I am generally sympathetic to the main point of the article: American Christians have too shallow of an understanding of the Bible. I have a few objections. Some are nitty, at least one or two are not, I think. First the nits:
1) The textual variation is over-dramatized in the quote from Ehrman. They do then go on to say that the vast majority amount to typos, but still. "No one has ever read the bible" is too strong.
2) The KJV isn't the gold standard of bibles
3) there isn't actually any real issue with translating προσκυνέω, it just requires a footnote.
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And the not as nitty:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Newsweek
Which raises a big issue for Christians: the Trinity—the belief that Jesus and God are the same and, with the Holy Spirit, are a single entity—is a fundamental, yet deeply confusing, tenet. So where does the clear declaration of God and Jesus as part of a triumvirate appear in the Greek manuscripts?
First, there's an interesting presupposition here, which is that Christianity is fundamentally a religion of the book, and that what's not in the book doesn't count. But that is also "not in the Bible", so to speak. It's also conditioned by later tradition, namely the
sola scriptura of protestantism.
They call that a deception, but there is no deception, even if there is misunderstanding on the part of modern Christians. The Church at the time of councils did not hold that the biblical texts were the only authority on Christology, but that the Church, hearing the spirit of God (however understood) was. There's certainly plenty of political machinations to criticize in Christendom both then and now, and just as they say the Bible is a human book and its flaws should be understood in that light, so too church history, I would say.
Beyond that, the author seems to implicitly side with the Arians, and suggests that the Biblical tradition is firmly against trinitarianism, but the actual Christology of the New Testament is pretty ambiguous, imo.
So for example they write:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Newsweek
In other words, with a little translational trickery, a fundamental tenet of Christianity—that Jesus is God—was reinforced in the Bible, even in places where it directly contradicts the rest of the verse.
That kind of manipulation occurs many times. In Philippians, the King James Version translates some words to designate Jesus as “being in the form of God.” The Greek word for form could simply mean Jesus was in the image of God.
That is untrue. The greek μορφη in Phillipians 2 means shape or form, and can't be translated image. I think they are confusing it with Colossians 1:15, which sounds similar, but calls Christ the εικον (icon, image) of God. See
Philippians 2 and
Colossians 1.
Beyond that, the implication that somehow the Colossians wording would change the theological implications of Philippians is stretched. Even as "image", the hymn of Colossians 1 certainly renders Christ divine in some way:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Colossians 1:15-20
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
They also mention 1 Corinthians 8. From the article
Quote:
Originally Posted by Newsweek
In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, he wrote that “there is but one God, the Father…and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ.”
which is implying that the passage is non-trinitarian. But N.T. Wright, a very notable modern scholar of Paul's work, considers that passage to reflect a very high Christology. I can't do justice to his argument here, but in short:
a) In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the O.T. which Paul would have used, κυριος (Lord) is used to replace the Hebrew YHWH. That tradition is where we get English translations of the O.T. which also render as "The LORD sayeth..." and so on. Paul's use of the title Kyrios for Jesus is already allusive
b) In context, Paul seems to be citing some older formulation, like a prayer, and he is citing it in support of the conclusion that there is only one "God", and his formulation also attributes to Christ the same sort of heavenly power:
Quote:
Originally Posted by 1 Corinthians 8:4-6
Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that "an idol has no real existence," and that "there is no God but one." For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many "gods" and many "lords"— yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.
c) Wright argues that the Greek of this passage echoes the style of the Greek formulation of the Shema in the Septuagint, the central monotheistic prayer of Judaism: "Hear O Israel, the Lord Our God, the Lord is One". That is a matter of the specific syntax, but he reads it as a Christian re-imagining of that prayer.
There are other arguments about how Paul's view of Jesus makes him Divine in a way that wouldn't make sense in a strictly Judaistic monotheism, but leaving those aside, John's gospel also clearly has a very high Christology, and although it is later than the other gospels and Paul, it's well prior to Nicea. The point that there was not universal consensus among Christians even many centuries after Jesus is well taken, but the orthodox view isn't simply a matter of Constantine destroying opposing views over the objections of the actual text. The inclusion of Christ and the Spirit in the identity of God (leaving aside the philosophical formulation of this at Constantinople) is something that can be found in the text, if not in a very developed and systematic way.
