Eyre Lines

A friend (thank you, Anne) recently lent me Philip Yancey’s “The Jesus I Never Knew”, which I read as light relief from the current main event of Douglas Campbell’s “The Deliverance of God”.

A couple of chapters in, my reaction was “Was he not listening in Sunday School, or to many years of sermons?” as, in essence, this is mainly an exploration of the Synoptic Gospels from a very uncritically naive viewpoint (it introduces some bits of the Fourth Gospel later). In the churches I know reasonably well, this kind of reading would have been started by about age 10; it is the first level of reading comprehension of the gospels, before embarking on any exploration of (for instance) the difference in the pictures painted by the four gospel writers.

However, I paused and went back and reread Mr. Yancey’s short biography, and recalled the “suggested readings” put forward as a start point for reading the Bible in some evangelical circles. Fourth Gospel (highlights), Pauline Epistles (highlights), Genesis (highlights) more of the Fourth Gospel, Epistles and Genesis, then (and only then) carefully selected highlights from the synoptics (parables for the most part) and from the major prophets and psalms, by this time read entirely through the lens provided by the initial readings.

Then I thought about the direction of sermons and worship songs, banging out the basics of PSA and the exalted status of Christ-as-cosmic saviour to the exclusion of any consideration of his humanity. Yes, I thought, it could well be that people manage to remain quite a while in that kind of environment and never consider Jesus as really human.

Yancey does spend quite a bit of space on the Sermon on the Mount later in the book, as well. Aside from “be perfect”, this does not figure large in evangelical circles, it seems to me.

So, my conclusion is that while I am absolutely not Yancey’s target audience, for what I envision his target audience to be, the book is a helpful corrective for the overwhelming stress on Christ as atoning sacrifice and divine intermediary, which to me verges on docetism (a view of Christ which denies his humanity).

I just wish both that it wasn’t needed and that it went further – much further.

There has been some discussion in the blogosphere recently about good and evil (James McGrath’s facebook feed has more of it), generally along the lines of whether God can be regarded as entirely good, and if good can exist without evil, and if so whether there must perforce be an “evil” deity (I would assume “Satan”) and whether therefore this evil deity must necessarily be equal to as well as opposite to a good God. In the process there has been mention of Taoism, and how it regards “good” as being attained from a balancing of yin and yang, positive and negative aspects. Those positive and negative aspects are sometimes confused with “good and evil”. There is also discussion as to whether this Taoist viewpoint can possibly coexist with Christianity.

So far as Taoism is concerned, I don’t think the fact that Taoism is a religion means automatically that Christians need to reject the yin-yang concept; Taoism is also a philosophy (the religious aspects are not fundamental to the philosophy), and Christianity should, I think, be able to adapt itself to being seen in the light of more than one overarching philosophy (though I’m inclined to think that the adaptation to scientific-rationalist materialism is fraught with problems resolvable only via some species of post-modernism).

I am naturally tempted to quote Isaiah 45:7 “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things” (KJV – most other translations avoid “evil” but still have much of the same sense, and the Hebrew definitely has in part the sense of “evil” as well as “calamity” or “disaster”), and to point out that the “satan” of the Hebrew Scriptures is determinedly an agent of God, most notably in Job. I am inclined to think that the Satan of the New Testament represents an element of dualist thinking creeping into Judaism (via the intertestamentals, notably Sirach, Jubilees, Wisdom and overwhelmingly Enoch).

I don’t relate well to dualism. My own experience (the “zap”) pretty much precludes there being more than one deity or deity-like entity in existence (using “existence” in a very loose way indeed). The Jewish tradition which developed into Christianity became possibly the most ardently monotheist religious tradition of any (and no, I don’t think this is particularly dented in theory by trinitarianism, however much the practice may start looking like tritheism). I am therefore predisposed to see the dualist tendency of the intertestamentals as being an aberration which we could do to move beyond, rather than as an innovation to be adopted and incorporated. My recent post about fatted calves indicates pretty well how I am obliged to see the relationship of God with creation.

As such, the Taoist concept of balancing positive and negative to produce a “good” result (which nonetheless may not be “good” from the perspective of some part of it) has some attractions. It goes beyond the concept of thesis-antithesis-synthesis with which I am very comfortable (and which is a sound corrective to “either-of” thinking), and gives the possibility of thinking of things as inevitably both-one-and-the-other, rather than as eliding the opposites and thus losing any benefit of making a distinction in the first place. It also resonates well with the Isaiah 45 quotation.

However, I am inclined to think that there is a basic error in the whole “good -v- evil” dichotomy, and that is in using the terms without a referent. I start with evil; I cannot conceive of absolute evil, for many reasons including that it would be instantly self-destructive. If I can’t do that, it becomes difficult to think of absolute good.

Indeed, when I settle down to think of what “good” or “evil” is, I inevitably end up asking myself “relative to who or what?” The vast majority of things which occur can be seen to be “good” in relation to something while being “bad” in relation to something else, even without invoking any general principle of good relative to A must be bad relative to not A (which does not invariably work, as sometimes cooperative strategies function well). Indeed, I have yet to see some “good” effect on anything or anyone which I cannot see as “bad” in relation to something or someone else. There are, of course, quite independent of religion, concepts of morality and ethics which prefer the good of the many to the good of the one as being logically superior (though taking this to extremes results in extremely painful decisions which most people would balk at). However, I end up finding it very difficult to accept that any absolute good or absolute bad (or evil) can be said to exist, at least not in the real world.

It is, of course, clear that an absolute morality can be constructed by appealing to something independent of material reality. Certain philosophies (for example political philosophies) will do, for instance, and probably all religions will do. The first depend on some abstract principles which are “above” any effects on humans (or any lower form of existence), the second on God; that which is good in relation to God is an absolute good, as God (at least a monotheistic God) is absolute where everything else is relative. However, then to say “God is good” becomes a redundancy; of course God is good to God (and conversely, referring back to an earlier argument, Satan must be evil to Satan, and therefore cease to be). It seems to me that we have in the Hebrew scriptures at least a near approach to this position, which (to adjust a well known phrase) is basically “God commands it, I do it, that settles it”.

Despite Paul’s apparent attitude in Romans 3:10-18 (in which “all have sinned” and the Law is held up as impossible to follow adequately), in Phil. 3:6 he says he is “as to righteousness under the law, blameless”, and this rather confirms the position of some observant Jews of my acquaintance, who do not find strict adherence to all of the 613 mitzvot difficult (let alone impossible) even as massively extended by generations of rabbis “placing a fence around the Torah” and extending their scope to as not to come even vaguely close to actually contavening one of those. They don’t actually say “God commands it, I do it, that settles it”, but this is close to their position.

I can see the attraction of that; a detailed code rather smaller than the list of laws of most developed nations (which one is also expected to follow perfectly by the civil authorities!) which is all that God requires of you as a condition of being righteous, i.e. “good”. But I am not Jewish, I was not brought up Jewish, I am through and through a Jesus-follower with the sermon on the mount (Matt. 5-7 cf Lk. 6:12-49) prominent in my consciousness as a standard – and that asks that we be “perfect, as our father in heaven is perfect”, that we not even bear anger towards our fellow men (or call them “fool”), that omissions are as worthy of blame as commissions. And that, as was pointed out in the second Alpha talk last night, is impossible for everyone.

I therefore don’t have the “God commands it, I do it, that settles it” position, just a “God commands it through Jesus in his lifetime teachings, I get as close as I can to doing it, nothing is settled by it”. The talk (as I’ve adverted to previously) presented a straight PSA answer to why I should nonetheless feel secure; I can’t swallow PSA myself, and will be adverting to the reasons shortly (I hope, should I ever finish writing the relevant post series). In point of fact, I experience God (and Jesus), I love and trust God (and Jesus) and that is sufficient. Sure, I can never feel smug about being perfect and never will do, but that’s OK with me – and actually, for all their theoretical reliance on Torah observance, my Jewish friends tend also to feel they can always do more and better.

