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I think it's not a struggle to understand the NT, but a struggle to understand the OT for me. There is grace and love in the OT that we don't see. I'm no theological scholar of any standing, and certainly not an OT scholar, but despite God's earthly wrath against men in the OT, I think it only stands as a testament to his loving faithfulness to the covenant he made with Abraham and, through Abraham, with Israel.

It is tough to reconcile, sometimes. A book I've had on my Amazon wishlist has been the Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament edited G.K. Beale and D.A. Carson, hoping that it will help me resolve some of these issues in my own heart.

Edit: I hope your dissertation goes well! You chose a good season in which to write on that topic.

First, go to a parish. We really do what the books say, but you can't learn the faith from books. The faith must be experienced and lived or you are missing 90% of Orthodoxy. If you do determine to go, go for a month before you make any decisions. Stand in the back and just absorb and listen without critical thought, but feel free to ask questions and participate as far as you are comfortable to. After that month, dig for every fault and fracture you can find. Ask questions about what you object to, demand explanations for what causes dissonance for you. Then start the process of making decisions. I might also suggest trying out the sign of the cross, a prayer book, and a little fasting, but that's up to you and any discussion you may have with a priest.

As for what got me started. Honestly, the thing that got me was the people here on reddit, particularly /u/silouan. There is a sizable contingent of us here here.

As far as the Church itself, I was struck by the sense of what's holy. There are parts of the building (the altar), our lives (daily prayers, fasting), our population (the clergy) that are intentionally set apart to service of God. This seems like a good and right reaction to God. I had never seen such reverence, awe, beauty, and worship as in an Orthodox church. 2 years in I'm used to things and my mind wanders as much as it did any place else, but the services still feel like worship and prayer, never a performance. As my mom once said (slightly paraphrased) "You actually deify Jesus."

Beyond that, I buy the historical arguments the Church can make regarding its connection to and constancy in adherence to the faith of the Apostles. There is a wealth of information regarding this in the form of both primary sources (Bible, Didache, Church Fathers, and so on), and in the form of modern summaries such as Bishop Kallistos Ware's The Orthodox Church and The Orthodox Way.

It might also be interesting to note for a long time I didn't want to be Orthodox. Some of the stuff we do looks weird from the outside. Fasting it not easy. In the Americas choosing to live an Orthodox life goes against the stream of much of our thought, even the general Christian stream of thought. Choosing to truly live the faith to the fullest we can manage will make us counter-cultural anywhere. The Orthodox claims on truth are also very exclusive. The exclusive claims were also disturbing to my democratic, denominational tendences. I knew that by accepting this I was stepping out onto the last bastion of religion, or at least Christianity, for me. There is no place else for me to back up to. No surer foundation for me to search back in history for.

First off, welcome to the forum! You're going to really enjoy your time here. I've experienced such incredible spiritual development thanks to all the folks here. There's a pretty good diversity of theological perspectives, which is really helpful to gaining a comprehensive understanding of God and the Christian faith

Second, you are not alone in your skepticism. I was an atheist for most of my life and still consider myself to be a skeptic. It can be overwhelming when you hear about all the miracles and the alleged contradictions in the Bible. Focus on one battle at a time. It is healthy to have doubts. An unchallenged faith is a weak, superficial one. Feel free to ask any questions and we will be happy to answer them to the best of our ability.

Third, historically, you are not alone in your doubts. Many famous Christians had doubts - including individuals in the Bible. Even after the apostle Thomas saw all of Jesus' miracles and followed Jesus for several years, he doubted whether Jesus had risen from the dead! Mother Theresa went through what is known as a "Dark Night of the Soul" for decades. Martin Luther thought himself so unworthy of God's love that he spent 6-8 hours a day repenting and still thinking he was unworthy.

So, do not fret about your doubts! They are a natural, healthy aspect of a sincere faith. I wish you well and look forward to engaging in discussion with you

PS: As an intro to the Christian faith, I recommend C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity.

If you want some resources which address the difficult problems of Christianity, I highly recommend William Lane Craig's podcasts at Reasonable Faith.

Furthermore, check out "Convince Me Now" podcast on Itunes! Also, there are tons of atheist vs. Christian debates on youtube. I recommend William Lane Craig and also NT Wright!

