Eyre Lines

(The following is the slightly modified text of a sermon I gave rather over 10 years ago. )

Seeing all the coverage about Israel and Palestine, and doing some background reading, a thought came to me.

Yasser Arafat was a son of God.

 

Shocking, isn’t it? Whatever you think of the rights and wrongs of the current conflict, Arafat was a long time terrorist, and his followers (if not he himself) have been responsible for the deaths of a lot of innocent Israelis.

 

But bear with me….. in Matthew’s gospel, we read “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God” (Mat.5:9). Chairman Arafat was once a joint recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. And he’s a male child, so he’s a “son”. Stands to reason……

 

I think, following that, that we’d all want to take refuge in the passage from Ezekiel (Ezk.18) in the reading “When a righteous man turns away from his righteousness and commits iniquity……. none of the righteous deeds which he has done shall be remembered” (Ezk.18:24). To be fair, I’d also suggest that it’s about time that those in Israel read and took to heart the wording of that chapter. There are too many fathers who have eaten sour grapes (Ezk.18:2), and too many children whose teeth are set on edge (Ezk.18:2). That passage marks the point where Judaism abandoned the concept that the sins of the fathers were visited upon the children (Ex.20:5, Ex.34:7, Num.14:18, Deut.5:9, Jer.32:18) and was a precursor to the development of Judaism which became Christianity.

 

So, perhaps, for  brief period, Chairman Arafat was a son of God and would have been received into the Kingdom of Heaven (or the Kingdom of God – I don’t make a distinction between them, and where Matthew says “Kingdom of Heaven”, Mark says “Kingdom of God” when describing otherwise the same saying). Perhaps, at some time in the future, that will be the case – we can hope and pray so.

 

Matthew also tells us Jesus said that the poor in spirit qualified. (Mat.5:3) Those persecuted for righteousness’ sake (Mat.5:10). Those who feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome strangers, clothe the naked, visit the sick or prisoners (Mat.25:34-37, Lk.12:32). Luke tells us “Love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the most high” (Lk.6:35).

 

So we have a promise. These actions will deliver the Kingdom to us. Jesus reinterpreted for us the standards which Ezekiel talked of, including especially charity (Ezk.18:16), and added the foundation for the commandments – that we should love our neighbour as ourself (Mat.23:39).

 

So what is the Kingdom? We hear that it’s a pearl of great price Mt.13:35), as well as a grain of mustard seed (13:31), a leaven (13:33), a treasure hidden in a field (13:44), good seed (13:24), choice fish (13:47), the new and the old from a treasure (13:52), a good return on investment (18:23), given in fullness irrespective of our worth (20:1). Confusing…….we should obviously look for it, but what will we get?

 

Paul writes “For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as I am known”. (I Cor.13:12). What we hope for is a glimpse of God as He is, a connection with Deity, a foundation for our existence. And this is indeed a pearl of great price and a treasure. Seeing through a glass darkly is accepting the grain of mustard seed which can grow, accepting the leaven which will raise our spirits. Clearly, this is something which we cannot comprehend without experiencing it, and we will experience it only in part.

 

Mind you, Matthew also tells us Jesus’ words “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mat.5:20)- but that may say more about how he felt about the Scribes and Pharisees than it does about what we need to reach the Kingdom.

 

More seriously, though, he says also “Except you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child, he is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven”. (Mat.18:3-4). Has the promise been taken away if we can’t manage to abandon all our adult attitudes?

 

No, I don’t think it has. I think Jesus speaks here from the absolute knowledge that, before God, we will inevitably react as little children.

 

Now, when will this happen?

 

Is it to be when we die? Is it to be when Christ comes again?

 

I don’t think it has to be. In Matthew’s and Lukes’ gospels, Jesus speaks of the Kingdom being at hand several times, as does John the Baptist before him (Mat.3:2, 4:17, 10:7) – but this is often interpreted as talking of an event which hasn’t happened yet. I think that’s not a correct reading. Luke tells us Jesus promised “There are some standing here who will not taste of death before they see the Kingdom of God” (Lk.9:27) – and this was nearly 2000 years ago!

