Eyre Lines

Alpha finished, officially, on Wednesday evening, and it remains to work out what I’ve learned from this. What I’ve actually GOT out of it is a whole set of new friends who share the same geekish interest as me (namely religion, spirituality, biblical history, studying scripture and all the stuff which surrounds that) and who are equally excited by exchanging ideas; they’re missional and full of fire, and that’s exactly what I was looking for. It may also have contributed (and probably did) to the abrupt ending of my marathon and severe depression 13 days ago.

It probably actually did that through the expected channel, which is that eventually the love and fellowship of the helpers combines with other factors to produce a moment of spiritual uplift and movement within the guests. Not, for me, when it’s expected, which is on the Spirit weekend (last weekend) as by the time I got to that I’d already been flying for a week. I went on two Alphas before this recognising that Alpha could sometimes do this, and hoping for a boost to my own conscious contact with God as a result (I was already well on the downward slope into depression when I went to the first, and hoped for a lifeline).

But that isn’t why I went this time; I went to help, and judging by the amount of extra input various people are wanting from me at the moment, I seem to have “done exactly what it said on the tin” and a bit more besides (looking back at my “Alpha, Beta test” post), and so did it. Unfortunately, for me this was despite the content for the most part rather than because of it.

I’ve resurrected this comment from someone attending a previous Alpha I went on; I didn’t get anything quite this pointed this time, but this sums a lot of it up:-

“Their whole attitude was ‘Why don’t you believe, you poor sick deluded person’ and ‘If you don’t believe by the end of this you’re going to hell and we can’t help you. This is your last chance’ “. She said she felt welcomed and well-fed but terminally embarrassed.

Other comments I’ve got from Alpha attenders (and I’m not going to say which comes from which Alpha course; some of these are from people attending courses in other towns and cities):-

“They all seem ‘holier than thou’ and ‘we’ve got it, you haven’t’. They’re all in on this joke, and I can’t seem to get it. Smug bastards. You’re a smug bastard too!”

“I’ve been a Christian for 40 years. I know all this stuff, and it doesn’t work for me any more – I want new answers, not the old stuff. And they say they’re Christians but used to be like me. So I’m not a Christian? I’m out of here!”

“They’re praying for me. That’s intrusive”.

“I hate the music. They’re trying to get me to join in and sing things I don’t believe in. Oh, it’s heartfelt and some of it’s actually not bad, but I feel excluded”

“I believe there’s a God, or at least something huge and difficult to understand, which I want to get closer to, and I believe that Jesus was a great inspirational leader and I try to follow what he told us to do. But they’re telling me I can’t believe that, I have to believe he was God squeezed into a human package or that he was a madman or a liar. And I can’t do that.”

“The first four talks were a load of complete rubbish. Most of their facts were wrong and I could drive a lorry through the holes in their reasoning. I didn’t go to any more. They’re obviously basing the whole thing on lies”

Of the set, the first and the last two are possibly the most damning for Alpha as it stands.

I don’t think this can be solved by praying harder for the Holy Spirit to come and transform people; this is good, indeed this should always happen, but if by that time someone is so thoroughly alienated by the process, they are far less likely to be able to receive the Spirit even if it comes knocking. Most people’s first experience is actually a small, fairly fragile thing and needs nurturing gently before it can burst into flame; mine was nothing remotely like small or fragile, but the vast majority of people I’ve shared experience with (and there have been a lot) do not have such an experience at any time during their lives.

Jesus did not allow his sheep to be snatched from the Father’s hand (Joh. 10:27-29); we might at least aspire to the same.

My first and most urgent suggestion is that we ditch Penal Substitutionary Atonement and it’s nice, simple, “convict of sin, believe Jesus was God, believe he died for our sins, pray to follow him, receive the Spirit, bang, it’s done” formula. Unfortunately, that wrecks the whole thesis of Alpha and the trajectory of the talks. What we want is acknowledgement of God, in some conception which works for people at the moment, following Jesus, in some conception which works for people at the moment and a radical act of reorientation toward God-through-Jesus, accompanied by a personal experience of God-through-Jesus. Me, I’m not even bothered if it’s God-through-Jesus, God-through-the-Holy-Spirit or just “wow, dad, you’re really there/here!”. I suggest that if you have that, you have at least a beginning Christian and we can present a few more developed theologies later for inspection.

In the course of this, we need to ditch Lewis’ trilemma. It turns off too many people who might otherwise stick there to the end – I’ve even heard people say that as Jesus was plainly not God, because that’s impossible, the message they got was that the man they’d been following was obviously a madman, therefore all the people saying these things were madmen. And “I’m out of here” followed… Incarnation is a very subtle and advanced piece of theology, and in my eyes entirely unsuitable for presentation to a beginner. After all, the early church spent the first three hundred years or more arguing about how this could be the case and having schisms, anathmatisations, riots and even wars about the idea. Let’s avoid having any of these within the Alpha rooms, no?

Alternative Alpha

Let’s avoid claiming that the gospels are eyewitness accounts. Some of us may think so, but there’s such strong modern biblical scholarship to indicate a large redactive, non-eyewitness content and a date later than most of the apostles had already died for even the earliest written form that we have any access to that we are going to get bogged down in another long and subtle argument.

Let’s not use leaps of inference from the early documents at all, in fact. What we can demonstrate clearly enough to satisfy all but the most sceptical modern scholarship is that Jesus lived, taught, inspired and gained a respectable following, died by crucifixion at the hands of the Roman governor Pontius Pilate and that within 10-30 years had a following large enough to be thought by the Romans to be a source of civil unrest as far afield as Rome itself. In the process we can set up the historical context of 1st century Palestine with some both politically and in terms of religion. We can end by pointing out that this apparently insignificant Galilean itinerant preacher produced a movement which is alive and well 2000 years later and is worldwide. (talk 1)

We can then look at the evidence and show what his followers thought about Jesus, and for this we can use Paul and the gospel writers without even having to look at historical-critical scholarship. We can show why they found him inspirational; maybe then we can start looking at some pictures they had of what the reason for the crucifixion actually was (and, no, we don’t mention PSA even then; it took over 1000 years to develop even something vaguely like that atonement theory and another 300 to articulate it in something like modern form). I think it would be good to admit that there were actually several different kerygmas used in the gospels and in Paul, in fact. (talks 2&3)

We can then look at what Jesus actually taught, using historical-critical scholarship to extract the undisputed teachings, i.e. those which liberal and conservative alike ascribe to Jesus. My very strong suggestion is that we hang this round the Kingdom statements. (talk 4)

Then we can look at the mystical/spiritual elements in Paul, John and Acts (and I’d like us to link back to the Kingdom statements here, which are to me clearly mystical). We will end up with the Spirit and the formulae used (no, not just the PSA one!). This is probably a good time for several personal testimonies, making sure they are “this is my experience” rather than “this is what you must believe”. Variation would be good here. (talks 5,6&7)

Then we can look at how churches can be organised, introducing small-group churches, home churches, internet communities and lay networks as alternatives to the institutional church, presenting a lot of possibilities for getting involved. This should definitely point out social programmes which can be included as part of a developing spirituality (talk 8)

Finally, we can get together and decide what groups want to do next, individually and collectively. This could be an add-on to talk 8, or be talk 9.

