Why Faith Fails The Christian Delusion

by John W. Loftus

even now enjoy eternal life. It teaches not the impending defeat of evil in a

  cosmic judgment but the routing of the devil at Jesus' crucifixion." It's as though

  the "Evangelist systematically set out to translate the literal into the figurative,

  sought to reinterpret, in terms of present religious experience, the apocalyptic

  mythology he found in the Jesus tradition."54

  Indeed! At the end of the Gospel of John we even see an attempt to explain

  away the fact that the last living "disciple whom Jesus loved" had died without

  these predictions coming true. Since Jesus had said his disciples would see the

  eschaton in their day (cf. Mark 9:1, 13:30; Matthew 10:23) "a rumor" started that

  this last disciple would not die before it took place. This presented a serious

  problem to the church as the disciples began to die out one by one until the only

  one still alive was the "disciple whom Jesus loved." To dispel such a rumor we're

  told this: "Jesus did not say that he would not die; he only said, `If I want him to

  remain alive until I return, what is that to you?"' (John 21:20-23).

  E. P. Sanders sums what happened so far in these words: "Jesus originally said

  that the Son of Man would come in the immediate future, while his hearers were

  alive." After Jesus died and after they claimed he resurrected, Sanders continues:

  [H]is followers preached that he would return immediately-that is, they

  simply interpreted "the Son of Man" as referring to Jesus himself. Then,

  when people started dying, they said that some would still be alive. When

  almost the entire first generation was dead, they maintained that one

  disciple would still be alive. Then he died, and it became necessary to claim

  thatJesus had not actually promised even this one disciple that he would

  live to see that great day.55

  In the book of Revelation the author moves the goal posts a little farther. In

  chapter 13 we find a beast who is identified with the Roman Emperor Nero,

  through the cipher language of using numbers to double as letters, called

  gematria, so that 666 adds up to Nero Caesar (13:18). So if Revelation was

  written during Nero's reign, then the eschaton had a statute of limitations with

  the people alive at that time. If, however, as Bart Ehrman and others argue, parts

  of Revelation were written in the 60s CE, during Nero's reign (ca. 54-68 CE)

  before the destruction of Jerusalem, and subsequently edited at the end of

  Domitian's reign around 95-96 CE, then an older tradition formed the basis of

  the present book (see note).56 This older tradition was reworked to show that the

  eschaton would instead take place during Domitian's reign because it didn't take

  place during Nero's reign as previously predicted. The connection between the

  two rulers was easy enough to make, since it was believed Nero would return

  from the dead to persecute the faithful once again,57 and because Domitian

  reinstated Nero's persecutions. In any case, the author assures us that this event

  was to happen "soon," in his day. But it did not happen.

  Later, when the pseudonymous second letter to the Thessalonians was written

  at the end of the first century-58 to reassure Christians that Jesus would indeed

  return, unlike some who thought he had already done so (2:1-2), and unlike

  others who quit their jobs to wait for it to happen (3:6-15), additional signs must

  take place first. A rebellion must take place and "the man of sin" be revealed

  who will "exalt himself over everything that is God" (2:3-12). And although the

  power of this "man of sin" (or antiChrist) is already at work in the world, he is

  being held back until the "proper time" when he will be revealed and later

  destroyed when Jesus returns in glory.

  By the time the even later second-century pseudonymous Epistle of 2 Peter

  was written,59 scoffers were mocking the claim thatJesus would soon return.

  Christians themselves were doing the scoffing since this letter was written to

  admonish them. These things were an embarrassment to the church of that time.

  The answer given was that with the Lord, "a day is like a thousand years, and a

  thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as

  some understand slowness ... the day of the Lord will come like a thief" (2 Peter

  3:3-10). This answer falls on deaf ears. It comes across as an excuse for why the

  eschaton didn't occur in the very generation Jesus said it would. This is just what

  apocalyptic movements do with the prophetic texts when their prophecies fail.