 

Was he wrong? Were his audience going to die before a second coming (as they clearly did) without his words being fulfilled?

 

I think not. I believe he was right; I believe some of them did see the Kingdom of God, and indeed entered into the Kingdom of God, within their natural lifetimes. The Kingdom is a thought away, if, indeed, it isn’t filling some of us as I speak.

 

I’ll assume that anyone who’s looking into space and seems to me not to be concentrating is experiencing the Kingdom at this moment…….

 

But I’d like to hear some testimony about it from them later.

 

But I don’t see any promise of when this entering into the Kingdom will happen, just that it will.Maybe not within our lifetimes, maybe at our deaths, maybe at some time after that.

 

Let me move on to John’s gospel. John has a very different approach and talks of a very different vision from Matthew, Mark and Luke. John records that Jesus said “unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (Jn.3:3) and “unless one is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God” (Jn.3:5).

 

I often used to attend a charismatic church, where they are very keen on the “born again” concept – and it seems to work. I’m not someone who’s gone through the formula of being born again in that way; neither was my father, and, I suspect, neither are most who will read this (though some may feel “born again” in a different way). Those of us who have arrived at faith by other means (and I’m going to come back to that) are going to find it difficult, at the least, to cast everything away and take a new path.

 

So do we all need to be “born again”? Born twice, indeed? Well, not as a precondition. Look at Saul, on the Damascus road: you’ll remember that Luke writes in Acts “But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the High Priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. Now, as he journeyed he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed about him. And he fell to the ground, and heard a voice saying “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” And he said “”Who are you.Lord?” And he said “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting, but rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do” The men travelling with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one. Saul arose from the ground, and when his eyes were opened, he could see nothing, so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. And for three days he was without sight and neither ate or drank” (Ac.9:1-9).

 

Saul’s heart was filled with anything but humbleness and charity, and he was a persecuter rather than the persecuted. He didn’t qualify under any of the headings I’ve mentioned, but God still gave him a vision, a faith and a mission all in one all-encompassing experience. I’m sure that in the process he was born again spiritually, as I’m sure that in entering into the Kingdom of God each of us are born again spiritually – if not yet, then in the future.

 

I’m sure you’ve realised that I’ve now covered three basic ways of attaining the Kingdom.

 

We can have faith, do those things Jesus stated would entitle us to enter the Kingdom, and rest assured on his promise that we will do so (though we ought to take to heart the passage from Ezekiel (Ezk.18:24)).

 

We can go through the ritual conversion which has been made out of the passages in John I mentioned and others. As I’ve said, it seems to me that this is a fairly effective way of opening a line to the Kingdom. I think John knew this route, having travelled it himself – I see his poetic writing in his Gospel as evidence of this – we all know “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (Jn 1:1), and we all know “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life; no one comes to the Father but by me” (Jn 14:6)

 

Or, a very few of us may be zapped by God like Saul. We won’t deserve it, but it will give instant access to the Kingdom and change our lives forever. We can’t ask for it, we can’t do anything to encourage it; it will just happen.

 

Unfortunately, after he became Paul, he didn’t write anything about that experience which might give us a glimpse of it from this great writer. The best I can come up with is from Blaise Pascal, the famous French mathematician, written in his notebook:

“From about half past ten in the evening to about half an hour after midnight.

Fire.

God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob.

Not the God of philosophers and scholrs.

Absolute certainty; beyond reason. Joy. Peace.

Forgetfullness of the world and everything but God.

The World has not known thee, but I have known thee.

Joy! Joy! Tears of joy!”

 

What Paul does write of at length is his knowledge that, once such an experience has happened, there is no going back, and areas where there is no room for doubt (Rom.12:2 etc.). And that the fruits of the spirit will flow inevitably (I.Cor.12).