Adjusted Alpha

I don’t think this is as promising a possibility, but it would also be possible to take the existing material, improve the way we react to people, making sure all helpers are well trained not to do any of the things mentioned above which alienate people and to include in at least the early talks two viewpoints, one of which should be a stripped down “liberal” one.

It would probably then be best to split each course into two streams, giving guests the option of going “conservative” or “liberal/radical/progressive”. Maybe these could even be on split nights, so someone could actually attend both.

They might well come together again at some point, probably the Spirit weekend.

I propose this rather cautiously, as I think I know who is going to be asked to do the liberal/radical/progressive side if this course is followed.

Living the Questions

It would be worth exploring Living the Questions as a Progressive Christian alternative to Alpha which, from what I’ve seen, does not have many of the drawbacks I’ve identified above. However, I know too little about it at the moment to be able to assess whether it would be a viable alternative, an add-on or a follow-up (it would certainly do the last of those).

Journey

Journey is a Radical Christian programme of spiritual development originated by Rev. Dr. John Vincent. I have not actually been through a Journey experience (albeit I have been on a journey of my own for 45 years now) but have talked at length with John Vincent about it and read the literature, and I think it has great promise as a follow-up to Alpha. However, I am sceptical that it could be an alternative.

———————-

The question is always “What do we do next”, and we’re going to be meeting elsewhere on Wednesday evenings for a bit to talk more informally; out of this I hope something will arise. What I’d like to see from a future Alpha is the ability to move more or less straight on to a Living the Questions or a Journey.

 

 

I haven’t blogged about the last few sessions, as the information is still sinking in. However, session 6 was considered as covered in the week 5 Bible Study talk, sessions 7,8 & 9 were shoehorned into an intense 4 hour period on Saturday last. As I was flying high enough on the Spirit (or a large dose of GF, if you’ve read “About”) to be a danger to civil aviation before I even walked into session 7, anything detailed will need more time, if indeed I am able to achieve rational analysis. My notes however indicate that in the discussion of Pentecost, the phenomenon of deindividuation needs to be considered as a contributory factor, as it does indeed in the one to one prayer session after session 9 and that sundry promises of the Spirit coming to every Christian do not in my experience, if true, seem to produce results which are actually sensible to a sizeable number, including lifelong and very devout Christians. I am not convinced that the statement “every Christian has the Spirit but not every Christian is filled with the Spirit” really answers this one adequately.

Apart from that, viewed as a sometimes figurative description of spiritual experience of this type rather than as a description of supernatural realities, these three talks seemed to me unexceptionable; they were very ably presented by a husband and wife “tag team” which actually made the presentation much more digestible.

I do not think that an afternoon is sufficient for these three talks. If a day is not achievable, could not an afternoon stretching into the evening have been considered?

As of tonight, we have had sessions 11 and 13 in one rather over-long talk, which as sessions 12 and 14 are to be “missed”, brings the course to a close. I have other comments, which are likely to be subsumed into a general overview and critique later, but did receive in answer to “Do you think that incompetent evangelism can be more damaging than none” or words to that effect, “Yes” with some further explanation.

I then proposed what I really think should be standard, namely that you should share how you came to believe something rather than trying to argue people into believing it. Ideally, you should also say what believing in it has done for you in the past and does for you today. That, I mentioned, tends to be difficult for people to take offence at, which is a major danger with the schoolmaster-like approach, and you can’t be as “in your face” in the process, which is always a plus for getting heard rather than ignored or attacked.

The discussion afterward largely went into what we had learned and where we intended to go. And at this point, I intend to go to bed…

The snag turned out to be, when I got there, that this wasn’t actually talk 6 “How does God guide us” which I’d prepared for, but talk 10, “How can I resist evil”.

After a chat with the guest speaker beforehand (remember, I’m trying to be a constructive pain in the neck here!), he got started. And that gave me problems, because I didn’t want to tear the thing to shreds immediately.

The talk started off by following the standard line of saying “the Devil” is referenced in the Hebrew Scriptures. And he’s not. There is the serpent in Genesis, there’s the morning star/lucifer in Isaiah and there are a few references to “Satan”. The Hebrew “ha-Satan” (meaning “the accuser” or sometimes “the adversary”) has pretty much the function described in Job; he’s an agent of God, there to act as something like counsel for the prosecution, to test faith by temptation. According to Judaism, he’s absolutely nothing like a personalised force of evil and, frankly, where there doesn’t seem to be any need to look at it too closely, I’m very happy to let Judaism claim prior copyright in the Hebrew Scriptures and let Jewish scholars do the interpretation. Call it intellectual laziness or “standing on the shoulders of giants” as you like. Also according to Judaism, the serpent is ha-Satan, as he is performing a somewhat similar function, so not “the Devil”. haSatan is regarded as real, but as a servant of God (hence permission being asked and given in Job).

Lucifer, in Isaiah, is a translation of the Hebrew words which indicate “morning star”, and this passage specifically refers to a king of Babylon. So, also not the Devil. (From this point, if I wasn to indicate the Jewish conception, I will use “haSatan”, otherwise if I use Satan it means the Intertestamental/Christian conception.

Yes, the New Testament concept is more like our current ideas of “The Devil”, and it doesn’t derive from the Hebrew “ha-Satan”, it derives from the intertestamental literature, Hebrew writings from between the Hebrew Scriptures and the time of the new Testament, notably the Book of Wisdom and the Second Book of Enoch. Wisdom is part of the apocrypha, i.e. it appears in the Catholic Bible but not in Protestant Bibles; it was part of the Septuagint (i.e. the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures) but is not part of the TaNaKh (the Judaic Hebrew Scriptures). Enoch is usually regarded as pseudepigrapha (generally a polite term for “fake”) but is accepted as canonical by the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Churches. Both of these are quoted in the New Testament.

