title: Criticism of Christianity

text: On the other hand, Blaise Pascal believed that "[t]he prophecies are the strongest proof of Jesus Christ". He wrote that Jesus was foretold, and that the prophecies came from a succession of people over a span of four thousand years. Apologist Josh McDowell defends the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy as supporting Christianity, arguing that prophecies fulfilled by Christ include ones relating to his ancestral line, birthplace, virgin birth, miracles, manner of death, and resurrection. He says that even the timing of the Messiah in years and in relation to events is predicted, and that the Jewish Talmud (not accepting Jesus as the Messiah, see also Rejection of Jesus) laments that the Messiah had not appeared despite the scepter being taken away from Judah.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Another example is Nazarene in : "And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene." The website for Jews for Judaism claims that "Since a Nazarene is a resident of the city of Nazareth and this city did not exist during the time period of the Jewish Bible, it is impossible to find this quotation in the Hebrew Scriptures. It was fabricated." However, one common suggestion is that the New Testament verse is based on a passage relating to "Nazirites", either because this was a misunderstanding common at the time, or through deliberate re-reading of the term by the early Christians. Another suggestion is "that Matthew was playing on the similarity of the Hebrew word "nezer" (translated 'Branch' or 'shoot' in and ) with the Greek "nazoraios," here translated 'Nazarene. Christians also suggest that by using an indirect quotation and the plural term prophets, "Matthew was only saying that by living in Nazareth, Jesus was fulfilling the many Old Testament prophecies that He would be despised and rejected." The background for this is illustrated by Philip's initial response in to the idea that Jesus might be the Messiah: "Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?"


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: A fundamental principle of the Christian faith is that Jesus was born of Mary, a virgin. Both Matthew and Luke trace the genealogy of Joseph back to David. According to Jewish tradition, the Messiah must be a descendant of David, but if Jesus was born of a virgin, he cannot be a descendant of David through Joseph. Michael Martin asserts that Mary's virginity is a later addition to Christianity as indicated through Paul's letters. Further, Martin notes that early Christian communities did not seem to have widely believed in the virgin birth. The confusion surrounding the virginity of Mary may result from Septuagint translation of both "young girl" and , "virgin" into , which usually means virgin. Relying on this translation, Matthew tried to show that Jesus's virgin birth was foretold in Isaiah 7:14—which refers to an "almah" in Hebrew.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Critics argue that the selective invocation of portions of the Old Testament is hypocritical, particularly when those portions endorse hostility towards women and homosexuals, when other portions are considered obsolete. The entire Mosaic Law is described in as a tutor which is no longer necessary, according to some interpretations, see also Antinomianism in the New Testament.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: On the other hand, many of the Old Testament laws are seen as specifically abrogated by the New Testament, such as circumcision, though this may simply be a parallel to Jewish Noahide Laws. See also Split of early Christianity and Judaism. On the other hand, other passages are pro-Law, such as Romans 3:31: "Do we then make void the law through faith? Certainly not! On the contrary, we establish the law." See also Pauline passages opposing antinomianism.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Translation has given rise to a number of issues, as the original languages are often quite different in grammar as well as word meaning. While the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy states that inerrancy applies only to the original languages, some believers trust their own translation to be the accurate one. One such group of believers is known as the King-James-Only Movement. For readability, clarity, or other reasons, translators may choose different wording or sentence structure, and some translations may choose to paraphrase passages. Because some of the words in the original language have ambiguous or difficult to translate meanings, debates over the correct interpretation occur.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Criticisms are also sometimes raised because of inconsistencies arising between different English translations of the Hebrew or Greek text. Some Christian interpretations are criticized for reflecting specific doctrinal bias or a variant reading between the Masoretic Hebrew and Septuagint Greek manuscripts often quoted in the New Testament.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Certain interpretations of some moral decisions in the Bible are considered ethically questionable by many modern groups. Some of the passages most commonly criticized include colonialism, the subjugation of women, religious intolerance, condemnation of homosexuality, and support for the institution of slavery in both Old and New Testaments.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Christianity and colonialism are often closely associated because Catholicism and Protestantism were the religions of the European colonial powers and acted in many ways as the "religious arm" of those powers. Historian Edward E. Andrews argues that although Christian missionaries were initially portrayed as "visible saints, exemplars of ideal piety in a sea of persistent savagery", by the time the colonial era drew to a close in the last half of the twentieth century missionaries became viewed as "ideological shock troops for colonial invasion whose zealotry blinded them."


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Christianity is targeted by critics of colonialism because the tenets of the religion were used to justify the actions of the colonists. For example, Michael Wood asserts that the indigenous peoples were not considered to be human beings and that the colonisers were shaped by "centuries of Ethnocentrism, and Christian monotheism, which espoused one truth, one time and version of reality."


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Early Christian perspectives of slavery were formed in the contexts of Christianity's roots in Judaism, and as part of the wider culture of the Roman Empire. Both the Old and New Testaments recognize that the institution of slavery existed, with the former sanctioning it within certain limits (Leviticus 25:39-46, Exodus 21:2-21).


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Saint Paul the Apostle in addressing slavery in Ephesians 6:-8 tells slaves to "obey your earthly masters" and "render service with enthusiasm, as to the Lord and not to men and women." Defenders of Christianity argue that nothing in the passage affirms slavery as a naturally valid or divinely mandated institution. Rather, Paul's discussion of the duties of Christian slaves and the responsibilities of Christian masters transforms the institution, even if it falls short of calling for outright abolition. St. Augustine thought slavery was a result of sin, but was part of the fallen world and so should be tolerated. However, others opposed it: John Chrysostom explicitly argued that slavery itself was a sin, but he did not advocate for its abolition; Origen called for the practice of manumission after six years as found in the Old Testament; others, such as Gregory of Nyssa, Acacius of Amida, and St. Patrick, called for the complete abolition of slavery. On the other hand, critics claim that Orthodox Christianity justified slavery on the ground that it was part of the divinely ordained hierarchical order. Slaves are enjoined to be submissive in the Ephesians passage above as well as other parts of the Bible, such as in Paul's Epistle to the Colossians: "Slaves, obey your earthly masters [kyrioi] according to the flesh in everything, not only while being watched and in order to please them, but wholeheartedly, fearing the Lord [kyrios]". In addition, St. John Chrysostom wrote "The slave should be resigned to his lot, in obeying his master he is obeying God" while St. Augustine wrote: "...slavery is now penal in character and planned by that law which commands the preservation of the natural order and forbids disturbance".


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: According to one view, today and from a human rights perspective, it is difficult to understand why early Christians did not object to the social institution of slavery. It is uncertain whether one can go so far as to criticise Early Christians, including Paul and other authors of Biblical texts, for their active or passive acceptance of slavery. Peter Gruszka attributed the view of early Christian Fathers on slavery to their social environment. In the 2nd and 3rd centuries, the most prominent fathers such as Clement, Tertullian, Cyprian, Origen and others emerged in Africa and Egypt, where slavery did not exist on a large scale. Different was the social environment in Eastern Mediterranean, Syria, Palestine and especially Asia Minor, where slavery was a strong presence and therefore attracted the attention of the Cappadocian fathers of the 4th century.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: According to Jennifer Glancy, sexual exploitation of slaves in the Roman Empire was helped by Christian morality. Jesus urged his followers to act like slaves, implementing a slave morality. The early Christian theologians were unconcerned about slave morals.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: In the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine), a shift in the view of slavery is noticed, which by the 10th century transformed gradually a slave-object into a slave-subject.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Since the Middle Ages, the Christian understanding of slavery has been subjected to significant internal conflict and has endured dramatic change. Nearly all Christian leaders before the late 17th century recognised slavery, within specific biblical limitations, as consistent with Christian theology. The key verse used to justify slavery was Genesis 9:25-27: "Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers. He also said, 'Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem! May Canaan be the slave of Shem." which was interpreted to mean that Africans were the descendants of Ham, cursed with "the mark of Ham" to be servants to the descendants of Japheth (Europeans) and Shem (Asians). In 1452, Pope Nicholas V instituted the hereditary slavery of captured Muslims and pagans, regarding all non-Christians as "enemies of Christ".


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: The ""Curse of Ham"" along with Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians, VI, 5-7 helped American slave owners to balance their beliefs with slavery. There are plenty of other pro-slavery verses in the Old Testament that were often quoted. The New Testament was ignored except in reminding that Jesus never condemned slavery and the "Epistle to Philemon" in which a runaway slave was returned to his owner.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Rodney Stark makes the argument in "For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery", that Christianity helped to end slavery worldwide, as does Lamin Sanneh in "Abolitionists Abroad". These authors point out that Christians who viewed slavery as wrong on the basis of their religious convictions spearheaded abolitionism, and many of the early campaigners for the abolition of slavery were driven by their Christian faith and a desire to realize their view that all people are equal under God. In the late 17th century, Anabaptists began to criticize slavery. Criticisms from the Society of Friends, Mennonites, and the Amish followed suit. Prominent among these Christian abolitionists were William Wilberforce and John Woolman. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote her famous book, "Uncle Tom's Cabin", according to her Christian beliefs in 1852. Earlier, in Britain and America, Quakers were active in abolitionism. A group of Quakers founded the first English abolitionist organization in 1783, and a Quaker petition brought the issue before government that same year. The Quakers continued to be influential throughout the lifetime of the movement, in many ways leading the way for the campaign. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, was instrumental in starting abolitionism as a popular movement.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Many modern Christians are united in the condemnation of slavery as wrong and contrary to God's will. Only peripheral groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and other so-called Christian hate groups on the racist fringes of the Christian Reconstructionist and Christian Identity movements advocate the reinstitution of slavery. Full adherents to reconstructionism are few and marginalized among conservative Christians. With these exceptions, Christian faith groups now condemn slavery, and see the practice as incompatible with basic Christian principles.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: In addition to aiding abolitionism, many Christians made further efforts toward establishing racial equality, contributing to the Civil Rights Movement. "The African American Review" notes the important role Christian revivalism in the black church played in the Civil Rights Movement. Martin Luther King Jr., an ordained Baptist minister, was a leader of the American civil rights movement and president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a Christian Civil Rights organization.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Many feminists have accused notions such as a male God, male prophets, and the man-centered stories in the Bible of contributing to a patriarchy. Though many women disciples and servants are recorded in the Pauline epistles, there have been occasions in which women have been denigrated and forced into a second-class status. For example, women were told to keep silent in the churches for "it is a shame for a woman to speak in the church". Suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton said in "The Woman's Bible" that "the Bible in its teachings degrades women from Genesis to Revelation".


