Two kinds of Christians

One of the striking things about many apostates, at least militant apostates like Bart Ehrman, is how easily they make the adjustment to life as an atheist. They don't think they put much behind them when they put Christianity behind them.

This goes to a related issue. You can have two Christians who are equally zealous, equally devout, but one loses his faith while the other perseveres. And this can be unnerving. In a sense, that's a good thing. It's a deterrent to getting cocky. 

The standard Calvinist explanation is that an apostate was never saved in the first place. 1 Jn 2:19 is duly quoted. Apostates and freewill theists consider that special pleading. The No-True-Scotsman fallacy. But that's an argument for another day. 

On the face of it, the Reformed explanation, which I think is correct, fails to explain the divergent trajectories of two equally zealous, devout Christians. And here I'd like to make an observation:

The similarity may be quite superficial, because they are Christian for different reasons. On the one hand there are Christians who are Christian because they believe they are sinners, and Christ died for them to spare them damnation. That inspires gratitude. You might say he's a sawdust trail Christian. Some become pastor and missionaries. 

Now, up to a point there's nothing wrong with that. It's great as far as it goes. But it's a Christian solution to a Christian problem. It takes the Christian framework for granted. So it's only valuable within that framework. 

If, however, you lose your faith in the framework, then you have nothing to lose by losing your faith. The Gospel is only the antidote if you accept the diagnosis. If, though, you come to believe that sin is just an artificial theological category, and you no longer believe the theology that sponsors it, then Christianity is the answer to a pseudo-problem. 

On that view, apostasy is cost-free. You can be very zealous so long as you operate within that framework, but if you cease to find it convincing, then you can shuffle it off because you never had any real stake it in. The value was internal to the system. The value was conferred by the theological paradigm, and has no value independent of the paradigm. From that viewpoint, it's easy to make the transition from Christian to atheist. 

But there's another kind of Christian. His identity is bound up with Christianity at a much deeper level. You might say he's an existential Christian. In a sense, he comes at it from the opposite end. He appreciates the fact that everything of value hinges on the Christian faith. There's everything to lose if Christianity is false. It's not just about sin and salvation, but what makes anything important. What makes something good? What, if anything, makes life worthwhile? 

It's far more difficult for a Christian like that to give up on Christianity. And even if he does, he's more likely to return to the faith. He understands what's at stake in a way that the first kind of apostate does not. So while, to all appearances, both kinds of Christians may be equally zealous, equally devout, what motivates their faith is fundamentally different. The existential Christian may be less outwardly zealous than the sawdust trail Christian, yet his roots run much deeper. He's a Christian because he has to be.