But really, this only tells me (or my Jewish friends) what I should do and not do, it does not give me any overarching concept of good and evil. As I outlined recently, my very existence is from the point of view of some organisms or entities a bad thing, a sin, an evil – and yet from the Godly point of view in Genesis 1, it is at least in principle good. My experience forces me to see God in everything, everything in God, and “everything” includes bad things, even evil things, includes “natural evil” in the form of natural disasters and accidents. Is this a Taoist yin and yang position after all? It certainly arrives at much the same position. Beyond that, I can really see no alternative to complete relativism.

My own balance is found in trying to tread lightly on the world (rather than any insects), in trying to treat my fellow humans as I would treat Jesus (mindful of Matt. 25) and in attempting to remember always that the earth and all that is in it is sacred, holy, in God, and to be treasured and taken care of.

Following my post about resurrection recently, I notice that another blogger who I generally find much fellow feeling with, Tony Jones, has written “Dear Marcus Borg; please reconsider the Resurrection”.

Now, I am, I think, singing from the same hymn sheet as Marcus Borg here. I see no problem if Christians believe that the resurrection was fully physical, involving the corpse of the deceased Jesus being in some way revivified and changed into something which could walk through walls and not be recognised by friends and which flitted between Jerusalem and Galilee with inhuman speed, but was nonetheless still “the physical body”. However, I personally think it extremely unlikely that this is what happened. I don’t think it’s the best fit for the scriptures we have, assuming them all to be entirely faithful records by eyewitnesses; a revivified corpse does not fit several of the accounts.

In fact, however, I don’t think any but Paul’s is an eyewitness account, and the experience he described wasn’t, by his admission, one of viewing a revivified corpse. I suspect, though cannot demonstrate, that the later accounts, building on oral tradition, may have been struggling with a particular current of Jewish thinking of the time which did not accept any spirit-body dichotomy and would therefore have considered that any resurrection would have to be fully physical, and the accounts may have adjusted what they understood to underline what they thought they knew must have been the case.

I am by no means the only person I know who thinks this way, though I may well be the only one among my face to face acquaintance who does and who self-identifies as a believing Christian.

And that is the problem here. I cannot stand before most of my friends and say “you have to believe in a physical resurrection, otherwise you cannot be a Christian” and get anything other than “fine, I’m therefore not going to listen to any other arguments you may have, any testimony you may give”. Tony Jones asking Marcus Borg to reconsider is, essentially telling him not to hold out the prospect to people that you can be a Christian without actually believing in a physical resurrection. The trouble is, from my point of view, it’s perfectly possible, and moreover it doesn’t place a potential stumbling block in the way of someone who may be edging towards faith.

In line with David Henson’s response to the Jones-Borg conversation, I don’t think there is an argument here worth pursuing, either. Whatever the actual historical fact, Christians everywhere experience the resurrected Jesus on a day to day basis; there really need be no more confirmation than that. As he says “So I do not believe the resurrection because it literally happened long ago. I believe the resurrection because it happens. It has happened to Christians for 2,000 years, and it has happened to me.”

In fact this is reminiscent of a lot of discussions I have had with Christians more conservative than me in the past; the fact that I work on the whole without any belief in miraculous events often troubles them hugely, but when it comes down to the matter of what we actually learn from scriptures which contain apparent supernatural events and apply that to our lives here and now, the difference often disappears. Take, for instance, the loaves and fishes. Did it happen or not? I think, on balance, if something happened it wasn’t supernatural, my conservative friends think there was a supernatural multiplication of material objects. What difference does it make to the message we derive from the story? None.

So I’m not disposed to say “you must believe it didn’t happen”, because that makes no difference in the here and now.

Both Jason Michaeli and Tony Jones (and some others less well known) have otherwise shown plenty of evidence of being more open about biblical interpretation than their recent reactions would indicate. I have to ask, therefore, what it is about the resurrection (as opposed, for instance, to inerrancy, the role of women in the church, treatment of sexual variance or the dreaded PSA) which makes it such a sticking point? Why is it that when this particular topic comes up, suddenly some attitudes seem to take a lurch to the right and something approaching the evangelical right’s condemnations of “liberals” seems to be on the horizon?

As a generality, if someone, against type, suddenly expresses a very strong opinion on a nonessential matter, I will usually look to see why that opinion matters to them more than would appear on the surface. Usually, such a strong reaction comes from some kind of fear, though occasionally just from anger. Generally in cases of doctrines, the fear is that some part of their own belief structure will be undermined. But how can this be when Marcus Borg, or David Henson, or John Spong (to name a very few) are not saying that belief in a supernatural explanation is wrong, just that they themselves adopt a somewhat less overtly supernatural explanation?

I have to wonder whether it’s a case of needing at least one instance of “having to believe an impossible thing” for faith to be so labelled. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 22-24: “For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (Bible Hub NIV) after all. Personally, that’s not how I see faith as the Biblical writers described it; what I see them talking of is more like unswerving personal commitment, faithfulness rather than faith.

If suddenly a slippery slope can be seen at the end of which is a perfectly rational faith which requires no “foolishness”, perhaps there is fear that they will end up there, and somehow their beliefs have to be based on a grossly supernatural theology? Perhaps the people saying this have such theological weight that people think they cannot argue against them and must follow? (This worry has never affected me personally, but intellectual arrogance is a character fault that I am working on… possibly I should work harder.)

Perhaps, too, there is some degree of resentment – it could be that supernatural belief of some kind has been difficult for them to accept themselves, but they have managed to do it – and now see a respected figure apparently managing to do without it?

I don’t know. What I do know is that I regret any moves to “circle the wagons” and establish fixed boundaries beyond which people must be thought of as “not Christians” or “heretics” or “false teachers” and so excluded from “us” and made “other”.  I see Jesus, and Paul (at least in the undisputed letters) establishing a trajectory of inclusion. OK, I don’t think Jesus got quite as far towards complete inclusion of gentiles and women as liberation or feminist theologians might like to see, I don’t think Paul got as far towards complete inclusion of women and slaves as feminist theologians and 18th and 19th century abolitionists might like (or have liked) to see, but I think they moved in a clear direction from where they started, and 2000 years later we should have continued moving in the direction they indicated faster and further than we have.

I don’t think, for instance, that we have remotely managed to take on board even the distance Jesus moved towards the inclusion of the sick, the disabled, the indigent, the poor and the criminal. To exclude from our own ranks for variant readings and understandings of our common scripture is very much a step, or rather a leap, in the wrong direction.

And I will again pray for understanding of how it is that Pat Robertson and myself can be considered as members of the same religion. But I have (just for today) faith that we are.

In a group on Thursday, we looked at the parable of the Prodigal Son. Now, I’d sat through the sermon on this twice on Sunday (I was sticking around to sell Alpha launch tickets) and I’ve heard sermons on it at least twice this year previously, so when the group leader turned to me and asked “What new inspiration do you get from this, Chris?” my first response was to say that my new inspirations were all played out for this year, please ask me again in twelve months or so.

However, what I did was blurt out an actual new thought which had come to me. The Prodigal is one of the parables where it’s a natural thing to look at it from the point of view of each of the characters, father and two sons. I like looking at stories from the point of view of the different characters, and in some cases it can throw up a really interesting line of thought. What had come to me was “What about the viewpoint of the fatted calf?”