  They use what has been aptly described as "secondary exegesis" (a la Dale

  Allison) to reinterpret them, and this is exactly what we see in the NT.

  CHRISTIANS HAVE FAILED TO EXPLAIN AWAY THIS FAILED

  PROPHECY

  My working hypothesis has been that the best explanation for the different

  claims in the NT of the timing of the eschaton is because later authors kept

  moving the goal posts as time marched on. By contrast, we have a splintered

  array of eschatological theories coming from Christians who are trying to

  interpret and harmonize the NT with itself as if it were the inspired word of God

  and consistent in every respect. In light of nearly two thousand years and no

  return of Jesus in sight, Christian eschatological theories are in a major crisis.

  One way to observe whether a theory is in crisis is to note how many versions

  of that theory there are. When it comes to Christian eschatology, there are

  Historicist, Preterist, Futurist, and Idealist versions of it. Specific millennial

  views include premillenialism, postmillennialism, and amillen-nialism ones.

  Then there is dispensational premillenialism with pre-, mid-, and post-

  tribulational rapture viewpoints, even though there is no room in the NT for the

  idea of a rapture separated from the final eschaton.60 There also are partial and

  full preterist views. There are so many questions and disputes between

  Christians over this issue that the evidence seems clear: attempts to harmonize

  the statements in the NT are a failure. Christians misunderstand what is going on

  in the NT writings themselves. The authors were reinterpreting these prophecies

  just like every failed doomsday cult has done in order to survive as a community.

  Dale Allison reminds us that these "after the fact rationalizations are almost

  inevitable: it is easier to deceive oneself than to admit selfdeception."61 And he

  argues the "evidence that this happened in early Christianity is substantial."62

  Today's Christian doomsday prophets are doing the same things we have seen

  ever since Jeremiah issued his prophecy of the restoration of Israel. They dodge

  the impact of the NT texts describing an imminent eschaton with a coming "Son

  of Man" by claiming God's clock stopped with the advent of the church and will

  start up again in the last days when the tribulation begins, called the Great

  Parenthesis. Or they'll claim that when God's word says "soon" it's from God's

  perspective rather than ours. Robert Price counters such nonsense:

  But what sort of revelation is it that is couched in terms unintelligible to

  those for whose sake it is vouchsafed? Given God's infinite expanse of

  cosmic eons, what could "s
oon" possibly mean if it bears no relation to our

  own use of the word? After all, if God is talking to human beings, he has to

  use human terms if he wants to be understood. And if he really meant, "I

  am coming thousands of years in the future," why didn't he just say so?63

  In our day a major reinterpretation of these prophecies has been offered by the

  Canon of Westminster, N. T. Wright, who argues in his book, 7esus and the

  Victory of God,64 that the prophecies of Jesus took place in his generation just

  as Jesus predicted. He argues that what Jesus and the early Christians predicted

  was not a cosmic ending of the universe in their day, but rather sociopolitical and

  spiritual change. They used the apocalyptic language of cosmic destruction but

  applied it metaphorically, not literally, to describe the destruction of the temple

  and Jerusalem, which took place in 70 CE. The coming of the "Son of Man" was

  not about Jesus' second coming but rather about his coming into the presence of

  God after his sufferings. Jesus was vindicated by virtue of his resurrection from

  the dead and who was later manifested on earth in the destruction of Jerusalem.

  He is now reigning victorious over the world. The greatest enemy isn't the

  Roman occupiers but Satan and his cohorts. As such, the greatest battle is not

  against the Romans but the liberation from sin.

  Christians fall into two groups based on Wright's arguments. Partial preterists

  claim there will be a future parousia (i.e., Jesus returning in the sky), while hull

  preterists like Wright deny it. It's ironic that Wright hopes that with his construal

  of these prophecies it might lessen the conflict in the world (p. xv), but in fact it

  has done the exact opposite. Reconstructionists have adopted it to advocate a

  theocracy, like Gary Demar in Last Days Madness: Obsession of the Modern

  Church American.65 Their argument is that if Jesus now reigns over the world,

  then he does so in part through Christians. What follows for them is that Jesus

  wants a theocracy.