 

Now, I did get zapped like Saul, or at least like Pascal. My father didn’t. He left myself and mum a message which we read after he died, and it was clear that he hadn’t had more than a glimpse of the full possibility of entry into the Kingdom and had many doubts and uncertainties. I wish he had had a fuller experience than that; I know that Jesus’ promise means that he now does. I know that that promise means that all can share in that Kingdom, whether we arrive by a life of faith and works, whether we seek an instant transformation with the Charismatics, or whether God just decides it’s time for us to change and changes us without warning.

 

But, knowing father’s doubts, I’ll pray that we can all enter the Kingdom sooner rather than later, and go through the rest of our lives with the absolute certainty given to John and to Paul.

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…

Turned up far too early last night. Not only did I allow for rush hour traffic which wasn’t quite there, but the 6.15 for helpers turned out to be 6.15 for 6.30 hoping to get something done by 6.45. Ah well – made myself useful.

I had an initial worry that “helpers” were going to seriously outnumber “guests” looking around approaching 7.30, which was the start time for the delivery of messages – organisation first, then a couple of songs, then the talk. However, plenty of people were there by the time things actually got started, probably slightly better than 1:1 guests to helpers. After the talk, “Who is Jesus”, we split into two groups to talk about it.

It transpired during introductions that none of the guests in my group were non-Christian, nor, indeed, had they any particular misgivings about the talk. I would have liked to take over and work through everything step by step, but didn’t want to monopolise discussion. Ho hum. For anyone wanting to refer to the talk outlines as I blog, by the way, there’s a set of these at http://www.alphausa.org/Groups/1000047416/Talk_Outlines.aspx. This is session 1.

I don’t quibble with Jesus existing as an historical figure, as it happens, though there are quite a few writers who put up a tolerable argument for complete nonexistence. I don’t, however, accept the argument that the New Testament dates from 40-100. OK, none of Paul’s authentic writings can date from much after 60, but I’m only reasonably sure that four of his epistles are actually his, some of the remainder definitely having the feel of mid-to-late second century to me – and Paul is no source at all for anything about the historical Jesus anyhow. For that, you need the gospels.

These are presented as contemporaneous eye-witness accounts. Oh dear! Now, Luke is avowedly not an eyewitness but a collector of stories. Papias, Bishop of Hieraconpolis (as quoted by Eusebius) says that Mark was Peter’s scribe. My own reading of the Fourth Gospel is that the actual writer purported to be taking dictation from the “beloved disciple”, whom the Church fathers decided had to be John.  Neither was therefore themselves an eyewitness. Somewhat more serious, however, is what Papias actually said about the gospels of Mark and Matthew; to paraphrase, Mark wrote down Peter’s sermons in no particular order while Matthew was a collection of sayings in a Hebrew dialect. Now, Papias was writing not earlier than 95, and probably as late as 110 (and as he lived until around then, might have been expected to recall anything he’d written which could mislead as to what the gospels actually looked like). Neither of those descriptions fits what we now see; both are narrative gospels, which does not fit a collection of sermons and absolutely does not fit a collection of sayings, and Matthew shows little signs of being in translation from Aramaic. As a bishop of a reasonably well-connected city, I cannot believe that Papias would not know of a narrative Mark or Matthew if such existed. I cannot therefore date either of these before about 110 at the earliest, i.e. 80 years after the events described. Luke is generally accepted as being derivative of one or both of Mark and Matthew, so is even later.

Most textual critics agree that all the gospels show evidence of multiple layers of redaction, though, so this does not surprise me.  Dating John is more difficult – the earliest fragment dates to about 130, which isn’t proof that the whole thing existed by then, but is indicative. The consensus seems to be that John postdates the three synoptic gospels, but as the synoptics definitely weren’t in their final form in c.110, this may not be correct. It does seem to evidence better knowledge of Palestinian geography, which might argue for earlier.

I do think there must have been earlier writings, now lost (although we might hope for another Nag Hammadi!), but in no way can I say that what we now see is original, eyewitness testimony. It might include some…

I didn’t feel I could advance this whole argument, so relied more on the Jesus Seminar’s conclusions that significant portions of all the gospels were either not Jesus or unlikely to be Jesus. The group leadership attempted to tell me that they were a group of three very liberal scholars, and I corrected the number. Not as much as I should have, for on checking, there were originally 150. I did say that as I recalled, almost none of John was considered even “sounds like Jesus”, let alone “is Jesus”.

