Jesus had 1 core teaching; Christianity ignored it

Barterman, thank you so much for taking the time to join me today.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

So, we're going to talk about this book, *Love Thy Stranger*. I'll see if I can get it into frame here. Um, *How the Teachings of Jesus Transformed the Moral Conscience of the West*. This was a really, really fascinating read and, um, surprising in a lot of ways. I think, um, there were a lot of things that you pulled out that I wasn't expecting and once I thought about it, I had to kind of go away and be like, "Oh, that's, I've never looked at things that way." So, we'll get into some of that today, but I hoped you could start by, uh, talking through one of what I, at one point, thought was a slam dunk apologetic argument. And I also did at one point think this was a slam dunk apologetic argument, and this is the argument that C.S. Lewis makes in *Mere Christianity* that there's sort of universal morality everywhere. Could you talk about how, how kind of you thought about that and then how studying the ancient world actually turns that on its head?

Yeah, you know, when I was, you know, when I was an evangelical Christian, C.S. Lewis was the fourth member of the Trinity and we, uh, you know, and he was, you know, he was the guy. And so, but he, he was smart. He, he was, I mean, he was smart and interesting and hugely talented, hugely learned. He, in, um, in his view, one of the arguments for Christ, for, for the, the existence of God, uh, ultimately leading to the truthfulness of Christianity is, uh, is the idea that there, there is a kind of objective morality in the world that everybody basically agrees on basic moral principles, um, and that, um, you know, it's just like they don't have to be taught. It's, it's like it's everywhere these basic, basic moral principles. And you can go through different cultures that have, you know, very similar moral teachings. And his view was that you can't have that with billions of people over, uh, millennia unless it's been given from above. It can't, it can't just develop naturally. It's got to be something that is, is been given. And so this is an argument for the existence of God, b, kind of based on, on a shared morality. And I, I always thought that was right. You know, why is it that both atheists and Christians and Jews and Buddhists all get upset about certain, like, certain improper behavior? Why is it that all of us do? Well, it makes sense that it's kind of divinely given. And so that, um, and people still use that argument today. Um, uh, some even more kind of, um, hardcore than than his, than his use of it.

Was, um, so I, you know, I, it kind of makes sense when you're in that system. And it, it's one of those things that makes sense when you, you're kind of hoping it'll make sense, and then it does make perfect sense to you. But if you get out of the system, it really doesn't work too well for several reasons. One is cultural anthropology. It's not like everybody has the same moral code. And if God gave us the same moral code, um, how, uh, uh, why, why is it that one of the greatest philosophers in the h, probably the greatest philosopher in the history of the West, Plato, uh, writes his *Symposium* on love where the, the love that is being celebrated is pederasty, where men taking young boys as their lovers and so, and, and unquestioned, you know, good in Plato's world. Hey, I didn't get that morality. I got to tell you. And so, so there, you know, there, there are, there are things like that. And it, and, um, but also I'd say that, um, there are easier explanations for why the human race tends to have general moral principles in common. It's because we all share DNA. And he doesn't, he doesn't look seriously about at evolutionary biology. I don't know if he knew much about evolutionary biology. He, he knew a lot and so he probably knew something about it, but he certainly knew Darwin. But I mean, he didn't know about especially developments in genetics since Darwin, appar, or maybe he did. But it's quite clear that humans have to have certain moral codes in order to exist as a species. And, um, altruism is part of it. Um, even Darwin recognized that a species cannot survive if members within it are not willing to sacrifice themselves for others. I mean, Darwin's interested in things like honeybees, but it doesn't matter whether you're talking about honeybees or chimpanzees or humans. You've got to have certain modes of cooperation which gets translated into moral codes in order to survive because otherwise, if it's every individual for themselves, I mean, the survival of the fittest is not every individual for themselves. If it was, you're, it's too easy to get all picked off by your predators. You've got to have cooperation. And so, so I don't think the, the kind of universal moral code at all says anything about there being a God.

I think this would be turned on its head in the modern world, certainly, but especially in antiquity when we look at some of these ancient cultures. You already, um, made reference to one of the quite disturbing features of Plato's philosophy. You open the book by exploring how rare the idea, like some of the things we find in the teachings of Jesus are quite rare in the Greco-Roman world. Can you talk a little bit about the three philosophies that you open the book with, which is Epicureanism, Stoicism, and Cynicism?

As far as we can trace it, you know, the, probably all these, these systems, all these groups, uh, trace their lineage. They certainly trace them back to Aristotle, uh, who was a student of Plato. And they were pre-Platonic, uh, philosophers, of course. So we just don't have much record of them. Um, but by the time of Jesus, the, the teachings of Plato and Aristotle had filtered down into various philosophical schools. And I talk about the Stoics and the Epicureans and the Cynics. Um, so they, they have different views of what it means to be, uh, what it means to be ethical. Uh, and all of them share a view that that is stated explicitly in Aristotle is in his *Nicomachean Ethics*. It's a 10-volume work, still worth reading. It's a fantastic book. But, but it begins with asking what, you know, if you want to know how to behave, well, what kind of person do you want to be? And what, what do you want to achieve? What do you want? If you know what you want, you're more likely to get there. If you, and so, and he, he argues that what everybody ultimately wants is not necessarily what people think they want. You know, they, they might think they want to get a lot of, they want to be wealthy. They want to be influential. They want to have a good job. They want to have good family and friends. You know, they have things. Everybody has things they want. But Aristotle views ultimately what everybody wants is a sense, he calls it *eudaimonia*, that gets translated to the English as happiness. Happiness is not a good translation, but there's not a better one for it, really. But it, it's a sense that you're content with your life, you're satisfied with who you are, you feel good about yourself, you feel good about where you're going. And it's kind of general all-satisfaction, you know, being pleased with things and flourishing is that, that kind of notion. And so, uh, the following philosophers after him basically agreed with that. And so the Stoics and the, and the Epicureans and the Cynics all agreed you really wanted to find, be in a situation where you have this *eudaimonia*, this kind of the sense of contentment, happiness.

So, they're thinking about how to, how to live a good life, which is, which is great. But there's two kind of, two kind of pervasive ideas. One is the idea that might makes right. And this is kind of what we see in Greco-Roman philosophy, that basically the poor just almost are poor almost by their own fault. Could you talk a little bit about that and how that would have, would have, um, kind of been a, a fixture in the world around?

Well, you know, we, we today, of course, are completely accustomed to hierarchies in society and in the world. There are some people who are, uh, rich, powerful, and beautiful, and, uh, others who are not. And, um, and there are tiers. And there, you know, certainly there are people who, um, who, uh, are more fortunate, but also more powerful. And that was certainly the case in the Greek and Roman worlds, maybe to an extreme in some ways. There was a widespread sense that, uh, people with power had the moral right to use it, um, and that domination was just written into the natural order. And so there was no moral discourse against war, for example, in the Greek and Roman worlds, or moral discourse against slavery, or moral discourse against men dominating women. It was just, it was just known that the powerful had that right. It also meant that the rich could dominate the poor, or, or at least like not, not care at all about them.

Yeah.

Because, you know, that's their fate, and this is my fate, and this is, uh, you know, and so, and if I give, if I give poor people money, they're just going to throw it away anyway, or they're not going to use it for anything. It's not going to help anything. So, so there was no kind of discourse about having to help those who are destitute or seriously in need, um, because they're seriously in need in the, in the Greek and Roman worlds. And that's, I, in the book, I argue this is where Jesus made, made an intervention.

Yeah. Absolutely. So, there's, there's one more thing. I don't want to, I don't want to keep harping too much on the Greek and Roman world, but it's important to kind of see how rare the teachings of Jesus actually were in his context. Um, and the other thing that really jumped out at me is that there really isn't this sense of of goodness. Like there, there is a lot of an idea of giving, um, for the Greeks and the Romans, but it's much more formulated as like euergetism, like giving for your own large self. Can you say a bit, bit about that? Like, it's not actually about giving to the poor or caring for people who actually need it.

Not giving to them because they're in need. Sometimes you give to them, but it's because they will, uh, they will shower honor upon you, you know, and they'll, they'll look up to you and think you're a great guy. And so you like that. So that's why you do it. So you mentioned the term euergetism. This is the, it's a scholarly word, invented in the modern world, but it, it expresses the, uh, the ancient understanding of what people with wealth were to do with their wealth. Euergetism literally means something like doing good, good things, doing good works. And the idea that was dominant throughout the Greek and Roman worlds, uh, that is talked about a lot, was that if you, if you have excess wealth, you don't want to, you don't want to just hold on to it, uh, because it would make you a bad person. You'd be greedy and selfish and self-centered. You wouldn't be pleasant to be around. And so, like, it doesn't, it's not good for your character, uh, to be like that. And so you should, you should be generous, uh, with your, with your money if you have wealth. Um, the generosity should be shown to those who are biologically and socially related to you. So your family, your friends, and people within your community. And so euergetism most often gets used to to describe what happens to what wealthy people do with their communities. In ancient, uh, in ancient municipalities, there weren't taxes for the municipality. The, the needs of the city were provided by the wealthy folk. So that to the extent that if you got elected to public office, you were required to pay for it.

Yeah.

You weren't, you weren't given a salary. It cost you a ton of money. Sometimes people went bankrupt because they had to buy, build these buildings, to fund these projects, or put on the gladiatorial shows, or whatever. But that was expected. And that's euergetism, where you're, you're benefiting the public. Um, but it's not because you're worried about people in need. And usually it's benefiting the people of the, of the, uh, of the higher classes. It, if you do benefit, like the lower classes, which was most everybody, most everybody was in the lower classes, um, then, um, it was just, it just happened to be that way because of your euergetism. But the idea that you would give money to poor people because they're poor, to help the needy because they're needy, that was, that's actually talked against in some of our sources. Like, even Seneca and, you know, very fine philosophers, talked against it.

Seen, seen as almost like a waste. Like, why would you bother? Well, when I was growing up, you know, the, uh, so I grew up in kind of a conservative area in Kansas. And, you know, there's a lot of talk about like, you know, giving to people like, you know, somebody begging on the street or something like that. And, you know, the line was always, they'll just, they'll just use it to buy beer and cigarettes. That was always the line, right? Beer and cigarettes. They didn't have, they had beer in the ancient world, but they didn't have cigarettes. But it was the same principle, man. You're just throwing your money down the toilet. Don't do that.

Yeah. So we, so we don't have, um, in, in the Greco-Roman world, we don't really have these principles of like helping, helping somebody for the sake of helping them, giving to the poor because they're poor because it's a good thing to do. Um, but we do have some of the roots of Jesus' teachings in the Jewish world, and specifically, we, we can see it show up in the Hebrew Bible. Can you talk a little about that, about where we see some of those fragments of early teachings that would look a lot like what Jesus taught?

Yeah, part of my, part of my book is showing that Jesus, Jesus' teachings, as revolutionary as they were in one respect, at least, are deeply rooted in the Hebrew Bible and in the Jewish world. So, it's not like he's like inventing morality, you know, he's not inventing the idea that you should be concerned for the poor. This is, this is, this is deep in the Hebrew Bible. Um, it's, um, the, when, if anyone were to read actually read the prophets, most of the Christians I know who read the prophets, like read Isaiah, they're just looking for a verse that predicts Jesus, right? They're not actually trying to see what Isaiah is about.

Or the end of the world or something.

Or the end of the world, or yeah. It's either the coming of Jesus or the coming of the end. It's like those are the two things people are interested in. And so you pick a verse or even part of a verse and you pull it out and you don't bother to pay attention to the context. When you read Isaiah, it's quite clear he is really upset because the people of Israel are neglecting the poor and the needy, and they are the, the people who have power, the elites. And it's because of that that God is going to send judgment upon them and wipe them out because they're not, they're not concerned for the things God is concerned about, which is, um, he's the God of the poor. He's the God who saved people from slavery, from their oppression. He wants his people to act like that. Uh, you get that in Amos. You get in Ezekiel. You get it in every prophet, just prophet after prophet. People would read them, they see this is the, this is the message. You got to obey God, and it involves helping the people in need. Um, and then you get, of course, you get Leviticus 19:18. Um, so Leviticus 19:18 is, uh, was central to Jesus' understanding of things and can, throughout Christianity, it's always been central. You should love your neighbor as yourself.

Yeah.

Um, in Leviticus, uh, if you just read that verse again, read it in the context right there, it tells you who it means when it says your neighbor. It means people of your, uh, those among your own people. It's, it's not, it's not loving foreigners. It's loving Israelites, but it's loving Israelite strangers, right? There are a lot of people in Israel. You don't know them all. And if there's a stranger within Israel who, uh, is in need, you're supposed to help them. And so love in this context does not mean to have like a good feeling towards them or feel kindly towards them or mean. It means to do the things for them that you do for yourself. Which is, you know, you're hungry, you find yourself something to eat. You, you don't have a place to stay, you find yourself shelter. You don't have clothing, you get some clothing. So if your, if your neighbor, your Israelite neighbor, is hungry or homeless or, or, you know, you, you'd give them the kind of things you would give yourself.

That's, that's the basis for Jesus' own teachings.

Jesus is also living in, in this world of a very apocalyptic type of view that maybe there's going to be this, you know, setting right, essentially. God's going to step into history and make things better. Um, how are Jesus' teachings also driven by that apocalypticism that had really come out from like the Maccabees? We see it a lot in, in writings from around Jesus at his time.

Yeah, this apocalyptic view was very common, uh, in Jesus' day. Um, so far as we can tell from the written record, uh, especially became evident when the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, but it was, uh, because they're thoroughly apocalyptic, but it was, it was known even before that. Um, so this, we call it apocalyptic, that's the modern term for it. It ba, it's based on the idea of the apocalypse is coming soon. Uh, and for, for apocalyptic Jews, it's, it's what you were saying, that God is going to make right everything that is now wrong. And there, the, there are, it's, it's, um, the, the suffering in the world, which is extensive, is there because there are powers of evil in the world that are bringing it about and they're causing it. And that God's going to intervene and destroy these powers of evil and everybody who sides with them and return the earth to what he originally planned, which was a Garden of Eden, a paradise. And people who are on his side will enter that paradise and live there forever, the way Adam and Eve were designed to live. And people who are opposed to God, whether they're Jews or anything else, if they're not doing what he wants, which is helping the needy, they're going to be, they're not going to be led into the kingdom. They're being thrown into the pits of fire and destroyed. And so, and Jesus, like other apocalypticists, expected this to happen, happen soon. He tells his disciples that some of them won't taste death before it happens. That he tells the crowds, this generation won't pass away before it happens. So, one of the theses in my book is that this apocalyptic form of Judaism is what, uh, radicalized Jesus' teachings in some ways and made them distinctive from other teachings that we have from other teachers of the time.

And they are really radical in a way that we don't often, I mean, I've read these things my whole life, presumably a lot of listeners have. But like, we usually find ways to get around how radical they are and they say, "Oh, that was just metaphorical or something." But they are quite radical.

Oh yeah, they're radical. And people don't, it is precisely because we've been trained not to realize how radical they are. But when this, you know, this rich man comes up to Jesus and says, "What must I do to have eternal life?" And, you know, they have this little back and forth, and Jesus ends up saying, "Look, you've got to, if you want treasures in heaven, you have to sell everything you have and give to the poor." And the guy's crestfallen and he can't possibly do it. And he walks away. And the disciples say, "What? The rich? Surely the rich people are the ones God's God's blessing, right?"

Yeah.

"They can't get in. No, it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter into the kingdom of heaven." And so people try to explain it away. They have all these explanations, what this needle really is. It's a gate in Jerusalem. It's hard for camels to get through, and that kind of thing. People can come up with this stuff. And, um, but he meant, no, he meant it's, and they said, "Well, that's impossible."

And he said, "Yes, it is impossible."

Yeah.

But then, but then so he has this line that people again, they, so he has this line that says, yeah, it's impossible, but with, it's impossible for humans, but with God, all things are possible. And so that has been, that is, that has been comfort for every rich person who's ever lived who's a Christian to say, "Oh, it is possible. You know, a rich person can get in. And hey, I'm a nice guy. I'll probably be one of the exceptions." You know, it's, I don't think so. I, I don't know, Chris, if this is your inter, I actually never thought of this interpretation until a while, but I realized what he's really saying is not, is not that what he's saying is God is able to change your heart to make you give everything away, to help you have the strength to give everything away, then you can enter. He's not saying you're going to get in as a rich person. He's saying, you know, I know it's impossible, but God can make it possible for you. And so this is, I, you talk about radical. Sell everything. And then he tells the disciples he's really pleased with them because they left everything behind. They left their homes, their wives, their children, their, you know, their everything to follow him. And that, that's radical in a world where the man is the breadwinner in the family and they don't have any other source of income. And he leaves to follow Jesus. How are they supposed to survive? You, I mean, apart from doing nasty things you don't want to think about, how are they gonna get money? And, you know, and so he's praising them. That's pretty radical, I think.

I'm almost imagining like Peter coming home and telling his wife and kids like, "I'm heading off to follow Jesus and you guys just, good luck."

But if you think the end is going to come in a couple weeks or in a month, you know, you can imagine it being okay for the time being. But it's radical because of Jesus' apocalyptic view, um, that the end is coming soon, and it's no time for half measures. Um, and the other thing is that, um, it's radical because it's concerned so much for the poor and for the needy, and not just for Israelites. This becomes the other point is that it becomes universal. It's anybody in need is whom whom God is concerned about.

Yeah. So let's talk about that. So Jesus basically redefines who we should actually care about, and he redefines who the neighbor is. Talk about that.

Yeah. So he, he completely agreed with scripture. It's not that Jesus is making up some new religion here. He thinks this is what the scripture means. That when it says your neighbor, it doesn't just mean your fellow Israelite.

I think the grounding for that is his apocalyptic view. That when God brings this judgment that's coming soon, that it's not going to affect only Jews, it's going to affect the whole world. And so it's not just salvation coming to Israel and everybody will go on as, as they're doing, but that it's going to be a cosmic thing, an entire, it's going to involve the entire world, which shows that God is concerned about the entire world, which means his people have to be concerned about the entire world, not just the Israelites. And so people, you know, Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan where he's trying to answer, "Who is the neighbor I'm supposed to love?" And it turns out the, it's the, the sworn enemy who you're, you know, whom you hate and who have the wrong religion and live in the wrong country and, you know, and don't behave the right way. It's like, that's, that's the neighbor. Uh, and so, and so it ties into Jesus' you know, thing, "Love your enemies." He means it. It doesn't mean feel good about them or to want them to persecute you more or anything like that. It just means that you should want their best interests. We should say there that it's important that the word love isn't about having good feelings towards your enemies. It's actually literally about action.

It's about action and about, you know, what you really want. So, last week I did a, I did a podcast with a Ukrainian, uh, theologian. He's a Christian theologian who's from Ukraine. He escaped when the, at the beginning stage of the Russian invasion because he was living in one of those cities where the Russians were taking the men and putting them in the Russian army, and he was getting, he got out. But he just wrote a book on Dietrich Bonhoeffer and he's a theologian. So I asked him, I said, "So, you know, you know, you're a Christian. I said, Jesus said to love your enemies." I said, "How can you possibly love the Russians?" And he, he had a really, I thought he had a really good reply. He said, "Look, I, you know, I, I don't, I don't like them and I don't have a good feeling about them. Um, but when, when I hear Jesus say that, I think what he means is I should wish for their best interests. And I think in their best interest, it would be better for them to stop this war and stop killing innocent people, and they would be better off for that as well as us. So, it's not, it is about us, but it's not just about us. That would be good for them, too. So, I hope they see the light." And, and he was genuine, you know, that he's, and wow, that's tough.

Yeah. Yeah. That's heavy. That's more than just warm feelings. That's, that is not, yeah. It ain't just a warm feeling. Yeah.

Yeah. Wow. Um, so the other, one of the other revelations that came from this book, I think it's, I don't know why I've never noticed this before, but it's a really, it's, once you see it, you can't unsee it. Um, and that is that, well, first of all, I think I knew this part, but I didn't realize the implications of it, that Jesus doesn't teach atonement. Jesus teaches forgiveness. And that's a radical shift in the teachings of Jesus.

Can we talk about that?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I know. I, um, I had this kind of in the back of my mind, kind of like you were saying, kind of like I noticed it, but I didn't realize the huge significance of this until I was really getting deep into it in this book. Um, because the book, what I do in the book is I, I have sections on the idea of love and the idea of charitable giving based on love and the idea of forgiveness based on love. Because forgiving, truly forgiving somebody who's hurt you, where you don't, you don't make them pay a penalty, you don't pay them back some way, you don't hurt them or harm them or penalize them or punish them, you, you just, for, you let it go to restore your relationship to what it was before. Um, that is very different from demanding payment from them. You know, somebody humiliates you in public, okay, you'll forgive them after you humiliate them, then you're even, right? Or somebody owes you something and you charge them, man, they, they've got to pay up. You know, they've done something wrong. You make them pay. There's a penalty. Um, forgiveness is not that.

And part of it is that there's a modern discourse, I didn't realize this much either, that there's a modern discourse among philosophers about forgiveness among philosophers. There's a lot written about it by Martha Nussbaum and some other very famous, uh, philosophers who are not doing this from a Christian perspective. But what does it mean to forgive? Well, it means not holding a grudge and not, you know, just. So my book argues that Jesus taught forgiveness both on the interpersonal level and on the divine level. That Jesus taught that God wants people to turn back to him. Repent means to turn back to God and begin doing what he wants you to do. If you do that, God will forgive your sins. Uh, forgiveness means that, um, he doesn't require a penalty. There's no payment involved. Um, he forgives you. Atonement is he would make you pay a price. Um, and so what, so the way the way I try to illustrate, I heard somebody else use this illustration, so I like using it, that, you know, my daughter, my daughter has done something that she does that, that is against what I've told her to do. She does something wrong and it's harmful. Uh, and she later regrets it and, and she comes to me and tells me that she's sorry. Uh, she's sorry she did it. I forgive her. I just let it go. That's forgiveness. Atonement is when I say, "Ah, well, well, thanks, dear. I really appreciate that. Now, your little, little kitten Tammy here, um, I need to, I need to kill Tammy, um, to make up for, you know, the fact that you did this. And if I, if I kill Tammy, then we'll be fine. You know, it's like, what? Yeah. Well, that's atonement. You got somebody's got to pay the price. Okay. I'm not going to take it out on you. I'm going to take it out on Tammy. It's like, wow. Okay. So, so that's, so the doctrine of atonement is somebody's got to pay, right? And that, and that it makes sense. Of course, that's justice, you know, that is. And the understanding is that God is both loving and just, and so justice requires a payment. But Jesus didn't think so. Jesus thought that God was a loving father who would forgive his children. And so what happens in Christianity is immediately after Jesus' death, his followers come to think he was raised from the dead. Um, and, you know, whatever you think about the traditions of the resurrection, I think his followers, I don't know if all of them came to believe, but some of them came to believe that he had been raised from the dead, which made them wonder, well, wait, we were right. He is the chosen one. Okay, we're right. We thought he was. Now we know he was. He is the chosen one. But why'd he die then? That God let him die? In fact, God, like, made his chosen one die. What, why would God make, that's what he does to his chosen one. He makes him be publicly tortured to death. What is that then? They, they immediately thought it must have been a sacrifice for sins. He didn't, he didn't die for his own sins because he didn't have, he was the chosen one. So, uh, I think they immediately thought that Jesus' death was a sacrifice. Once they thought that, they thought that God does not forgive. God requires atonement, and Jesus paid the atonement. So, Christianity ends up being based on a teaching that is contrary to Jesus's.

Yeah, you wild. Yeah. Let me, let me state this back because this, this is what you said in the book, and it was really, uh, when you get this, it'll, it'll really bend your brain a little bit. So Jesus, so, so there, you know, there's atonement in the temple, of course. Sadducees are kind of in control of the temple. Jesus teaches that there's forgiveness outside of the temple. You don't need atonement. He probably gets crucified for that teaching. And then, ironically, that makes Christians then interpret him as the atonement, which is exactly what he never taught. Is that, have I gotten that right?

Yeah. I, you know, I have to admit, I, I thought as I was writing this book, I realized, oh my God, it's a complete irony.

Because the Christians are proclaiming the view he was, he's teaching against, that God needs an atonement. Wow. That's, yeah. That's, yeah.

Wow.

So, I have to say, you know, when I wrote this book, I was kind of thinking, you know, I've written a lot. I've written a number of books that people who have committed Christians to traditional Christian beliefs about the Bible and early Christianity and Jesus have found they have found offensive. Most of them are not my own. Rare, very rarely is anything like this one of my own ideas. It's just like, well, critical scholars have long said that I can't point out to the public, but people have been upset about that. So I thought, ah, you know, here I'm going to write a book where, like, people who are traditional Christians are going to really appreciate the fact that I think Jesus made a huge difference in the, in the, in the West. And so it turns out though that, no, that people on both sides of the, the, of the belief spectrum, have problems with my book because people who are non-believers say, "Man, you're giving too much credit to Jesus here. Come on, that can't be the right answer." And the people who are on the traditional side, "What do you mean that God, they're teaching something contrary to to Jesus? What? Christian changed everything? What?" So, like, I'm getting from both sides here.

Oh, well, what are you going to do? That, that should be your next book, maybe. That's a, that's a really interesting idea.

Yeah.

Cool. Um, yeah, I mean, it's fascinating when you actually stop and, and kind of realize the, uh, the implications of this. And I think the obvious, the obvious point that you go to next in the book is that we do get quite different ethical teachings among Jesus' earliest, kind of, the people who take over this, this fledgling movement. Not least of which is the Apostle Paul, who doesn't really have all that much to say about love and doesn't really seem to share Jesus' ideas about love and forgiveness to some, to some extent. I mean, there's some continuity there, but there are some differences too. Can you talk about that?

Yeah. So, um, I think there's not continuity with, with forgiveness. Paul does not teach that God forgives sins. He, he, and repentance isn't a big issue for Paul. He uses the word repent, maybe a couple, repentance a couple times, and it's so his idea is not that God forgives your sins. It's that Christ atones for your sins. I, I should interject here that it's, it's difficult to explain this to people because the words themselves get used in confusing ways, even in the New Testament. So when, but if somebody says, "Christ died so that God will forgive your sins," you know, people know what that means. But the, the words get in the way because technically, if Christ dies so that God will forgive, it's not forgiveness in the sense that I'm talking about it. It might be forgiveness in some other sense, but the idea that you just let it go without a punishment, it's a different concept. Now, so, so Paul, Paul did teach atonement, clearly taught atonement, uh, in numerous passages, did not teach that God would just forgive it, forgive you and let it go on the basis of repentance. Um, with respect to love, there, there are, there are differences again in Paul. It's not that radical kind of difference. I'd say the main thing with Paul is he does use the word love, uh, a good bit. Uh, particularly in 1 Corinthians 13, which gets read at every wedding on the planet. And I've always wondered if people are really paying attention to what's being said here because it's not about marital love at all. It's about, it's about how to use the spiritual gifts, like speaking in tongues, in the church. What? But it is, uh, so, but Paul, so Paul does talk about love, and he does talk about love, um, you know, being doing good things for people in need. But Paul has now made it into an intramural affair, um, where you help other believers in Christ who are in need. And it's, it's an understandable move. And it's not just Paul doing this. Throughout the entire New Testament, outside of the teachings of Jesus, the idea is that you help people who are in need within your communities, your Christian communities. And the reason for the difference is because, um, Jesus had a very small circle of followers, and he was, and, and he was concerned about need all around him. But as you start getting Christian churches and they start growing, you got a lot of people in there and you have very limited resources. And if you're going to help people in need, who's going to have the priorities? You got to, you've got to have priorities because you don't, you got very limited funds. And so it just kind of made sense to people, well, you help people who are in the community before you help those outside. And that becomes the Christian model then, that it's intramural within the, within the Christian community. But that being said, when Christianity takes over the Roman Empire by, you know, the end of the fourth into the fifth century, everybody's in the Christian community in terms of the West is Christian. And so that kind of intramural concern no longer restricts so much the, the giving.

And love for Paul, um, just to say, it's not really altruism, right? It's, it's more about communal harmony and kind of like making sure the community is healthy. It does seem to be a lot more like that. I mean, it, it's, I'll tell you, it,

You know, one of the things I talk about in the book is whether there is anything like real altruism or not. Like if, if somebody ever behaves just on behalf of someone else, and you can think of examples where possibly, yeah, this might be a case. You know, but philosophers can always think of exceptions, even in every one of those cases. But it's interesting that both Jesus and Paul incentivize altruism in ways that are not altruistic. Um, for Paul, it's that the, um, you know, this is for the health of the community. What really matters is the health of the community. You need to love one another. You need to be cohesive. Um, you know, basically, there, there are communities that are being opposed by everybody else, and you need the cohesion. And, you know, it's the body of Christ, and in the body, every part has to work together. And so love is a way of coordinating and compromising your own desires for the sake of the larger, larger good. And so, but it is, it's very communal oriented in that way. Jesus, Jesus, you know, even though he teaches that you should sacrifice seriously for the sake of others, others, um, he also incentivizes it by saying that if you do that, you'll have treasures in heaven.

Yeah. True.

You know, and so it's almost that you, it's almost deferred gratification for Jesus, that you, you give up stuff now because it'll be better for you in the long run. So it's almost like an investment policy, you know, you just like it's going to. So it is incentivized.

My view is, I don't care how you incentivize something like that. If you're helping people in need, great.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's cool. Um, so I guess, I mean, we could talk about the, the teaching of Jesus, writings of early Christians, like we kind of get this, this picture of altruism emerging. But it's a big step to get from there to this being the moral conscience of the West. That's, that's kind of a big step. But you, you made a couple really interesting moves in the book that I thought were, were really convincing. Um, one of the first ones is that pretty quickly the early Christian movement both defends itself against some pretty ridiculous charges and it uses the fact of altruism to defend itself. And we even see outsiders starting to see early Christians as being altruistic. Can you talk about that?

Yeah, so the, um, Christians celebrated, uh, how their communities were, uh, so helpful to one another. Uh, this was not a feature of Greek and Roman religions. Uh, in the Greek and Roman worlds, religions were matters of, um, not so much of communal life. And so there wasn't, you, you didn't, like, if you were a follower of Zeus and you worshiped in the temple at Zeus in, like, in, I don't know, Rome or Ephesus or someplace, you didn't have a community of people that got together every week and, um, talked with each other and shared each other's concerns and prayed together and confessed a creed together. And there wasn't this kind of togetherness thing. You'd come every now and then, there's a sacrifice to Zeus. You'd all come together. You wouldn't know each other. You just have the sacrifice to Zeus, have a banquet afterwards with your friends among the people there. And so there wasn't this communal aspect. Christianity early on becomes a thing with communal aspect. And the communal aspect, as I was saying earlier, that the resources, the additional resources that were available went to people in the community. And so Christians very early on started emphasizing how we have these loving communities. And, um, and as the communities grew, it's not, it's not as if these people were not human and had bad moods and, you know, bad policies and stuff. They did, uh, but, um, but they, they did, you know, this was kind of a distinctive feature. You didn't get this in Greek and Roman religions. By the time you get to the fourth century, you, you act, you, even before that, you have outsiders noticing this and talking about it. The most famous instance is the, the final pagan, uh, uh, emperor Julian, sometimes called Julian the Apostate, because he had started out as a Christian. Uh, but he was the, he was the nephew of Constantine, the first Christian emperor. And after Constantine's son ruled for a while, he ended up dying, and then his, his nephew becomes Julian. And Julian had become, had returned back to paganism. And he wanted to, he wanted to revert the world away from the movement toward Christianity to be become pagan again. And, um, he did that, and he was trying that. But he, he wrote a letter, we still have, where he says, you know, he doesn't use the word Christian. He uses the term Galileans. These Galileans, they help people in need, you know, and they, they got this community thing, and it's, and we don't do anything like that. We need to do that.

So, it's like.

We're going to compete. We better start getting the pagans to give to give to the poor and that sort of thing.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

That's cool.

So, yeah.

Yeah. Go ahead. Sorry. No, I cut you off.

I know. I thought there might have been a second part of your question that I've forgotten already.

Um, well, I, I was interested in both the way that, yeah. So, so the way the Christians talked about how they did this in their own defense in the face of some pretty, um, some pretty wild accusations as well. Um, do you want to talk about that?