  While there are many nuances to his case, this will suffice for my critique of

  Wright, since it should be enough simply to show there is abundant evidence that

  the NT writers believed the language of cosmic catastrophe was to be taken

  literally, not metaphorically. They literally expected a cosmic conflagration at

  the predicted eschaton, which did not happen in their generation, contrary to

  Wright, and as such, the apocalyptic predictions of the eschaton could not have

  been fulfilled in their day.

  The eschatological language in the NT was thought by the early church fathers

  as depicting literal cosmic events, as seen in Papias (as reported in Eusebius,

  Ecclesiastical History 3:39:12), Justin Martyr (Dialogue with Trypho 80),

  Irenaeus (Against Heresies 5:32-36), Tertullian (AgainstMar-cion 3:24), the

  Montanists (Epiphanius, Panarion. 49:1:2-3), and Lactantius (The Divine

  Institutions 7:24-26). From all of this Allison says they "all believed, because

  they read their Bible literally, in a rather worldly millennium involving a

  transformation of the natural world."66

  Given the cosmology of the Bible that Edward Babinski shows us in chapter

  5, it's clear what believers would think of the following language in Mark 13:24:

  "But in those days, following that distress, the sun will be darkened, and the

  moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly

  bodies will be shaken." To people like Wright, who claim this language is

  metaphorical, Allison asks:

  Why then suppose that Mark 13:24 is less prosaic than, let us say, 1 Enoch

  70:6, which foretells that one day the stars "will change their course and

  their activities, and will not appear at the times which have been proscribed

  for them," or that it is less realistic than The Epistle of Barnabas 15:8,

  which says that when the Son of God abolishes the time of the lawless one,

  God "will change the sun and the moon and stars," or that it is less literal

  than Lactantius, Divine Institutions 7:24, where we are told that, during the

  millennium, the moon will shine like the sun and the sun will be seven

  times brighter than it is now?67

  While Allison admits there is indeed some metaphorical language in the Bible

  with regard to beasts and the moon turning into blood, he concludes:

  My own judgment is that we have so many similar texts because so many

  people have longed for the same thing, namely, supernatural judgment and

  repair of a fallen world; and it would strike me as peculiar to suppose that,

  whereas ancientJews and Christians looked into the future and saw

  metaphorical darkness, metaphorical earthquakes, and metaphorical stars,

  so many others who have looked into the future have seen literal darkness,

  literal earthquakes, and literal stars.68

  Edward Adams extensively documents these kinds of things more than

  sufficiently in his book, The Stars Will Fall from Heaven: Cosmic Catastrophe in

  the New Testament and Its World, as do Jonathan T. Pennington and Sean M.

  McDonough, editors of Cosmology and New Testament Theology.69 It's hard to

  believe that Jesus didn't think the stars will fall from heaven on that day (Mark

  13:24), or that the early Christians didn't think Jesus would literally come on the

  clouds and take Christians up into the air with him (e.g., Mark 13:26-27, Acts

  1:9-11, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18), with one person snatched away right next to

  others who are not taken, even from their very beds as they sleep (Matthew

  24:36-44, Luke 17:26-35). The fact that no one would know the exact hour when

  this would happen (e.g., Mark 13:32-37) entails that a singular apocalyptic event

  was meant, which is contrary to Wright's hypothesis. It's also highly unlikely that

  the writer of Hebrews did not think the heavens (sky) and earth would be shaken

  (12:25-29, cf. 1:10-12), or that the author of 2 Peter did not think that "the earth

  will be burned up" (3:5-13), or that the author of Revelation did not think heaven

  would literally roll up like a scroll and that every mountain and island will be

  removed from its place on that day (6:12-17).