There is an immediate problem here for those who are not Catholic or from the two small Orthodox churches mentioned; that is that the concepts which become quoted in the New Testament are themselves not canonical; the church fathers, in other words, thought that they were unreliable.

There is a much bigger problem, though, and that is that one of the probable reasons they are not canonical in most of Christianity or in Judaism is that they are considered to do two things, one being to introduce a tendency to gnosticism, the other being to be heavily tainted by Zoroastrian thinking. Zoroastrian is a dualist religion with equal opposing good and evil Gods (Ahura Mazda and Ahriman or Angra Mainyu). The Zoroastrian concept of Ahriman is quite similar to the concept of the Devil in the New Testament, and I think transmission of this idea is a certainty.

Judaism is an ardently monotheistic religion, and in theory so is Christianity (arguments about the Trinity set on one side here). Zoroastrianism is not.

Some time ago, I wrote “If the Devil existed, it would be necessary to disbelieve in him”. The theological reason for this is that I am a panentheist, and in this conception there is just no room in metaphysics for a second force; I could point out that if we believe in omnipresence (and panentheism is to a great extent an extreme and literal assertion of omniscience) then, if there were an “evil god”, then God would permeate him as well. Also, the presence of an opposing force of real power limits the conventional belief in God’s omnipotence and, in order to function with any actual power at all, his omniscience. God stops being almighty, and whatever you say about God having the final victory, this has to be the case. In any event, I cannot read Isaiah 45:7 “I form the light and create darkness: I make peace and create evil: I the Lord do all of these things” (KJV) and not consider that there is direct biblical authority for there not being any creator whether of good or evil than God. Yes, you will find the word “ra-ah” in Hebrew translated by all sorts of words other than “evil” in other, later, translations, for instance “woe” in the RSV, but it is impossible to get away from a very strong connotation of evil and still preserve the meaning of the original.

And as has happened earlier in the course, they have to quote C.S. Lewis. Lewis was an amateur theologian only, his academic background lay elsewhere and he was best known as a novelist and poet. How it is that Lewis has become the theologian of choice for Alpha beats me, because I have never encountered a C.S. Lewis quote used in this kind of situation which is not theologically unsound and/or logically false. In this case, Lewis claims there are two mistakes to make, disbelief and unhealthy interest. I agree with him on the second, but not, as you can see above, the first. I’ll deal with this more later.

In the questions at the end of the main discussion, what I then made was the point that a “real Satan” was untrue to the Jewish monotheist tradition from start, and introduced the real risk of a slide into complete dualism. However, I said I agree that if you the New Testament references metaphorically and referring to inner forces, then I find little to argue with. There was quite a bit of agreement.

At the discussion later, reference was made to Paul’s use of the term “God of this age”, also rendered “God of this world”, but I didn’t have an opportunity to address it. This is even more dangerous terminology as it can easily be read to indicate actual dualism, and also to support a gnostic concept of the material world being incurably bad, annd the only good to be reached post-mortem. It’s beyond the scope of what I’m writing here to say more than that gnosticism was thoroughly disliked by the early Church Fathers (this is Irenaeus’ position) and led to the non-inclusion in the canon of the New Testament of the Gnostic Gospels. (There is one of those, the Gospel of Thomas, which I regret not being included, on the grounds that firstly it’s the only pure “sayings” gospel I’ve read, secondly that it contains the one scripture which most persuaded me that Jesus was to be followed, “I am the light that shines over all things. I am everything. From me all came forth, and to me all return. Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift a stone, and you will find me there.” (Tho. 77) and thirdly that if it’s gnostic at all, it’s less gnostic than John, on which very much Christian doctrine is based).

I didn’t mention, but will note here that when taken metaphorically, the New Testament references to Satan or cognates encourage a form of exteriorisation of our own baser urges. There can be psychological benefits to this (which I why I agree the metaphorical interpretation is worthwhile) but there are also some significant psychological dangers, particularly in persons with mental illnesses or psychological disorders; I would recommend that this kind of concept is not used by anyone with such a mental health background without the utmost of care.

Firstly, it is an unfortunate fact that the more you stress the reality of something “bad” and stress it’s power, the more attractive you tend to make it. If it’s powerless and/or imaginary, it isn’t attractive. Put very briefly, I can speak from personal experience, as though by around age 9 I was atheistic as far as God was concerned, all things occult fascinated me, and even after I lost any serious interest in those as a possible way of getting power, I remained interested on an academic level until my 20’s. The detail of this must wait for another day, but suffice it to say that I have personal experience of some aspects and have past or current friends who actually practice in various areas.

It is the case that we now live in a scientific-rationalist society, and science has ostensibly left no room for there to be any supernatural element in the church. No miracles, no prophecy, no healing; all are scientifically impossible. (Yes, there are a few studies indicating there may be some minuscule benefit to prayer, but they’re much attacked). This has had, and still gets, a big press, and no, I don’t think that that’s because atheists, science or the press are agents of Satan; it’s because the church has historically got itself an extremely bad name (and parts of it continue to) and it’s therefore a large and popular target. On the other hand, although science has been equally used to debunk every supposed supernatural event from the wide field of the occult, that isn’t so unpopular, and it has the cachet of being “a bit naughty”, and after all, everyone looks at their horoscope in the papers, don’t they?

I’m not saying that guarantees a slide into eventual Satanism (and I remind you that Satanism is firmly based on Paul’s “God of this world” statement), but if someone believes in any kind of “magic”, other kinds become easier to look for.

This Wikipedia article on magic isn’t too inadequate or unbalanced. Neither is this on Wicca or this on Freemasonry. Aside from pointing out that Wicca is a religion rather than specifically an occult practice and that due to Christianity’s past history, there is a saying in Wicca “never more the burning times”, these are mostly harmless, and scare articles in some Christian sources which I’ve actually investigated have always proved to have some non-supernatural explanation but some deplorable human behaviour. Again, that’s a big subject and one I may come back to.

However, some occult practices and those who use and pursue them are extremely capable of messing with people’s heads, so I urge caution. Mind you, that can be said of some branches of Christianity and even, dare I say it, Alpha (which one atheist friend of mine is convinced is a form of brainwashing). Ho hum

As it happened, a lot of the discussion on Wednesday revolved round a feature of “How should I read the Bible” which I hadn’t considered. There were two people in our discussion group who had serious difficulty with reading, one who thinks more in pictures than words, and one who goes beyond that – she didn’t manage to read a whole book until she was 32, and spoke of needing a whole range of sensory input to grasp something.

