What the Resurrection is Not

(This is Neil) I should begin by wishing any readers a very happy Easter. I haven’t been posting much as of late, and I now owe posts on both the existence of God and the sacrament of confirmation. I should be more regular in my contributions in the near future, for better or worse. In any case, I haven’t died.

 

Here, I would like to post on the Resurrection in order to continue the very interesting discussion begun by Todd’s post “Have Faith.” (I have posted on the Resurrection before; see here and here.) I think that the essential question regarding the Resurrection is asked in a sermon preached this year by the Reformed minister Kim Fabricius: “Are we to interpret the Easter event in the light of secular convictions about what constitutes ‘reality,’ or are we to interpret secular convictions about what constitutes ‘reality’ in the light of the Easter event?” The Rev. Fabricius, correctly siding with the latter option, tells us that the Resurrection “certainly cannot be circumscribed by our so-called plausibility structures, or understood within our everyday frames of reference, rather it subverts these structures and frames and compels us to revise reality itself.”

 

This might seem to leave us helpless, able to do little more than speak softly of paradox and inexplicability. I – not going quite so far – would like to say that the Resurrection changes our epistemic capacities (again, please see here). The Gospel accounts of the Resurrection challenge our attempts to see it as merely a particularly strange or intense event that we can already grasp and use to confirm our preexisting thoughts and ideas. But this is not meant to leave us simply stuttering and babbling. We can speak, but whenever we say something about reality or “the way things are,” we must speak out of the astonishment and, yes, trembling of the first Easter.

 

I’d like to quickly go over a very interesting article by Deborah Thompson Prince from the Journal of the Study of the New Testament that appeared in 2007. I think that it nicely shows that part of the Easter event is, in Fabricius’ words, the subversion of the usual structures and frames through which we usually interpret reality. Prince is looking at the 24^th chapter of St Luke’s Gospel. If our first reaction to Luke’s account is to shake our heads and say, “I don’t get it,” we might be in the perplexed place where Luke wants us to be.

 

After all, we can think of many inadequate ways to “get” the Resurrection: a vision, a dream, resuscitation, or, in Dale Price’s words, “something out of the works of Romero” (George, not Oscar). There were, Prince tells us, already many inadequate ways to “get” the Resurrection in Greco-Roman times. She says, “I propose that the picture of Jesus that emerges in Lk 24 surpasses all expected modes of post-mortem apparitions by virtue of the fact that it draws upon them all and distinguishes itself from them all.”

 

The first of these ways of “understanding” the Resurrection is as the appearance of a disembodied spirit. Disembodied spirits are insubstantial. They might eat and drink. Teiresias tells Odysseus, “Any ghost that you let taste of the blood will talk with you like a reasonable being.” But Odysseus’ dead mother, despite his sorrows, simply cannot be embraced. Anticlea tells her son, “The sinews no longer hold the flesh and bones together; these perish in the fierceness of consuming fire as soon as life has left the body, and the soul flits away as though it were a dream.”  

 

Jesus might seem to be a disembodied spirit because he “vanishes from sight” at Emmaus (Lk 24:31). But Jesus cannot be a disembodied spirit because his tomb is empty (“when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus,” see Lk 24:3-12). The bodies of disembodied spirits are not disturbed. Furthermore, when Jesus shows his hands and feet, it is “because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see I have” (Lk 24:39).

 

The second of the inadequate ways of “understanding” the Resurrection is as a reanimated corpse, or revenant. The 2^nd century writer Phlegon of Tralles, in his On Marvels, reports an account of a reanimated girl who is able to eat, drink, and have sex during a three day period. Then, from Euripides, Plato, and Apollogorus, we have the story of Alcestis, who dies in the place of her husband, but is retrieved from death by Herakles. (Plato: “So noble did this action of hers appear to the gods, as well as to men, that among the many who have done virtuously she is one of the very few to whom, in admiration of her noble action, they have granted the privilege of returning alive to earth.”)

 

Jesus might seem to be a reanimated corpse, because his body is not in the tomb and he is still flesh and blood. But, then, how does he “vanish from sight” at Emmaus? In Jerusalem, how does he suddenly appear “in their midst” so that the disciples “thought that they were seeing a ghost” (Lk 24:36-7)?

 

The third inadequate way of “understanding” the Resurrection is as the apparition of a dead hero. These heroes are ghosts that appear to have physical contact with the living. Prince gives, as example, Philostratus’ fictional dialogue Heroicus, in which a vinedresser speaks of Protesilaus, the first Greek to die in Troy, with whom he converses regularly. Protesilaus eats, leaves footprints, and can be embraced. “But how he returned afterwards too, he does not tell me even though I’ve wanted to find out for a long time. He is hiding, he says, some secret of the Fates.”