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Elizabeth Clark cites early Christian writings by authors such as Tertullian, Augustine, and John Chrysostom as being exemplary of the negative view of women that has been perpetuated in church tradition. Until the latter part of the 20th century, only the names of very few women who contributed to the formation of Christianity in its earliest years were widely known: Mary, the mother of Jesus; Mary Magdalene, disciple of Jesus and the first witness to the resurrection; and Mary and Martha, the sisters who offered him hospitality in Bethany.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Harvard scholar Karen King writes that more of the many women who contributed to the formation of Christianity in its earliest years are becoming known. Further, she concludes that for centuries in Western Christianity, Mary Magdalene has been wrongly identified as the adulteress and repentant prostitute presented in —a connection supposed by tradition but nowhere claimed in the New Testament. According to King, the Gospel of Mary shows that she was an influential figure, a prominent disciple and leader of one wing of the early Christian movement that promoted women's leadership.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: King claims that every sect within early Christianity which had advocated women's prominence in ancient Christianity was eventually declared heretical, and evidence of women's early leadership roles was erased or suppressed.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Classicist Evelyn Stagg and New Testament scholar Frank Stagg in their jointly authored book, "Woman in the World of Jesus," document very unfavorable attitudes toward women that prevailed in the world into which Jesus came. They assert that there is no recorded instance where Jesus disgraces, belittles, reproaches, or stereotypes a woman. They interpret the recorded treatment and attitude Jesus showed to women as evidence that the Founder of Christianity treated women with great dignity and respect. Various theologians have concluded that the canonical examples of the manner of Jesus are instructive for inferring his attitudes toward women. They are seen as showing repeatedly and consistently how he liberated and affirmed women. However, argues that Jesus' reply to his mother in during the wedding at Cana amounted to a blatant violation of the commandment to honor one's parent.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Many critics of Christianity have cited the violent acts of Christian nations as a reason to denounce the religion. The science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke said that he could not forgive religions because they endorsed atrocities and wars over time. Richard Dawkins makes a similar case in his book, "The God Delusion". In the counterargument book "The Dawkins Delusion?," Alister McGrath responds to Dawkins by suggesting that, far from endorsing "out-group hostility", Jesus commanded an ethic of "out-group affirmation". McGrath agrees that it is necessary to critique religion, but he says that Dawkins seems to be unaware that it possesses internal means of reform and renewal. While Christians may certainly be accused of failing to live up to Jesus' standard of acceptance, it lies at the heart of the Christian ethic.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Peace, compassion and forgiveness of wrongs done by others are key elements of Christian teaching. However, Christians have struggled since the days of the Church fathers with the question of when the use of force is justified. Such debates have led to concepts such as just war theory. Throughout history, biblical passages have been used to justify the use of force against heretics, sinners and external enemies. Heitman and Hagan identify the Inquisitions, Crusades, wars of religion and antisemitism as being "among the most notorious examples of Christian violence". To this list, J. Denny Weaver adds, "warrior popes, support for capital punishment, corporal punishment under the guise of 'spare the rod and spoil the child', justifications of slavery, world-wide colonialism in the name of conversion to Christianity, the systemic violence of women subjected to men". Weaver employs a broader definition of violence that extends the meaning of the word to cover "harm or damage", not just physical violence per se. Thus, under his definition, Christian violence includes "forms of systemic violence such as poverty, racism, and sexism".


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Christians have also engaged in violence against those who they consider heretics and non-believers. In "Letter to a Christian Nation", critic of religion Sam Harris writes that "...faith inspires violence in at least two ways. First, people often kill other human beings because they believe that the creator of the universe wants them to do it... Second, far greater numbers of people fall into conflict with one another because they define their moral community on the basis of their religious affiliation..."


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Christian theologians point to a strong doctrinal and historical imperative against violence which exists within Christianity, particularly Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, which taught nonviolence and love of enemies. Weaver says that Jesus' pacifism was "preserved in the justifiable war doctrine which declares that all war is sin even when it is occasionally declared to be a necessary evil, and it was also preserved in the prohibition of fighting by monastics and clergy as well as in a persistent tradition of Christian pacifism". Others point out sayings and acts of Jesus that do not fit this description: the absence of any censure of the soldier who asks Jesus to heal his servant, his overturning the tables and chasing the moneychangers from the temple with a rope in his hand, and through his Apostles, baptising a Roman Centurion who is never asked to first give up arms.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Historically, prohibitions on fighting by monastics and clerics have often been discarded; the notion of military monasticism emerged in the 12th century, in large part because of the advocacy of St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Bernard—and, once the papacy gave sanction to the idea, the entire Catholic Church—believed that existing Christian methods of serving the Church's ends in war were inadequate, and that a group of dedicated warrior monks could achieve spiritual merit by waging war, rather than despite it. In this view, war against heretics justified means of waging war that fell outside the bounds of just war; for example, the Teutonic Order, which received papal sanction, made frequent use of massacres and violence to compel conversion during the Baltic Crusades.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: During the 19th century an interpretive model of the relationship between religion and science known today as the conflict theory developed, according to which interaction between religion and science almost inevitably leads to hostility and conflict. A popular example was the misconception that people from the Middle Ages believed that the Earth was flat, and that only science, freed from religious dogma, had shown that it was spherical. This thesis was a popular historiographical approach during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but most contemporary historians of science now reject it.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: The notion of a war between science and religion remained common in the historiography of science during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Most of today's historians of science consider that the conflict thesis has been superseded by subsequent historical research. The framing of the relationship between Christianity and science as being predominantly one of conflict is still prevalent in popular culture.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: The astronomer Carl Sagan mentioned the dispute between the astronomical systems of Ptolemy (who thought that the sun and planets revolved around the earth) and Copernicus (who thought the earth and planets revolved around the sun). He states in "" that Ptolemy's belief was "supported by the church through the Dark Ages... [It] effectively prevented the advance of astronomy for 1,500 years." Ted Peters in "Encyclopedia of Religion" writes that although there is some truth in this story, it has been exaggerated and has become "a modern myth perpetuated by those wishing to see warfare between science and religion who were allegedly persecuted by an atavistic and dogma-bound ecclesiastical authority". In 1992, the Catholic Church's seeming vindication of Galileo attracted much comment in the media.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Jesus is the central figure of Christianity. Since the time in which he is said to have lived, a number of noted individuals have criticised Jesus. Objects of criticism include the morality of the life of Jesus, in both his public and private lives, such as Jesus' mental health, morality of his teachings etc.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Early critics of Jesus and Christianity included Celsus in the second century and Porphyry in the third. In the 19th century, Friedrich Nietzsche was highly critical of Jesus, whose teachings he considered to be "anti-nature" in their treatment of topics such as sexuality. More contemporary notable critics of Jesus include Ayn Rand, Hector Avalos, Sita Ram Goel, Christopher Hitchens, Bertrand Russell, and Dayananda Saraswati.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: The ethics of the Bible have been criticized by some who call some of its teachings immoral. Slavery, genocide, supersessionism, the death penalty, violence, patriarchy, sexual intolerance, colonialism, and the problem of evil and a good God, are examples of criticisms of ethics in the Bible.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: The ethics in the Bible have been criticized, such as the passages in the Old Testament in which God commands the Israelites to commit genocide against enemy peoples, and His command that no one among those same enemy peoples should be spared. The existence of evil has been argued as evidence of no omnipotent, omnibenevolent being, however skeptical theism suggests that humans do not have the understanding of the big picture to make an adequate assessment. However, a counter argument by Stephen Maitzen suggests that the ethical inconsistency in the bible that is not followed by most Christians or Jews today, such as the execution of homosexuals, blasphemers, disobedient children, or the punishment for mixing linen and cloth, ultimately undermines the skeptical theism argument. Christian ethics have also been criticized for breeding intolerance (such as antisemitic views), and for having a repressive nature. Criticism has also been aimed at the core of Christian ethics, the threat of Hell.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Some leftists and libertarians, including Christians who disavow the Religious Right, use the term "Christian fascism" or "Christofascism" to describe what some see as an emerging neoconservative proto-fascist or Evangelical nationalist and possibly theocratic sentiment in the United States.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Reverend Rich Lang of the Trinity United Methodist Church of Seattle gave a sermon which he titled "George Bush and the Rise of Christian Fascism", in which he said, "I want to flesh out the ideology of the Christian Fascism that Bush articulates. It is a form of Christianity that is the mirror opposite of what Jesus embodied."


