隱形宗派（八）---『保守』距離『不信』只有一紙之隔

極端保守的福音派好像很安全，其實是站在懸崖旁邊。

聽一位極端保守的神學院教授說，他一個朋友的兒子去一間常春藤大學的神學院唸書，很高興，但被他澆了一頭冷水，說你兒子完了，一定會變成不信，因為那些學校的教授不是自由派，就是不信的新派。幾個月後果然如他所料，這年輕人果真變成不信派，他父親悔不當初，不聽他的勸告。

他這段故事背後有兩種可能，第一種是，也許這年輕人並沒有不信，而是經過學術的洗禮後受到啟發，放棄了原來從教會學來的保守立場，而這個教授和他的朋友把這種比較自由的立場都當成不信。第二種是，這年輕人可能真的不信了，因為他原來保守立場過於僵化易碎，在學術界各種事實的挑戰下就崩潰了。

其實這種例子很多。Craig A. Evans寫了一本書“Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels”，目的是衛道，反駁那些新派學者以歷史批判的研究方法否定有關耶穌基督的真理。他所批判的學者真的都是不信派。很有趣的是，作者花一整章的篇幅來指出這些學者一個很普遍的現象，就是對聖經的不正確的期望，導致他們現在的立場。他說許多不信派的學者都是成長自極端保守的福音派的環境中，他們那種僵化的立場，尤其是聖經字面無誤的立場，讓他們一點轉圜餘地都沒有，遇到學術界裡很平常的事實，比如聖經的不同抄本之間的差異，信仰就崩潰了。他列了四個學者的故事，其實像這樣的例子大有人在，列這些人是因為他們有公開談論自己從保守到不信的心路歷程。我把他們的故事節錄出來，做為借鑑。這也是我為什麼要大聲疾呼要謹防福音運動的不良影響。再次強調，新教不等於福音派，新教的朋友請把我的文章當作有則改之，無則嘉勉的提醒，可別以為我是一桿子打翻一條船。像Craig Evans這樣的許多學者本身也是新教的，我就蠻佩服的。

你希望你的小孩以後接觸更多真相的時後不會失去信仰嗎？那最好確定他現不會陷在極端保守的福音派教條裡，那是一個非常脆弱的處境。

【案例一】Robert Funk, founder of Jesus Seminar（耶穌研討會，是批判耶穌各種真理的大本營）

這是他的自述：

If the creationists had their way I…would have been stuck with a literalist reading of Genesis 1 and 2, which I had already acquired from attending Sunday school…

[My pastor] sent me to a Bible college located in the hills of eastern Tennessee. I promptly became a teenage evangelist, using my rhetorical skills to make my audiences laugh and cry.

But I was uneasy. Learning at the college was mostly by memorization and rehearsal. Truth was already encoded in the simplistic creed of the school. A doctrinal straitjacket did not suit me.

【案例二】James Robinson, Nag Hammadi考古遺址出土的有關Gnostism 史料的專家

這是他的自述：

Before going on to graduate studies, I taught for a year at my college (Davidson)…a quite literal Old Testament. My students were mostly returning veterans, who must have experienced me as hopelessly naïve. Whether or not they actually believed anything I said, by the end of year I no longer did. I had tried to make sense of my childhood theology to myself, and had failed.

In effect, my theological trajectory over half a century has moved step by step from right to left.

I am often asked by Christians who are not academics the leading question as to how a lifetime of critical biblical scholarship has affected my faith as a Christian. The implied answer is that such “higher criticism” obviously destroyed it.

【案例三】Robert Price

這是他的故事：

Price is a graduate of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, a conservative evangelical school. Previously he was involved with a fundamentalist Baptist church and was a leader of a chapter of intervarsity Christian Fellowship. Not long after seminary, where he was exposed to biblical criticism, Price began rethinking his faith. He returned to school, earning a PH.D. in systematic theology from Drew University. In the years that followed he began moving to the left, leaving one pastorate for another. He returned to school, this time earning a degree in New Testament. Influenced by nineteenth-century New Testament critics, Price moved further to the left, eventually adopting an agnostic position. His own views of the New Testament Gospels became increasingly radical.

【案例四】Bart Ehrman

這是他的自述：

For me, though, this [the loss of the original manuscripts of the New Testament] was a compelling problem. It was the words of scripture themselves that God had inspired. Surely we have to know what those words were if we want to know how he had communicated to us, since the very words were his words, and having some other words (those inadvertently or intentionally created by scribes) didn’t help us much if we want to know His words.

The Bible began to appear to me as a very human book….This was a human book from beginning to end. It was written by different human authors at different times and in different places to address different needs…

Those of us at Moody, believed that the Bible was absolutely inerrant in its very words.

【作者的一些論述，借用做為總結】

The truth of the Christian message hinges not on the inerrancy of Scripture or on our ability to harmonize the four Gospels but on the resurrection of Jesus. And the historical reliability of the Gospels does not hinge on the inerrancy of Scripture or on proof that no mistake of any kind can be detected in them. Ehrman’s struggle with faith---and I feel for him---grows out of mistaken expectations off the nature and function of Scripture, mistaken expectations that he was taught as a young, impressionable fundamental Christian.

翻譯：基督教真理並不是奠基在聖經的無誤性上，或者是否可以合理解釋四本福音書之間的抵觸上，而是建立在耶穌復活這個事實上。再者，福音書的歷史可靠性也不是建立在聖經的無誤性，或一些證明聖經的無誤性上。 Ehrman信仰的掙扎我深表同情，但是他的掙扎是出自對聖經的性質和功能的錯誤期望，而這種錯誤期望是他自幼烙印在心裡的保守福音派教導所致。

針對Ehrman的經驗，作者說他從小長大一定聽過無數次保守派的牧師說：『只要你找出聖經任何一點錯誤，我就承認基督教是個笑話。』這是一種一折就斷（Brittle）的態勢。