I suppose at that point the next bit of the argument, using C.S. Lewis’ celebrated ” would not be a great moral teacher, he would either be insane or he would be the Devil of Hell” trichotomy was going to float by, as I wasn’t confident he said these things (all the important ones being from John). I don’t like the trichotomy anyhow. Leaving out the options of “misreported”, “honestly mistaken” and “speaking as from…”, I don’t actually believe that even in John he is represented as claiming to “be God”. The passages used are 10:30-33, which merely says “from God”, 20:26-29, which is another’s comment and the most famous, 8:58, “Before Abraham was, I am”. That last, to my eyes, almost certainly involves “I AM” being used in the Jewish manner as a reference to God, rather than as a claim of Jesus’ own preexistence; it should therefore read “before Abraham was, God” – and in context, Jesus is shown as claiming that he has knowledge from God, not that he is God. “Son of God” isn’t as much of a claim as might appear, as Hosea 1:10, for instance, applies this term to all of Israel; “messiah” (or “christos”) is probably the strongest, but then, Sabbati Zevi and Menachem Mendel Schneerson are more recent examples that indicate it isn’t unique.

We didn’t get as far as evidence for the resurrection. Ah well, maybe another time.

With this group, I don’t think I need to worry, as I usually do, that quoting facts which can readily be called into question and using arguments which are just plain wrong can give a basis for belief which can too easily be demolished, or can put someone off exploring Christianity where, without the need for a shaky intellectual understanding, they could find spiritual profundity. I do wonder if there’s therefore a point in my continuing. However, the organiser is extremely keen that I keep turning up after hearing some of what I can say, so onward to week 2.

A little while ago, I wrote a question for consideration by a trio of pastor authors, namely “Can a charismatic, evangelical. mission-based church find a home for a post-modernist theologian/mystic?” which Henry picked up (see http://energion.net/2013/01/transforming-mainline-congregations/) . I obviously had myself in mind. Now, there is an Anglican church which fits that description in a city a mere 15 miles from here, and I’ve in the past gone by invitation of a friend to a few evening talks/discussions there. At the last of these, I was somewhat taken aback to be invited extremely warmly to take part in their next Alpha course, on the basis of being, effectively, devil’s advocate.

I’ve been to one-and-a-bit Alpha courses in the past, about 10 years ago. I was encouraged not to finish the second of these, but to go on to a follow-up group and eventually join for a while a cell group at the church which did this particular Alpha. A few months later, I was asked not to attend further cell group meetings, on the basis of an incident where in one I attended I failed to conceal my unease about the pastor talking of the need for what was essentially doctrinal lock-step. The pastor noted this and asked why. I said I’d prefer not to go into that, but he pushed and pushed, and I therefore gave my reasons, first briefly and then with justification. Now, it seems that one young member of that group heard my reasons, and was severely shaken in his faith; the pastor did not want that happening again. Actually, neither did I. That is a large part of the reason why I was so reluctant to speak openly and at length. I don’t want something like that to happen again.

I did deliver several fairly strong “health warnings” to the organiser of this year’s Alpha. Not in the slightest deterred by this, I got a formal invitation last week, and to my surprise, was invited as either guest or “helper”. After some soul-searching, I went along to their training session for helpers and leaders on Wednesday.

I didn’t find this quite so alienating an experience as I’d expected. Yes, a few songs were sung, none of which I knew. There are fairly few pieces of devotional music written after about, say, 1930 which I actually like. There was a short session of extempore prayer. No one went on at too great length, however, nor were they too loud, nor expressing wishes I would have found jarring, so nothing got in the way of my own “being quiet with God”. There was a “name game” introduction, in which I dubbed myself “Cantankerous Chris” (which almost everyone could remember!). There was instruction about the way in which exchanges after the talk should be moderated, which was not exactly new territory but sound, and a few role plays of how not to do it, which were great fun. As I said to the organiser, I will need to guard against one of my tendencies, which is to be the guy who takes over the discussion. The temptation to go into cross-examination mode is definitely still there!

I did get a few minutes to leaf through the new glossy course manual, which is new in format, but appeared largely unchanged from the one I have on my bookshelf. I can probably manage to disagree with every fact and argument presented, so should have no difficulty in presenting counter-opinions. The style is not supposed to be a real discussion, however, more a round up of views and reactions. I wonder in the circumstance how much use I am actually going to be.

If you read my previous post, “Childish Thoughts”, you will appreciate that my own position is based entirely on transformative personal experience; without that I would probably still be an atheist, though I might have mellowed into not being an evangelical one. I went to my first Alpha course knowing that the objective was to produce personal transformative experiences for those attending. My own base experience, and those which have followed it, are not reliably replicable. I have never been able to say to someone “Do these things, and you will have an experience like mine”. I have been able to say that if you have had a first experience like mine, doing some things is likely to improve massively your chances of having another like it, but not that this will produce a first experience. Alpha does produce first experiences, not with complete reliability but with sufficient regularity to convince me that it does work, at least for those with a reasonably suitable psychology and background.

My own experience was, to use a phrase I probably over-use, “better than sex, drugs and rock & roll”, and I would be delighted if everyone could have one like it. Granted, Alpha produces experiences which are interpreted differently from mine – how can that be avoided, as what that interpretation should be is a very major content of the course. However, I know of significant numbers of people who have arrived at faith via something like Alpha and, through sufficient study and praxis, then come to the conclusion that something far closer to my own interpretations has to be the way for them. I cite Marcus Borg as one easily readable example.

In an ideal world, maybe I could pick up one or two people who would otherwise drop out of Alpha without any transformative experience and persuade them that there is value in this even though the theoretical framework on which it is based is flawed.

(In fact, I think the Alpha interpretation is largely downright wrong; even if you were to accept that all the gospels are reliable near-contemporaneous eyewitness accounts instead of products of a faith community largely from later generations and that Paul and those writing as Paul were not doing ad-hoc theologising but were inspired to the extent of writing nothing inaccurate, the interpretations of scripture used to produce the Alpha theoretical framework leave a lot to be desired, and some of them took over one and a half millenia to be extracted from the base scripture).

In this ideal world, maybe they could stick with the course to the end and have their own transformative experience as a result, with or without Alpha’s stock interpretations. At this point, I’m not sure how this could be achieved, even if the constraints of the course allowed me to try.

What I do not want is to suggest to anyone that my interpretations are in any way the only right way to give yourself an interpretational structure into which to fit such experience. I had to do a lot of intellectual “heavy lifting” to get where I am, and anticipate there may be plenty more to be done. Heavy lifting is not for everyone, and if I were to give the impression that it is necessary to do this in order to “be right”, or worse, in order to have transformative experience, this would be at best non-constructive and at worst damaging. Equivalent, if you like, to a suggestion that you need to understand quantized free electron theory and lattice dynamics in order to use a computer rather than call it “George” and regard it as an odd kind of human. If you then gave up using a computer, it would be a bad thing. What I do think is that for someone with a basically scientific-materialist mindset and a critical, analytical approach, the Alpha interpretations are very unlikely to work, but something like mine might.

We will see. Unless I am disinvited, I will be going along on Wednesday evenings for the next few weeks. I think it will be good discipline for me to blog about it in the process.

 

This is the title of a book by Marcus Borg, published 2003. I can strongly recommend it.

I’ve been doing some reading to provide background for some more extended writing I have in contemplation, around the topic of panentheism and Christianity, and caught a reference to this book, which had slid past my consciousness ten years ago. Now, I’ve thought for quite some time that Prof. Borg was what I’ve previously described as a “closet panentheist”, in that parts of some of his previous books strongly hinted to me that he had arrived at a broadly panentheist conception of God. I was interested to see if he went further in “The Heart of Christianity”.