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Conservative Christians are often accused of being intolerant by secular humanists and progressive Christians, who claim that they oppose science which seems to contradict their scriptural interpretation (creationism, use of birth control, climate change denial, abortion, research into embryonic stem cells, etc.), liberal democracy (separation of church and state), and progressive social policies (rights of people of other races and religions, of women, and of people with different sexual orientations).


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Gallup polling shows that within the US, trust in organized religion has declined since the 1970s. Phil Zuckerman, a sociology professor, argues that political campaigning against same-sex marriage in churches "is turning off so many people from Christianity", and it is responsible for a decline in the number of Christians in the United States.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: David Kinnaman, president of the Barna Institute, and Gabe Lyons of the Fermi Project published a study of the attitudes of 16- to 29-year-old Americans towards Christianity. They found that about 38% of all of those who were not regular churchgoers had negative impressions of Christianity, especially evangelical Christianity, which they associated with conservative political activism, hypocrisy, anti-homosexuality, authoritarianism, and judgmentalism. About 17% had "very bad" perceptions of Christianity.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: There are three major viewpoints within modern Christianity over the role of women. They are respectively known as Christian feminism, Christian egalitarianism and complementarianism.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Some Christians argue that the belief that God is a man is not based on gender, instead, they argue that the belief that God is a man is based on the tradition which existed in the dominant Patriarchal society of the time in which men acted as the leaders and caretakers of their Families. Thus, the idea of God being "The Father" is with regards to his relationship with what are "his children", Christians.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Most mainline Christians claim that the doctrine of the Trinity implies that God should be called Father rather than Mother, in the same way that Jesus was a man rather than a woman. Jesus tells His followers to address God as Father. He tells his disciples to be merciful as their heavenly Father is merciful. He says the Father will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask and that the Spirit of their Father will speak through them in times of persecution. On Easter Sunday, he directs Mary Magdalene to tell the other disciples, "I am going to my Father and your Father..." Mark Brumley points out that behind New Testament language of Divine Adoption and regeneration is the idea that God is our Father because He is the "source" or "origin" of our new life in Christ. He has saved us through Christ and sanctified us in the Spirit. Brumley claims this is clearly more than a metaphor; the analogy with earthly fatherhood is obvious. God is not merely like a father for Christ's followers; he is really their Father. Among Christians who hold to this idea, there is a distinct sense that Jesus' treatment of women should imply their equality in leadership and marital roles every bit as strongly as the definite male gender of Jesus should imply a name of Father for God. Instead of characterizing alternative naming as antifeminist, they characterize it as unnecessary and unsupported by the words which are found in the Bible.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: In 2000, the Southern Baptist Convention voted to revise its "Baptist Faith and Message" (Statement of Faith), opposing women as pastors. While this decision is not binding and would not prevent women from serving as pastors, the revision itself has been criticized by some from within the convention. In the same document, the Southern Baptist Convention took a strong position of the subordinating view of woman in marriage: "A wife is to submit herself "graciously" to the servant leadership of her husband. She has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation." (Emphasis added)


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: The Eastern Orthodox Church does not allow the ordination of female clergy. On the other hand, the Chaldean Catholic Church continues to maintain a large number of deaconesses who serve alongside male deacons during mass.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: In some evangelical churches, it is forbidden for women to become pastors, deacons or church elders. In support of such prohibitions, the verse is often cited:


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: The Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church reject Hume's argument against miracles outright with the teachings of St. Gregory Palamas, who postulated that Reason alone was not sufficient to understand God's energies (activities such as miracles) and essence, but faith was. Of course, when no one would hear anything classified as Christianity but for the communications of other human beings, the question of just where faith has been placed arises.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Miraculous healings through prayers, often involving the "laying on of hands", have been reported. However, reliance on faith healing alone can indirectly contribute to serious harm and even death. Christian apologists including C.S. Lewis, Norman Geisler and William Lane Craig have argued that miracles are reasonable and plausible.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Celsus found it hard to reconcile the Christian human God who was born and matured with the Jewish God who was supposed to be one and unchanging. He asked "if God wanted to reform humanity, why did he choose to descend and live on earth? How his brief presence in Jerusalem could benefit all the millions of people who lived elsewhere in the world or who had lived and died before his incarnation?"


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: One classical response is Lewis's trilemma, a syllogism popularised by C. S. Lewis that intended to demonstrate the logical inconsistency of both holding Jesus of Nazareth to be a "great moral teacher" while also denying his divinity. The logical soundness of this trilemma has been widely questioned.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Christianity has been criticized as seeking to persuade people into accepting its authority through simple fear of punishment or, conversely, through hope of reward after death, rather than through rational argumentation or empirical evidence. Traditional Christian doctrine dictates that, without faith in Jesus Christ or in the Christian faith in general, one is subject to eternal punishment in Hell.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Critics regard the eternal punishment of those who fail to adopt Christian faith as morally objectionable, and consider it an abhorrent picture of the nature of the world. On a similar theme objections are made against the perceived injustice of punishing a person for all eternity for a temporal crime. Some Christians agree (see Annihilationism and Christian Universalism). These beliefs have been considered especially repugnant when the claimed omnipotent God makes, or allows a person to come into existence, with a nature that desires that which God finds objectionable.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: In the Abrahamic religions, Hell has traditionally been regarded as a punishment for wrongdoing or sin in this life, as a manifestation of divine justice. As in the problem of evil, some apologists argue that the torments of Hell are attributable not to a defect in God's benevolence, but in human free will. Although a benevolent God would prefer to see everyone saved, he would also allow humans to control their own destinies. This view opens the possibility of seeing Hell not as retributive punishment, but rather as an option that God allows, so that people who do not wish to be with God are not forced to be. C. S. Lewis most famously proposed this view in his book "The Great Divorce", saying: "There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Hell is not seen as strictly a matter of retributive justice even by the more traditionalist churches. For example, the Eastern Orthodox see it as a condition brought about by, and the natural consequence of, free rejection of God's love.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: The Roman Catholic Church teaches that hell is a place of punishment brought about by a person's self-exclusion from communion with God. In some ancient Eastern Orthodox traditions, Hell and Heaven are distinguished not spatially, but by the relation of a person to God's love.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Some modern critics of the doctrine of Hell (such as Marilyn McCord Adams) claim that, even if Hell is seen as a choice rather than as punishment, it would be unreasonable for God to give such flawed and ignorant creatures as humans the awesome responsibility of their eternal destinies. Jonathan Kvanvig, in his book, "The Problem of Hell", agrees that God would not allow one to be eternally damned by a decision made under the wrong circumstances. For instance, one should not always honor the choices of human beings, even when they are full adults, if, for instance, the choice is made while depressed or careless. On Kvanvig's view, God will abandon no person until they have made a settled, final decision, under favorable circumstances, to reject God, but God will respect a choice made under the right circumstances. Once a person finally and competently chooses to reject God, out of respect for the person's autonomy, God allows them to be annihilated.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Christians have sometimes been accused of idolatry, especially with regard to the iconoclastic controversy. However, Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christian forbid worship of icons and relics as divine in themselves, while honouring those represented by them is accepted and philosophically justified by the Second Council of Constantinople.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: The Roman Catholic Church teaches that baptism is a necessity. In the 5th century, St. Augustine concluded that infants who die without baptism were consigned to hell. By the 13th century, theologians referred to the "limbo of infants" as a place where unbaptized babies were deprived of the vision of God, but did not suffer because they did not know of that which they were deprived, and moreover enjoyed perfect natural happiness. The 1983 Code of Canon Law (1183 §2) specifies that ""Children whose parents had intended to have them baptized but who died before baptism, may be allowed church funeral rites by the local ordinary"". In 2007, the 30-member International Theological Commission revisited the concept of limbo. However, the commission also said that hopefulness was not the same as certainty about the destiny of such infants. Rather, as stated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1257, "God has bound salvation to the sacrament of Baptism, but he himself is not bound by his sacraments." Hope in the mercy of God is not the same as certainty through the sacraments, but it is not without result, as demonstrated in Jesus' statement to the thief on the cross in Luke 23:42-43.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: The idea of atonement for sin is criticized by Richard Dawkins on the grounds that the image of God as requiring the suffering and death of Jesus to effect reconciliation with humankind is immoral. The view is summarized by Dawkins: "if God wanted to forgive our sins, why not just forgive them? Who is God trying to impress?" Oxford theologian Alister McGrath maintains that Dawkins is "ignorant" of Christian theology, and therefore unable to engage religion and faith intelligently. He goes on to say that the atonement was necessary because of our flawed human nature, which made it impossible for us to save ourselves, and that it expresses God's love for us by removing the sin that stands in the way of our reconciliation with God. Responding to the criticism that he is "ignorant" of theology, Dawkins asks, "Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in leprechauns?" and "[y]es, I have, of course, met this point before. It sounds superficially fair. But it presupposes that there is something in Christian theology to be ignorant about. The entire thrust of my position is that Christian theology is a non-subject." Dinesh D'Souza says that Dawkins' criticism "only makes sense if you assume Christians made the whole thing up." He goes on to say that Christians view it as a beautiful sacrifice, and that "through the extremity of Golgotha, Christ reconciles divine justice and divine mercy." Andrew Wilson argues that Dawkins misses the point of the atonement, which has nothing to do with masochism, but is based on the concepts of holiness, sin and grace.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Robert Green Ingersoll suggests that the concept of the atonement is simply an extension of the Mosaic tradition of blood sacrifice and "is the enemy of morality". The death of Jesus Christ represents the blood sacrifice to end all blood sacrifices; the resulting mechanism of atonement by proxy through that final sacrifice has appeal as a more convenient and much less costly approach to redemption than repeated animal sacrifice—a common sense solution to the problem of reinterpreting ancient religious approaches based on sacrifice.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: The prominent Christian apologist Josh McDowell, in "More Than A Carpenter", addresses the issue through an analogy of a real-life judge in California who was forced to fine his daughter $100 for speeding, but then came down, took off his robe, and paid the fine for her from his billfold, though as in this and other cases, illustrations are only cautiously intended to describe certain aspects of the atonement.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Jesus appears to promise for his followers the second coming to happen before the generation he is preaching to vanishes. This is seen as an essential failure in the teachings of Christ by many critics such as Bertrand Russell.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: However, Preterists argue that Jesus did not mean his second coming but speaks about demonstrations of his might, formulating this as "coming in his kingdom", especially the destruction of the Second Temple in the Siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD, which he foretold, and by which time not all of his disciples were still living. According to this view should be understood in the same way.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Most Christian traditions teach belief in life after death as a central and indispensable tenet of their faith. Critics argue that the Christian conception of the afterlife is inconsistent with that described in the Old Testament. George E. Mendenhall believes there is no concept of immortality or life after death in the Old Testament. The presumption is that the deceased are inert, lifeless, and engaging in no activity.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: The idea of Sheol ("שׁאול") or a state of nothingness was shared among Babylonian and Israelite beliefs. "Sheol, as it was called by the ancient Israelites, is the land of no return, lying below the cosmic ocean, to which all, the mighty and the weak, travel in the ghostly form they assume after death, known as Rephaim. There the dead have no experience of either joy or pain, perceiving no light, feeling no movement." Obayashi alludes that the Israelites were satisfied with such a shadowy realm of afterlife because they were more deeply concerned with survival.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Before Christianity began in the 1st century, the belief in an afterlife was already prevalent in Jewish thinking among the Pharisees and Essenes. The themes of unity and Sheol which largely shaped the ancient tradition of Judaism had been undermined when only the most pious of Jews were being massacred during the Maccabean revolt.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: "Gaudium et spes" claims that the example of Christians may be a contributory factor to atheism, writing, "...believers can have more than a little to do with the birth of atheism. To the extent that they neglect their own training in the faith, or teach erroneous doctrine, or are deficient in their religious, moral, or social life, they must be said to conceal rather than reveal the authentic face of God and religion."