Great post. I would definitely agree that the anti-Judaic and anti-Semitic streams of thought in Christianity predate Luther, although tracts like On the Jews and Their Lies were really something else. (For the uninitiated: Critical introduction and excerpts here; the whole shebang here.) Attempts by influential albeit heretical teachers in the early Church, like Marcion, to treat the God of the Old Testament as being different from the God of the New come to mind, not to mention the propagation of supercessionism as an official, strategic response to the non-believing Jewish community by Church fathers from Irenaeus to Clement to Tertullian to Origen to Cyprian--the idea being that the crime of the Jews rejection of Jesus was so heinous that God had rejected them and replaced them with the Church.

While there are problems with the text, I felt that Ruether's Faith and Fratricide did a pretty good job of at least identifying several of the potential causes of the theological reification of anti-Semitism. From my research, it's not really until Karl Barth that we wind up with a fully world class theologian who attempted to embrace the Jewish particularity of Jesus in a way that was not also dismissive of the Jewish people; an excerpt from Church Dogmatics IV/1, 166 illustrates this pretty well:

> The word did not simply become any "flesh," any man humbled and suffering. It became Jewish flesh. The Church’s whole doctrine of the incarnation and the atonement becomes abstract and valueless and meaningless to the extent that this comes to be regarded as something accidental and incidental. The New Testament witness to Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, stands on the soil of the Old Testament and cannot be separated from it. The pronouncements of the New Testament Christology may have been shaped by a very non-Jewish environment. But they relate always to a man who is seen to be not a man in general, a neutral man, but the conclusion and sum of the history of God with the people of Israel, the One who fulfills the covenant made by God with this people. [Note: for a great assessment of Barth's position towards the Jewish people, check this out.]

To this day, even churches who do not officially espouse a hostile position towards the Jewish people often struggle to create the sort of community that effectively accomplishes discipleship for Jewish seekers, let alone Jewish followers of Jesus. In these cases where a functional if not intentional anti-Judaic atmosphere persists, there is not only great harm done to Jews but also to everybody in the Church. A church who has lost the concept of particularity that you are helping to identify here is one that has also lost a robust understanding of grace, a point Paul is careful to fortify across the whole of Romans 11.

So now I have to ask: Where have you witnessed something like a solution for all this? Where have you witnessed people not only understanding but truly living a better way?

It just strikes me as so watered down. It seems to lose so much of the original beauty and some of the harsh language found in other copies. Like thephotoman said, it is trying to straddle the middle ground between the original and the figurative.

That said, I don't think it's terrible. It's not good for critical study or for any deep theological work but if you're somewhat new to the faith or you simply don't have much of an interest in theology then I think it's okay. You can be a great Christian without much interest in theology. If you're following the teachings of Christ, believe Him to be God and pretty much everything else in the Apostle's Creed then you're in good shape. If a complex understanding of the Bible serves as a stumbling block but something presented a bit more simply helps you then more power to you. That's probably the reason why it has such popularity. I just would sincerely discourage anyone from using the NIV as a tool of apologetics or theology.

Also John, since you enjoy Bible history you should check out this book by Alister McGrath. It's kind of a dry read at times but it's really fantastic.

I fear we may end up talking past each other, so this will probably be my last response.

>There is a blatant misconstruing, against the way the term has been classically defined and accepted, and what modern atheists are trying to construe it as in an attempt to aid their argument against the Christian apologist, making it mean something it does not. From where I sit, the "Christian atheist" is either an atheist or agnostic (I wouldn't label them either, as the article does not make plain whether they affirm the non-existence of God/gods or not) who is attempting to assemble a morality similar to Christ's own, but without the necessary objective morality that comes with it.

As I said, it's not a misconstruing, it's a different construing. You're right--modern atheists of the sort you are referring to do indeed construe it that way for that purpose, but that's not the only way it must be construed. So far from where you sit, I don't really see where you're disagreeing with me. I haven't said that Christian atheists aren't actually atheists (the vast majority are with only a couple of agnostics who own the label), I just don't think the label "Christian atheist" is bad. If you want to talk about trying to create precise terms, what would you rather label them as? I find that it captures their position pretty succinctly, myself. To be honest, I don't actually think we're disagreeing on anything here. I just want to say one can be an atheist that is sympathetic to religious ideas, which is different than the militant atheists you'll find in the Dawkins camp--just like there are plenty of different kinds of Christians, all with their own modified labels.