If he was in the closet, in this book he has come out; he’s loud and proud, as you might put it. He goes a lot further. He puts forward a way of viewing scriptures and traditions within “the emerging paradigm” which really demands a panentheist stance, and then goes on to explore specific issues; being “born again” and the Spirit generally; the Kingdom; “Thin Places”; Sin and salvation; praxis; and finally Christianity in a pluralist world. He does it very well, as you’d expect from a biblical scholar of his experience and credentials and a best-selling communicator.

2003 was a bit late for this book to have saved me a lot of thinking, even had I read it fresh from the presses, but I’d have loved to read it in, say, 1993, and had it been in existence and I’d read it in 1973 (or, even better, 1968) my whole spiritual adulthood would probably have been very different. Since 1968 I’ve laboured under the difficulty that my panentheist stance, about which I really have no option, is not “standard Christianity”; here is a well-respected scholar arguing that not only is it a viable and valid way of moving forward with Christianity in a postmodern and pluralist world, but also to some extent respectable in terms of pre-modern thought (say, before around 1500). I grant you, I’ve yet to come across a church anything like local to me in which this kind of approach has reached more than (at most) the leadership, but armed with this book 45 years ago, who knows what might have happened?

I might have liked to see more about what I see as a panentheist thread running through Christianity, or at least it’s mystics, from the earliest days. Prof. Borg does touch on that, but only extremely lightly.

He arrives at his position from a direction entirely different from my own. Prof. Borg has, so far as I can see, been a Lutheran from childhood, and has been thoroughly within the church throughout, arriving eventually at a panentheist conception which re-invigorates and makes sense of his Christianity for the future. I started out as an atheist with an experience which I could only sensibly interpret as panentheist, and then spent many years trying to find out how to fit that into an available faith community (it was only in the late 1990s that two online friends persuaded me that I was, in fact, legitimately a Christian, albeit of a rather unusual flavour). It is interesting to see that Prof. Borg arrives at many of the same ways of looking at things as do I, for instance concepts of sin and salvation; exclusivity; the Kingdom. Neither are they just the same in outline; often he chooses the same passages and analogies as do I. Maybe this further validates the stance?

A few months ago I posted that I seemed to be emotionally a five-point Calvinist, and how this irritated me.  A few years ago I wrote the following (over-inspired by the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s rap Othello):-

“Bro, let me tell you ’bout a concept called TULIP/big in the South where they like mint julep/totally bad is the way that we’re created/only by election is /the way that it’s fated/Jesus came for some but not for others/God gives grace to some of the brothers/Once you’re elected escape their ain’t/’cause you’ll persevere like all of the Saints”

otherwise “The Calvin Rap”, which I gather pretty accurately describes the five points under the acronym “TULIP”; Total depravity, Unconditional election, Limited atonement, Irresistible grace, Persistence of the saints.

I also wrote the “Anti-Calvin Rap” in reply to myself:-

“God messed it up in his first creation/Gave a way to save themselves to Israel’s nation/”Follow my commandments” was his prescription/”Even if you sin, I’ll save” was the prediction/Are you serious that God can’t hack it?/Gives commandments that aren’t a good packet?/Jesus came to save us all as John well said/”Believe in what he said to us; you won’t be dead”/Gave new commandments that we could use/”Love me, your fellow men you don’t abuse”/We have the choice as to whether we do it/If we do we will reap the fru-it/Falling away a question poses/’Cause in that case your life ain’t ROSES”

ROSES is a reference to a competing concept, standing for Redeemed on condition of faith, Open to all, Separated by sin, Elect to good works, Sealed by the Spirit. “Elect to good works” means you are chosen by God to do certain things; if you don’t, you are still “saved” but subject to discipline.

There’s a spirited defence of ROSES against TULIP by Jeffrey A at http://community.compuserve.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?tsn=7&nav=display&webtag=ws-religion&tid=155430, which I won’t repeat here. As it happens, I’m not so sure about ROSES either, but it’s theoretically better than TULIP!