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Secular and religious critics have accused many Christians of being hypocritical. Tom Whiteman, a Philadelphia psychologist found that the primary reasons for Christian divorce include adultery, abuse (including substance, physical and verbal abuse), and abandonment whereas the number one reason cited for divorce in the general population was incompatibility.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Some have argued that Christianity is undermined by the inability of Christians to agree on matters of faith and church governance, and the tendency for the content of their faith to be determined by regional or political factors. Schopenhauer sarcastically suggested:


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Christians respond that Ecumenism has helped bring together such communities, where in the past mistranslations of Christological Greek terms may have resulted in seemingly different views. Non-denominational Christianity represents another approach towards reducing the divisions within Christianity, although many Christian groups claiming to be non-denominational wind up with similar problems.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Individuals and groups throughout history have been persecuted by certain Christians (and Christian groups) based upon sex, sexual orientation, race, and religion (even within the bounds of Christianity itself). Many of the persecutors attempted to justify their actions with particular scriptural interpretations. During Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, important Christian theologians advocated religious persecution to varying degrees. However, early modern Europe witnessed a turning point in the Christian debate on persecution and toleration. Nowadays all significant Christian denominations embrace religious toleration, and "look back on centuries of persecution with a mixture of revulsion and incomprehension".


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Early Christianity was a minority religion in the Roman Empire and the early Christians were themselves persecuted during that time. After Constantine I converted to Christianity, it became the dominant religion in the Roman Empire. Already under the reign of Constantine I, Christian heretics had been persecuted; beginning in the late 4th century AD also the ancient pagan religions were actively suppressed. In the view of many historians, the Constantinian shift turned Christianity from a persecuted into a persecuting religion.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: After the decline of the Roman Empire, the further Christianization of Europe was to a large extent peaceful. However, encounters between Christians and Pagans were sometimes confrontational, and some Christian kings (Charlemagne, Olaf I of Norway) were known for their violence against pagans. In the late Middle Ages, the appearance of the Cathars and Bogomils in Europe laid the stage for the later witch-hunts. These (probably gnostic-influenced) sects were seen as heretics by the Catholic Church, and the Inquisition was established to counter them. In the case of the Cathars, the Albigensian Crusade violently suppressed them. In the Baltic countries, pagans were killed, subjugated or forcibly baptized.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: From the start of Christian rule in Europe, Jews were increasingly discriminated against, at times rising to outright persecution. This sometimes took the form of events like the Rhineland massacres, and the Blood libel was often the source (falsely claiming Jews ritually murdered Christian children). Jews were also expelled from a number of countries, including from England and later Spain. In the latter case, if converted they could remain. However, as most did so only under duress, Judaism continued to be practiced in secret by many. As a result, the Spanish Inquisition was formed to root them out, along with the secret Muslims there. In the First Crusade, after the Siege of Jerusalem, all Jews and Muslims within the city were massacred by the Crusaders.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: After the Protestant Reformation, the devastation caused by the partly religiously motivated wars (Thirty Years' War, English Civil War, French Wars of Religion) in Europe in the 17th century gave rise to the ideas of religious toleration, freedom of religion and religious pluralism.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Adolf Hitler's 1920 Nazi Party Platform promoted Positive Christianity—which mixed ideas of racial purity and Nazi ideology with elements of Christianity and removed "Jewish" elements.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Nazism aimed to transform the subjective consciousness of the German people—their attitudes, values and mentalities—into a single-minded, obedient "national community". The Nazis believed they would therefore have to replace class, religious and regional allegiances. Under the "Gleichschaltung" process, Hitler attempted to create a unified Protestant Reich Church from Germany's 28 existing Protestant churches. The plan failed, and was resisted by the Confessing Church. Persecution of the Catholic Church in Germany followed the Nazi takeover. Hitler moved quickly to eliminate political catholicism. Amid harassment of the Church, the Reich concordat treaty with the Vatican was signed in 1933, and promised to respect Church autonomy. Hitler routinely disregarded the Concordat, closing all Catholic institutions whose functions were not strictly religious. Clergy, nuns, and lay leaders were targeted, with thousands of arrests over the ensuing years.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Hitler was supportive of Christianity in public, yet hostile to it in private. Anti-clericalists like Joseph Goebbels and Martin Bormann saw the conflict with the Churches as a priority concern, and anti-church and anti-clerical sentiments were strong among grassroots party activists. Hitler was born to a practising Catholic mother and an anticlerical father, but after leaving home Hitler never again attended Mass or received the sacraments. According to biographer Alan Bullock, Hitler retained some regard for the organisational power of Catholicism but held private contempt for its central teachings, which he said, if taken to their conclusion, "would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure."


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda, used his position to widely publicise trials of clergy and nuns in his propaganda campaigns, showing the cases in the worst possible light. In 1928, soon after his election to the Reichstag, Goebbels wrote in his diary that National Socialism was a "religion" that needed a genius to uproot "outmoded religious practices" and put new ones in their place: "One day soon National Socialism will be the religion of all Germans. My Party is my church, and I believe I serve the Lord best if I do his will, and liberate my oppressed people from the fetters of slavery. That is my gospel." As the war progressed, on the "Church Question", he wrote "after the war it has to be generally solved... There is, namely, an insoluble opposition between the Christian and a heroic-German world view".


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Hitler's chosen deputy and private secretary, Martin Bormann, was a rigid guardian of National Socialist orthodoxy and saw Christianity and Nazism as "incompatible" (mainly because of its Jewish origins), as did the official Nazi philosopher, Alfred Rosenberg. In his "Myth of the Twentieth Century" (1930), Rosenberg wrote that the main enemies of the Germans were the "Russian Tartars" and "Semites"—with "Semites" including Christians, especially the Catholic Church.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: According to Bullock, Hitler considered the Protestant clergy to be "insignificant" and "submissive" and lacking in a religion to be taken seriously. Hitler attempted to create a unified Protestant Reich Church from 28 separate regional churches through "Gleichschaltung". His bid to create a unified Reich Church ultimately failed, and Hitler became disinterested in supporting the so-called "German Christians" Nazi aligned movement. Hitler initially lent support to Ludwig Muller, a Nazi and former naval chaplain, to serve as Reich Bishop, but his heretical views against Paul the Apostle and the Semitic origins of Christ and the Bible (see Positive Christianity) quickly alienated sections of the Protestant church. Lutheran Pastor Martin Neimoller created the Confessing Church movement to oppose the Nazification of Protestant churches. Neimoller was arrested by the Gestapo in 1937, and sent to the concentration camps. The Confessing Church seminary was prohibited that same year.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Christian persecution complex is the notion that Christian values and Christians are being oppressed by social groups and governments. According to Elizabeth Castelli, some set the starting point in the middle of the 20th century while others point to the 1990s. After the September 11 attacks, it accelerated. The concept that Christianity is being oppressed is popular among conservative politicians in contemporary politics in the United States, and they utilize this idea to address issues concerning LGBT people or the ACA's Contraceptives Mandate, which they perceive as an attack on Christianity.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Others (like professor Candida Moss and lecturer Paul Cavill) point out that this mentality of being persecuted roots back to the earliest times. It appeared during the era of early Christianity due to internal Christian identity politics. Cavill claims that the New Testament teaches that persecutions are inherent to Christianity.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Ram Mohan Roy criticized Christian doctrines, and asserted that they are "unreasonable" and "self-contradictory". He further adds that people (even from India) were embracing Christianity due to the economic hardship and weakness, just like European Jews were pressured to embrace Christianity by both encouragement and force.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Vivekananda regarded Christianity as "collection of little bits of Indian thought. Ours is the religion of which Buddhism with all its greatness is a rebel child, and of which Christianity is a very patchy imitation."


