provide a level of certainty and safety for people.

That's what makes it centered is, well, as long as I believe the right thing about inerrancy and morality and sexuality, I'm in. And that gives me a sense of certainty and in this and belonging. And that's why it's so hard to let those go or to see them for what I think it's obvious that they are, which is this identity marker that's come as a response to threat from outside culture.

Well, that doesn't make it wrong, by the way. It's not saying that's wrong or right. It's just saying that it's situated in contextual. Like I said, the unfortunate reality is we're humans, and so that's somewhat all we have are these things that we have.

Again, the question becomes, do we trust the spirit of God to guide us into all truth or do we not? And that's a scary, scary proposition. That for me is faith. That's the risk. It doesn't take a lot of faith to defend everybody who says we don't have this perfect book that gives us all the answers for everything we're ever going to face.

I think that's materially not true. And I also think it goes against the spirit of faith that we have in the New Testament, which is risk.

The Spirit, Community Discernment, and the Fruits of Faith

Yeah. I mean, I have like four more questions I would ask on this topic, but I feel like the the Holy Spirit, like, is this going to answer our questions? Is this going to lead us? Can we put our faith in it?

Kind of already answers that, you know, like when it comes to like if we remove these markers about immorality or inerrancy, morality and sexuality, you know, if we're moving those, does that make our Christian faith lose?

Lose its identity. It's like, well, what where is your relationship with the Holy Spirit? Like, where is the Holy Spirit guiding you? Like, if you feel like it is, then maybe, yeah, hold closer. Or if you feel like it isn't and you still have that active relationship because kind of like what you were saying in the last section of like relationship and authenticity that matters more than like hard, objective facts.

Like, are you close to God? And it makes me think about like my mom had a friend who was a lesbian, and I feel like being raised in a very legalistic Christianity, I'm like, well, you can't do that. That's wrong.

But my mom loved that woman. Like, I love that woman. She's amazing person. And she was a Christian. And so I'm like, I don't want to say it was like an exception to the rule, but it's like, why would I not love that person if the relationship wasn't deceitful and it was bringing me closer to God, regardless of her sexual identity?

And I think Jesus speaks on this, which is we know them by their fruits. Yeah. So if the fruits are good, Jesus says that good fruit can't come from a bad tree and vice versa. So if we are to judge on anything, we can't know hearts.

We can't know what, you know, we're not God, but what we can judge is by fruit. Yeah.

So would you say that these kind of like hard and fast rules, these like objective yes or no's, this black and white, this is something that like an early ancient Near Eastern Israelite, they would just kind of like, it would just not be a priority for them.

Their priority would be more relationally. It wouldn't be inerrancy or morality. It would be, where's your heart in alignment with God? Like, are you feeling the Holy Spirit?

Yes or no? Well, I mean, I think the ancient church probably had hard and fast lines. They just were different than ours. So I think we have, we have hindsight's 20 20. Yeah, we have both the responsibility and the privilege to look back and say, maybe it wasn't really ever about the hard lines.

Maybe that's a human thing that we feel like we have to draw hard lines because we're afraid of what it looks like if we don't have hard lines. And I think maybe if we look at the trajectory over and over, what I see throughout the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament is that the boundaries continue to either absolve and break down or they continue to broaden and broaden and broaden.

And maybe the message is you're putting those boundaries on. Maybe God's not.

It makes me think of these characters in the Old Testament where you're like, and God forgave him. Like David, after what David did, he's still so loved. And it's like, well, because God knew his heart, which is it's so it's like a blanket, but it's such an ambiguous blanket of like, yeah, no, if you feel close relationally to God, then that's probably a good fruit.

You know, that's probably the right place.

But it's like maybe the only thing I would challenge with that is just because you keep saying you, I do think there is there. We have to work on the checks and balances where we're not just running away with our own feelings.

Right. Part of that is being in community with people where you can share a vulnerability and a transparency that you can be critiqued and you can be corrected as a community, as a large group of people.

Not for me, I think the challenge is sometimes we think of that in this hierarchical where there's one senior pastor and kind of he gets to be the judge, jury and executioner of all things right or wrong.

I don't think that's a true community. And in the same way, I don't think an individual on their own is going to be able to discern what that looks like, because we can get confused between what we feel and what the right thing is.

And so we discern that in community and it's messier. It's not this inerrant Bible that tells us 100 percent and it's not anything goes. It's in this messy middle of a community of faith.

Christianity as Something to Be Existed In

Yeah, a messy middle for sure. So what I really appreciated was all of the philosophical takes within the four part series of the Making of the Modern Mindset. I feel like I was completely ignorant to all of that.

And one of the things that really stuck to me was when you quoted Kierkegaard and said that Christianity did not enter the world to be understood, but to be existed in. And for me, biblically speaking, is understanding Christianity.

It's understanding the Bible. So what does that mean to you in simple terms that Christianity is meant to be existed in but not understood?

Yeah, well, let's take a we'll take an ancient church approach and then a more modern one. So St. Augustine, and I can get the reference, but it's not coming to me right now. St. Augustine basically said the Bible is an instruction manual.

It's a tool for a life of love. So he famously said, here's how you can tell if you're interpreting the Bible rightly. Does it lead to loving God and loving your neighbor more? If it is, it's the right interpretation.

If it's not, it's the wrong interpretation. And he basically says there'll be a point where technically, theoretically, a Christian doesn't need the Bible anymore because it's a tool toward a loving life.