There was hilarity. There was dumfounded silence. There was “Oh well, it’s Chris, trust him…”

However, there’s much more to that with me than just a joke. I posted recently about some aspects of the “zap” experience and the new viewpoint this gave, how the boundaries of “self” dissolved and everything was in some way “me” (and even more to everything was God). I found in the weeks and months following the experience that I was having difficulty maintaining a view of animals as being different, unconnected, something other, something not to be concerned about. Hey, I’m English, and that came really naturally to me anyhow – we’re inclined to value our neighbours pets more than we do our neighbour, after all. I now had, however, a really good reason for taking this bond, this sameness and in a way this identity really seriously.

Obviously there is a difference. I cannot see the fatted calf, for instance, dwelling on the transitory nature of all things and finding comfort in something like “The rain falls on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matt. 5:45) or the hope of heaven or resurrection. I can envisage something more like “Good grub, good grub, good grub, terror, pain, end” being about the sum of the calf’s reactions. But even if you don’t share my disindividuated viewpoint, the fatted calf is also one of God’s creatures, and an omnipresent God is present in the calf just as he/she/it is in you or me.

I went through a fairly extreme period of soul searching at that point. Should I be eating meat, and therefore complicit in the pain and killing of one of God’s creatures? I learned a little of Jainism around this time, and some very observant Jains go so far as sweeping the path in front of them lest they inadvertently step on an insect and kill it. Even an insect is, after all, one of God’s creatures as well.

This is already at the point where living in the real world becomes just about impossible, but I’m fond of “reductio ad absurdum” and kept up the thinking. What about bacteria? They’re also living creatures, and I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t had courses of antibiotics at one point of another, or if I didn’t kill off a few bugs before I started preparing food. I supposed I could lean on sentience as the governing factor, but it seemed to me that this was a continuum and that I’d eventually have to draw an arbitrary line without any justification other than practicality. Then there were vegetables, also living… and eventually there were rocks. In which God was also manifest.

I eventually arrived at the idea that, in order to exist, I must perforce do things which were (from the point of view of some part of existence) evil. A new conception of “original sin” perhaps, which didn’t need to get as far as Genesis 2 and 3. Countless decisions I make rest on thinking of myself as separate rather than as part, and this in and of itself is “separation from God”, which is one definition of sin. The end of self is the end of sin.

But then, I thought, there is the idea of the world and everything in it as God’s creation, and God rather consistently saying that it was good in Genesis 1. Indeed, that is something which was also forcefully imprinted on me in the initial “zap”. And so somehow, the fact of my being here, forced to sin against God’s creation (which I see as God’s very self) in order to exist, is also, somehow, good. It is, it would seem, good that I exist, just as it is good that everything else exists – and were I the fatted calf, that would be enough. Most of the fatted calf’s story is, after all “good grub”, and the terror, pain and end is a mere speck in its lifetime.

I am aided in being able to take the view of the whole rather than the part rather easily, and from the view of the whole, the existence or non-existence of a part, the pain or joy of a part is of relatively small import, being in any event fleeting in terms of the atemporality of God. Ups and downs are two sides of a coin, you cannot have just “up”; without pain, there is no goodness in lack of pain, without death there is no goodness in life, in existence.

This is, therefore, as it should be (it is “good”), but could it be better, could it be perfect? If it could be perfect, would not an omnipotent God make it so? Now, I am not a fan of omnipotence as a divine characteristic, and Charles Hartshorne has usefully written in “Omnipotence and other Theological Mistakes” a philosophical argument indicating that it cannot actually be so. John Caputo, in “The Weakness of God” has written a fine rethinking of Christianity in terms of God as an essentially weak force. However, I don’t think I need to go as far as that; the easiest critique of omnipotence is to ask if God can make something which he cannot move (or destroy, or take some other action against), and this exposes the fact that omnipotence cannot really be “omni”; there always have to be boundaries. At the most, we could say that God could do anything which it was possible to do; is it therefore the case that in creating (which I am obliged to see, due to my “all things are God, all things are within God” experience, as a creation out of God’s own substance), God has limited the scope of what he is able to do, whether by actual limitation or limitation of will?

I end up seeing the creation as the original act of kenosis, of self-emptying, thinking of the words of Phil. 2:6-7 “⁶ who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, ⁷ but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant,being born in the likeness of men.” (ESV from Bible Gateway); thus the kenosis attributed to Jesus is a symbol of the greater kenosis of God. In that act of pouring himself out into existence, which I interpret as God becoming creation (thus, perhaps, “Original Incarnation”), God has thus potentially created the best existence which could then be created, given the individuality, the separateness of its constituent elements (that is not to say that this existence is the best existence there could ever be in the future, though; the elements within creation develop and evolve, and I do not think that is a zero-sum game even had Jesus not pointed to the Kingdom of God on earth as a present and growing actuality).

Returning to the fatted calf, it does not, as far as we know, have the capacity to do much more than “live in the moment”; it will not be asking questions like those I am asking. The mental apparatus to weigh courses of action and decide which is good and which is evil are, with the fatted calf, instinctual, not subject to conscious control.

I therefore arrive at the story of Genesis 2-3 and the “Fall”; I don’t see this as an actual Fall, that having taken place at the point of creation and being only a descent (or ascent) from unity into individuality. It does, however, involve the eating of the fruit of the tree of Knowledge, specifically knowledge of good and evil.

The training evening for the next Alpha was last night; it starts in earnest next Thursday, so the volume of posts will probably increase as I get more ideas from the discussions and want to work through them here. I’m in the process of reading Douglas Campbell’s “The Deliverance of God” at the moment, so when the video of Nicky Gumbel describing the Alpha process was shown, I immediately noted that he (and Alpha) cleaves to the standard evangelical model of conversion.

And this is based very heavily on the theory of Justification, which is what Campbell’s book focuses on – it’s subtitled “An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul”. At just over 1200 pages, it’s going to keep me out of trouble for a while yet. I don’t intend to review what I’ve read of it to date, but Richard Beck has done a series on it recently. What I have read, however, mounts a very detailed and convincing assault on the concept of Justification generally and salvation via the “Justified through faith” route specifically (Romans 1-4 being the most significant text here).

Let me outline this paradigm. Mankind are all sinners. God cannot accept sin, and therefore sin in any measure whatsoever deserves death and/or hell. They have through two potential routes, “natural theology” (i.e. the obvious testimony of creation) or Mosaic Law, a conviction of this, but no way out of it; Paul specifies that the Law is inadequate to save anybody. Jesus’ death on the cross provides, via faith in Christ, justification by grace to all. The logic is inescapable; all are guilty, all are condemned but faith in Christ produces deemed justification and therefore saves. The standard model of conversion involves this; pray the “sinners prayer”, receive (be born again in) the Holy Spirit and faith, be saved.

It is worth mentioning that the 12 Step formula, admitting powerlessness over something and our lives having become unmanageable, becoming convinced that there existed a higher power which was capable of releiving us from this position and making a decision to turn our wills and our lives over to the care of that higher power mirrors extremely well the evangelical standard model. And that works; I’ve seen it work in many people. The spiritual experience doesn’t always occur at any of those points (Steps 1-3), it can occur later. Some of them have gone on to find their relationship with their higher power in Christianity. OK, some have found that by another route, but they aren’t the subject of this post!

Justification theory is not quite entirely PSA (Penal Substitutionary Atonement) in its full exposition, but is a major foundational part of that theory. I don’t intend to deal with the detail of my theoretical reaction to PSA in this post; I have another post (or possibly series) under construction at the moment in which I intend to do that. Here, I intend to talk about practice.

Now, if you’ve read my previous post, you may realise that I didn’t arrive at faith via this route. I didn’t have anything remotely like a conception of irretrievable, unforgiveable sin and of a stern judgmental God who could only accept perfection. I didn’t believe any god of any sort existed, for a start, and forgiveness appeared to be reasonably readily obtained (sometimes with a bit of pain and time) in every situation I’d come across. I just got a whole package which included an extremely lively consciousness of past sin and at the same time a consciousness of forgiveness and a compulsion to try very hard not to do any of that stuff again, all in one “zap”.

