"It takes one to know one," quipped historian Eugene Genovese, then an atheist and Marxist. He was referring to liberal Protestant theologians, whom he believed to be closet atheists. As Genovese observed, "When I read much Protestant theology and religious history today, I have the warm feeling that I am in the company of fellow nonbelievers."

Genovese's comment rang prophetic when Gerd Ludemann, a prominent German theologian, declared a few years ago, "I no longer describe myself as a Christian." A professor of New Testament and director of the Institute of Early Christian Studies at Gottingen University in Germany, Ludemann has provoked the faithful and denied essential Christian doctrines for many years.

With amazing directness, Ludemann has denied the resurrection of Jesus, the virgin birth, and eventually the totality of the Gospel. Claiming to practice theology as a "scientific discipline," Ludemann (who taught for several years at the Vanderbilt Divinity School) has sought to debunk or discredit the Bible as an authoritative source for Christian theology.

In his influential book Heretics (1995), Ludemann sought to demonstrate that the heretics were right all along, and that the Christian church had conjured a supernatural Jesus to further its own cause. In What Really Happened to Jesus (1995) he argued, "We can no longer take the statements about the resurrection of Jesus literally." Lest anyone miss his point, Ludemann continued, "So let us say quite specifically: the tomb of Jesus was not empty but full, and his body did not disappear, but rotted away."

Nevertheless, Ludemann argued that Christianity could be rescued from its naive supernaturalism by focusing on the moral teachings of Jesus. Later, Ludemann gave an interview to the German magazine Evangelische Kommentare in which he stated that the Bible's portrayal of Jesus is a "fairy-tale world which we cannot enter."

In that same interview he denied the sinlessness of Jesus, explaining that, if Jesus was truly human, "we must grant that he was neither sinless or without error." The church, he argued, must give up its faith in the "risen Lord" and settle for Jesus as a mere human being, but one from whom much can be learned.

In later writings, Ludemann argued that Jesus was conceived as the product of a rape, and stated clearly that he could no longer "take my stand on the Apostles' Creed" or any other historic confession of faith. He continued, however, to teach as an official member of the theology faculty--a post which requires the certification of the Lutheran church in Germany.

Gerd Ludemann's theological search-and-destroy mission eventually ran him down a blind alley. As he told the Swiss Protestant news agency Reformierter Pressedienst, he has come to a new realization. "A Christian is someone who prays to Christ and believes in what is promised by Christian doctrine. So I asked myself: 'Do I pray to Jesus? Do I pray to the God of the Bible?' And I don't do that. Quite the reverse."