Well, you know, so we have, you know, in the starting in the second century, we have Christians who are converting who are trained academically. Most Christians were from lower classes. Most people were lower class. You know, this is a world where like 90, 85 to 90% of the population could not read, you know, they just, they didn't have education systems. And so, but you start getting some, uh, people who are well-educated, of course, Paul, you know, in the end, and the other authors were educated. But in the second century, you start getting some intellectuals converting who defend the faith against pagans who attack it. Uh, and in the second, third centuries into into the fourth century, you have Christian apologists who report what it is pagans are saying about them that they're trying to defend themselves against. And the, the moral charges against the Christians are quite astounding to many Christians today. Um, and, uh, we have a record of this, um, in a, um, in actually in several, in several apologetic writings. Um, and so one of the charges against Christians is that they, uh, they in their, so they have secret meetings. Okay. Christians at this time do not have like open. It's

Not like the Baptist church in the corner that you just kind of can go to. They've got their meetings and they're for Christians. And so, um, they apparently, uh, typically met when either early in the morning or after, uh, work ended at night and, uh, and so, uh, in times that were dark and there were secret meetings and rumors got out about what they were doing in there.

Um, and so there were rumors uh that they were uh committing acts of cannibalism, uh infanticide, actually eating the babies uh that they had killed, and um that they had wild nocturnal orgies, uh including incest when they would uh put out the, you know, put out the torches and all just kind of copulate at random together. You see these wild, wild charges.

Um, I'll say that the wild charges are charges that you can find in a number of ancient contexts, always against the enemy. And so you, the way you really trash your enemy is say that they kill babies and eat them. You know, this is like it's the worst thing you can imagine. And you just say that against. So we have records of pagans saying it against Christians. Uh Christians charging pagans with it. Uh Christian charging Jews with it. Pagans charging pagans with it. It's like, you know, whoever your enemy is, you kind of have similar charges to this.

But then the Christian apologists have to defend against this. And their line, one of their lines of attack, um, is to say, look, you know, we, we actually, it's not that we just don't murder people. We actually love everybody and we love our enemies. Uh, we don't, we, you know, you all are accusing us for things that your gods do. Your gods are massive adulterers and killers. Your gods. We're not like that. We're not even as bad as your gods. In fact, we, we don't, you know, committing adultery. No, we, we don't have these wild incestuous things. We, we, you say you shouldn't commit adultery. We don't even let people lust after each other. Our morality is like so high compared to yours. So you, you aren't going to get anywhere with those charges, is what they would say. But it's based on their idea of of altruistic love.

>> Yeah. So that that becomes kind of a foundation of Christian identity, both for insiders and for outsiders, as a way to kind of present the world.

>> Yeah. >> Yeah.

>> And then it gets formalized. This this was the other really interesting move. um, you point to somebody named Basil of Caesarea, who has the wherewithal within the empire to take these to take these values and not just to kind of live them out, which maybe he did or didn't, but to also make them kind of formalized into structures. And we get then the structural kind of engine that would drive even what we now see today as as a lot of Western altruism. Can you talk about that?

>> Yeah, I'll tell you this. This when I write trade books for general audiences, I very rarely learn things that are like, wow, I hadn't thought of that before. Um, all just because, you know, basically I'm presenting scholarly knowledge to a community and so it's, you know, stuff we scholars know. But I learned some things on this about this idea of institutionalizing this understanding of altruism that I didn't know, and I make a big point of it in my book. We can show historically that Christians invented public hospitals in the West. Uh, they didn't exist in the West before before the Christian movement invented them with Basil. I'll say something about in a second. Um, uh, Christians invented orphanages in the West. Uh, poor people's homes, old people's homes. Um, governmental assistance to the needy, private charities dealing with hunger and homelessness. These these are Christian inventions, and you can show it historically. So again, I'm not an apologist for Christianity, but I'm they did invent these things, and it's, and I do think it's a good thing they did.

So, uh, Basil is a very interesting figure that I deal with in the book. So, he's a he's a 4th century church father living in Cappadocia, which is, um, sort of middle of Greece, the middle of Turkey today. If you ever go to Turkey, you need to go to Cappadocia because like it's an amazing, amazing place. But but he was um he was a prominent uh bishop there who himself had been like crazily wealthy uh who who sold everything, followed Jesus' teachings. One of the few people actually did what Jesus said and sold everything and gave to the poor and because he thought that's what he had to do. And he started he he was involved with the early monastic movement. Um, so he was a he became uh he started he started going off by himself in the wilderness to be a a, you know, monk off in the wilderness. But he eventually started monastic communities. Um, and he started a monastic community in the middle of the 4th century. And he decided that Jesus said you need to help the the help the helpless. And he thought and he thought rightly that the most helpless people in his world, the most needy people were lepers. Lepers who have skin disease, probably Hansen's disease, where their skin was rotting away and they lose limbs and they were outcast from their communities because they were infectious and so they basically left to fend for themselves or to starve away from civilization, and it was a very, very bad situation. He he built a facility that would care for lepers who would come there. They'd be given a room, uh, a decent room with a bed and a chair and uh with medical facilities available to them, and they'd be fed and they would uh they would be taught, they'd be given education, and he would take care of these lepers. And it was a big, it was a big place and it was he didn't, this wasn't the invention of the hospital per se, but because there were other kind of other things kind of like this going on uh in smaller ways, he he started this thing and then it caught on big time. And it became the thing that if you were if you were in a uh if you're in a position to, you would you would try and start a hospital to help to attend to the needs of the of the ill. And it made a big difference. Of course, they didn't have modern medicine, but even just basic nursing care makes a huge difference in survival rates and such. So this be this is this is kind of a point at which I I I start saying this this is where this kind of thing starts uh in the West.

>> Because you don't get that in the Roman world or the Greek world. This is this is it.

>> And empire. I mean, Christianity's marriage with the Roman Empire has obviously very complicated um complicated things we could talk about and certainly not all of them good. But this arguably is something that, you know, what have the Roman Empire, what has the Roman Empire ever done for us? This sounds like it might be one of those things that kind of that we have thanks to.

