Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 49:1 (Mar 2006)
Article: What Evangelicals and Liberals Can Learn From The Church Fathers
Author: Christopher A. Hall

JETS 49:1 (March 2006) p. 81

What Evangelicals and Liberals
Can Learn From The Church Fathers

Christopher A. Hall

Christopher A. Hall is professor of biblical and theological studies at Eastern University, 1300 Eagle Road, St. Davids, PA 19087–3696. This paper was originally presented as a plenary address at the Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in Valley Forge, PA on November 16, 2005.

Bart Ehrman, the James A. Gray Professor and chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has recently published an interesting, provocative book titled Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew.1 Ehrman’s title is thought-provoking. There are clearly, in Ehrman’s thinking, “Christianities” that have been lost as what we know as “orthodox” Christianity emerged as the dominant group and purposely suppressed other “Christian” interpretations of the gospel.

Ehrman describes these diverse “Christianities” as illustrative of an amazing, lively diversity in the earliest centuries of the Church’s history. In Ehrman’s words, “What could be more diverse than this variegated phenomenon, Christianity in the modern world? In fact, there may be an answer: Christianity in the ancient world. As historians have come to realize, during the first three Christian centuries, the practices and beliefs found among people who called themselves Christians were so varied that the differences between Roman Catholics, Primitive Baptists, and Seventh-Day Adventists pale by comparison.”2

Despite the diversity found in the ancient Christian world, Ehrman acknowledges that “virtually all forms of modern Christianity, whether they acknowledge it or not, go back to one form of Christianity that emerged as victorious from the conflicts of the second and third centuries.”3 What we know as orthodox Christianity today, with its distinct affirmations concerning the Trinity, Christ’s incarnation, resurrection, and ascension, Christ’s body, the Church, and so on, are viewed by Ehrman as the tenets of a community that defeated its theological and ecclesial opponents through its dominance, strength, and willingness to shape the historical record into its own image. Other perspectives, all of whom orthodox Christians would describe as in some way heterodox, either were “reformed or stamped out, by the dominant orthodox group.”4

JETS 49:1 (March 2006) p. 82

Ehrman repeatedly employs the language...