>God, as understood by both classical, contemporary, and modern theology is a being with a Perfect Moral Character. Using His own Perfect Moral Character to shape His own Will & Creation, His Moral commands & duties are of an objective standard. Without this objective standard (IE: the non-existence of God), then morality ironically shifts to a sort of "post-modern" state, where it has no objective meaning, and morality is just the phrase used by people to describe a category of subjective statements on what they accept as "right" and "wrong", but in the end have no means to define those two terms.

This understanding of God is in no way universal whatsoever and reflects a highly narrow reading of the Christian tradition. One need only read the mystics (particularly Eckhart) classically, process theologians and Kierkegaard as contemporary, and thinkers like Jean-Luc Marion or John D. Caputo in current scholarship to see that this "objective standard" you refer to is not only dismissed by many Christians but is even labeled as violent and not reflective of the biblical witness, assuming that's what you're after in the end. Furthermore, I think your understanding of postmodernism is that it is synonymous with relativism, which is a grave mistake and actually led to some very interesting discussions between famous postmoderns like Derrida and relativists like Rorty.

>This is my problem with Post-modernism and post-modern thought - it is apparently impossible to communicate at any point. They are two different words with two different meanings than many modern atheists are trying to define as the same. They are trying to make "not believing in any gods" (not P) & "believing gods do not exist" (P) mean the same thing. THIS is incoherent, and it plainly obvious.

If that's you're problem, I have to say I'm not sure you've read any of the postmoderns. Perhaps I'm wrong, but it appears you've misunderstood them (and the fact that they can even be misunderstood seems to only prove my point here). It's not impossible to communicate--the point is that we only communicate within particular contexts and lexical ecosystems. If I say one word in one community it means one thing, and if I say the same word in a different community it may mean something else. This is not prescriptive but descriptive. Surely you can think of an example yourself! It happens all the time, and is usually the root cause of many things as simple as a petty argument between lovers or friends. Human beings are always finite, and language, too, is always finite--there is no "objective" language to be had. Any claim that this or that definition is the pure one to be accepted by all has no grounds other than your own community's, which then becomes nothing more than imperialism. A great book on this by a Christian was actually reissued recently--James K. A. Smith's The Fall of Interpretation is excellent. I highly encourage you to look into it.

>I understand what they say, I reject the idea based on many different grounds. The Moral Argument itself for example is perfectly designed to challenge this attempt at reconciling this thought process. From what I can see, "Christian atheists" are no different then, say, humanists, except humanists derive their morality from the betterment of the species rather than a 2000 year-old text that the "Christian atheist" rejects in the majority.

The Moral Argument is just as flawed as their own. I disagree with them, as I said, but as Kierkegaard has shown quite convincingly God is not in the business of establishing and bulwarking ethical systems--if he was, he probably wouldn't ask Abraham to kill his son, at which point Abraham steps outside the ethical. For more on this, see his Fear and Trembling. "Objectivity" is generally a code word for that strange set of doctrines held by western secularism and rationality as a whole; I have yet to find out why Christians are so interested in arguing on their terms.

>I never said this wasn't so - don't put words in my mouth please. It is a fact that Morality is quite separate from a belief in God, as is demonstrated very often. I'm not contending that morality cannot be derived; if the nonbeliever wants to recognize an intrinsic value of human beings, there is no reason to think that he can't work out an ethical code that a believer would generally agree with. Regardless of how someone comes to that belief however, the Christian contends and any morality is inseparable from God's Existence. Without His existence, then any moral objectivity is thrown out.

Forgive me, it just seems as though when you say things like "The Moral Argument itself for example is perfectly designed to challenge this attempt at reconciling this thought process," you're trying to suggest there's no logical way for people to do what the Christian atheists are doing, and I think that's just simply false. Also, as a Christian, I don't find "moral objectivity" to be a worthwhile thing to prove. At least, it doesn't seem like Jesus was very interested in proving it (nor can I think of another reference from the New Testament where this appears to be an important point).

What other reddits do you surf?
I moderate /r/RATS, /r/Louisiana and /r/OpenChristian. I also read a lot in /r/SquaredCircle, /r/SRSBusiness, /r/SRSDiscussion, /r/polyamory, /r/woahdude and I've been dipping back into /r/Christianity a bit lately as well.