  Clearly the events expected by Jesus and his followers were cosmic in scope,

  and soon to occur. It was not only going to be the end of all of the kingdoms of

  men on earth but a total cosmic catastrophe in which the stars literally fall from

  heaven and the present earth is burned up, after which God inaugurates a literal

  kingdom with the "Son of Man" reigning on a new earth from a new Jerusalem,

  in their very day. This prophesied event did not happen.

  So Christians must choose. Either the NT isn't even somewhat reliable, or

  Jesus was a failed apocalyptic prophet. In either case this falsifies Christianity.

  NOTES

  1. I thank Dr. Felipe Leon for calling my attention to this whole problem, and

  I thank Richard Carrier for some helpful comments on this chapter. Paul Tobin

  has a good discussion of this issue in his book, The Rejection of Pascal:r Wager.

  A Skeptics Guide to the Historical Jesus (Authors Online Book, 2009), pp. 455-

  70.

&n
bsp; 2. For a helpful description of Jewish apocalyptic literature, see John J.

  Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination.- An Introduction to Jewish Apocalyptic

  Literature, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998). See also The

  Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, vol. 1, The Origins of Apocalypticism in

  Judaism and Christianity, ed. John J. Collins (New York: Continuum

  International, 2000).

  3. Kirsch, History of the End (New York: HarperCollins, 2006). See also

  Bernard McGinn et al., The Continuum History of Apocalypticism (New York:

  Continuum, 2003).

  4. Kirsch, History of the End, p. 126.

  5. Probably the best three books discussing the claim that Jesus was a fictional

  character are Robert M. Price, Deconstructing Jesus (Amherst, NY: Prometheus

  Books, 2000), Earl Doherty, The Jesus Puzzle (Ottawa: The Age of Reason

  Publications, 2005), and Richard Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus Christ,

  forthcoming, which I have not yet seen.

  It can be very difficult to establish what may have happened in the past, so

  agnosticism about the historicity of Jesus is a reasonable position. On the poor

  evidence of historical evidence, see chapter 8 in my book, Why I Became an

  Atheist. When it comes to the historicity of the founder of the Jesus cult, the

  dominant theory, in Earl Doherty's words, is this: "In their fervor and distress

  following the crucifixion, the followers of Jesus ... ran to their Bibles and began

  to apply all manner of scriptural passages to him, especially those looked upon

  as messianic by the Jewish thinking of the time. But they turned as well to

  contemporary Hellenistic mythology about the Logos, supplementing it with the

  Jewish equivalent in the figure of personified Wisdom, throwing in for good

  measure ... myths about descending-ascending heavenly redeemers." Earl

  Doherty argues instead for an alternative skeptical theory:

  [T] he Christian movement was not a response to any human individual at

  one time and location. Christianity was born in a thousand places, out of the

  fertile religious and philosophical soil of the time, expressing faith in an

  intermediary Son who was a channel to God, providing knowledge, love

  and salvation. It sprang up in many innovative minds like Paul's, among

  independent communities and sects all over the empire, producing a variety

  of forms and doctrines. Some of it tapped into tradi tional Jewish Messiah

  expectation and apocalyptic sentiment, other expressions were tied to more

  Platonic ways of thinking. Greek mystery concepts also fed into the volatile

  mix.... Paul and the Jerusalem brotherhood around Peter and James were

  simply one strand of this broad salvation movement, although an important

  and ultimately very influential one. Later, in a mythmaking process of its

  own, the Jerusalem circle with Paul as its satellite was adopted as the

  originating cell of the whole Christian movement.

  (http://www.jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/jhcjp.htm)

  The reason why a vast majority of scholars do not accept the skeptical theory is

  not necessarily because they are believers, although most of them are. It's

  because the dominant theory seems to be a simpler one. It is much simpler (and

  hence easier) they conclude, to conceive of an original movement with a human

  founder that splintered into a multitude number of groups than it is to conceive

  of a multitude number of similar groups arising at the same time across the

  known world who soon came together to identify themselves as Christians.

  A recent book of five views discussing this issue is The Historical Jesus: Five

  Views, eds. James K. Beilby and Paul Rhodes Eddy (Downers Grove, IL: