Eller, Jack David, 2012 Review of Beyond Belief: Two Thousand Years of Bad Faith in the Christian Church. Anthropology Review Database January 27, 2012.
(This review is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 United States License).
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ABSTRACT:    This energetic exposé on the ‘invention of tradition’ in Christianity describes many examples and processes of the historical construction of the Christian religion, with a tone that seems to advocate the dismissal of Christianity because of its obvious and ongoing (and, to the author’s mind, dishonest) self-invention.

     Anthropologists are more than familiar by now with the phenomenon of ‘invented tradition.’ Indeed, every tradition was invented at some time (at which time it was obviously not ‘traditional’). Or, since no tradition or any other aspect of culture is established in one moment and once and for all, it is actually more accurate to say that it is accumulated or accreted over time. Perhaps nowhere in culture is this more evident than in religions, which ironically typically claim an absolute timelessness that is ideological rather than factual. Serious religious scholars not only admit this process but attempt to make hay from it. Walter Brueggeman, for instance, has acknowledged that the “interplay of historical reportage and canonical formation is endlessly complex” and has referred to this interplay as “the work of tradition, the defining enterprise of biblical formation, transmission, and interpretation that we may term ‘imaginative remembering’” (2003, p. 7).
It is this process of canonical formation, of imaginative remembering, or what is often called ‘traditioning’ that is the subject of James McDonald’s explosive new book. As he rightly claims in his introduction, “The history of the Church is different from the version popularly taught in most European and North American schools” (p. xii)—much more complicated, much sloppier, much more ‘political,’ and much less noble than most believers like to think. Accordingly, the quite-long book is divided into five quite-long chapters, exploring issues of the authority of Christian tradition, the historical development of Christianity, ‘facts and fictions’ in the scriptures, science and Christianity, and ‘religion today and tomorrow.’
The first chapter, over ninety pages in length, questions the reliability of Christian authorities, in regard to the Old and New Testaments as well as to other non-canonical material. For instance, contrary to the expectations “that there would be no doubt what constituted the Old Testament” (p. 2), McDonald shows how its sources and eventual canonical books were very much contested throughout Hebrew and Christian history. The same is indisputably true for the New Testament, as he shows. Much of the text of the Judeo-Christian scriptures is not even original, being borrowed from diverse earlier religious traditions. Even worse, there is no official original Old Testament (and Jews object to that name, anyhow), since “Jewish history was routinely rewritten to show a favorite leader in a good light, or to confirm God’s attachment to the Jewish people” (p. 12). The very notion of textual consistency, of authenticity, that so preoccupies scholars today was not a concern in ancient times. McDonald also discusses problems of translation, contradiction, and multiple versions in the Christian writings, including naturally the ‘apocryphal’ materials and how some books became accepted as valid while others did not. Finally, he presents evidence “that early Christians tampered with their holy texts” (p. 59).
The second chapter, almost 150 pages of it, exposes the ‘development of Christianity’ from the life of Jesus to imperial and medieval settling of many Christian doctrines. McDonald examines fully eleven interpretations of who or what Jesus may have been, then turns to the various ‘founders’ of Christianity such as the Nazarenes, the Gnostics, and of course Paul and his camp. He then shows when a number of ‘official’ Christian positions were first debated and established, including the incarnation, the holy spirit and the trinity, original sin, transubstantiation, and the status of Mary. He traces in some detail the course of the early church: the rise of the bishop of Rome, diverse schisms, the formation of the priesthood and ecclesiastical ranks, all of which were later inventions largely without scriptural or historical precedent.
Over 150 pages are taken up with an exposition on ‘facts and fictions,’ which comprises the third chapter. Here, the author demonstrates “the extent to which the Christian Church has manipulated facts by selecting sources, destroying inconvenient evidence, fabricating records, and the use of other methods of hiding the truth that the Church has been accused of” (p. 247). He describes eight specific methods of massaging tradition, such as suppressing evidence, selecting your sources and arguments, fabricating history, engaging in ‘retrospective prophecy,’ attributing ambiguous authority to older writings, ignoring or distorting New Testament claims, inventing/amending/discarding doctrines and practices, and manipulating language. Each of these damning charges is illustrated with abundant examples. The chapter concludes with several ‘case studies’ on the creation of the Christian god by ‘re-branding a sky god,’ on the invention of monotheism out of polytheism, on Mary’s putative virginity, on the nativity story, and on ‘textual problems.’
The final two much shorter and somewhat gratuitous chapters highlight ‘science and Christianity’ and the present and future of religion (by which we can assume he means Christianity). The science chapter, rehearsing a conventional struggle between science and religion, considers “some areas where science has found itself in conflict with Christian teaching” as well as “continuing skirmishes” between the two mortal enemies (p. 405). The docket is fairly familiar: cosmology, math and physics, biology and geology, chemistry and medicine, and philosophy and philology. No one but the hardest-headed theist would contend that ‘Christian teachings’ on many of these subjects have been superseded—yet there are such hard-headed theists out there. More alarmingly, McDonald reminds us that respectable Christian teachers from Tertullian to Martin Luther have warned believers about the evils of reasoning and research. The fifth chapter, which is something more like a brief conclusion and caution, lists the ongoing dangers of religion in modern society, including religious discrimination, fatalism and the shifting of moral responsibility, abuses of power, and negative effects on sex, economic development, and the pursuit of knowledge.
According to the back cover, the findings of Beyond Belief “will shock devout believers.” Two things are probably true, though. First, few devout believers will get near the blasphemous volume, and second, the Christian Church has been working for two thousand years on its response. Scholars will not be surprised by much of what they read here, although the careful organization is helpful. There are many books, especially since the emergence of a self-confident atheist voice in modern culture, on the errors, contradictions, and inventions of Christianity (and other religions). It is not clear precisely what McDonald’s intention is in offering this study: as an exposé on Christianity, it would seem to want to debunk Christianity and to encourage believers to discard their belief. It is difficult to imagine any other goal. Non-believers will certainly take the message to heart: why believe something if it is so explicitly made up? Believers, however, have found ways over the eons to ‘re-fence’ their beliefs in the face of such indignities, not the least by engaging in precisely the kinds of behavior McDonald describes in the book.
Reference
Brueggemann, Walter 2003 An Introduction to the Old Testament: The Canon and Christian Imagination . Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press.
 
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