Are “Lost” Christian Texts Dangerous?

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:05]Are non-canonical texts dangerous? Hi everybody. My name is Robin Walsh. I'm a scholar of New Testament and early Christianity and part of Paths in Biblical Studies. The short answer is no, they're not. I think rhetorically sometimes we do get this impression, especially if you're looking at the church fathers who are desperately trying to gain control of certain populations under their auspices or trying to establish and inculcate their particular views or theology and get it into the tradition or get it into accepted standing, then of course you're going to get rhetoric about how dangerous a certain kind of viewpoint is. I mean only look to politics, right? To [laughter] see how this tends to play itself out. One side is particularly dangerous, my side is safe.

[00:00:54]And you know, in this case theology as it stands or texts around around religious texts around the development of a particular movement, it's really not that different. So are certain texts dangerous? No. I would say an example where you see that kind of rhetoric emerge and maybe the stakes seemed high are things like different theological perspectives that seem to go counter to what is being established as a right opinion as orthodoxy at certain points in Christian history. And one example might be something like Docetism.

[00:01:28]Sometimes scholars will divide Docetism into different kinds of Docetism, but essentially what Docetism meant is that perhaps Jesus was not fully human or was not actually flesh and blood at all and that when he was on the cross it wasn't a sacrifice in the sense of him suffering having experiencing bodily suffering, but maybe he was more like a fantasm or a ghost or maybe his soul left his body uh the time of the crucifixion and he didn't suffer on the cross. Now, at a time when the church is developing a theology not only around the significance of the cross, the significance of Jesus' sacrifice, but also crucially um certain mariologies, but ideas about the Virgin Mary, um about Mary giving birth, how did she give birth? Uh and I've talked about some of this in the past. Uh some of the interesting theories that some of the church fathers come up with about her labor and delivery. Um but as all of that is going on and you know, emotions are running high, it could seem quite dangerous for someone to come along and say, "Well, you know, Jesus didn't really suffer at all.

[00:02:36]Uh you know, he was just kind of a a ghost on the cross and uh God didn't want to sacrifice his only son." We're so imbued with a different theology today that you could see how that might seem strange or any texts around that kind of idea might seem strange to us because a certain orthodoxy, right opinion, prevailed.

[00:02:55]So, in that respect, sure. Um certain theological perspectives could seem dangerous.

[00:03:02]Um I would only say that I would ascribe a label like danger to anything that causes harm to others, uh direct bodily harm, and certainly there's danger when uh the church elects to say execute people who don't hold the right opinion. Of course, I would count that as dangerous, but inherently themselves, uh especially something like early Christian texts, are not dangerous. Um non-canonical texts or texts that come to be non-canonical were not in and of themselves dangerous. They were just maybe a a different opinion, a different perspective, or something that didn't catch on uh in the most sort of mundane sense.

[00:03:42]So, I would uh keep a lot of tension with that concept or with that idea and you know, use some scrutiny when looking at some of the church fathers if they do use rhetoric that is really severe. But again, always with that caveat if unless somebody was being hurt physically by certain opinions or certain determinations around a text. I would say otherwise you are looking at rhetoric.

[00:04:06]If this kind of issue interests you, please go check out Biblical Studies Academy. You can find that information on the Biblical Studies Academy at bartderman.com/bsalearning.

[00:04:17]So check out bartderman.com/bsalearning.