I don’t have difficulty reading text. I could read before I went to school at 5, courtesy of demanding of my mother to learn about this fascinating stuff and showing that I could recognise some simple words before anyone had thought to teach me letters (my mother still likes to talk of her shock when, from a pram, I pointed at a sign and said “dat says ‘Esso’ “). The local primary school headmaster was consulted, and said I was obviously ready and suggested a set of books which my mother then used to teach me. By the time I was 11, I was reading not only my own three library books a week, but also the additional six my parents borrowed, whatever they were. I used to read after going to bed, usually by getting on the other side of the bedroom curtains and using the light from a nearby street light, once my parents wised up and made sure I couldn’t steal a torch so as to read under the bedcovers. I used to have nearly photographic memory for text (nothing like the case any more). I am probably addicted to reading; if there is nothing else to read at the breakfast table, I will read and reread the backs of cereal packets.

If you don’t have a problem yourself, you tend not to think that others may have it. Mea culpa! However, as in what follows, although I am myself primarily a text-based learner and student, there are other ways of study which I find helpful, and I can therefore learn from other’s experience and hope to give something from my own which may help them.

There was discussion around making up a set of images to accompany favorite texts (a scrapbook of these was shown) and using Childrens’ or other illustrated Bibles, and audio books.

However, this led to me having (and sharing with her) an insight from my own experience. If I’m studying a passage seriously, and particularly if I’m using “lectio divina”, I make a point of reading it aloud at least once, with feeling, which gives you both audio and a feeling of “ownership”. I’ve acted in quite a few scripturally based amateur drama productions, which gives you another dimension or two (expression and movement). On one occasion, however, in auditions for a part in the York Mystery Plays a few years ago, we were asked to improvise around a scene (actually, the crucifixion, as it was the Butchers’ play). Having to think ones self into the character of one of the participants as well as all the rest gave an entirely new slant for all of us. I hope this will prove to have been some help.

I suppose that ends up as a sort of externalised version of Ignatian Visualisatory prayer, combined with a kind of Bible Study group. That is, of course, as well as being a form of prayer, a seriously productive way of studying the Bible!

Groups are another wonderfully productive way of reading and studying the Bible for me. I tend to be fizzing with more ideas than I could express in the time provided after one – and that brings me to an aside. My memory used to be very good, and I didn’t tend to note down thoughts and intuitions as they came to me; now it isn’t nearly so good, but I’ve not developed the good habit of keeping a notebook in which to write these down as they come to me. Not only does that make sure I won’t forget them, or forget that I’ve got that memory somewhere if I looked for it (a slightly different thing) but it also reinforces the thought. When studying seriously, writing things down helps me a lot. So I should do more of it, and maybe others will find this useful as well.

Why am I fizzing with ideas? Well, other people have different thoughts and intuitions from my own, however deeply I may be studying by myself. If I’m talking about scripture or religion more generally, I tend to get more out of it talking with people who don’t think like I do. This is in one way easy, because apart from online, I’ve never come across a community of people who do think like I do. In another way, though, it’s difficult, because the very fact that I don’t think the same way as those study groups which have historically been available to me means either that I can’t share many of the thoughts or intuitions I am actually getting or that I run the risk that someone is going to have part of their thinking radically challenged.

This has in the past resulted in me being asked to leave a Bible study group, and on occasion to accusations that I’m guided by evil spirits, am a mouthpiece of Satan or even that I’m the Antichrist (a promotion I really don’t deserve). While I don’t much like this (English understatement here), more seriously it’s led in the past on a number of occasions to someone losing their faith, and I absolutely don’t want to do that, however much I may think that “an unexamined faith is not worth having” (James Luther Adams) and that ultimately faith, as opposed to belief, cannot be shaken by a challenge to belief. Faith is an emotional commitment of love and trust in God, and as such is properly immune to challenge from reason. However, it seems to me that that emotional commitment can often follow from and almost always is nurtured by a belief structure, so it is not usually a good thing to damage that structure before the emotional commitment has arisen. It may be that the love and trust was not directed at God but at a belief structure, for instance.

I would hope in the future to get round this with a group which basically accepts the twelve step approach that each can share their “experience, strength and hope” in a supportive environment where each accepts that all they can themselves share is their own “experience, strength and hope”; it may differ from mine (and I hope it does!), but everyone seeks similarities not differences and hopes that something they say will be of use to others and that something others say may be of help to them. After all, I have managed to study scripture in the past with people of other religions and none without there ending up being “more heat than light”. It isn’t easy, but it’s possible.

(to be continued)

The title of the talk is “Why and how should I read the Bible”, mostly focussing on “why”. I have a host of answers for that, but none of them is that “It’s the Word of God” (quoting Matt. 4:4 “It is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which comes from the mouth of God”) and is “God-breathed”, quoting 2 Tim. 3:16-17. Rendering vv. 15-17 (RSV), we see “and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness”.

First Matthew. Even Orthodox Judaism does not think that the whole of the Hebrew Scriptures “come from the mouth of God”, though they have a fairly high concept of inspiration.

Then the letter to Timothy. Assuming it to be genuinely written by Paul, it is talking of sacred writings which his hearers have been acquainted with from childhood, and therefore definitively the Hebrew Scriptures, not any part of the New Testament (of which Paul was the earliest writer). Christians in general do not use large swathes of the Hebrew Scriptures for reproof, correction or training in righteousness, not least the bulk of Leviticus and Deuteronomy.

A defence is to quote Matthew 5:17. I’ll quote vv 17-19 here: “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them. For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”The argument then goes that Jesus “fulfilled” them and that “all was accomplished” by dying and rising again.

Frankly, I don’t think that argument works. It frankly reads more naturally as all being accomplished BY heaven and earth passing away, and that Jesus’ “fulfilment” rested in his generally scandalous proposals that societal outcasts such as women, the disabled, heretics (Samaritans) and even Romans should be consorted with in table fellowship., and that the spirit of the law (in the two Great Commandments, Matt. 22:37-40) should override the letter.

Yes, I am not ignoring Paul’s ad-hoc theologising in Romans. Frankly, for gentiles I do not think it was in any way necessary – not being Jewish, I have no need to consider the laws of Moses. I agree with the Rabbinic chain of reasoning which results in the Noahide Commandments, though not personally feeling a need to follow the principle of “building a fence around the Torah”, I don’t necessary follow the full expansion. I don’t personally see that I need any relaxation or setting aside of those. I did share in a previous post that I have seriously contemplated whether, in order to imitate Jesus more closely, I should act as if I were Jewish (without obligation, of course), but have so far dismissed that. It seems clear to me that Paul was avoiding there being a “two tier” Christianity, with those of Jewish origin being unable to be in full fellowship with those of Gentile origin unless the Gentiles also followed Mosaic Law.