In fact, to my more or less complete consternation, the model of salvation which best fits me is Calvinist (about which I wrote a while ago). Full Calvinism doesn’t start with a conviction of sin and praying the sinners’ prayer (or something like it), it starts with divine intervention in changing you, and only after that do you get on to bits like considering past sins.

So, we have Nicky Gumbel and Alpha doing conversions one way, (with, apparently, very considerable success – I have multiple friends who have arrived at belief via Alpha or something very like it) and Calvin describing another way of getting converted of which I seem to have personal experience. The two are just not the same. Conviction of sin followed by a choice to give your life to Jesus demands a free will choice, and Calvin says that the totally depraved non-Christian (the “T” of “TULIP”) cannot make, has not the capacity to make, that decision.

Do we see a pattern emerging here? The Evangelistic paradigm is, basically, Luther on Justification, and Luther and Calvin are not all that far apart. The distinction may, therefore, be rather subtle.

So, let me add to that. Actually, only a few people who arrive at faith via Alpha have been able to say to me with conviction that they were, in fact, convicted of otherwise irredeemable sin and then made the decision. Most, it turns out, have been somewhat convinced by the talks, but much more influenced by one or more very powerful testimonies and the fact that they feel love and friendship from the people round them and want to be part of that. But in the process, they have arrived at something very like the spiritual experience testified to by people who have gone the Lutheran/Evangelical route or the Calvinist route. Significant numbers of them have then worked at it, much as twelve steppers work at the twelve steps, and maintained their “conscious contact with God”. Some have at a later time lost this again.

This, I should point out, doesn’t really conform very well to anyone’s theoretical soteriology.

Then again, there are those I know who have just made a decision that this is where they want to be and have started working at it, without any particular crushing consciousness of sin or appreciation that there is only one way out of this into God’s favour. Many of these are people who were just brought up to believe in the system and have never challenged it. And some of them do arrive at a conscious contact with God, sometimes in a blinding flash (or zap) after they have been working at it for months, years or sometimes decades, sometimes very gently and imperceptibly. (It’s worth mentioning, however, that many who tread this route never seem to attain this state, at least not in any form strong enough for them to testify to).

And this is, essentially, works-based soteriology of the kind which Luther and Calvin both considered theoretically impossible. It ought to work; the psychological establishment has long understood “act as if” techniques, and so have the twelve step fellowships. Eastern Orthodoxy, the Western Monastic tradition and observant Judaism are examples in practice, whatever their theory may be.

It may actually be that I have an element of this operational in my own experience, because a couple of years before my original zap, I started to try to improve myself. 20/20 hindsight reveals that what I actually did about this bore a significant resemblance to steps 1, 4-5, a God-free 6 and 8-10, starting with an appreciation of powerlessness and a searching moral inventory. It took the zap to insert the God-related steps, though. The motive had, of course, nothing to do with anything spiritual; it was a purely pragmatic approach to improving my ability to function in society, but it does seem possible that it could have had an unanticipated result!

I anticipate that some might say that actually there has to be only one way, and these might try to find the elements of their chosen one solution in the lives of others who did not seem at first appraisal to have fitted their template. I think they stretch to attempt this, and also have a tendency to reject the experience of some who, to a more objective eye, might well display all the characteristics of a “saved” person, notably Paul’s “fruits of the spirit” (Gal. 5:22-23) and attest to their own conviction of being “saved” (or otherwise justified, or “right with God”).

I was at one time guilty of this; I knew how it had happened with me, and assumed that this was the only way it could happen and be authentic. I could see the result in the writings of mystics (at least in places), so I assumed that the way to go was the way they had described (my own “out of the blue” was no help to anyone). Most of them used seclusion, privation and sometimes sensory deprivation, so 20 year old Chris would have said everyone had to do that, if, that was, they wanted to experience something like the zap; I had used bits and pieces of the praxis of some of the great mystics myself to try to re-experience the zap, and had duly had some recapitulations (though generally not with anything like the original force). It therefore seemed experimentally verified.

So, could it be that those originating these concepts of salvation had found a way themselves, and thought that it perforce had to be the only way? Not entirely – Paul’s writings spawned the standard Lutheran/Evangelical model, and Paul himself clearly had a “bolt from the blue” conversion which doesn’t fit the model. I could, however, empathise with a Paul who was asked “how do I get an experience like yours” thinking “well, I suppose it could go like this…”.

So, it seems to me that there are a number of ways in which faith is, in fact, arrived at. Surely any theory of salvation should take all of those into account? None I’ve yet come across do that, though. You could tack a set of them together and say “well, all of these seem to work”, but their mechanisms are theoretically incompatible to a large extent.

I wonder, however, whether that matters. Faith, as opposed to belief, is first and foremost an emotional thing, a commitment of trust and obedience. Emotions do not have to be held on rational grounds (the conflicts I talk of between SR (scientific rationalist Chris) and EC (emotional Chris) bear witness to this, even if no psychological studies convince. Often, there seems no rationality in emotions at all. If, therefore, we talk of something which is largely or partly emotional, is it surprising that it appears to arise from a set of mechanisms which are contradictory? Augustine, after all, once wrote “credo quia absurdum” (“I believe because it’s impossible”).

Me, I don’t understand why the teenaged Chris suddenly had a zap, a peak spiritual experience. I don’t need a theory, though, I have the experience.

But a theory would be nice…

This morning I listened again to the curate reading from John (3:16) “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life”.

I’m in the process, among other things, of catching up with Richard Beck’s outstanding “Experimental Theology” blog, which I discovered about three months ago. I’ve made it from the beginning up to mid 2011 so far, and one of the recurring themes is Universalism. Prof. Beck is an Universalist. He makes a very good case for Universalism, as you can see if you follow that link (and others with that tag – there are quite a few of them!). As a psychologist, he has also written about death anxiety being at the root of a great deal of Christian theology.

In conscience, I’m not really best targeted by the passage from John, as I have no fear of death at all. I have a very healthy fear of many of the means of getting from here to there, mind you! The reason lies partly in the content and nature of my original peak spiritual experience (which I’ll call the “zap”), but also in the thought that my consciousness goes offline every night (well, nearly every night now I’ve got reduced insomnia) and until I wake up, I could well die and never know about it. My late Uncle John passed away like that many years ago; fell asleep reading his morning newspaper and just never woke up. I’ve always thought that you couldn’t design a better way of leaving life, whether or not there is something beyond that.

There were, however, a few aspects of the zap which are pertinent. One was the dissolving of the boundary between “self” and “other”, a complete oneness with everything, animate and inanimate, near and far, human and divine. The sufi Baba Kuhi of Shiraz wrote about this kind of experience, saying “In the market, in the cloister, only God I saw; in the valley and on the mountain, only God I saw”. Meister Eckhart said “Thou shalt know him without image, without semblance and without means. – ‘But for me to know God thus, with nothing between, I must be all but he, he all but me’. – I say, God must be very I, I very God, so consummately one that this he and this I are one is, in this isness working one work eternally…” All things were God, in which I “lived and breathed and had my being” as someone else said, well before Teilhard de Chardin suggested the “Milieu Divin” ground of all being concept.

That boundary has never really returned in fullness (it was previously absolute); one effect of this was to become significantly empathic (the pre-zap Chris was NOT noted for empathy) which is a somewhat mixed blessing – yes, I can be far more responsive to the needs of others, but also I tend to soak up emotions from others and become too affected by them (which means that in order to function at all, I often have to wall off my emotions, which has a distinct downside). Another, though, is to see the Chris inhabiting this particular structure of bone and flesh as nothing like the whole extent of that-which-is-Chris; if this bit dies, the whole of that-which-is-Chris doesn’t (though I grant the continuity of consciousness is likely to be somewhat lacking!).

It is, incidentally, very difficult to have this kind of consciousness and not “love your neighbour as yourself”, or regard your neighbour as Jesus, aka God in disguise as is set out in Matthew 25:31-45 ending “Truly I say to you, as you did it not to the least of these, you did it not to me”. For they ARE you. And, indeed, they are more than you.

I may go away (indeed, I expect to) but God endures, and therefore I endure. Another aspect of the zap is the strong desire to conform myself to God, to become a part of God which is more in tune with the rest, less of a discordant note. I see echoes of that in the concept of the Church as the body of Christ, in which I occasionally say that I am the ingrowing toenail. I have aspirations to be less irritating than that! My best template for that is Jesus, who I inescapably regard as having had this consciousness (only more so, probably more so than anyone else who has lived); I seek to cultivate Christ-in-me, and as I do so that-which-is-Chris will diminish. I doubt the process will be anything like complete during my life!

An important aspect of the zap was the feeling that, if I could just let myself go a little more, the ecstasy of union with God could be complete – but that my “self” would in the process be extinguished; there would be nothing but God. The image of a moth in a candle flame came to me, but as an image of intense joy. The first time, that scared me, and as a result I pulled back, but I have pulled back less on subsequent occasions and think that I may soon be able to let go completely, if another zap of that intensity is granted me (I practice the presence of God as best I can, but it seems to me that the more intense zaps are given, not worked for). Baba Kuhi ends by saying “But when I looked with God’s eyes – only God I saw. I passed away into nothingness, I vanished, and lo, I was the All-living – only God I saw”. Eckhart writes “But he manifests as different and the soul is destined to know things as they are and conceive things as they are when, seized thereof, she plunges into the bottomless well of the divine nature and becomes so one with God that she herself would say that she is God” but also, speaking of the soul, “Wherefore God has left her one little point from which to get back to herself and find herself as creature. For it is of the very essence of the soul that she is powerless to plumb the depths of her creator”. Perhaps he is right, and the process will always stop just short of complete extinguishment of the self. But perhaps not, and that is an ecstatic end.

On one occasion several years ago, I was in serious fear of death, as someone far more physically powerful than me was pounding me. Yes, it hurt – but thinking I might die, a strange peace came over me as I looked forward to the ecstatic reunion with God which death would provide. Maybe that might reduce my fear of physical pain? Probably not, as generally I’m not expecting to die from it. As it happened, the disconnect of me smiling seraphically while this guy hit me was sufficient to make him stop and ask why I was doing it – I said “it’s only pain” and he walked away, confused.

I expect, therefore, that at my death, that which is other-than-God will be destroyed, that which is God will remain, cannot but remain. The Theologia Germanica says “Nothing burns in Hell save self-will, therefore it has been said ‘put off thy self-will and there will be no Hell’ “. I intend that there should be as little that is not God as possible at that time, but expect that the remainder will burn, be burned away, indeed. This is very akin to Dr. Beck’s concept of Hell as a purification prior to universal salvation.

So, am I an Universalist? I’m attracted by Dr. Beck’s thinking, and certainly I expect everyone regardless of their beliefs and actions to arrive at the same point. However, I am not so confident that all will survive the refiner’s fire of Hell (be it ever so brief). I have met people in whom any spark of the divine seems exceptionally weak; I can envisage that rather than submit to the fire of cleansing, a few may be able to elect to resist, and that they may remain in that condition forever, or even that in a very few, the spark of the divine may have been extinguished completely during their lifetime, and there remains nothing but self. Some of those I have met, for instance, have been sociopaths. I am not particularly optimistic for them.

And so I think I have to accept the Arminian view of salvation, which acknowledges God’s wish that we all be saved and our freedom to choose, but effectively denies that in this salvation God is omnipotent.

There is one final aspect of the zap which has a bearing, and that is that it appears to give a glimpse into eternity. That eternity is not, as most seem to think, a very VERY unimaginably long time, it is atemporal. The zap is a “timeless moment”, in which all that is and has been is as one (possibly all that will be as well, although I cannot confirm). As such, all that you have been and done and are during your life is present, and this can be an extremely painful situation, alleviated only by the knowledge of God’s love and acceptance (of the essence of you, not of your actions). Perhaps it is possible not to repent in a powerful zap, I don’t know; I certainly couldn’t have withstood it’s force.

In this atemporality, my life just represents a set of boundaries; once I did not exist, as I had not been born, in the future I will not exist (in one sense, at least) as I will be dead. All that is between those remains, atemporal, eternal. In this, there can be no annihilation, no unmaking of what has been. I have to an extent had one foot in this atemporality much of the last 45 years, as my cultivation of conscious contact with God, the practising of the Presence of God, has developed. Beside that, temporal limits appear irrelevant.

Timor mortis non conturbat me.

 

Last year, allegations about Jimmy Saville sexually abusing children became big news; Saville had been a very significant figure in television aimed at the young, and was a fixture of the youth of many of us. They were assuredly true; he had been a prolific sexual offender behind the public face of entertainer and very significant philanthropist, and most of his victims had been under age. It would appear that he used his position and status to indulge his tastes. He was perhaps best known for hosting the TV programme “Jim’ll fix it” in which children were given experiences they had only been able to dream of, often seriously ill or disabled children. He gave them the “experience of a lifetime” – and I am now wondering if that expression is more barbed than I would once have credited in many cases.

Following that, police investigations continued, and many other well known figures have been similarly accused. I rather suspect that Operation Yewtree is to a considerable extent a reflex reaction to the fact that the ire of society cannot now be taken out on Saville; suddenly when it was announced there were a very large number of scared rock stars, DJs and other “personalities” of the 60s and 70s, certainly (when the absolute boundary of 16 as an age of consent was for a time not taken terribly seriously). This week, Rolf Harris has appeared in court, similarly charged (though with only a small fraction of the offences which could be laid at Saville’s door).

Very many people felt a huge sense of betrayal by Saville, who had been immensely popular up until his death in 2011. I was not actually one of them; I didn’t like his flagrant self-promotion, and his public manner grated on me. Quite a few people have told me since the allegations became known that they didn’t like him because they “found him creepy”; I didn’t tend to hear that much beforehand, and I’m not sure it isn’t reconstituted memory. I don’t know that I “found him creepy”, but I definitely didn’t like him, while having to acknowledge that he had done huge things for a number of charities. Of course, hindsight tells us that these were largely childrens’ charities, and part of the motive was probably to increase his ability to molest young people.

This is not the case with Rolf Harris, however. Him, I have always liked. He had a talent for writing somewhat humorous songs of the kind which (sometimes irritatingly) stick in your memory, he has an engaging personality and is an extremely talented artist; an excellent all round entertainer. I would so like the allegations to prove unfounded, but I fear they won’t (I’m particularly concerned about an apparent pornographic image from 2012; the impact of 40 year old matters with no further bad deeds can, perhaps, be somewhat discounted, but this is fresh). Seeing pictures of him going to court, I noted that I’d never seen him in public looking anything other than ebulliant. He did not look ebulliant, he looked hunted. Perhaps he deserves that, perhaps not – but something which I used to treasure has been damaged, perhaps broken.

Saville was a well known Catholic (and was honoured by a previous Pope), so the issue of weighing good deeds and bad is particularly apposite in his case. Of course, his position is between him and God now, but there has been a huge amount of public vilification and I’m confident that if you took a vote, the consensus would be that he is damned. I’m not sure the same would have been the case had it emerged, for instance, that he had been a prolific wife-beater or something of the sort. Sexual offences seem to loom larger in our weighing of good and evil than non-sexual offences, and sexual offences against children are, for many, the “unforgivable sin”.