>> Yeah. Right. If if in the Life of Brian, like this was after the 4th century and hospitals. But yeah. So so the way it works is that in the year 312, Constantine, a pagan emperor, converts to Christianity. He does not make Christianity the empire-wide religion. Doesn't make paganism illegal. Doesn't make Christianity the state religion. But he's a Christian. And then a lot of people, you know, more people start converting, especially the elite. By the end of the 4th century, it is about half of the Roman Empire. By the end of the 5th century, it's most of the Roman Empire. And the deal, what I argue in my book is the reason that this idea of helping people in need, that we don't know, you know, people we don't know them. We uh may well never, we probably never will know them. We may not like them if we do get to know them. It's like, you know, it doesn't matter. If they're in need, we help them. That idea uh was propagated by Christians and Christian leaders and Christian preachers um starting in the second and third centuries, going into the fourth century. Then Christianity converts basically the the whole empire is Christian, and this is the ethical message people hear. This is it. They don't they don't hear Stoic philosophy and Epicurean philosophy, sometimes they do, but not really. And they hear the Christian message, what does it mean to be a good person? And that happens century after century after century after century until today. It's just common sense. Of course, you help people in need. And it doesn't matter if you're a Christian or you're an atheist or an agnostic or a Jew or a Muslim. If you live in the West, this is what you're raised with. And so, that's why I argue it took over the West. It's not that I think it was like a supernatural event or something. Um, but just on historical grounds, it makes sense that it did because Christianity conquered the West, and this was the this was the heart of their ethical teaching.

And it's interesting too, like one of as I reflected on this after, we we talk a lot about the historical Jesus and what we can or can't know about the historical Jesus, but it seems like this one might actually go back to him. I mean, you mentioned a few other people who have somewhat similar ideas, but this this does actually seem to be perhaps the invention of the historical Jesus.

>> It it may be an invention of the historical Jesus. I mean, we don't, you know, we have

>> Maybe I should be more cautious.

>> No, no, no, no. To to our knowledge, it is. Uh, but I I do hedge my bets in the book to say there may have been other Jewish teachers teaching this, but if they did, we don't have a record of it. Um, and so so but even if they did, like even if um, you know, Rabbi Samuel, somebody we don't know, also had this idea, you know, 10 years before Jesus. Rabbi Samuel's followers didn't take over the Western world. So so it's the teachings of Jesus that that did this, whether he invented them or not. I I'm inclined to think that this was his this was something he came up with and it just made sense to him uh because of his apocalyptic view, but it doesn't mean that he necessarily was the first to think of it, but you know, so.

>> Yeah, that's cool. Um, as you reflect on this and uh the the impact on the the conscience of the West, um, you do talk in the book about, you know, we we can't trace this line like all good things Christianity brought all good things to the West or anything like that, which is frankly just silly and requires some very dedicated historical rewriting. But you do talk about how this is probably one of the benefits of Christianity. Can you reflect on that a little bit and what that like how you've come to see that, even I mean, I we're at a time when people are, you know, people are leaving religion, trying to some people are trying to re-engage with religion or reinventing Christianity, whatever. Um, we're at a time when these teachings I think still resonate with a lot of people, and we're still kind of glad they're there. Is that that's true for you personally as well, I think?

>> It is. Um, I uh since I'm not a Christian, you know, again, it's not a this book's not a Christian apology. And I I talk about I realize and talk about uh the some of the many dark sides of Christianity, and there are lots of dark sides, from hatred of Jews leading to pogroms leading to slaughter of entire villages, leading to the Holocaust. Um, hatred of Muslims and uh Crusades destroying the infidel as bloodily as possible, and Islamophobia down to our own day. Um, hating anybody who has a view of Christianity that's different from yours and torturing them to death in the Inquisition. You know, Christian justifications of war, Christian justifications of slavery, Christian justifications of oppression of women. I mean, it's like it's a very long list of the dark side. And so, I I I don't think that you can um soften that. It is it's it's the reality. Christianity has engaged in a lot of a lot of really bad things. But my but there's also a really positive side. And I think it's we're remiss not to recognize that it's not all bad, and just as it's not all good. Uh, the good side is we wouldn't have these institutions that I've mentioned, including orphanages and poor people's homes and and helping those in need if we didn't. And I I don't know, I can't say we wouldn't have them. We don't know what would have happened. Um, I don't think these developments, I try to argue in my book that these developments toward helping those in need did not come to us from Eastern sources. It's not that it like imported from China or India or some place like that. I think it's an internal development within the West as Christianity took over the empire, and it led to a world of good. I mean, it it transformed the million, billions of millions of lives, anyway. Millions of lives are transformed, and millions of lives that's saved by having hospitals and orphanages and poor people, etc. Uh, and having charities that deal with hunger and homelessness. And so I don't think we could deny the good of that.

What really upsets me, I think, today is that there are so many people in our world, including people in power, who um take their Christian message and weaponize it to support whatever um radical or unradical social agendas and political policies they want to promote that are unrelated to the Christian message or contrary to the Christian message. You know, using Jesus to justify slaughtering masses of people, that just ain't right, you know? Or uh using it to uh to oppose people who are different from us, using Jesus' message to to oppose and harm people who are not like us. That just ain't right. Um, and so I that that's my main, that's probably my principal concern about all this, that we recognize it, and if we profess to be followers of Jesus, uh, that we actually, you know, listen to what he had to say to follow Jesus.

>> Yeah, absolutely. Well, the book is the book is Love Thy Stranger. I'll leave a link to it down below for those who want to join uh for those who want to read it. Go check it out. I I really enjoyed it. It's a it's a great read. And Bart Ehrman, thank you so much for taking the time to join me today.

>> Well, thanks Chris. This has been great. Enjoyed it.