“Lost Christianities” by Bart D. Ehrman — A compelling invitation to rediscover the many early paths of the Christian faith, long hidden from view.

Holy Covenant,

After last week’s newsletter article on The Gospel of Judas, several of you shared how meaningful and surprising it was to learn about this different view of Judas and the role he might have played in Jesus’ story. This conversation has reminded me of another powerful book: The Lost Christianities by Bart D. Ehrman.

In this book, Ehrman takes readers on a journey through the first few centuries of Christianity, a time when the movement was far from unified. There wasn’t yet a “New Testament” as we know it, nor was there a single, agreed upon doctrine of who Jesus was or what his life, death, and resurrection meant. Instead, there were many different groups of Jesus followers, each with their own beliefs, practices, and sacred writings.

He tells us some early Christians, like the Ebionites, believed Jesus was fully human, not divine at all, and that following Jewish law was still essential. Others, like Marcion, who lived in the 2nd century, saw Jesus as divine but rejected the Hebrew Scriptures entirely, seeing Luke’s Gospel and the letters of Paul as all that was needed. And others wrote texts we now call “apocryphal” or “gnostic,” like the Gospel of Thomas, which offers a very different kind of Jesus: one who teaches that the divine is found within and that spiritual insight comes through self-knowledge.

All of these groups, and many more, were part of a very diverse early Christianity. But over time, what Ehrman calls a “proto-orthodox” group ended up winning out and defined the boundaries of what were acceptable beliefs, which books belonged in the Bible, and the creeds and doctrines mainline denominational churches have inherited. Their vision of Christianity became the Christianity we have today, at least in the eyes of history.

To help frame the impact of this early period in Christianity Ehrman asks big “what if” questions, like

• What if Marcion’s Bible had become the Bible we have today?
• What if the Gospel of Thomas had been included as part of the four gospels?
• What if Christianity had evolved with Jesus as a teacher of mystical wisdom instead of a divine sacrifice?

I don’t think questions like these threaten our faith, but they deepen it. They remind us that early Christianity was full of possibilities, not certainties. And perhaps most importantly, they invite us to recognize that today’s diversity within the church is not a departure from tradition but more so a return to our roots.

It’s okay if we believe different things. And it’s okay to question, wonder, and explore how beliefs from others faith traditions might fit into our own sense of faith.

In a time when people are hungry for honesty and openness in their spiritual lives, remembering this lost history matters. It tells us that there has never been just one way to follow Jesus. There have always been many ways.

And that, I think, is good news worth sharing.

Peace and Blessings,

Rev. Christopher Czarnecki
Holy Covenant UCC
Senior Pastor