What do you do in your free time?
I read. I reddit. I smoke my pipe and drink my cocktails. I watch pro wrestling. I cuddle. I toy around with making jewelry (trying hammered wire recently) or playing with polymer clay. I'm considering this thing they call "ex ur size" or some such. It involves riding on a bike that goes nowhere. I understand I can read or watch TV while I do it, so I figured what the heck.


What do you read?
Right now I'm going back and forth between The History of White People and A Canticle for Leibowitz. Before that I read Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. the most powerful book I've read in the last few months was Silence by Shusaku Endo. You should read it. And then you should read Lamb because you'll need something a bit more jovial. But not until after you've sat with it a while.

What do you watch?
Ring of Honor Wrestling, WWE, Leverage, Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother.

Do you Blog?
Yup, though not regularly enough to develop any sort of readership.

Do you game?
I just got my first console since the original NES when I was in junior high. It's a Wii. Every once in a while I'll play Mario Kart of do something on the Wii Fit.

Do you play a musical instrument/sing?
I make noise periodically. I want to do more.

What are your favorite movies?
Absolute number one favorite? Hedwig And the Angry Inch. The only tattoo I have is from that movie. Other favorites include The Big Lebowski, Pump Up The Volume, The Wrestler, Shortbus, Dangerous Beauty, Walk The Line.

What is some favorite music?
My absolute favorite band is Over the Rhine. Behind them, tied for second place, you'll find Boris, the Cure, Leonard Cohen and Johnny Cash. Also up there are Kris Kristofferson, Mischief Brew, the CrimethInc band called Requiem (there are lots of bands called Requiem), The New Orleans Bingo Show. The list goes on for days.

/u/unheeding has made an excellent suggestion. I really like how Macullough weaves in the Israelite history as essential to understanding the Christian history. If I might widen the variety here, however, if by only a little bit:

Justo Gonzalez is fantastic. He has a two volume, recently re-edited series on the history of Christianity called The Story of Christianity. Here's Vol. 1 and Vol. 2

Gonzalez also has a short book that focuses on the history of Christianity through the development of doctrines called A Concise History of Christian Doctrine which, as far as I can gather is a much condensed version of the another three volume set that I've never read. Gonzalez is fun, approachable, and honestly a really good read.

I am also in the middle of Christianity: A Social and Cultural History and it is quite good so far, though I've not gotten into it quite so much as Gonzalez.

I am also in the middle of an Old Testament history book for my Hebrew Bible course called Understanding the Old Testament which has a really exciting philosophy of doing history and I'm really into it. This book has me at least as excited as Gonzalez, but Anderson's approach is a very responsible one which still evokes power and mystery revolving around the development of the Hebrew canon as well as those things that we simply cannot know, even if we can try to take a really good shot at it.

I hope this helps.

Eusebius: The Church History is a translation into modern English that turns out to be both accurate to the Greek and very readable. A couple of reasons it stands out:

• Eusebius cites his sources. This is new and unheard-of in fourth-century historiography.
  
• Eusebius writes before Protestantism, before Catholicism and Orthodoxy split, before the monophysite or iconoclast debates... before any of the debates among the modern Christianities. His perspective is common to all our streams of faith.
  
• It's not in English because there wasn't any English back then; anybody who writes in English is going to be writing from a post-Enlightenment mindset as well as across a language and culture barrier. It's unavoidable that you'll be seeing a modern person's choice of events, connections and people. If you want to muse on What It All Means, that's one perspective to consider, but if you want to know what it was like to live back then, somebody close to or in that generation is a wonderful firsthand source.
  
  if you got to the chapters about Constantine, then you got most of the way to the end of the book. Did that part overshadow everything else you read? To me the best part was the late-first through late-third centuries - when the embryonic Church was growing into its potential. In Eusebius' history, instead of simple lists of events, we have accounts of personal relationships, personal conflicts, debates over doctrines and disciplines by people who understood why they matter, and a sense of how the events of specifically Christian history fit into the politics of the era.
  
  I enjoyed it immensely.

Thank you.

Now that I'm back home, here are some recommendations. First, I might note that while /u/johnnytoomuch's post has some good links in it, the truth is that for someone new to the whole Orthodoxy thing, that's all going to be hitting the ground too hard and fast.

So here are my recommendations, geared towards somebody totally new to Orthodoxy (I'd say beginner, but we're all beginners, even the likes of St. Theophon the Recluse).

1. Bread and Water, Wine and Oil by Archimandrite Meletios (Webber) is actually a relatively solid introduction to both Orthodox theology, practice, and language. It's also a fairly short read. My copy is well dog-eared. If you're a digital guy, there's also a Kindle version.
   