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Philosopher Dayanand Saraswati, regarded Christianity as "barbarous religion, and a 'false religion' religion believed only by fools and by the people in a state of barbarism," he included that Bible contains many stories and precepts that are immoral, praising cruelty, deceit and encouraging sin.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: In 1956 the Niyogi Committee Report On Christian Missionary Activities was published by the Government of Madhya Pradesh. This influential report on controversial missionary activities in India recommended that suitable controls on conversions brought about through illegal means should be implemented. Also in the 1950s, K.M. Panikkar's work "Asia and Western Dominance" was published and was one of the first post-Independence Indian critiques of Christian missions. It argued that the attempt to convert Asia has definitely failed, and that this failure was due to the missionaries' claim of a monopoly of truth which was alien to the Asian mind, their association with imperialism and the attitude of moral and racial superiority of the Christian West.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: The Indian writer and philosopher Ram Swarup was "most responsible for reviving and re-popularizing" the Hindu critique of Christian missionary practices in the 1980s. He insisted that monotheistic religions like Christianity "nurtured among their adherents a lack of respect for other religions". Other important writers who criticized Christianity from an Indian and Hindu perspective include Sita Ram Goel and Arun Shourie. Arun Shourie urged Hindus to be "alert to the fact that missionaries have but one goal—that of harvesting us for the church"; and he wrote that they have "developed a very well-knit, powerful, extremely well-endowned organizational framework" for attaining that goal. In his "widely read and cited" book "Missionaries in India", Shourie tried to build a case that Christian evangelistic methods were cynically calculating and materialistic, and to Shourie, missionary strategizing "sounded more like the Planning Commission, if not the Pentagon, than like Jesus".


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Shlomo ben Aderet called Christianity a lesser form of monotheism that lacks the unified deity of Judaism.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: David Flusser viewed Christianity as "cheaper Judaism" and highly anti-Jewish. He also regarded the "failure of Christianity to convert the Jewish people to the new message" as "precisely the reason for the strong anti-Jewish trend in Christianity."


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Stephen Samuel Wise criticized the Christian community for its failure to rescue Jews from Europe during Nazi rule. He wrote that:


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Muslim scholars have criticized Christianity, usually for its trinity concept. They argue that this doctrine is an invention, distortion of the idea about God, and presentation of the idea that there are three gods, a form of shirk, or polytheism. According to , Christians should follow one God, but they have made multiple.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Some have argued that Christianity is not founded on a historical Jesus, instead, they have argued that Christianity is founded on a mythical creation. This view proposes that the idea of Jesus was the Jewish manifestation of Hellenistic mystery cults that acknowledged the non-historic nature of their deity using it instead as a teaching device. However, the position that Jesus was not a historical figure is essentially without support among biblical scholars and classical historians.


title: Criticism of Christianity

text: Scholars and historians such as James H. Charlesworth caution against using parallels with life-death-rebirth gods in the widespread mystery religions prevalent in the Hellenistic culture to conclude that Jesus is a purely legendary figure. Charlesworth argues that "it would be foolish to continue to foster the illusion that the Gospels are merely fictional stories like the legends of Hercules and Asclepius. The theologies in the New Testament are grounded on interpretations of real historical events."


title: Helle Thorning-Schmidt

text: Helle Thorning-Schmidt (; born 14 December 1966) is a Danish retired politician who served as the 26th Prime Minister of Denmark from 2011 to 2015, and Leader of the Social Democrats from 2005 to 2015. She is the first woman to have held each post. Following defeat in 2015, she announced that she would step down as both Danish Prime Minister and Social Democratic party leader. Ending her political career in April 2016, she was the chief executive of the NGO Save the Children until June 2019.


title: Helle Thorning-Schmidt

text: Thorning-Schmidt served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Denmark from 1999 to 2004 before being elected to the Danish Parliament in 2005. She was elected to replace Mogens Lykketoft as Leader of the Social Democrats after the 2005 parliamentary election, leading her party through the 2007 parliamentary election, which was won by the centre-right alliance, and the 2011 parliamentary election, after which she was appointed Prime Minister by Queen Margrethe II and the 2015 election. Thorning-Schmidt holds degrees in political science from the University of Copenhagen and a graduate degree from the College of Europe.


title: Helle Thorning-Schmidt

text: Helle Thorning-Schmidt was born in Rødovre to Holger Thorning-Schmidt, a lecturer in mathematics and national economics at the University of Copenhagen, and his wife Grete. Her father was politically conservative and she grew up in the Copenhagen suburb of Ishøj. She attended Ishøj Gymnasium from which she graduated in 1985. Her parents divorced when she was 10 years old.


title: Helle Thorning-Schmidt

text: Thorning-Schmidt studied political science at University of Copenhagen, earning a cand.scient.pol. degree in 1994. She also holds a master's degree in European studies specialising in policy and public administration from the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium, where she studied from 1992 to 1993 (she is an alumna of the Charles IV promotion). At the time, Denmark had a quota administered by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of one student at this prestigious institution, and Thorning-Schmidt was selected. In addition to her native Danish, she speaks fluent English and French.


title: Helle Thorning-Schmidt

text: She became a social democrat during her studies in Belgium and joined the Social Democratic Party in 1993.


title: Helle Thorning-Schmidt

text: From 1994 to 1997, Thorning-Schmidt led the secretariat of the Danish delegation of Social Democrats in the European Parliament. After her time in Brussels she worked as an international consultant with the Danish Confederation of Trade Unions until being elected MEP in 1999.


title: Helle Thorning-Schmidt

text: Thorning-Schmidt was elected to the European Parliament as a member of the Party of European Socialists. During the five-year term, she was a member of the Employment and Social Committee and served as a substitute on the Constitutional Committee. She co-founded the Campaign for Parliament Reform (CPR).


title: Helle Thorning-Schmidt

text: After the defeat in the 2005 election, in which the Social Democrats lost five seats and failed to regain the majority it had lost in the 2001 election, former Minister of Finance and party leader Mogens Lykketoft resigned his post, taking responsibility for the poor election results. In his speech of resignation on election night, 8 February 2005, he called for a leadership election in order to determine who should lead the party into the next election.


title: Helle Thorning-Schmidt

text: Thorning-Schmidt campaigned for the party leadership as a moderate candidate and was elected by the party members on 12 April 2005, ahead of the other candidate, Frank Jensen. She led the Social Democrats in the 2007 election, in which her party suffered modest losses and was forced into a third term in opposition. The party was also unable to regain its position as the largest party in the Folketing.


title: Helle Thorning-Schmidt

text: She was against holding a referendum on the European Reform Treaty. During her 2007 campaign she promised to relax restrictions on asylum seekers and immigrants. She also opposed tax cuts announced by Anders Fogh Rasmussen, instead stating she would like to see more funding for welfare. The party also campaigned on a platform of combating increased inequalities in society, and fighting global warming by supplying 45% of Denmark's energy from renewable sources by 2025.


title: Helle Thorning-Schmidt

text: Although her party again lost two seats in the 2007 election reducing the total to 45 seats, her leadership was not questioned by her party. In June 2008, according to a Gallup poll, the opposition centre-left was at 49.8% compared to 49.6% for the centre-right. This would leave the centre-left with 88 seats, two short of a majority, discounting the Faroe Island and Greenland seats. Since late 2009 the opposition enjoyed large majorities in the polls, and according to polls carried out in January 2011 the opposition led the governing coalition under Lars Løkke Rasmussen by 5–7 points and the Social Democrats led Venstre by 7–10 points which would make the Social Democrats the largest party by far in the Folketing.


title: Helle Thorning-Schmidt

text: Both Margrethe Vestager (Social Liberal Party) and Villy Søvndal (Socialist People's Party) have pledged their support to Thorning-Schmidt after a potential election victory. After the last election Helle Thorning-Schmidt started working towards forming a centre-left government coalition consisting of the Socialist People's Party and the Social Liberal Party with parliamentary support from the small Red-Green Alliance. As the leader of the largest opposition party in Denmark, she was described by the media as the leader of the Danish opposition.


title: Helle Thorning-Schmidt

text: In the 2011 parliamentary election, she was re-elected to parliament. Although the ruling Liberal Party became the largest party and gained a seat and the Social Democrats lost a seat, the opposition parties combined obtained more seats than the government coalition. Her four-party bloc gained a majority of 89 seats in the 179-seat parliament against 86 for the sitting Prime Minister and his center-right parliamentary supporters. Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen formally tendered his resignation to Queen Margrethe on 16 September 2011. Rasmussen's cabinet remained in office as a caretaker government until 3 October, when Helle Thorning-Schmidt was appointed Prime Minister by the Queen following negotiations with the other opposition parties.