I grant that had the Jewish Christians taken fully to heart Jesus’ scrictures about the validity of the purity provisions, for instance (Matt. 15:11) they might have been able to get round this. Paul may not have had any knowledge of these sayings of Jesus, of course, as Matthew hadn’t yet been written (and so far as I can see, wouldn’t be for about another 40 years). But then, Paul doesn’t actually display very much knowledge at all of Jesus’ lifetime sayings.

Thank goodness we only had “The Message” translation quoted in the pre-meeting, as this renders “Scriptures” in 2 Tim 3:15 as “Word of God”. Even so, really the whole presentation was predicated on the whole Bible being “the Word of God”.

It is hugely clear to me that this is not a tenable position. No form of inerrancy can be sensibly defended against discrepancies (which abound), the fact that no original manuscripts exist, the textual evidence of several layers of rewriting (by different people) in most if not all of the New Testament, and the clear evidence of development in the various writer’s conceptions of very many things through the long history of assembly of the set of books which now comprise the Bible, both within the particular books (textual criticism) and of the whole (formation of the canon).

I hope that no-one reading my blog will, however, be inclined to say “If you don’t take the whole of it as inerrant, you pick and choose what bits you like” (an excluded middle argument with which I have no patience) or that I don’t take scripture seriously – very seriously. To my mind, I “pick and choose” less than do those who mine the text for a set of proof texts which support a position they’ve arrived at. I assess everything I read there critically and prayerfully, trying to see how the inspiration of the various writers was moulded by their language, their preconceptions, world-view and philosophy (and that of their audience) and arrive at what they were really trying to tell those reading them. Where I am in any doubt at all, I refer to experts, and I don’t limit myself to experts of one particular denomination of inclination, liberal or conservative. And I assess the contributions of the experts critically and prayerfully as well.

I am not wonderfully happy that some texts were included in the canon and that others were excluded, but accept that it is the tradition of some 1700 years that these are the scriptures, at least for the Western Churches (with a few additions for Catholics). However, I see no reason why I am precluded from reading the excluded ones and taking them in much the same way as I take the canonical texts (having regard, of course, to the reasons given for their not being included). So far as the others are concerned, there are still many passages which I have not studied in full depth as yet, and yes, I have problems with some of them. I am not, for instance, entirely happy that I want to regard injunctions to exterminate every last Amalekite as being “inspired”, as just one example (particularly the contents of 1 Sam. 28:18). At least, if they are inspired, I have to consider the possibility that the inspiration was very seriously warped by the characters of the (faillible) humans involved in and transmitting the story!

Which leads me neatly back to 2 Tim. 15-17, which I read primarily as Paul’s caution against taking what anyone, however much inspired (or “filled with the spirit”) they may be without comparing it with what those before have written from their own inspirations, and reproving or correcting accordingly. He is talking about the Hebrew Scriptures there, as well, so we really have to view the New Testament through the lens of the Old, which as Paul says, all the New Testament writers took as their authoritative scripture.

Needless to say, I only had the opportunity to hint at bits of these lines of reasoning in the discussion last night and in a number of individual conversations afterwards.

There is one point more, though, which I did not get to talk about, for shortness of time. Nicky Gumbel’s guide for starting Bible readers was promoted. I hate it, not least because, assuming a theological agenda, it picks and chooses those bits of scripture which support that agenda to the exclusion of others. I would still hate it, even if the theological agenda were one with which I did not disagree thoroughly.

If I am granted the strength, I will continue this tomorrow or Saturday…

In my last post, I mentioned something which happened at the end of discussion on Wednesday evening. I was explaining why I didn’t wholly rely on any translation of the Bible, and used as an example the beginning of the Fourth Gospel, “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God”. When I first read that in French, it was from the Jerusalem Bible, which reads “Au commencement etait le Verbe, et le Verbe etait aupres de Dieu, et le Verbe etait Dieu” (sorry for the lack of accents – I don’t know how to get them in WordPress). Although “Verbe” is perfectly well rendered in English by “Word”, at the time I first saw it I’d have expected “Mot”; “Verbe” carries with it at least a hint of being an action word, not a “thing” word. Of course, in the original Greek, the word is “Logos”, which has even more comlexity – and that’s where I stopped.

It proved that someone there was going to be presenting a bible study on the first 18 verses of John the following night  and that this had given them a new dimension to the first verse. I mentioned that there was even more to the original Greek word “Logos”. Having given him a link to the entry on Philo in the Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, I wasn’t able on Thursday to do full justice to the concept .

I use the above link not because I think it’s wonderfully written (even overlooking the typo in the date of Philo’s embassy) or because I think it does full justice to the subject, but because it’s the fullest resource I could find on the internet for the whole gamut of Philo’s concept of “Logos”.

“Logos” was in any event a Greek philosophical term with a set of meanings well beyond “Word” or “Verbe”, but I think Philo of Alexandria is the best possible source for a fuller understanding of what it is likely the writer intended by using the word “Logos” in the gospel. Philo was a Jewish philosopher who is known to have been old enough and respected enough to head a Jewish delegation to the Emperor Gaius Caligula in 40 CE, which places him as a contemporary of (or possibly a decade or two older than) Jesus. He seems to have had Greek as his primary language, judging by the fact that he quotes from the Greek Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Torah (the first five books of what we call the Old Testament) rather from the original. He wrote prolifically, and whatever the arguments are, I think it very probable that the Greek-speaking writer of the Fourth Gospel knew of Philo’s ideas, even if you don’t look at what Philo’s ideas actually were; he was after all writing in Greek with Greek philosophical concepts about a development from Hebrew scripture, just as Philo had slightly earlier.

Philo had a very complex idea of the meaning of Logos, drawn from his study of the Torah but putting his understandings into a Greek philosophical framework. Assuming that you don’t want to plough through the entry I’ve linked to above, there are twelve categories listed. Among these are Utterance of God, God’s first-born son, the power of creation, the mediator between God and man and God himself. In other words, all of the philosophical structure underlying the Fourth Gospel is laid out in plenty of detail in Philo’s works. On that basis, I don’t think there’s a serious possibility that the author wasn’t steeped in Philo’s ideas.

It is not surprising that some of the early Church Fathers loved him, even to the extent of trying to co-opt him as at least a proto-Christian (though there’s no sign that he even knew of the existence of Jesus). They already had most of the building blocks of trinitarian thinking laid out for them by Philo.