2. Beginning to Pray by Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom) of Sourozh touches on prayer specifically. What's more, this book will be of use to you regardless of your background.
   
3. Check your bookstore for a prayer book. Study the prayers in there. They're actually rather dense. The notes in the one published by Holy Trinity Monastery (ROCOR) in Jordanville, New York, commonly just called the Jordanville Prayerbook, has some excellent note sections, though I would not attempt that full prayer rule without some advising from a spiritual father, particularly for someone new. That book also contains the text of the Divine Liturgy and a few other services, so you can use it to follow along (except for the hymns that are prescribed by the day or week). That said, it does have a few glaring typos in the prayers themselves--they work on revising it regularly, though.
   
4. If you really want to get in to how the Divine Liturgy (and the rest of the services) are put together, get yourself a copy of the horologion. This one is also by Holy Trinity Monastery, and is in common use at many English speaking Orthodox parishes in North America. I warn you, though: that rabbit hole is very deep. There are 13 different books we pull from*.
   
   I'd also ask the priest what book he uses for his inquirers class.
   
   * For a layman, the horologion and psalter (if you have a Bible, you have the psalter) are the core of it. You do not need and should probably not purchase your own copy of the Menaion (the books that give the hymns for feasts and saints) or the Ochtoechos (the books that give the hymns for the tone of the week). I'm also not mentioning the Triodion (the book of Lent) or Pentecostarion (the book of Pascha). The other 7 books are generally clergy books or books for specific occasions.

"The Orthodox Church" By Kallistos Ware. A very readable and comprehensive book by a well respected convert now bishop.

Byzantine Theology by John Meyendorff. He is one of the greatest contemporary Orthodox theologians.

The Way of the Pilgrim Author unknown. This is a classic of Eastern Christian spirituality that brings many people into the Orthodox way.

Hope these help!

I think this should be compared to what Enns himself emphasised in linking to the article.

IMHO, RHE gets it wrong right precisely when she emphasizes that of course the Bible must do it right: "But who was I to criticize a biblical writer for his exegesis?" If we stop our inquiry and just trust a (collection of) book(s) to be something it doesn't seem to be, of course all the hard questions are softened. Is that really a price we are willing to pay for what seems to be in the end an unfounded certainty?

Contrastingly in his article Enns emphasizes the fact that this use of scripture should be deeply unsettling to those with a high view of scripture. I have not read the book, so I'm not sure if his differing focus is a reflection of his viewpoint shifting in the past 7 years since the book has been published, but I'm guessing it is.

This goes along with a much deeper conversation. I deeply distrust those who, rather than being epistemically consistent in evaluating their beliefs, "begin with the end in mind", and contrastingly appreciate those who undertake an unbending search for truth. I respect Enns because the viewpoint shifts I've seen in his writing even over the past year make me think he is doing that to the best of his ability.

As he says in this excellent talk, the answer for evangelicals is not attempting to shore up historical beliefs, but "mass theological re-education". I couldn't agree more.

Just in case anyone might be interested, I have a new book on the issue which was just published a month ago: The End Is Near...Or Maybe Not!


It offers a kind of verse-by-verse commentary on Mt. 24, as well as an overview of Revelation, from an historic amil perspective. I was raised the son of a dispensationalist preacher, and knew the charts like the back of my hand. Alas, my charts are a lot easier to draw now!

I use this ESV Study Bible and I love it. It has provided really great commentary and insight during my studying.

I disagree with almost everything you said :)

I think our fundamental disagreement comes from how to interpret what the Bible means by "the LORD says X." You take it to mean that God actually said X, whereas I take it to mean that the author of that book supported X.

If you would like to understand my position, I would recommend reading Thom Stark's The Human Faces of God: What Scripture Reveals When It Gets God Wrong (and Why Inerrancy Tries to Hide It).

Is that from Game of Thrones...?

I really enjoy the Irenaean theodicy, and if literature is your cup of tea you should read Silence. It's a historical novel about the persecution of the secret Christians in Japan, and it has some very beautiful thoughts on the problem of evil.

Oh! And the Brothers Karamazov, too.

EDIT: Yeah...Princess Bride, that makes a lot more sense...it's a Wesley line. For some reason I pictured Jorah Mormont (from Game of Thrones) saying it...