 

Some of this might seem consistent with Jesus’ Resurrection, but, again, the bodies of dead heroes who reappear are usually undisturbed. And the apparitions of dead heroes are generally not “taken up to heaven” (Lk 24:51).

                                                                                  

Finally, the fourth inadequate way of “understanding” the Resurrection is as the translation of a mortal to the end of the world or the realm of the gods. This usually does not involve death. Thus, Livy on the translation of Romulus:

 

A violent thunder storm suddenly arose and enveloped the king in so dense a cloud that he was quite invisible to the assembly. From that hour Romulus was no longer seen on earth. When the fears of the Roman youth were allayed by the return of bright, calm sunshine after such fearful weather, they saw that the royal seat was vacant. … At length, after a few had taken the initiative, the whole of those present hailed Romulus as “a god, the son of a god, the King and Father of the City of Rome.” They put up supplications for his grace and favor, and prayed that he would be propitious to his children and save and protect them. … The tradition runs that Proculus Julius, a man whose authority had weight in matters of even the gravest importance, seeing how deeply the community felt the loss of the king, and how incensed they were against the senators, came forward into the assembly and said: “Quirites! At break of dawn, to-day, the Father of this City suddenly descended from heaven and appeared to me. Whilst, thrilled with awe, I stood rapt before him in deepest reverence, praying that I might be pardoned for gazing upon him, “Go,” said he, “tell the Romans that it is the will of heaven that my Rome should be the head of all the world. Let them henceforth cultivate the arts of war, and let them know assuredly, and hand down the knowledge to posterity, that no human might can withstand the arms of Rome.”

 

Jesus might seem to be “translated” to heaven (again, see Lk 24:51). Luke will write about his Ascension. But Jesus clearly dies and does so in public. In translation stories, the death is usually uncertain and the body is missing. Romulus disappears in a cloud.

 

What is Luke doing? Prince tells us that Luke means to “disorient” us. He can only describe the Resurrection using the categories found in Greco-Roman literature, but the Resurrection surpasses all of them, one after another, leaving all the alternatives obviously inadequate. Likewise, the Resurrection, while drawing on elements of our reality, forces us even today to revise our commonplace accounts of reality.

 

And this is why we must speak of it with astonishment and trembling. Whenever we would “overspiritualize” the Resurrection for the sake of intellectual comfort, Jesus always offers us his hands and feet for inspection. Whenever we would think to understand the Resurrection in such a way as to domesticate it, Jesus always “vanishes from our sight.”

 

Once again, Happy Easter.

 

St Paul as Pastor

(This is Neil.) The Oxford Jesuit Nicholas King has a short piece on “Paul as Pastor” in the July issue of The Pastoral Review. I will briefly summarize. After all, it is the Year of St Paul. Fr King begins with three “odd facts.” First, Paul doesn’t seem to use “pastor” language – he only refers to himself as a “shepherd” once, when claiming that he has a right to “milk from the flock” (1 Cor 9:7). Second, Paul does things that we generally discourage pastors from doing. “O stupid Galatians!” (Gal 3:1), he writes. And, after being sarcastic with the arrogant Corinthians (“you have become kings”), Paul actually seems to threaten them with some sort of corporal punishment: “Shall I come to you with a rod, or with love and a gentle spirit?” (1 Cor 4:21) He was, we might say, old-fashioned in the sense of the former pastor in a parish that King once served who would challenge abusive husbands to a fight, dramatically reducing the rate of domestic violence. Incidentally, Jason Byassee of the Christian Century reports a pastor saying, “Baptist deacons had to be big ole’ boys because once in a while someone would be abusing his wife, running around on her, not taking care of his kids. The pastor could try and ‘talk him up,’ but if he wouldn’t listen, the deacons would take him out back and apply muscle to him.” Maybe this sort of rough, old-fashioned, somewhat disturbing sort pastoral ministry was more a little more common once than we would think.

Third, and most shockingly, Paul doesn’t accept money. Really.

Why is Paul so odd? Paul, King says, “felt an absolute imperative to preach the good news” (my emphasis). Thus, regarding the matter of payment, Paul asserts that he and Barnabas have not “used this right,” because they will “endure everything so as not to place an obstacle to the gospel of Christ” (1 Cor 9:12). “For Paul, therefore, there was a freedom in working for a living and preaching the gospel for nothing.” If you don’t accept a stipend, your only obligation is to the Gospel. This “absolute imperative” perhaps explains his “old-fashioned” qualities and his reticence about pastoral language.