He isn’t recognised as of any importance by Judaism. Those Orthodox or Conservative Jews with whom I’ve talked consider him an aberrant individual outside anything like the mainstream of Judaism.

That’s where I go out on a limb. I think it highly probable that he’s been deliberately minimised over the years in Judaism, and that actually he was representative of a really significant element in the Greek-speaking diaspora Jewish community, which was all around the Eastern Mediterranean, i.e. in all the places Paul later visited. Scholarship seems to indicate that the Fourth Gospel was written in Asia Minor by a fluent Greek-speaker (there’s less agreement about whether or not he was Jewish).

Before 70CE, there were several strains of what is called “Second Temple” Judaism, including Pharisees, Sadducees, Temple priests, Essenes and Zealots but also, I think, including a significant proportion of Jews in the diaspora who spoke and thought in Greek. The link I gave gives two other names of earlier Jews who wrote combining Greek philosophical thinking and Judaism, so I don’t think this was unusual.

I will grant that between 164BCE and 63BCE the Jews had revolted against the Greek imperial power in the region and maintained an independent state, reacting against the Greek (pre-Roman) oppression of Jews and their attempt to assimilate them, and that during that century there had been a major reaction against anything tinged with “Greek” in Palestine. I doubt, however, that this took in the whole of the diaspora – it certainly didn’t include Philo’s background.

In 66-73CE, the Jews revolted again and were put down with maximal force. The Temple was destroyed and all groups other than the Pharisees were thereafter largely wiped out by death or deportation, a process which took until the aftermath of the Bar Kochba revolt in 132-135CE to complete. I think the Jerusalem church was one such casualty.

Without the heart of their religion, the surviving Pharisaic Rabbis were forced to reconsider what Judaism was, and the result seems to me to have been a neo-conservatism in which one often used phrase was “not as the gentiles”. Over the next centuries, anything which smacked of Greek thinking (or Christian thinking) was extirpated.

If, which I am inclined to think, Philo’s kind of thinking was widespread among Greek-speaking diaspora Jews, it goes a long way towards explaining how early Christian concepts might have taken root reasonably easily in Jewish communities in Asia Minor and Greece. Again, my Jewish correspondents seem to think that none of Paul’s ideas (far less John’s, which are regarded as irredeemably antisemitic) could possibly have been accepted by Jews and that Christianity is therefore virtually entirely a Greek phenomenon, just “borrowing” some ideas together with a bad translation of their scriptures (the Septuagint). I don’t now think that’s correct; much more of the conceptual differences (such as God-made-man, man elevated to God or trinity) now seem to me natural developments from a kind of Second Temple Judaism which existed in the Greek-speaking diaspora in the first century.

They’re right from the standpoint of modern Judaism, but not from that of, I think,  a significant part of first century Judaism.And, just to underline my point, modern Judaism doesn’t accept translations of their scriptures as being fully reliable. They have a point!

You don’t need to know all this stuff in order to read John 1, particularly if you have a footnoted Bible which gives additional meanings. But I think you’re missing something.

 

 

Week 4 is titled “Why and how do I pray”. The speaker gave a largely personal account, which I thoroughly approve of. OK, there was stress on involving the whole trinity, which I can understand but which to my mind gives you far too much to think about before you even get started. There wasn’t much stress on tangible results (” Oh lord, won’t you buy me a Mercecedes Benz…”) thank goodness, as I think there are all sorts of problems in taking some of the passages that suggest that whatever you pray for (in the right way…) you will get, such as Matt. 18:19 or John 14:13-14 – the first was mentioned, the second not. We also didn’t touch too much on the list of excuses for a literal interpretation of those passages actually not happening most of the time, as given in the Alpha manual. The speaker did say that when she prayed, coincidences happened. They do indeed. Granted, coincidences happen when you don’t pray as well, and I’m well enough aware of my own internal confirmation bias not to want to advance any personal evidence myself.

There wasn’t much stress on the ACTS formulation either (adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication). Actually, I think this is a pretty fair formula. Some while ago a good friend told me how much he liked the Great Litany , which I’m not all that familiar with, despite hanging around a few fairly “high” churches in the past. I told him I thought it was a bit long, and he asked what I’d put in it’s place…

“Hey, Boss; Wow!; Sorry; Thanks; Help!; Whatever…”

He agreed that it was, indeed, shorter!

OK, that’s the outline, now fill in the specifics.

I talked a little about not wanting to ask for specifics, not only because I was unconvinced they’d be granted but also because I valued so much the second S which I’d add to ACTS – submission. I said my favorite and very much most used prayer was the Serenity Prayer – “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”. Of course, that doesn’t conform to the ACTS formula, but it’s big on submission. “Not my will but thine be done, O Lord” ends any prayer I make which actually asks for something.

Prayer is mandated as a continuing activity in Step 11 of AA’s Twelve Steps – “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand him, praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out”, but I considered it valuable for exactly that purpose a long time before I had read it in a twelve step programme. Yes, I considered it valuable as one of very many spiritual practices which I explored in my early attempts to find a way of repeating the overwhelming “conscious contact with God” which kicked me off some 45 years ago. But, in conscience, though I generally pray (by myself and silently) quite a bit, I’ve only for fairly brief periods had a formal routine of prayer. I suspect I should; there was certainly a period of my life during which I lost the habit of pausing and praying for guidance and inspiration many times a day, and that may well have contributed to the fact that these days I mostly lack the instant feeling of response and presence which I once got used to. And, of course, took for granted. A big mistake, I think.

I will try to do better…

I didn’t mention special techniques such as lectio divina and Ignatian visualisatory prayer. I use a form of the first frequently. The second, I don’t counsel unless you have a spiritual director, which I don’t at present, but it can be extremely powerful. Possibly too advanced for this kind of group, at least in week 4? I did slide in a comment that telling the rosary can be viewed as a form of mantra yoga – Hindus and Buddhists have no monopoly on this kind of technique!

There was one slight sidetrack in the discussion, which I’ll talk about in another post. Suffice it to say that something I said gave another member of the group a new and energising insight. I give thanks that I was able to do this. It makes me appreciate the worth of doing this so much more.

 

I’ve been confident for quite a while that where the scriptures says “have faith” it doesn’t just (or even primarily) mean intellectual belief, and that where the original is translated “believe” that actually, “have faith” would be a better translation. I read it as something like “love and trust”. It was a pity, therefore, that much of last night’s talk effectively said to me “believe these things”, principally being that God exists, that Jesus was (and is) God, that scripture is entirely reliable and unambiguous and that the primary purpose of Jesus was to die and so save us from sin.