Now, as my history records, I got “zapped” in my mid-teens entirely out of the blue. I had really done nothing to deserve it, nor to make it more likely that such would happen. I was, frankly, a pretty miserable specimen of humanity before this, wholly self-centred, manipulative and – well – very teenager-like. Intrinsic to the experience was first a conviction of how bad I had previously been, but also a conviction that I was forgiven. I have no problem with “total depravity”!

I was powerless to resist the experience at the time (surprising, as my reluctance to “let go” has since been the bane of my existence in following a path of meditation and contemplation), so “irresistible” chimes. So does “unconditional”, as I was not fulfilling any conditions which I can think of at that time. I have never since felt that things could be (in the deepest sense) any way other than as in that experience, and have sought to repeat the experience and to act in accordance with the paradigm change it produced in me, so “persistence” probably works, though I’m uneasy about the word “saints”. That’s four points…

I suppose, in a sense, so does “limited”, as I have met very few people who have had a similar experience of such intensity. I don’t understand why I should have been favoured above others (particularly far more deserving candidates). Very many people seem to get by with relatively very weak experiences of consciousness of God, or indeed just on hope.

But… the consciousness of God which I experienced then and since is not consistent with an arbitrary selection of some and rejection of others; the inevitable result of 5 point Calvinism, it seems to me, is that you’re either saved or damned without any question of worth, without any consideration of what you have done or will do in the future, without even any requirement to try. That does not sound like the God I know, whose policy on acceptance or rejection seems to me far better summed up in Ezekiel 18, to which I was referring in the second rap.

I’ve also met a lot of people who have at some point had all the signs of having had at least a loosely similar experience to my own, and have then lost their adherence to their new paradigm. The usual answer I hear from the 5 point Calvinist is that they were merely imitating those who are actually saved, but it overwhelmingly seems to me that you can, in fact, fall away from at the very least the consciousness of being irrevocably in God’s love and protection, and certainly from keeping commandments and manifesting the fruits of the Spirit. People do. Sometimes they return. Often they don’t.  I don’t see persistence there, nor unconditional election, nor irresistible grace. Particularly not the last of these, as I have met a very few people who have testified to an experience very similar to mine and of at least near that force, but who have dismissed it as “just one of those things” or, as one friend charmingly puts it “a brain fart”. In conscience, I suppose it might have gone that way with me too – I didn’t at the time accept the existence of a God, and my first thoughts were to seek medical help. Had my doctor not assured me that there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with my brain function or mental processes at all (including TLE, which was my best guess), I suppose I might have just dismissed it, and not gone on to act on it.

I think I’ll stick with my head on this, whatever feels emotionally correct.

Most of my activity connected with this blog seems to be trashing inappropriate comments, virtually all of which seem to come from automatic mailings. So, OK, I know that this is likely to fall on deaf ears, or more accurately uncomprehending search engines, but look:-

Those few reading this blog for it’s real content are really very unlikely to want to rent property in Richmond, Virginia. I suppose very marginally more might be interested in slightly exotic personal services, and of those very few, maybe someone also is looking for “performance enhancing” drugs. Probably none, however. Similar microscopic numbers ( likely smaller than one actual person) might, I suppose, be drawn to camera equipment, or ski lodges in Vanuatu (OK, I made that one up by eliding two genuine ones). Criminal defence attorneys in Chicago? Apartments in Gurgaon, wherever that is? No, even if my readers did actually see these robotically produced posts (and no, it does not help you if the content looks vaguely OK but the title line or address are clearly advertising), you would probably get no custom.

However, all replies to this blog are mediated, so the only reader who is ever going to see any of this tripe is me – and if I actually register anything about it at all, it will be to ensure that I never ever have anything to do with the sender. Be reassured on this; although I currently have to get rid of two or three of them a day, no, I will not be finding out where you live and sending Luigi and the Boys (not even the electrical contractor in London, who is actually conceivably within reach), nor will I be getting a friend to hack your account and demolish your hard drive, much as I might wish to. All you are doing, therefore, is to annoy me without fear of comeback.