And what is this Gospel that Paul must preach? Paul summarizes it twice in his letters. In Romans, Paul writes, “It is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: for Jew first, and then Greek. For in it is revealed the righteousness of God from faith to faith; as it is written, ‘The one who is righteous by faith will live’” (Rom 1:16-17). This Gospel is Christocentric. As Paul writes to the Corinthians, this revelation of “the righteousness of God” consists of a few major points: “that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures; that he was buried; that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures” and that he appeared to others (1 Cor 15:3-8). “So we preach and so you believed” (1 Cor 15:11).

Hopefully, we share Paul’s commitment to the Gospel. But, practically speaking, does Paul show us any qualities that we should see in our pastors? Fr King identifies three qualities. First, Paul has obvious affection for his fellow Christians. He tells even the Corinthians, “I am writing you this not to shame you, but to admonish you as my beloved children” (1 Cor 4:14-15). This is not mere rhetoric – although it is good rhetoric – and it is not mere politeness. As Paul tells the Philippians, he prays “with joy” for them, because of their “partnership for the gospel from the first day until now” (Phil 1:5). King will say that these Christian communities reflect, however imperfectly, “the mystery of God’s love in Christ,” and, thus, Paul loves them.

Second, although Paul has just a few important tenets, he is able to “think on his feet,” dealing with a bewildering set of issues ranging from runaway slaves to incest. King warns us against overemphasizing Paul’s opinions on “relatively trivial issues,” but it is hard to know exactly what he means here. King does tell us that what is really essential to Paul is – thirdly – to always keep one’s eyes on Jesus.

Here, I will close by directly quoting Nicholas King, SJ, on this third quality that Paul models for would-be pastors:

Paul had, it is clear, fallen head over heels in love with Jesus, and so come to the realization that it was true, what these crazy Christians had been saying, that God had raised him from the dead, and that Jesus was Lord, and Paul had to tell non-Jews about it. That, so far as he was concerned, was the heart of the matter, and his approach to any problem that he encountered in his pastoral work was simply to go back to Jesus. There can hardly be a better watchword for a pastor today or in any century. That is the reason that he gets so irritable with the Corinthians: they had taken their eyes off the ball; likewise, when the Galatians had forgotten about Jesus in their determination to return to Law-observance, Paul spectacularly lost his temper. Even in a largely warm and loving letter like Philippians, Paul is capable of severity if people forget about Jesus. There had been a rattling of the tea-cups up there in Macedonia, and two valued apostolic workers, Evodia and Syntyche (Philippians 4.2) were at odds, and Paul wants them to get it sorted out. Interestingly, the language that he uses, “think the same thing in the Lord” is the same as he has used earlier in the letter, when he introduces the famous “hymn to Christ” in 2.6-11, where three times (2;2, 3, 5 – but be warned that it may not be clear in English) he uses the word to “think” or its compounds to encourage unity: “think the same thought among yourselves as was also in Christ Jesus…”. If you get that right, then absolutely everything else follows. So when Paul tells his churches to “imitate” him (1 Corinthians 4.16; 11.1; 1 Thessalonians 1.6), it is not out of arrogance, but because he has centered his life on Christ, and they must do the same if their lives are to make sense. …

 

Philippians as a Model for Preaching

(This is Neil) Since Todd has been providing excerpts from and commentary on Fulfilled in Your Hearing, I thought that I’d contribute a short post on preaching. And, since it is the Year of St Paul, and Philippians 2 makes two close appearances in the lectionary for September, I thought that I’d post on St Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians as a model for preaching. The following is indebted to an article by James W. Thompson from last year’s Interpretation.

First, we should review the context of Philippians. Paul’s epistle was addressed to a vulnerable community. The Christian community, Thompson tells us, was a “remarkable experiment in a world in which groups were normally united by family ties, professional associations, or ethnicity.” Furthermore, the Christian belief that “Jesus is Lord,” as NT Wright tells us, “could not but be construed as counterimperial, as subversive to the whole edifice of the Roman Empire; and there is plenty of evidence that Paul intended it to be so construed, and that when he ended up in prison as a result he took it as a sign that he had been doing his job properly.” Even if he expected punishment, the jailed Paul now has to reassure the anxious Philippians, themselves plagued by adversaries and false teachers, that his imprisonment has “helped to advance the gospel” (Phil 1:12) and is not a disaster.