Aside from possible quibbles that “exists” is not the best terminology, I have no difficulty accepting the first. I only manage not to disagree with the second as a result of being a panentheist, which is not the understanding of “was God” which the speaker and other helpers have. And there we parted company.

I’ve blogged previously about my attitude to “This is the word of…”. Most of the New Testament I consider the product of a faith community which developed after Jesus’ death. I accept it as acccurate in portraying the understandings of the actual writers at the times when they wrote, granted that much if not all of it has been adjusted at least once by someone with a subsequent understanding, according to significant numbers of experts in textual criticism. I am not at the moment at all confident that Jesus himself would have recognised or approved of all of it. Sadly, of the many possible texts the speaker could have used, he chose Revelation 3:20 “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me”.

Now, I am not a big fan of Revelation. Neither, I understand, was Martin Luther, but like him, I accept that it’s become part of the canon and I need to deal with it. How I deal with it is mostly to quote early Church fathers, who said that it was highly symbolic and that the key to the symbolism had been lost. I think there are huge dangers in trying to interpret it against that background, to say the least.

In this case, however, I think I can deal with it as it stands, but bearing in mind that rather than “the word of God” it is the testimony of the writer to his experience. It may well have been the author’s experience, but it has not been mine. Firstly, I got where I am by a different route, so I can’t speak from personal experience. However, observing others who have been very earnestly seeking a faith, including in a previous Alpha course,  it does not seem to me that all of those who have heard what has been said about Jesus, apparently with open minds, have actually had the experience of an encounter with Jesus, the Holy Spirit or God as a result. Some have been going to various churches for many years (so this is not a complaint about the content of Alpha). It has long been a source of pain to me that this happens.

So the message I got, which was that all one needed to do having got this far was to be open rather than closed minded, seemed to me to be just plain wrong. Various explanations suggest themselves to me, the simplest of which is that the writer did not have the same experience as I do and had never met someone in that position. I doubt it. He could, like many I have heard, have blamed the person who was afflicted for not opening their mind sufficiently. While I cannot be certain what has been in the minds of anyone other than myself, it really has not seemed to me that this has been the case with those who just “don’t get it” after (sometimes) many years of church, and that feels to me like blaming the victim.

An old ex-Jesuit friend of mine would say that if the gospel has not been adequately presented to someone, they cannot be fixed with knowledge, or in other words that the most likely explanation would be that to date, no-one has succeeded in telling them in such a way as to connect with them, and that as a result they have not “heard his voice”. I’m unsure about this. In a few cases, I have tried every permutation of telling and retelling, including stripping down the message well beyond even the point which I was at the time comfortable with, and taking them to hear others with different approaches, and the result has still been no transforming personal experience for them.

I have no other answers at the moment, save perhaps that the response may not be immediate. If so, in at least a couple of cases it would have to have been either deathbed or post-mortem.

I talked a bit about substitutionary atonement last week, so I won’t go into that here.

As it happened, the discussion afterwards didn’t really get into these areas. I was happy to endorse that a personal relationship with God is important and that such a relationship has transforming power. I don’t agree with some atheist friends that this represents a form of brainwashing (which scares them). There was some talk about whether God provokes in us love or fear; the consensus was firmly in favour of love. I mentioned psalm 111:10 “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”, but that went nowhere (I am inclined to think that “fear” there would be better translated as “awe”, myself) I do not think that a form of Stockholm Syndrome is an appropriate basis for love of God, or any other relationship!

Just musing a little, I wonder where I’d have gone had I actually had intellectual acceptance of at least some of the basics 0f Christianity at the time of my teenage experience? Would I have found things easier thereafter, and (for instance) not taken some 30 years to feel able to self-identify as Christian? I can’t know, but I’d like to think so – and it’s very much on that basis that I think Alpha can be valuable even just as “here are some reasons for giving intellectual assent”, bad as I think many of those reasons are, and much as I think intellectual assent to things which are other than Jesus would actually have agreed with is being asked for.

 

I think this Alpha business is good for me. I may not agree with some of the content (a malicious person might say “any of the content”), but to feel moved to two posts in one day…

While thinking further about what I said about Paul in my previous post, I followed a link from a friend’s blog (Henry’s Participatory Bible Study) and found Scott McKnight talking about Pharisees. Excellent. I add that I accept what a Jewish friend once said, which was that all of modern Judaism is basically “the Pharisees” – as Scott points out, the rabbinic tradition is Pharisaic. If we use it as a derogatory term, we are probably being anti-semitic, not having the excuse of actually being Jewish in the first place.

OK, Paul was self-admittedly a Pharisee (which of itself should give us pause when using “Pharisee” in a derogatory way, perhaps). Alan Segal gives an excellent account in “Paul, the Convert”, accepting Paul’s self-description, and on the back of that I see no need for any other hypothesis. Paul’s theologising in Romans (and I referenced chapters 2 to 4 in my previous post) is fundamentally Pharisaic; it is an attempt to use reason and scripture (in this case a lot of Psalms, a little Torah and a snippet of Ezekiel) to justify following Paul’s concept of Jesus without the need to follow the whole Levitical/Deuteronomical Law.

I always had problems with this. I have to remember that Jesus was a Jew, and by all accounts a learned Jew, concerned about the way to follow God’s Law, which puts him squarely in the Pharisaic tradition himself. It seems to me that it has always been true that, in religion, there is a tendency for those who are extremely similar in most things to anathematise their only slightly divergent brethren more than they might people of a completely different faith structure – Emo Phillips wonderfully satirised this in what was voted the best religious joke ever. Were the Pharisees harder on Jesus than he was on them, and was either really justified? I can’t tell, though I do notice that arguments between Jews of different persuasions these days tend to be “vigorous” by my standards, and reading stories of, for instance, the followers of Hillel and Shammai (during one such, the followers of Shammai won, because more of them survived…), I can read the accounts in the synoptics as merely evidencing vigorous debate. Not so much those in the Fourth Gospel, where “the Jews” tends to substitute for “scribes and Pharisees”.  Years ago, I spent some time wondering if, in order more fully to follow Jesus, I should adopt Mosaic Law in it’s 613 commandment entirety.

I still do not discount this completely, but where would I then be? The only group which, as far as I can see, attempts this are the “Messianic Jews”, who are anathematised by most of Judaism (Mr. Phillips must love this…). Most, it seems to me, are not “Jews who have come to follow Jesus”, but gentiles; basically Christians who have gone down this way of thinking. The way Judaism has developed since the time of Jesus means that there can be no sensible crossover. “Not as the gentiles” seems to have been a major principle of the development of Judaism as it now is, and in order to become in any way a part of Judaism, I would need to abandon any adherence to Jesus (or, as you wish, Yeshua ben Yosef, or Yoshke).

