Be forewarned, this might be the pettiest topic I have chosen to write about. It’s a topic I never actually imagined engaging with, and I can already see those I consider mentors rolling their eyes at me saying, “Let it go, Justin.”
I try not to let online pushback dictate my apologetic studies, but for some reason, this one irked me enough to change course for a hot minute. But upon reflection, I realized the issue troubled me because it actually matters more than people like to admit.
If you didn’t catch it, I made a tongue-in-cheek comment days back about the modern use of BCE/CE in place of BC/AD.
It was admittedly meant to be provocative, which I know is something I should probably avoid. But it was also meant to express a frustration I share with many Christians over our willingness to conform to the slow removal of all things Christ from culture and society.
And it’s that willingness that can serve as an unintended, but real signal when I first approach theological works. When a Christian author chooses BCE/CE over BC/AD, I can’t help but see it as one small indicator of a willingness to concede Christian language to better conform to the secular world.
What seems to be a trivial matter for many may not actually be so trivial when we stop and reflect on what’s being conceded, however.
Why the Change?
For those unfamiliar, BC/AD are Christian-rooted era designations that help us gauge where a year falls in our calendar.
BC – Before Christ
AD – Anno Domini (in the year of our Lord)
By the 15th century, BC/AD had been adopted throughout Western Europe, and the system was implicitly carried into the Gregorian calendar when it was introduced in the 16th century.1 Developed by Christians, the Gregorian is the familiar calendar we still use today and arguably the greatest ever devised.
The Gregorian calendar format even became the formal international standard when the International Organization for Standardization released ISO 8601 in 1988.
There’s a reason it remains the dominant civil calendar throughout the world centuries after its introduction. Solar years are not perfect 365-day cycles, as some might assume. This discrepancy created problems for centuries, but those who devised the Gregorian calendar accounted for it with remarkable precision through its leap-year system.
However, as secularism has increasingly prevailed in academia over the last several decades, the BC/AD designators within the Gregorian have slowly been displaced by BCE/CE.
BCE – Before Common Era
CE – Common Era
One commonly cited reason for the change is sensitivity toward non-Christians, since BCE/CE removes the explicit references to Christ and “our Lord.”2
But ironically, the use of BCE/CE doesn’t actually change the calendar. In an effort to remove Christian terminology, academia changed the era designations but kept the entire dividing line, which is Christ himself.
The whole situation feels like a chapter straight out of Frank Turek’s book, Stealing from God, a work detailing how atheists steal Christian ideas to make their worldview work.
Though the language is brash, the ridiculousness of the entire affair is well captured by renowned physicist and agnostic TV personality Neil deGrasse Tyson. While discussing the history of calendars with Joe Rogan, Tyson colorfully pushed back on those who insist we remove Christian references from our dating system, stating:3
“I gotta give props to the Jesuit priests. I’m not going to say, ‘No, I’m taking the Christianity out of this reference,’ because they figured out the calendar that we all use, and it’s a ******* awesome calendar.
Sorry to drop an F-Bomb there…just because some atheists are telling me to rid God out of everything in the universe, I’m not doing that. I’m going to say ‘they came up with this calendar’…the motivation is whatever it is, but the science is good.”
What Is the Modern Standard?
After my post unexpectedly took off, I was met with a handful of dissenters claiming that BCE/CE is the academic standard in theological studies. The argument was that if I use it as any kind of litmus test, I am inevitably going to miss out on valuable information.
I even had someone with a PhD in Biblical Exposition tell me that BCE/CE is the required standard in the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) Handbook of Style, a guide widely used in biblical and theological scholarship.
Discounting the fact I never suggested works using BCE/CE be outright rejected, the claims piqued my interest as I had never encountered such a requirement in my own studies. So I dug into it, and it turns out there is a widely held belief that guides like SBL actually require the strict usage of BCE/CE. In fact, the belief appears so widely held, even AI assumed that was the case when I first inquired about it.
The implication is that anyone academically studying or writing theology has their hands tied. They aren’t necessarily conceding anything. They’re simply following the required academic standard.
But after reading the SBL Handbook, it became clear that this claim simply isn’t true. You can look it up yourself and see that BC/AD is still a recognized standard. SBL gives formatting guidance for both, but the relevant section does not require authors to use BCE/CE over BC/AD.4
In fact, SBL says in its introduction that its intent is to “reflect usage and not make new law.”5 This makes clear that SBL’s internal usage of BCE/CE is not a requirement they are placing upon others.
I also looked at other common standards, such as MLA and the Chicago Manual of Style, and could not find any requirement to use BCE/CE for era designation.
Contrary to popular belief, it’s clear that there is no universally required academic standard mandating BCE/CE. Individual journals, schools, publishers, or professors may potentially require it as a local formatting policy, but that is a far cry from saying theologians have no choice, because academia now requires it.
Why Does It Matter?
After a brief exchange, one commenter asked why such a seemingly insignificant issue mattered so much to me. There was some irony in the question, considering it apparently mattered enough to him to keep engaging me on it. But more importantly, I believe Christians willingly removing references to Christ to satisfy some invisible secular academic standard is actually important.
It can be a tell that the writer is willing to appease the demands of atheists in exchange for acceptance. That’s why I compared it to pronouns in a bio. They suddenly swept in from nowhere and often signaled something about how the person thought. Either they were an advocate for gender fluidity, or they simply fell in line out of fear of being ostracized, even though such identifiers were never a requirement to begin with.
Now, this is not to say that a work should be discarded because BCE/CE is used, nor is it meant to make those who have used it feel personally attacked. I recognize that many Christians have unwittingly adopted the terminology because it has become commonplace in academic writing.
But seemingly trivial concessions have a way of becoming much less trivial over time. One simply needs to reflect upon issues where small concessions have compounded into larger problems that have become increasingly difficult to escape. Things like gender transitions for minors, the decimation of privacy, assisted suicide in places like Canada, the widespread accessibility of pornographic material to children, or abortions up until birth.6
The Canaanites would be proud.
The point isn’t to debate those issues here. The point is that history is full of concessions that seemed minor, right up until the compounded effects of those concessions were no longer trivial.
And that brings me back to BC/AD. No, changing two letters on a page isn’t going to bring about the collapse of Christianity. But “trivial” matters that intentionally remove God from the equation aren’t necessarily trivial when they become part of a larger pattern of concession.
One concession rarely changes a culture. Thousands of small concessions, made by people convinced that none of them matter, can. It’s a game we should refuse to play, for Scripture says:
“A little leaven leavens the whole lump.” – Galatians 5:9
Ibid.
Joe Rogan, The Joe Rogan Experience, Ep. #1159, “Neil deGrasse Tyson,” August 22, 2018, 59:29–1:00:00.
SBL Press, “Eras and Time Periods,” SBL Handbook of Style, September 22, 2016.
See Also: Society of Biblical Literature, The SBL Handbook of Style, 2nd ed. (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2014), §8.1.2, 119.
Society of Biblical Literature, The SBL Handbook of Style, 2nd ed. (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2014), p. 1.
I agree, small things like BC/AD vs BCE/CE are petty when considered in isolation. But things in isolation almost never stay that way. Eventually it all leads down the slippery slope.
When I consider religious non-fiction, I am much more likely to trust the views of an author that uses BC/AD than BCE/CE.
Very well argued. I’ve encountered the BCE/CE in secular history writing. I didn’t realize that it was becoming a standard in biblical studies. This should not be. Thanks for putting this together.