title: Helle Thorning-Schmidt

text: Helle Thorning-Schmidt officially began her first term as Prime Minister on 3 October 2011, after having presented her cabinet to the Queen and having received her official appointment. Thorning-Schmidt has pursued a centrist compromise agenda, building several reforms with support from both sides of the Folketing. This has caused friction with the supporting Red-Green Alliance, which has been kept outside of influence.


title: Helle Thorning-Schmidt

text: Thorning-Schmidt presided over the successful conclusion of NATO's strike missions in Libya, to which Denmark was a contributor, less than three weeks after taking office.


title: Helle Thorning-Schmidt

text: During the first year in office her government rolled back anti-immigration legislation enacted by the previous government, and passed a tax-reform with support from the liberal-conservative opposition. The tax reform raised the top tax threshold, effectively lowering tax rates for high income earners. The aim of the tax reform has been to increase labour output to fend off a projected shortage within the next decades. The stated goal is to entice Danes to work more in order to compensate for the decreasing workforce, by lowering tax on wages and gradually lowering welfare payments to those outside of the labour market to increase the economic benefit of working relative to receiving welfare. Despite effectively lowering tax rates on high income earners, tax revenue continued to increase from 831,172 million Krone in 2011, to 901,001 million Krone in 2013, and eventually reached 954,473 million Krone in 2015 by the end of her time in office. These effective reductions were in line with the 2009 tax reforms of Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a Venstre prime minister preceding her, which is likely why she received liberal-conservative support.


title: Helle Thorning-Schmidt

text: On 9 August and 12 December 2013, amid tensions between coalition partners, Thorning-Schmidt made cabinet reshuffles.


title: Helle Thorning-Schmidt

text: On 30 January 2014, the Socialist People's Party announced their departure from Thorning-Schmidt's government due to a conflict over the proposed sale of DONG Energy shares to Goldman Sachs. Before departure, they also announced they will support Thorning-Schmidt although not being a part of her government.


title: Helle Thorning-Schmidt

text: Thorning-Schmidt led her party into the 2015 general election in which her party increased its share of votes and seats. However, the Social Liberals lost nine seats, leaving the left bloc without enough support to remain in office. Within an hour of the results being declared, she announced her resignation as both Prime Minister and leader of the Social Democrats.


title: Helle Thorning-Schmidt

text: Having lost the Danish general election of 2015, Thorning-Schmidt stepped down as Prime Minister and as leader of the Social Democratic Party. It was announced that she would become her party's member of the Presidium of the Folketing, and she currently serves as the Presidium's 1st Vice-President. On 4 September 2015, Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen announced that the Danish government had nominated Thorning-Schmidt as Denmark's official candidate to the position as new United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.


title: Helle Thorning-Schmidt

text: After her retirement from Danish politics, Thorning-Schmidt served as the CEO of Save the Children from 2016 until 2019.


title: Helle Thorning-Schmidt

text: Following the resignation of Ghassan Salamé as head of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) in 2020, the American Government proposed Thorning-Schmidt as special envoy to focus on mediating peace in Libya; according to media reports, however, she withdrew herself shortly after.


title: Helle Thorning-Schmidt

text: In May 2020, Thorning-Schmidt joined the Facebook Oversight Group, established as an independent entity within Facebook, Inc. She was appointed as a full board member (one of twenty) who as a board have initially adjudicated on deleted Facebook posts in 2021.


title: Helle Thorning-Schmidt

text: Also in 2020, Thorning-Schmidt was appointed by the World Health Organization's Regional Office for Europe to serve as a member of the Pan-European Commission on Health and Sustainable Development, chaired by Mario Monti. From 2021 to 2022, she was a member of the Trilateral Commission’s Task Force on Global Capitalism in Transition, chaired by Carl Bildt, Kelly Grier and Takeshi Niinami.


title: Helle Thorning-Schmidt

text: Thorning-Schmidt married Welsh politician Stephen Kinnock in 1996, becoming the daughter-in-law of Neil Kinnock, former Leader of the Opposition and leader of the British Labour Party and European Commissioner, and Glenys Kinnock, former British Minister for Europe. She met her husband while they were both attending the College of Europe. They have two children, daughter Johanna and son Milo. Thorning-Schmidt lived in Copenhagen with their children, while her husband partly resided in Davos, Switzerland, where he worked as a director for the World Economic Forum. In 2014, he worked for London-based Xyntéo as managing director for the "Global Leadership and Technology Exchange", but was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Aberavon at the 2015 United Kingdom general election. The family have been living in Kilburn, London since Thorning-Schmidt became CEO of Save the Children, whilst also spending time at Kinnock's constituency in Port Talbot. Thorning-Schmidt has also campaigned for her husband and for the British Labour Party.


title: Helle Thorning-Schmidt

text: Although Thorning-Schmidt has been baptized into the Church of Denmark, she is not confirmed. She occasionally goes to church but does not believe in eternal life, salvation, heaven, or hell.


title: Helle Thorning-Schmidt

text: The Danish tax authorities (SKAT) investigated reports that Thorning-Schmidt's husband, Stephen Kinnock, was guilty of tax evasion. Kinnock had declared that he was not a resident of Denmark and thus not subject to Danish taxes, while at the same time Thorning-Schmidt had declared, in an application for dispensation for Kinnock to own property in Denmark, that he resided in Denmark "every weekend of the year from Friday through to Monday". Thorning-Schmidt attributed the discrepancy to a "big and sloppy error". On 16 September 2010, Danish tax authorities acquitted the couple and the charges of tax evasion were dropped.


title: Helle Thorning-Schmidt

text: A week before 15 September 2011 elections to the Danish Parliament, the 2010 decision from SKAT (the taxation department) surfaced in the Danish tabloid "B.T." The case had been leaked to the newspaper several months previously. It turned out that from 2000 to 2008 Thorning-Schmidt had made use of tax deductions applicable to her husband, even though he was not subject to Danish taxes and had no income in Denmark. The mistake was corrected by SKAT for the three years from 2006 to 2008, and Thorning-Schmidt paid the amount she had saved due to the error. She was however not required to pay the amounts saved for the six years from 2000 to 2005, because of the statutory time limit for liability in such cases.


title: Helle Thorning-Schmidt

text: In November 2011, the daily "Politiken" disclosed that the Tax Ministry deputy chief Peter Loft had attended several meetings attending to the Thorning-Schmidt case and had tried to insert comments into the final resolution text. This would be unlawful under Danish law as the Tax Ministry may not interfere with the decisions taken in individual tax cases. This set off a flurry of speculation in the press, as to whether there had been any political pressure from the then government to pursue a stricter course in the tax case. The Tax Minister in the new government, Thor Möger Pedersen, subsequently asked Peter Loft and the director of the revenue service's Copenhagen branch, Erling Andersen, to give a report on the happenings. On 2 December, Pedersen disclosed that he had found such big discrepancies in the two reports that he would set up a commission of inquiry to determine the actual course of events.


title: Helle Thorning-Schmidt

text: Further controversy erupted when two days later the tabloid daily, "Ekstra Bladet", reported that they had also been offered the confidential information that was made public during the election campaign. The source of the leak was determined to be Peter Arnfeldt, spin doctor for then Minister for Taxation Troels Lund Poulsen. This led to intense media speculation that the former government, and specifically Troels Lund Poulsen, were engaged in leaking confidential tax information and trying to pressure the revenue service into changing its decision in the case, in an active attempt to discredit the opposition leader in the then imminent election. This would constitute a hitherto unseen level of abuse of power in Danish political life. The commission of inquiry that had already been announced two days previously, was broadly supported by the Danish Parliament to also look into whether the former government was involved in, or knew of, the leak. On the same day, Troels Lund Poulsen announced he would be taking an indefinite leave of absence from the Danish Parliament. Peter Arnfeldt has been reported to the police by the Ministry for Taxation. In March 2012, Peter Loft was suspended from his post as deputy chief, for the duration of the two-year investigation period.


title: Helle Thorning-Schmidt

text: In December 2013, Thorning-Schmidt, British Prime Minister David Cameron and US President Barack Obama faced criticism on social media that they had behaved inappropriately after posing for a "selfie" taken with Thorning-Schmidt's mobile phone during the memorial service for the former South African President Nelson Mandela. Defending her actions, Thorning-Schmidt said, "There were lots of pictures taken that day, and I just thought it was a bit fun. Maybe it also shows that when we meet heads of state and government, we too are just people who have fun." Cameron said he was being polite when Thorning-Schmidt asked him to take part in the picture. On a previous occasion, Thorning-Schmidt had stopped her car to ask for a picture with the actress Sarah Jessica Parker after spotting her signing autographs in Oslo.


title: Carbide

text: In chemistry, a carbide usually describes a compound composed of carbon and a metal. In metallurgy, carbiding or carburizing is the process for producing carbide coatings on a metal piece.


title: Carbide

text: The carbides of the group 4, 5 and 6 transition metals (with the exception of chromium) are often described as interstitial compounds. These carbides have metallic properties and are refractory. Some exhibit a range of stoichiometries, being a non-stoichiometric mixture of various carbides arising due to crystal defects. Some of them, including titanium carbide and tungsten carbide, are important industrially and are used to coat metals in cutting tools.