I write this pretty much serene in the knowledge that those who should be reading it won’t be, and if they did, they would ignore it. But then, I pray on a regular basis too, and I do not expect mountains to move or the government to see sense, nor for friends or relations to be healed or (at a minimum) stop dying for a while. The panentheist conception of God really doesn’t allow for a seriously interventionist deity, save in the arguably small way of influence on hearts and minds, and search bots, like mountains, diseases and (for the most part) governments do not have hearts or minds. Even if it did, by asking something which would otherwise not happen, I would be setting myself above the wisdom of the deity, and even if what I asked for were of itself entirely benevolent, I do not know and cannot know enough to be confident that unintended consequences would not outweigh any good result. However, having expressed my wish, I can more easily go on to say “not my will but thine be done, O Lord” and take a small step towards accepting a thing which I cannot change. “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change” – ah well, serenity in accepting is more than just a small step, but I can hope and pray for it, and hope for that arguably small influence.

I attend an Anglican Church, and the words “this is the Word of the Lord” float past me following any reading from the Bible apart from the gospels, in which case the formula is “this is the Gospel of Christ”. But in what way can this conceivably be true for me, a panentheist? This question arises from a private response to my two previous posts.

Well, I assuredly do not think that a separate and personified God dictated the words to the various writers of sections of the Bible, nor do I think that inspiration from whatever source is guaranteed to be rendered by any writer in a form which is correct, sufficient and complete.

That is, except insofar as any words, just as any actions whatsoever, emanate from a part of the whole which is God. Although that could possibly be an adequate piece of mental gymnastics for someone, I need more than that.

I hear the words, and would sometimes really like to substitute (for instance) “this is the word of Paul”, or “this is the word of an unknown psalmist”. In an extreme case, I might want to say “this is the word traditionally ascribed to Moses but actually of an unknown redactor of around the third century BC working on material of the Yahwist source“. I am reasonably convinced by the Biblical scholars who have reached such conclusions; I’m certainly in no position to argue against them, except perhaps in some details of method which don’t impact on the general conclusion.

But I do actually have more than that. For most purposes, I treat scripture as something of fundamental authority in a way in which I assuredly don’t treat (say) the words of the editorial writers of “The Times”, which of course also qualifies to me as words emanating from a part of the whole which is God. If I swallow really hard, I equally have to include the words in “Hello”magazine, thus indicating the limits of usefulness of systematic theology.

This emanates from tradition. In the Wesleyan quadrilateral of scripture, tradition, reason and experience, the fact that the Bible as we know it is scripture is a matter of tradition. Various works which might well have been in the Bible, such as the Epistle to the Laodiceans, the Didache or the Gospel of Thomas don’t appear in current versions; Luther questioned whether Hebrews and Revelation should actually be part of the Bible, but eventually bowed to the pressure of tradition.

A sizeable amount of the impact of that tradition, to me, is the fact that I was brought up with scripture. It was the tradition of my family, the tradition of my early schools, the tradition of what was then a sizeable proportion of the population where I grew up. It is a part of my thinking at a very deep level (which the contents of “Hello” are definitely not!). (A level, indeed, sufficiently deep that I have some suspicions that at some emotional level I may be verging on being a five point Calvinist – but I’m working on that; I don’t find it a particularly healthy emotional stance). In the sense that it forms that imbedded tradition, therefore, I consider “this is the Word of the Lord” to be accurate.

What I do not do is consider this in any absolute sense. I don’t really do absolutes, as witness part of my “Childish Thoughts” post; I consider taking things to extremes to be the best way of causing any system of thinking to break down. It is, however, the bedrock on which the praxis of most of my spiritual life is based, including making the response “thanks be to God” after the declaration in the service. It really isn’t helpful to be thinking “well, actually it’s the word of someone traditionally thought to be Paul but actually writing some years after his death in the context of a theology which had developed somewhat beyond Paul’s actual position”. So I try not to do that any more.