This is very much the case within the prison system; sexual offenders generally are picked on, and frequently end up in “vulnerable prisoner” units or wings; convicted child molesters are virtually guaranteed physical violence with a considerable risk of fatal violence unless they are on a vulnerable prisoner unit from start, and even then paedophiles are not safe. Rapists regard them as untouchable too. There is nothing so reviled as a “nonce” in prison, where murderers and armed robbers are looked up to. I’m inclined to think that prison attitudes just write large those of society, but largely without the morality – except in the case of sexual offences.

The law more generally puts sexual offences in a different class. Aside those crimes carrying a life sentence and the sometime iniquitous IPP sentence, many of  those who serve their sentence and wait long enough are effectively absolved by the system under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. Sexual offenders, however, go on the Sexual Offences Register for life.

There is some logic behind this; sexual preferences are not readily (if ever) changed, and if these are directed to the young or are otherwise illegal, the law cannot, it seems, assume that sexual offenders are ever “safe”. I’m not convinced that larcenous preferences or violent tendencies are readily changed either, mind you; there is, however, an expectation that the impulses can be controlled.

Society, therefore, does not forgive sexual offences or consider that the guilt can be expiated by prison, time or good works. To listen to some Christians, neither does God. Some even consider that the mere fact of being homosexual is sufficient to damn you unconditionally (and as a sexual preference, that too cannot readily if ever be changed). Society more generally seems to think that crimes can be expiated, or that good deeds may outweigh crimes which have been “paid for” (there is one well known actor in the UK who has a past conviction for murder, which is now not much mentioned, for instance) – but not in the case of sexual offences. In Saville’s case, he did, I have to acknowledge, an immense amount of good raising charitable contributions, but it is now as nothing when he is remembered by most people.

And yet Christianity in general holds that any sin can be absolved, can be washed clean, can be saved from. There is nothing so horrendous (with the possible exception of “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit” whatever that may be), that it cannot end in redemption. Saville, as a practising Catholic, was presumably given absolution and is therefore presumably “saved”, though society would never have accepted him again had he still been alive. If Harris proves to be guilty, what about him? Indeed, if we take Matt. 5:28 seriously, what about most of the rest of us? I assume that the passage can be modernised into gender equality, and that a modern Jesus might have said “if you look on someone with lust in your heart, you are guilty of rape” rather than adultery (which has rather lost its sting these days).

Without wishing to deny justice to anyone wronged, I hope that Harris is found not guilty. But if he isn’t, I am going to need to wrestle with the balance of the combination in one person of a lot of good and a taboo failing, and to lament the fact that society will probably not feel able to see any balance there.

But is this not really the position of many, most or even all of us, our own faults perhaps not, quite, being taboo?

Lord, have mercy.

Yesterday morning, my Live Journal feed was adorned with “21 comics that capture the frustrations of depression”, which I strongly recommend (if you get here via facebook, you’ll already have seen me link to it). If you’re severely depressed at the moment, you’ll maybe get as far as “Well, that’s something like how it is” and shrug. Four months ago, I’d have shrugged. Today, however, I recognised what it was like wonderfully portrayed there and felt a huge sadness, and also joy at NOT FEELING LIKE THAT ANY MORE.

And my mind went back to sitting with a couple of counsellors from MIND back in 2008, telling them my life story (as they’d asked). One of them said, when I paused, “That’s so SAD”, and I noticed that tears were running down her cheeks. I couldn’t remotely understand how it was that she found it sad; I was just dispassionately telling them what they’d asked for. I can recall people saying after I shared much the same story at a twelve step meeting that I was “courageous” or “brave” to be so truthful and open. Not a bit of it. I just didn’t have an emotional dog in the fight any more; there was no point in not telling as nearly as I could exactly how it was.

I think we’re inclined to confuse depression with an emotional state – I certainly used to, and there’s a voice at the back of my head which still tells me that it is, with the corollary that “you can or at least should control your emotions”. As several of the cartoons point out, depression isn’t controllable like that. You can’t “think your way out of it”; it isn’t a matter of controlling the impulse to look on the black side of everything.

No, I think depression isn’t an emotion, it’s where emotions go to die.

Of course there wasn’t much about my emotions in my life story as told then, because by the time I was doing the telling, emotions were limited to shadows of despair, frustration and anger. Those were, I think, the last to go, and I suppose I sort of welcomed their demise, as those three were the ones which could well have meant that I actually did something to change the situation. Something terminal. That did come very close to happening a number of times, and a couple of those I shouldn’t have survived.

I can sit here today and feel incredibly grateful that, by some miracle, I did survive, as life is emphatically worth living – it isn’t a bed of roses, but it’s now either good or it’s stimulating, and sometimes both. However, that’s eclipsed by how grateful I feel that I’m NOT in the situation described by those cartoons any more. I have no idea why that happened. It could have been new medication (very unlikely after one dose of a slow buildup antidepressant), it could have been a placebo effect, it could have been six and a half years trying to stick to a twelve step programme, it could have been the answer to prayer. Or it could have been “just one of those things”. So I don’t know where the gratitude should be directed, but in order not to miss out, I thank God, my doctor, the pharmaceutical industry, Bill W and Dr. Bob and, of course, chance.

I suspect that my reaction to reading the comic strips this time was actually a normal one (as, probably, was the reaction of the two Mind counsellors hearing my story). So this is what “normal” feels like? Well, normal is pretty damn good. Normal I can work with. I did get two weeks of an unbelievable high following the depression going, and that was great, and I could probably live off the memory of it for quite a while (with Elbow singing “one day a year like this will see me right” in the back of my head) but I’m not sure my constitution is equipped for radical highs any more, if it ever was. It looks as if things have arrived at a sort of plateau, and taking the image of one of the cartoons, reasonably priced drinks and snacks do seem to be served (cue another cup of tea!). That, for the moment, is OK. Indeed, it’s more than OK, it is really just fine (and not in the sense of the acronym for f’d up, insecure, neurotic, emotional). Normal is a lot better than we give it credit for.

Last Thursday evening saw me at a study group, considering the topic of “Humility”. I wasn’t sure I could make much of a contribution there, once someone pointed out that humility was not to be confused with low self-esteem. My own self-esteem has been somewhere through the floor for so long that I’m likely still to be struggling to work out what actual humility rather than abject self-effacement looks like.

I’m not even sure what humility actually is. Phil. 2:3 says (NIV) “Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than yourselves”. Clearly it isn’t the crippling lack of self esteem which says EVERYONE is better than you – at everything, though “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven” might give some hope (assuming, for a moment, that depression allows hope!).

This passage doesn’t seem to be quite consistent with the second Great Commandment, either, “love your neighbour as yourself”; surely it is actually saying “love your neighbour better than yourself”. Perhaps “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend” would qualify.

It isn’t really practical to consider someone better than you at something in which you are skilled and they aren’t, and it’s also dishonest. On the other hand, it definitely isn’t “humble” to consider yourself always right even in an area in which you’re an expert.

So, perhaps what we see here is a form of “affirmative action”. The aiming point should, perhaps, be a balanced assessment of yourself and of others, never failing to recognise that everyone has some unique worth, everyone has abilities and above all everyone has experience which you don’t have; to value every human being for what they are, a wonderful, complex and interesting individual, but in order to get there the natural tendency to put self first has to be overcome.

It’s a lot easier seeing people this way if you’re in a twelve step programme, and are used to listening to other people’s “shares” of their own experience, strength and hope, and finding points which you can identify with. Frequently I’ve found that someone else’s life story can reveal to me something about my own, which I would probably never have known if they hadn’t held up to me a mirror of myself.

It’s also easier having reached a rock bottom of self esteem, which most long term twelve step members have done. If you have actually experienced “life at the bottom” and can keep its memory alive for yourself, it’s hard to feel superior.