title: Carbide

text: The long-held view is that the carbon atoms fit into octahedral interstices in a close-packed metal lattice when the metal atom radius is greater than approximately 135 pm:


title: Carbide

text: The following table shows structures of the metals and their carbides. (N.B. the body centered cubic structure adopted by vanadium, niobium, tantalum, chromium, molybdenum and tungsten is not a close-packed lattice.) The notation "h/2" refers to the MC type structure described above, which is only an approximate description of the actual structures. The simple view that the lattice of the pure metal "absorbs" carbon atoms can be seen to be untrue as the packing of the metal atom lattice in the carbides is different from the packing in the pure metal, although it is technically correct that the carbon atoms fit into the octahedral interstices of a close-packed metal lattice.


title: Carbide

text: For a long time the non-stoichiometric phases were believed to be disordered with a random filling of the interstices, however short and longer range ordering has been detected.


title: Carbide

text: Iron forms a number of carbides, , and . The best known is cementite, FeC, which is present in steels. These carbides are more reactive than the interstitial carbides; for example, the carbides of Cr, Mn, Fe, Co and Ni are all hydrolysed by dilute acids and sometimes by water, to give a mixture of hydrogen and hydrocarbons. These compounds share features with both the inert interstitials and the more reactive salt-like carbides.


title: Carbide

text: Some metals, such as lead and tin, are believed not to form carbides under any circumstances. There exists however a mixed titanium-tin carbide, which is a two-dimensional conductor.


title: Carbide

text: Examples include calcium carbide (CaC), silicon carbide (SiC), tungsten carbide (WC; often called, simply, "carbide" when referring to machine tooling), and cementite (FeC), each used in key industrial applications. The naming of ionic carbides is not systematic.


title: Carbide

text: Salt-like carbides are composed of highly electropositive elements such as the alkali metals, alkaline earth metals, lanthanides, actinides, and group 3 metals (scandium, yttrium, and lutetium). Aluminium from group 13 forms carbides, but gallium, indium, and thallium do not. These materials feature isolated carbon centers, often described as "C", in the methanides or methides; two-atom units, "", in the acetylides; and three-atom units, "", in the allylides. The graphite intercalation compound KC, prepared from vapour of potassium and graphite, and the alkali metal derivatives of C are not usually classified as carbides.


title: Carbide

text: Methanides are a subset of carbides distinguished by their tendency to decompose in water producing methane. Three examples are aluminium carbide , magnesium carbide and beryllium carbide .


title: Carbide

text: Transition metal carbides are not saline: their reaction with water is very slow and is usually neglected. For example, depending on surface porosity, 5–30 atomic layers of titanium carbide are hydrolyzed, forming methane within 5 minutes at ambient conditions, following by saturation of the reaction.


title: Carbide

text: Note that methanide in this context is a trivial historical name. According to the IUPAC systematic naming conventions, a compound such as NaCH would be termed a "methanide", although this compound is often called methylsodium.


title: Carbide

text: Several carbides are assumed to be salts of the acetylide anion (also called percarbide, by analogy with peroxide), which has a triple bond between the two carbon atoms. Alkali metals, alkaline earth metals, and lanthanoid metals form acetylides, for example, sodium carbide NaC, calcium carbide CaC, and LaC. Lanthanides also form carbides (sesquicarbides, see below) with formula MC. Metals from group 11 also tend to form acetylides, such as copper(I) acetylide and silver acetylide. Carbides of the actinide elements, which have stoichiometry MC and MC, are also described as salt-like derivatives of .


title: Carbide

text: The C–C triple bond length ranges from 119.2 pm in CaC (similar to ethyne), to 130.3 pm in LaC and 134 pm in UC. The bonding in LaC has been described in terms of La with the extra electron delocalised into the antibonding orbital on , explaining the metallic conduction.


title: Carbide

text: The polyatomic ion , sometimes called allylide, is found in and . The ion is linear and is isoelectronic with . The C–C distance in MgC is 133.2 pm. yields methylacetylene, CHCCH, and propadiene, CHCCH, on hydrolysis, which was the first indication that it contains .


title: Carbide

text: The carbides of silicon and boron are described as "covalent carbides", although virtually all compounds of carbon exhibit some covalent character. Silicon carbide has two similar crystalline forms, which are both related to the diamond structure. Boron carbide, BC, on the other hand, has an unusual structure which includes icosahedral boron units linked by carbon atoms. In this respect boron carbide is similar to the boron rich borides. Both silicon carbide (also known as "carborundum") and boron carbide are very hard materials and refractory. Both materials are important industrially. Boron also forms other covalent carbides, such as BC.


title: Carbide

text: Metal complexes containing C are known as metal carbido complexes. Most common are carbon-centered octahedral clusters, such as (where "Ph" represents a phenyl group) and [FeC(CO)]. Similar species are known for the metal carbonyls and the early metal halides. A few terminal carbides have been isolated, such as .


title: Carbide

text: Metallocarbohedrynes (or "met-cars") are stable clusters with the general formula where M is a transition metal (Ti, Zr, V, etc.).


title: Development of the New Testament canon

text: The canon of the New Testament is the set of books many modern Christians regard as divinely inspired and constituting the New Testament of the Christian Bible. For historical Christians, canonization was based on whether the material was from authors socially approximate to the apostles and not based solely on divine inspiration – however, many modern scholars recognize that the New Testament texts were not written by apostles. For most, it is an agreed-upon list of 27 books that includes the canonical Gospels, Acts, letters attributed to various apostles, and Revelation, though there are many textual variations. The books of the canon of the New Testament were written before 120 AD. Although the list of what books constituted the canon differed among the hundreds of churches in antiquity, according to ancient church historian Eusebius there was a consensus that the same 27 books constituting the canon today were the same 27 books generally recognized in the first century. For the Orthodox, the recognition of these writings as authoritative was formalized in the Second Council of Trullan of 692. The Catholic Church provided a conciliar definition of its biblical canon in 382 at the (local) Council of Rome (based upon the , of uncertain authorship) as well as at the Council of Trent of 1545, reaffirming the Canons of Florence of 1442 and North African Councils (Hippo and Carthage) of 393–419. For the Church of England, it was made dogmatic on the Thirty-Nine Articles of 1563; for Calvinism, on the Westminster Confession of Faith of 1647.


title: Development of the New Testament canon

text: From the end of the Apostolic Age, there has been a general consensus among the churches that there were 27 books in the New Testament. This is demonstrated conclusively in several ways. When Church Councils of the fourth century gave their lists of New Testament canons; they affirm that these were the same 27 books that were accepted as canonical from the time of their church fathers at the inception of their church, namely the first century bishops. For example the Council of Carthage in 397 CE stated that the church received from its "fathers" the books which should be received as scripture. Evidence corroborates the claims of the fourth century church councils that their canonical list are the same 27 books that the church received from the earliest bishops. 25 of the 27 New Testament books received as canonical by councils in the 4th century were quoted, referenced and alluded to as authoritative by bishops who were allegedly directly appointed by the apostles in the first century; namely Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp. Irenaeus (died ) quotes and cites 21 books that would end up as part of the New Testament, but does not use Philemon, Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 3 John and Jude. By the early 3rd century, Origen of Alexandria may have been using the same 27 books as in the modern New Testament, though there were still disputes over the canonicity of Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Revelation (see also Antilegomena). Likewise by 200, the Muratorian fragment shows that there existed a set of Christian writings somewhat similar to what is now the New Testament, which included four gospels and argued against objections to them. Thus, while there was plenty of discussion in the Early Church over the New Testament canon, the "major" writings were accepted by almost all Christian authorities by the middle of the second century.


title: Development of the New Testament canon

text: The next two hundred years followed a similar process of continual discussion throughout the entire Church, and localized refinements of acceptance. This process was not yet complete at the time of the First Council of Nicaea in 325, though substantial progress had been made by then. Though a list was clearly necessary to fulfill Constantine's commission in 331 of fifty copies of the Bible for the Church at Constantinople, no concrete evidence exists to indicate that it was considered to be a formal canon. In the absence of a canonical list, the resolution of questions would normally have been directed through the see of Constantinople, in consultation with Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea (who was given the commission), and perhaps other bishops who were available locally.


title: Development of the New Testament canon

text: In his Easter letter of 367, Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, gave a list of exactly the same books that would formally become the New Testament canon, and he used the word "canonized" () in regard to them. The first council that accepted the present Catholic canon (the Canon of Trent) was the Council of Rome, held by Pope Damasus I (382). A second council was held at the Synod of Hippo (393) reaffirming the previous council list. A brief summary of the acts was read at and accepted by the Council of Carthage (397) and the Council of Carthage (419). These councils took place under the authority of St. Augustine, who regarded the canon as already closed. Pope Damasus I's Council of Rome in 382, if the "Decretum Gelasianum" is correctly associated with it, issued a biblical canon identical to that mentioned above, or if not the list is at least a 6th-century compilation claiming a 4th-century imprimatur.


title: Development of the New Testament canon

text: Likewise, Damasus's commissioning of the Latin Vulgate edition of the Bible, , was instrumental in the fixation of the canon in the West. In 405, Pope Innocent I sent a list of the sacred books to a Gallic bishop, Exsuperius of Toulouse. When these bishops and councils spoke on the matter, however, they were not defining something new, but instead "were ratifying what had already become the mind of the church." Thus, from the 5th century onward, the Western Church was unanimous concerning the New Testament canon.


title: Development of the New Testament canon

text: The last book to be accepted universally was the Book of Revelation, though with time all the Eastern Church also agreed. Thus, by the 5th century, both the Western and Eastern churches had come into agreement on the matter of the New Testament canon. The Council of Trent of 1546 reaffirmed that finalization for Catholicism in the wake of the Protestant Reformation. The Thirty-Nine Articles of 1563 for the Church of England and the Westminster Confession of Faith of 1647 for English presbyterians established the official finalizations for those new branches of Christianity in light of the Reformed faith. The Synod of Jerusalem of 1672 made no changes to the New Testament canon for any Orthodox, but resolved some questions about some of the minor Old Testament books for the Greek Orthodox and most other Orthodox jurisdictions (who chose to accept it).