There is no community of Messianic Jews anywhere near me, in any event. I don’t think you can sensibly follow this praxis (practice) alone. It demands community; by and large, the Hebrew scriptures speak to the collective rather than the individual, in any event.

The same Jewish friend I mentioned earlier did try to give me something of a “get out” in introducing me to the concept of the Noachide Law. This, I can do, and was already doing. It makes me, he reckoned, a “righteous Gentile”. So, not really in a position fully to understand Jesus, who was not a Gentile at all.

Then again, would I be better placed to understand him if I had been born and brought up Jewish? I have doubts – Jesus was a first century Jew, working within second temple Judaism. Judaism developed very substantially after the first century, not least in reaction to the destruction of the Temple in 70CE and the virtual elimination of Palestine as a centre of Judaism, at least for a time. Jesus may himself have been very like the Pharisees, but I’ve seen argument that he was Essene, a sect which didn’t survive the first century, and even if he was himself uninfluenced by esoteric Judaism (as seen in some of the intertestamental apocrypha) or the Hellenised Alexandrian Judaism of Philo, some of his followers who actually did the writing were definitely not uninfluenced. Paul in particular has to have been familiar with Hellenised Judaism, and even more so the author of the Fourth Gospel.

I think I need to follow Hillel here, and go and study.

“Why did Jesus die” was the title for this week’s talk and discussion. I knew I was going to have problems!

Arriving only marginally less horribly early than last time, I tried to make myself useful, and after setting out the library again (seems to be my main job) ended up on the door. Well, it is better to be a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord than to dwell in the tents of iniquity, or so says psalm 84. As I now know that Ben is reading this blog, I suspect he may have kept me away from the sacred song and extempore prayer out of charity!

I was pleased to find that the speaker didn’t follow the outline in the course manual at all closely. As a result, the result was significantly less unadulterated PSA (penal substitutionary atonement) than I’d feared, but at the end of the day, that was still the main content. I always like the suggestion that, had the event been more modern, we might be going around with small silver electric chairs on a chain round our necks now, which caused some merriment.

Happily, in the discussion, I was able to stress the “sin is separation from God” argument, and move things slightly away from the “list of transgressions to be answered” model; self-centredness is clearly inimical to union with God. Have we “sinned”? Yes, if we have not loved God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind and our neighbour as ourself. Much as one attender might have wanted to talk about drink, drugs and promiscuous sex, which I’d have wanted to avoid anyhow as one of our number was actually fairly drunk, it felt like safer ground.

The group didn’t want to explore further my reference to Ezekiel 18, in which firstly the sins of the fathers (presumably including Adam and Eve) are not visited on the children, and secondly it is made very clear that you’re exactly as good as your last action (and probably thought, as well); repent, turn to God, and you are OK. It is, of course, thus clearly established some hundreds of years earlier that there is a serious flaw in the development of the argument from Paul’s ad hoc theologising in Romans 3:23-25 to PSA.

With this group, I’m trying to avoid any suggestion that anything in the New Testament should not be read as if it’s an instruction manual, but rather as the product of members of a faith group trying to make sense of  their experience as it was at the time. I did make an attempt to introduce this way of thinking by raising the issue of the massive disappointment which must have afflicted Jesus’ followers, who expected their Messiah to usher in the supremacy of Israel and world peace, living for a positively patriarchal span and acknowledged as leader, whereas in fact he’d been executed particularly nastily as a common criminal by the hated Romans. Sadly, the author of the Fourth Gospel has already sold his message of a Jesus who really didn’t need to do this and could have extricated himself at any time far too well to this group.

No-one bit at my mention that there were at least four atonement concepts I was aware of either. Penal substitutionary is, to my mind, inferior to Exemplary and Christus Victor, though not a lot worse than Ransom, which I have to remember was the dominant concept for nearly two thirds of the history of the Western Church. Ah well.

I’m still at a loss to understand how PSA has twisted what Paul actually wrote in Romans backwards. Verses 24-26 read “whom God put forwards as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins; it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies him who has faith in Jesus”. It is not to make mankind righteous, but to prove a point about God, i.e. that God’s mercy does not represent a lapse of standards; the expiation is of God, not of us.

I recall also that this comes after Paul has spent a chapter and a half finding reasons why the law of Moses is not applicable to followers of Jesus. It’s clear that his main target is circumcision, which he doesn’t want to be thought necessary for Christians. Reading between the lines of Acts, it seems fairly clear that the then dominant Jerusalem Church considered that Jesus was a Jew and that his followers should therefore be Jews too, in the sense of following Mosaic Law, the sticking points being circumcision and dietary issues. (As an aside, I’m pretty confident that the passage Mark 7:20-23 referred to in the Alpha manual  is a part of this conflict, and that Jesus probably didn’t intend it to be a suspension of dietary constraints, assuming he actually said it as quoted). He therefore finds an outside reason, within what is by now central to the movement, namely that Jesus died but is in some way still active – and in the next chapter also refers it to Abraham, “justified” by faith, although clearly there not in Jesus.

The speaker had said that the most important thing about Jesus was his death. I disagree. We started in week 1 with Lewis’ ” if he were just a great moral teacher” argument. What seems all to likely to be forgotten is that in the complex thing which is what we have since made of Jesus, the thing about him which can be most widely agreed is that he was just that, a great teacher. Less people agree that he was also a variety of other things, such as Jewish Messiah, son of God, God incarnate, a person of the Trinity who can in some fashion communicate with us directly today – or a substitute for a burned offering which was no longer necessary after Hosea 6:6, or a quite ridiculous putting right of a theological problem in the mind of Paul, or later  a different one in that of (perhaps) Anselm or (definitely) John Calvin, neither of which would have been a problem if they’d believed Ezekiel 18. Frankly, I think that to say this demeans Jesus. They also, to my mind, demean God. How His mercy could possibly be regarded as a fault, I fail to understand; how it could be regarded as good, let alone as a principle ruling God that he should exact maximal punishment even from someone who has repented and turned to Him, and that for any slightest transgression including thinking of transgressing, beats me. Let alone (as a friend puts it) the divine child abuse of torturing and killing His son to correct something he could readily just have announced – but hey, didn’t he already do that in Ezekiel 18?

Words occasionally fail me…