How does he preach to them? Thompson suggests that Paul’s letter falls into the recognizable genre of the “ancient letter of friendship.” Paul uses the common definition of friendship as two bodies with one soul – bodies that possess all things in common – in order to urge the Philippians to remain “standing firm in one spirit, with one mind struggling together for the faith of the gospel” (Phil 1:27). They are to rejoice together and share their love with one another. He constantly repeats the word phronein, which literally means “to have an opinion,” “think,” or “set one’s mind on,” but can also mean “insight” or “inner reflection.” Thompson says that, in politics or military affairs, phronein could even refer to a “common loyalty.” When Paul urges the Philippians to “have this mind” – “attitude” in the NAB (touto phronein, Phil 2:5), he is trying to unite the vulnerable Philippians around one particular “insight,” “loyalty” and “attitude”: the self-emptying of the Jesus who is Lord. Paul shows us that preachers must unify a fragile congregation by illustrating this common “mind” in Jesus Christ. That is the basis for Christian friendship. The preacher, we can say, must never leave his congregation with a fellowship merely based on shared ideology, principles, programs, or moral examples. These things, however worthy, can become twisted through our fear of death into self-protective fantasies (see my posts here and here). Put bluntly, we need an entirely new way of thinking. The preacher must bring his congregation with Christ to the foot of the cross, so that they might grasp that death is not a final shame and humiliation and then see the world through this new “insight,” “loyalty” and “attitude” (see my post here).

We can now look at how Paul argues. We can see coherence in the letter’s composition if we glance at rhetoric handbooks. Paul uses all three kinds of common argument. His long autobiographical sections – “Whatever gains I had, these I have come to consider a loss because of Christ” (Phil 3:7); “I have learned, in whatever situation I find myself, to be self-sufficient” (Phil 4:11) – are arguments from ethos, or character. Paul also makes arguments from pathos, or emotion. As Aristotle, from whom this identification of three modes of persuasion comes (see Rhetoric 1356a), tells us, “persuasion may come through the hearers, when the speech stirs their emotions,” making them “pleased and friendly.” Thus, Paul assures the Philippians that he “shall remain and continue in the service of all of you for your progress and joy in the faith” (Phil 1:25), and will reassure them again and again of his love for them. Finally, Paul makes arguments from cognition, or logos. These arguments are rooted in the “mind” revealed by Christ: God exalts those who empty themselves, even to the point of death. Paul shows us that preachers must “recognize that complexity of the communication process” by integrating the modes of argumentation. A good preacher must know how to present himself as credible, has to understand the emotions of the congregation, and should be able to reason logically. A sermon can be ruined if the deacon seems arrogant, unfair, or unduly concerned about the wealth and influence of the church. A sermon can be ruined if the priest is either boring or overly melodramatic. A sermon can be given by a good preacher, contain compelling stories, but still be tarnished through painfully poor or incomplete reasoning.

Paul also shows his mastery of rhetoric in his arrangement of the letter. Paul asks his listeners to “with one mind struggle together” in the first chapter, after an opening thanksgiving (Phil 1:27), and returns to the athletic metaphor in the fourth chapter (synathlountes means to “be athletes together”), noting that Euodia and Syntyche “have struggled at my side” (Phil 4:3), before finally ending with a final thanksgiving. These passages serve to bind his arguments together in an inclusio. Paul also follows classical rhetoric in including an exordium (to introduce the topic and favorable dispose his audience), narratio (to cover the history of the case), propositio (thesis), probatio (proofs), and peroratio (summation and final emotional appeal). (Perhaps a refutatio was not necessary here.) These elements give his letter an overall structure. The exordium clearly states his goal – that, in this time of difficulties, the Philippians should become friends in Christ with more love, discernment, and righteousness – and favorably disposes his listeners by telling them that he holds them in his heart (Phil 1:6-11). Paul then continues with an autobiographical narratio, which argues from both ethos and pathos. Illustrating the situation, he tells the Philippians that although he is in prison, he is still able to rejoice, because his imprisonment contributes to the spread of the gospel, and he cares nothing for himself.

Paul then clearly lays down his thesis: the Philippians, despite their enemies and hardships, must remain “standing firm in one spirit, with one mind struggling together for the faith of the gospel” (Phil 1:27). How? Why? Paul argues for this thesis in the probatio, using examples. The Philippians are to be friends, with one mind, because this is the mind of Christ, who emptied himself but was then exalted by God. Paul gives other examples for them to follow: Timothy, Epaphroditus, and, as we might expect from the narratio, Paul himself. “Join with others in being imitators of me, brothers, and observe those who thus conduct themselves according to the model you have in us” (Phil 3:17). In the peroratio, Paul returns to his themes – the Philippians must struggle together, and rejoice together with Paul. Paul reminds them that he is a model for them because he has adopted the mind of Christ, knowing “indeed how to live in humble circumstances” (Phil 4:12) as well as abundance, because Christ strengthens him. He can share in and model the deepening friendship in the midst of hardship to which they are called. Paul then thanks the Philippians once again. Paul, obviously, has presented a developed and compelling argument. He has, among other things, presented a thesis and proven the thesis by showing how it has been actualized in real life. The preacher, we can say, must never be disorganized. Paul also shows us how the use of examples can make an argument persuasive, whether the examples come from the life of Jesus, the saints, or even autobiography.