title: Development of the New Testament canon

text: Writings attributed to the apostles circulated among the earliest Christian communities. The Pauline epistles were circulating, perhaps in collected forms, by the end of the 1st century AD. Justin Martyr, in the mid 2nd century, mentions "memoirs of the apostles" as being read on "the day called that of the sun" (Sunday) alongside the "writings of the prophets." A defined set of four gospels (the "Tetramorph") was asserted by Irenaeus, "c". 180, who refers to it directly.


title: Development of the New Testament canon

text: By the early 3rd century, Origen may have been using the same twenty-seven books as in the present New Testament canon, though there were still disputes over the acceptance of the Letter to the Hebrews, James, II Peter, II John, III John, Jude and Revelation, known as the Antilegomena. Likewise, the Muratorian fragment is evidence that perhaps as early as 200, there existed a set of Christian writings somewhat similar to the twenty-seven book NT canon, which included four gospels and argued against objections to them. Thus, while there was a good measure of debate in the Early Church over the New Testament canon, the major writings are claimed to have been accepted by almost all Christians by the middle of the 3rd century.


title: Development of the New Testament canon

text: In his Easter letter of 367, Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, gave a list of the books that would become the twenty-seven-book NT canon, and he used the word "canonized" ( "kanonizomena") in regard to them. The first council that accepted the present canon of the New Testament may have been the Synod of Hippo Regius in North Africa (393). A brief summary of the acts was read at and accepted by the Councils of Carthage in 397 and 419. These councils were under the authority of St. Augustine, who regarded the canon as already closed. Pope Damasus I's Council of Rome in 382, if the "Decretum Gelasianum" is correctly associated with it, issued a biblical canon identical to that mentioned above, or, if not, the list is at least a 6th-century compilation. Likewise, Damasus' commissioning of the Latin Vulgate edition of the Bible, c. 383, was instrumental in the fixation of the canon in the West. In "c." 405, Pope Innocent I sent a list of the sacred books to a Gallic bishop, Exsuperius of Toulouse. Christian scholars assert that, when these bishops and councils spoke on the matter, however, they were not defining something new but instead "were ratifying what had already become the mind of the Church."


title: Development of the New Testament canon

text: Thus, some claim that, from the 4th century, there existed unanimity in the West concerning the New Testament canon, and that, by the 5th century, the Eastern Church, with a few exceptions, had come to accept the Book of Revelation and thus had come into harmony on the matter of the canon. Nonetheless, full dogmatic articulations of the canon were not made until the Canon of Trent of 1546 for Roman Catholicism, the Gallic Confession of Faith of 1559 for Calvinism, the Thirty-Nine Articles of 1563 for the Church of England, and the Synod of Jerusalem of 1672 for the Greek Orthodox.


title: Development of the New Testament canon

text: By the end of the 1st century, some letters of Paul were known to Clement of Rome (fl. 96), together with some form of the "words of Jesus"; but while Clement valued these highly, he did not refer to them as "Scripture" (""graphe""), a term he reserved for the Septuagint. draws the following conclusion about Clement:


title: Development of the New Testament canon

text: Marcion of Sinope, a bishop of Asia Minor who went to Rome and was later excommunicated for his views, may have been the first of record to propose a definitive, exclusive, unique list of Christian scriptures, compiled sometime between 130 and 140 AD. Whether his canon was preceded by that of the Church is debated. Though Ignatius did address Christian scripture, before Marcion, against the perceived heresies of the Judaizers and Docetists, he did not define a list of scriptures. In his book "Origin of the New Testament" Adolf von Harnack argued that Marcion viewed the church at this time as largely an Old Testament church (one that "follows the Testament of the Creator-God") without a firmly established New Testament canon, and that the church gradually formulated its New Testament canon in response to the challenge posed by Marcion.


title: Development of the New Testament canon

text: Marcion rejected the theology of the Old Testament entirely and regarded the God depicted there as an inferior being. In the "Antithesis", he claimed the theology of the Old Testament was incompatible with the teaching of Jesus regarding God and morality.


title: Development of the New Testament canon

text: Marcion created a definite group of books that he regarded as fully authoritative, displacing all others. This comprised ten of the Pauline epistles (without the Pastorals) and a gospel similar to that of Luke. It is uncertain whether he edited these books, purging them of what did not accord with his views, or whether his versions represented a separate textual tradition.


title: Development of the New Testament canon

text: Marcion's gospel, called simply the Gospel of the Lord, differed from the Gospel of Luke by lacking any passages that connected Jesus with the Old Testament. He believed that the god of Israel, who gave the Torah to the Israelites, was an entirely different god from the Supreme God who sent Jesus and inspired the New Testament. Marcion termed his collection of Pauline epistles the "Apostolikon". These also differed from the versions accepted by later Christian Orthodoxy.


title: Development of the New Testament canon

text: Marcion's list and theology were rejected as heretical by the early church; however, he forced other Christians to consider which texts were canonical and why. He spread his beliefs widely; they became known as Marcionism. In the introduction to his book "Early Christian Writings", Henry Wace stated:


title: Development of the New Testament canon

text: Other scholars propose that it was Melito of Sardis who originally coined the phrase "Old Testament", which is associated with Supersessionism.


title: Development of the New Testament canon

text: Robert M. Price argues that the evidence that the early church fathers, such as Clement, Ignatius, and Polycarp, knew of the Pauline epistles is unclear, and concludes that Marcion was the first person to collect Paul's writings to various churches and to treat ten Pauline letters, some of them Marcion's own compositions, together with an earlier version of Luke (not the Gospel of Luke as now known):


title: Development of the New Testament canon

text: In the mid-2nd century, Justin Martyr (whose writings span the period from c. 145 to 163) mentions the "memoirs of the apostles", which Christians called "gospels" and which were regarded as on par with the Old Testament. Scholars are divided on whether there is any evidence that Justin included the Gospel of John among the "memoirs of the apostles", or whether, on the contrary, he based his doctrine of the Logos on it. Justin quotes the letters of Paul, 1 Peter, and Acts in his writings.


title: Development of the New Testament canon

text: In Justin's works, distinct references are found to Romans, 1 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, and 2 Thessalonians, and possible ones to Philippians, Titus, and 1 Timothy. In addition, he refers to an account from an unnamed source of the baptism of Jesus which differs from that provided by the synoptic gospels:


title: Development of the New Testament canon

text: Tatian was converted to Christianity by Justin Martyr on a visit to Rome around 150 and returned to Syria in 172 to reform the church there.


title: Development of the New Testament canon

text: Irenaeus of Lyon referred directly to a defined set of four gospels (the "Tetramorph"), "c". 180. In his central work, "Adversus Haereses" Irenaeus denounced various early Christian groups that used only one gospel, such as Marcionism which used only Marcion's version of Luke, or the Ebionites which seem to have used an Aramaic version of Matthew, as well as groups that used more than four gospels, such as the Valentinians ("A.H." 1.11).


title: Development of the New Testament canon

text: Based on the arguments Irenaeus made in support of only four authentic gospels, some interpreters deduce that the "fourfold Gospel" must have still been a novelty in Irenaeus's time. "Against Heresies" 3.11.7 acknowledges that many heterodox Christians use only one gospel while 3.11.9 acknowledges that some use more than four. The success of Tatian's Diatessaron in about the same time period is "...a powerful indication that the fourfold Gospel contemporaneously sponsored by Irenaeus was not broadly, let alone universally, recognized."


title: Development of the New Testament canon

text: Irenaeus apparently quotes from 21 of the New Testament books and names the author he thought wrote the text. He mentions the four gospels, Acts, the Pauline epistles with the exception of Hebrews and Philemon, as well as the first epistle of Peter, and the first and second epistles of John, and the book of Revelation. Irenaeus argued that it was illogical to reject Acts of the Apostles but accept the Gospel of Luke, as both were from the same author; in "Against Heresies" 3.12.12 he ridiculed those who think they are wiser than the Apostles because the Apostles were still under Jewish influence. He may also refer to Hebrews ("Book 2, Chapter 30") and James ("Book 4, Chapter 16") and maybe even 2 Peter ("Book 5, Chapter 28") but does not cite Philemon, 3 John or Jude.


title: Development of the New Testament canon

text: He does think that the letter to the Corinthians, known now as 1 Clement, was of great worth but does not seem to believe that Clement of Rome was the one author ("Book 3", Chapter 3, Verse 3) and seems to have the same lower status as Polycarp's Epistle ("Book 3", Chapter 3, Verse 3). He does refer to a passage in the Shepherd of Hermas as scripture ("Mandate 1 or First Commandment"), but this has some consistency problems on his part. Hermas taught that Jesus was not himself a divine being, but a virtuous man who was subsequently filled with the Holy Spirit and adopted as the Son (a doctrine called adoptionism). But Irenaeus's own work, including his citing of the Gospel of John ("Jn". 1:1), indicates that he himself believed that Jesus was always God.


title: Development of the New Testament canon

text: In the late 4th century Epiphanius of Salamis (died 402) "Panarion" 29 says the Nazarenes had rejected the Pauline epistles and Irenaeus "Against Heresies" 26.2 says the Ebionites rejected him.