I could actually pity those who haven’t got one of the many roots of twelve step programmes, and therefore don’t qualify to join one. I’m certainly grateful that I do qualify and do have such a programme!

 

At Tamed Cynic, Jason Michaeli is talking about Reza Aslan, Karl Barth and the Search for Spock,   and in particular about the Resurrection. He has a flair for titles!

Jason inveighs against historical Jesus scholars who arrive at one-dimensional pictures of Jesus, and I’ve criticised this previously. He then goes on to argue against modernism as a mindset and to talk of resurrection.

I’m shortly to start with a new Alpha course, and there’s a strong chance that I’ll again be asked “Chris, do you believe in the resurrection?” This time, it would be nice to come up with a reasonably clear answer, even if it does turn out rather long.

I think the first thing to say is that I have to agree that something radical happened to at least some of Jesus’ followers, and happened very shortly after the crucifixion. The earliest document we have is Paul, writing in 1 Cor. 15. This dates from 20-25 years after the crucifixion, but refers to Paul’s vision and him receiving the tradition about Jesus’ death and resurrection earlier; scholar tend to place this hearing of the tradition between 4 and 7 years after the actual date. Evidence from Suetonius is that the cult of Christ had spread to Rome by about 49 (19 years after the crucifixion) and was causing disturbance in the Jewish population there.

So, this was a very early understanding indeed.

Jason is right to focus on the sheer unlikelihood that Jesus’ followers would, very shortly after his death, be saying that he had been resurrected and be worshipping him as God unless there was some very strong basis for this. Even taking a very sceptical view of the evidence of the Gospels, I think we have to accept the accounts of a set of scared disciples scattering, disspirited after the crucifixion (and to some extent earlier, after Jesus’ arrest) as being an “admission against interest”, quite apart from being what happened after the failures of other more or less contemporary Jewish popular leaders who were for a time hailed as “Messiah”. The transition from that attitude to going out and boldly proclaiming Jesus’ resurrection and other elements of his message demands a really major convicting event. But what was it?

It is incredibly difficult to advance a physical resurrection in a modern, largely scientific-rationalist society. Jason may criticise scholars for being wedded to a modernistic world view, but that is the understanding of the world in which we live; it is impossible to forget it, and it works to explain and predict better than does any previous world-view. So much so, for instance, that one commentator has suggested that despite the colossal unlikelihood of Jesus’ body being removed from the tomb by space aliens, that is still more likely than a physical resurrection.

In the interests of clarity, though I might spend some time agonising over the choice, given a decision between little green men and a physical resurrection, I think I might thinly come down against a “beam me up, Scotty” answer. But only by a hair. On a good day, with the wind behind me…

The fact that Jews and Gentiles of that period experienced reality as, in part, magical and as driven by supernatural forces does not mean that that was the reality. Are we to argue that the magical view of reality should be reinstated, despite abundant demonstrations that apparently supernatural events are explicable either by natural mechanisms or by trickery? In order to argue that the way people of the time saw reality did in fact dictate the nature of that reality, you would have to conclude that a belief in magic makes magic work, and there is copious evidence that in no case does this actually operate in the world of today. There is, of course, no good reason to believe that there has been a shift in the nature of reality between 30 CE and 2013 CE such that supernatural forces worked then but do not work now (and in fact it would not date to 30 CE but to later, if we consider the reports of Peter raising Tabitha and Paul raising Eutychus to be correct). The dispensationalists may say that, but the only rationale I can see for them doing so is to explain why miracles happened then, but don’t appear to happen now. Far simpler to decide there has been no change, and look for another explanation.

The biblical reports of supernatural miracles may, it must be said, have actually been miracles (a negative cannot be proved and a miracle is by definition exceptionally unlikely), but there are feasible explanations for how the perceptions which led to most of them may have arisen within a scientific-rationalist word-view, and so those are preferred; assuming that they were in fact rationally explainable by those mechanisms, the people of the time would still have interpreted them as supernatural events. There is therefore no good justification for concluding that the witnesses were correct in ascribing the category of “miracle” to them.

There is equally, of course, every justification for concluding that the witnesses’ understandings of the events affected the way they then thought and acted. Had they thought that this was an “existential experience”, would they have acted as they did? Well, not if that expression is to be interpreted as dismissively as Jason seems to think it should be, but I think he horribly underestimates the impact of peak spiritual experience. Having had a number of peak spiritual experiences myself, I can attest that they can carry huge conviction even if the person experiencing them is intellectually completely confident that nothing supernatural is in fact happening, and that it is (probably) an event restricted to the neurological processes of the individual; how much more convincing would it be if they did not have those rationalist concerns. We are told, for instance, that Paul (who definitely did not see a corporeal appearance according to him) was transformed by it, and there is no good reason to doubt that. Indeed, Paul goes to some trouble in 1 Cor. 15 to say that the resurrection body is not a corporeal body (shortly after the passage which many rely on that “if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain”).

Among biblical miracles, however, the resurrection of Jesus is the big one. Any of the others can be rationally explained without significant damage to the course of events which we can reconstruct using historical method apart from this one (even the parting of the Red Sea).

Something happened.

I would agree with Jason that the option of the disciples making up the stories is farfetched. Not only were they dispirited, but it is impossible to see how they could have lied sufficiently convincingly to persuade substantial numbers (even in a much more credulous age) and it strains credulity that they would have seized on resurrection as the claim.

However, I disagree with Jason in saying: “Not only did they not have a belief structure in place to posit something like one man’s (a failed Messiah no less) resurrection from the dead, that they would in their lifetimes start to worship this Jesus as God (with sophisticated, high theology) violates the most basic foundation of their faith: the first commandment.” Firstly, if there is any truth at all in the accounts of Lazarus, the Widow’s son and Jairus, the disciples already knew (or thought they knew) that resurrection was possible.

Secondly, there was no need to worship as God someone who was resurrected (there is no trace that this happened in the case of Lazarus, for instance), and there is strong evidence in the synoptic gospel accounts that in fact Jesus was not worshipped as God universally among the earliest followers. This did not, therefore, flow directly from the understood “fact” of resurrection, but from other causes.

Thirdly, this did not contravene the first commandment. It did, however, contravene the shema “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one”, which was by this time standard to Judaism. It is therefore necessary to explain how it was that a significant number of Jesus’ followers did indeed start worshipping Jesus as God, even though this does not flow necessarily from resurrection or non-resurrection. I think myself that this is adequately explained by considering the intertestamental literature in which the vision of two thrones in Daniel 7 was developed and which had given rise to a current of understanding that the messiah (son of man) would be enthroned beside God the Father. Once you identified Jesus as messiah, the possibility of at least quasi-divinity was established. [Note – since writing this, Daniel Kirk has published “A Man Attested by God”, which is a scholarly demonstration that the synoptic gospels’ view of Jesus was as an exalted human being.]

In attempting to assess what actually happened, I look at the accounts and, in fact, find them apparently contradictory as to what form this resurrection actually took. There is the empty tomb, a meeting during which the risen Jesus appeared to eat and, of course, the celebrated episode with Thomas touching Jesus’ wounds. All of these would seem to indicate a physical resuscitation. Then again, on a number of occasions people who knew him well failed to recognise him (Mary Magdalene in the garden in the Fourth Gospel) even after significant periods talking to him (for instance on the Emmaus road), he seems to have appeared to different people in widely separated places at more or less the same time, and (as in the Thomas episode) he seems to have been able to materialise and dematerialise at will. None of these are consistent with a physical resuscitation. The appearances to Mary and on the Emmaus road, indeed, seem to me to be instances of seeing Jesus in another person, which leads me to think of Paul’s description of the Church as the “body of Christ” and repeated use of “Christ in us” or “us in Christ”, not to mention what happens if you take a rather literal view of Matthew 25:31-46, which I have been known to, not least in musing on crucifixion (what if we are actually crucifying Christ again every time we do or allow some injury to another human being?).

