"The True Lost Gospel of Peter" Updated and Expanded -- Part 4: Theology Theory, Less Direct Issues

Theology theory does not fit Peter's nature.

Accept the church tradition that the ring leader of the Disciples was martyred for his faith or not, it is not debatable that he did convert back to belief in Jesus after the crucifixion. Therefore, he surely suffered and definitely was aware that he was risking death because of his faith. For more information, see this three page pdf located here that argues for the resurrection by going to it as the foundation for the Christian faith (i.e. something like not proving Jesus by proving his other miracles since the Gospels are accurate). 

With this in mind, Christian apologist Frank Turek and the great late Norman Geisler wrote:

"There's no reason to doubt, and every reason to believe, the New Testament accounts. While many people will die for a lie that they think is truth, no sane person will die for what they know is a lie. The New Testament writers and other apostles knew for sure that Jesus had resurrected, and they demonstrated that knowledge with their own blood. What more could eyewitnesses do to prove that they are telling the truth!" (1)

Since Peter was a direct witness of Jesus's resurrection - the first mentioned in the 1 Corinthians 15:3-5 creed! -- surely he wouldn't try to distort the truth of Jesus's Gospel, because he was dedicated to the dangerous truth of an ultimate miracle above all others. See my next post for more information on this subject.

So why, if historical teaching doesn't matter and you are just trying to record theology, is someone working so hard to assign it to Peter? Just for the sake of saying that this theology definitely is true? Theology theory says that Christians would trust it anyway. I can't imagine someone working so hard to make it look like they knew Peter when they are just trying to write a theological book. Furthermore, being so devoted to Peter, why would they not care for historical material? A Christian like Mark definitely wouldn't have undervalued one of Jesus's 12 special chosen Disciples -- and the leader from the book of Acts who was in Jesus's inner trio, at that! Indeed, as Ehrman himself seems to imply below, it is ad hoc to suggest that a forger would be so implicit about the credibility he is trying to receive.

Finally, as the question was raised in part 1, why didn't the early church attach the name Peter instead of Mark to it, if they need such apostolic authority? 

Least importantly, but still significantly, Bart Ehrman probably wouldn't agree. 

In his book (2) arguing against a minority position that lacked professional schooling in the subject -- mythicists, over Jesus's existence -- Bart Ehrman does make a very good and humble point: professional opinion is still just opinion, and just because a view is marginalized does not mean it is false. 

Still, as I said before in my last post, I did not need to devote such space to refuting theology theory. What I wrote in my introduction post should be enough. There, I cite Ehrman twice to define embarrassing testimony, and how Mark is probably the earliest Gospel, and say why this is important. 

Which gets me to a hopefully persuasive point. Ehrman doesn't assume theology theory. Something else he wrote, when critiquing the view that the Gospels are eyewitness material, is this:

"Read them for yourself... you'll see. Nowhere in these books are there any first-person narratives, where the authors say something like 'Then Jesus and I went up to Jerusalem, and there we...' These books always talk in the third person, about what other people were doing--even the Gospels of Matthew and John, which allegedly were written by participants in Jesus' ministry." (3)

But as I recorded in my primitive (original) post, and as I have mentioned when appropriate throughout this blog project, there is an abundance of evidence that Mark had Peter in mind when writing his Gospel. While I very well might not have caught these reports unique to Mark, J. Warner Wallace, former staunch atheist who turned Christian because of evidence which he saw under his cold-case homicide detective nose, did and explained them to any reader. 

It seems to me that by Ehrman's standards -- a famous agnostic New Testament critical scholar -- my original post would have been enough to prove the true lost Gospel of Peter.

Now, onto the ultimate conclusion of not only this blog project, but this entire blog!

Citations:

1. Frank Turek and Norman L. Geisler, I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist (Crossway: Wheaton, IL. 2004), 293.

2. Bart D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (HarperOne: 2012).

3. Bart Ehrman, Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code: A Historian Reveals What We Really know About Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine (Oxford University Press: New York, NY. 2004), 111.