So, if you are to attempt to harmonise the accounts through a resurrection, it has to be something beyond a resuscitation of a corpse or seeming corpse. The mortal remains would have had to be able to dematerialise and rematerialise or to teleport in order to appear suddenly in the upper room and to appear within a short period in Jerusalem and Galilee, as an attempted harmonisation would have us believe. Indeed, Paul is confident that the appearances he reports in 1 Cor. 15:3-8 are of the same nature, and in 1 Cor. 15:35-57 makes a strong statement that they are not corporeal. There is a reasonably in depth analysis of the appearances and argument in support of non-corporeal appearances as After Death Communications (ADCs) by Ken Vincent entitled “Resurrection Appearances of Jesus as After-Death Communication”, which I think demonstrates non-corporeality as the “best fit” for the evidence.

I can add to that my own anecdotal evidence. I have in fact on two occasions myself experienced a tangible apparition (without any drugs or other factors which might produce hallucination), one of them being of Jesus. (Incidentally, this is why I advise against Ignatian visualisatory prayer unless a spiritual director is available – the impact of such an occurrence is very strong). I have also been present when a group of people “saw” something which I knew not to be there (not Jesus!). I didn’t see it myself, not being particularly vulnerable to deindividuation, and would ascribe the event largely to deindividuation and contagious euphoria. I do not therefore have difficulty in crediting that all the reports of post-resurrection appearances could have been non-corporeal.

That still leaves me with a problem, however, and that is the empty tomb. It is correct to say that Paul does not mention an empty tomb, and he is the earliest witness; neither do the early kerygmas in Acts. I have no real trouble in considering that later accounts may have embellished in order to “concretise” the events (after all, there was a considerable slice of First Century Judaism which did not accept any body/spirit dualism and for whom the only resurrection would have had to be physical). John Dominic Crossan is firmly of the opinion that the body of a crucified man would not have been released to relatives or friends for burial, but would have been cast out with the rubbish, possibly in the valley of Ge Hinnom (i.e. Gehenna) which was the city rubbish dump and that that was what most probably happened; the stories of the tomb generally being a later decoration.

But what was it which sparked the first visions of the resurrected Christ? Could it have been anything other than the shock of a tomb being empty where it was expected to be occupied? Did Joseph of Arimathea and, perhaps, Nicodemus actually persuade the Romans to abandon normal practice and release the body to them? Without the known absence of a body, I would have expected any post-death appearances to be visions of Jesus enthroned beside the Father. Did they prepare a tomb and then fail to obtain permission and place the body in it? Was it removed by some other party?

We cannot, I think, do more than speculate. On balance, I think there has to have been an empty tomb, but that this does not explain the post-resurrection appearances, which were almost certainly not appearances of the reanimated, revivified corpse of Jesus (pace Thomas). However, I think this will have been sufficient to prompt experiences of the risen Christ, and those experiences could readily have had sufficient force to prompt the disciples to break free of their despondency, to have major transformative experiences and go on to spread the good news of Jesus throughout the then known world. We can, in any event, be confident that that is what happened to the disciples, and that is what they did.

Whatever the actual mechanics, that is enough miracle for me.

I am, in any event, not unduly worried about the form the resurrection actually took, as I have experienced Jesus (non-physically) myself as a living person.

I was maybe a little taken aback to see the congregation at St. Michael le Belfrey invited yesterday afternoon to form groups and do their own intercessionary prayers. Once we had our little huddle of four, I commented that we wouldn’t get beyond Syria and the Middle East – and we didn’t.

One thing we did not pray for, at least not vocalised, was for the various Muslim leaders involved. I think we should have. We did pray for the people of the area, for the Christian churches in Syria and Egypt and, finally, for western leaders to have wisdom (and I’ll come back to that). But we didn’t pray for the people whose decisions will have far more actual effect on how things proceed in the desperate situation in Syria and the very difficult one in Egypt; President Assad and his government and army leaders, ex-President Morsi and the Egyptian army and the Muslim Brotherhood there.

So, I’ll express openly what I didn’t have time to express openly yesterday; may all of them remember that they very regularly pray “in the name of Allah, the merciful, the compassionate” and take it to heart; may mercy and compassion overflow in their hearts and those of the people generally.

I am having a difficult time with the news reporting of these situations. My wife, indeed, has mainly turned away from news, because she doesn’t want to know any more. We see pictures and hear reports of appalling things happening on a daily basis, and the need to do something, anything, in order to stop the beating our compassion is taking is very strong. Obama clearly feels it; Cameron and Clegg seem to have as well – but amazingly parliament has listened to the voice of the people and has decided for the UK not to take any military action.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Well, I would like to think the west could change something and would have the courage to do that. Is this a matter of courage? Is Obama being courageous, and the UK parliament being cowardly? Well, probably yes; to a great extent I think the parliamentary vote was because we don’t want to see much money spent and British lives lost in another foray into the Middle East. But that may also be the wise thing to do, and after all, we elect our politicians in a representative democracy to be wise on our behalf. I feel the pull of the Myth of Redemptive Violence here, very strongly; the situation is intolerable, something must be done, someone has used violence, let’s use more violence against them and “put things right”; I’m sure the parliamentarians who voted feel that too. Perhaps, therefore, the really courageous thing to do is to restrain ourselves?

What I do see is that, as in Iraq, the long term results of military intervention cannot be sensibly mapped out. Syria is not a situation in which there is a “right” and a “wrong” side; there are not two, but at least five distinct interest groups involved (probably significantly more), and the major force opposing Assad is linked with al Quaeda, which should at least give us pause in doing anything which may be seen to support them. Indeed, we should not do anything military unless we have a clear plan for the peace afterwards (as we did not have in Iraq). The only way I can see in which the multiple interests in Syria can coexist peacefully is in a fudged compromise (which is what the Assad regime really rested on until recently), and the only way to get that is for the parties to negotiate between them. There is certainly no clear path to a partition there; the various groups are far too closely intermingled.

I also see no clarity as to who is “at fault” and who is “innocent”. Both sides have been guilty of killing civilians fairly indiscriminately as well as on a narrow sectarian basis in the past; it is by no means clear to me that the recent sarin attack was by government forces (and there is every reason to believe that they would not want to cross that line, but that the rebels would want that line to be crossed as long as it was blamed on the Assad regime). Again, there is no “right” and no “wrong” side.

Neglecting for a moment moral considerations, including such things as public and world opinion, the solution might be to say to the two sides “You will come to the negotiating table NOW and make peace, otherwise we will attack both sides indiscriminately”; of course, if the threat is made, we must be prepared to carry it out, and there seems a huge danger that that might happen. But public and world opinion would never condone such an attitude, and probably neither would the consciences of our leaders.

No, if there is anything the West can do, with its massive supply of manpower and weapons, it would be the non-violent expedient; move in soldiers tasked to do no more than defend themselves and place them between the warring factions, then call for peace talks. In other words, an UN peacekeeping mission. That would require courage (not least from the PBI – “poor bl**dy infantry – on the ground), and it would not directly foster the myth of redemptive violence. I am not sure whether this should be done either; it might still not be successful in bringing the parties to negotiation, and could end up with the forces on the ground being the target of all sides. However, it is, I think, the only courageous and proactive thing which could usefully be tried, diplomacy having so far signally failed.

Do we need the courage to change this, as we can, or do we need the serenity to accept the situation and do nothing? I don’t know, I am praying for wisdom. But I am praying more for the leaders on the ground to find their mercy and their compassion, and a very large amount of courage to change.