There are other ways in which Philippians can be a model to the preacher. Professor Thompson notes that Paul uses a hymn in the second chapter, “That Paul appeals to a hymn open possibilities for the preacher insofar as the hymn has a specific rhetoric effect on the listener.” He also notes that the prominent placement of the hymn is only possible because it “recalls the entire Christian story.”

What can we learn about preaching from St Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians? I think that we can summarize with two points:

1. The preacher can only unify his congregation with the “mind of Christ”

2. The preacher should be familiar with classical rhetoric.

What do you think? How do they teach rhetoric in seminaries?

 

The Enigma of St Paul

(This is Neil) I’d like to do two things with this overdue post. First, I want to note the passing of Henry Chadwick, the great Anglican historian and member of the Anglican Catholic International Commission. Please read Rowan Williams’ tribute, in which he observes that “the ecumenical scene is pretty wintry with less room for the distinctive genius of another Chadwick.” Then read all of Chadwick’s books and pray for, in Archbishop Williams’ words, “more hospitable times.” Second, I want to recognize that, as Todd has already reminded us, the Pope has announced a Jubilee Year to the Apostle Paul to run from this past June 28 to June 29, 2009.

It would seem to be a good time to quickly look at a lecture delivered by Henry Chadwick on St Paul. “The Enigma of St Paul” was given on February 27, 1968 and can be read here (PDF).

Professor Chadwick shows us that we really must read Paul with good judgment. After all, Paul, he writes, has long attracted “extreme critics” who have regarded him as “archdeceiver” and “corrupter” of the Gospel, and, on the opposite wing, “ecstatic admirers” who have seen him as nothing less than the “Comforter” prophesied in St John’s Gospel. The Gnostics believed that their dualism and rejection of the world could be discovered in Paul’s epistles. Even the orthodox found reading St Paul to be a rather perilous affair. Chadwick writes:

Orthodox interpreters inevitably wished that the apostle had composed his letters more slowly and carefully. Origen, for example, in a fragment of his commentaries lately discovered on papyrus, remarks that many heterodox doctrines have originated from incomprehension of Paul’s text; for the apostle being, as he himself said, “rude in speech,” failed to exercise proper caution in expressing himself.

We are reminded of the warning and regretful words in 2 Peter iii. 16 that in Paul’s letters there are “certain things hard to be understood which the unlearned and unstable wrest to their destruction.”

What is the point of these words of caution? Chadwick wishes us to remember that some of our seemingly modern problems were already known to ancient readers. The apparent “enigma” of St Paul doesn’t end or interrupt the history of Christianity, but has always been a part of it. As we will see, it is not something from which we must (or can) desperately escape.

If we may jump ahead, early modern readers also found Paul to be difficult. More specifically, his texts seemed to resist against certain deeply held presuppositions. Liberal rationalists, seeing Paul as the tortured and introverted apostle discovered by Luther, believed him to be overly pessimistic and to have “superimposed on the basic Christianity of the Golden Rule a complicated structure of doctrine about the Atonement and the Sacraments.” The Pietists worried that Paul’s doctrines occluded the simple “experimental” religion of the Gospels. Later on, even some Evangelicals “found simplicity in Paul by leaving on one side him [the] ecclesiological and sacramental passages” in Colossians, Ephesians, and the Pastoral Epistles.

Paul’s depiction of divine grace rescuing a corrupted humanity resists against the liberal desire to see Jesus as “a wise and benevolent teacher by the sunlit shores of Galilee.” But, says Chadwick, we can’t retreat to the opposite wing to see Paul as marked by a long struggle with a tormented and wounded conscience. After all, the imprisoned Paul doesn’t express disenchantment, disappointment, self-pity, “weary disillusionment or cynicism.” Paul’s letters (here Philippians) thus resist the “common modern notion that neurosis is an indispensable attribute of genius and that to be torn and twisted, dogged by drugs and drink, is a necessary qualification for recognition as a true artist.” (On this latter point, one should read the late Krister Stendahl’s “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West,” which first appeared in the Harvard Theological Review in 1963 – a few years before Chadwick’s lecture.)

…

But what of the intractable problem of sex? Can Paul be neatly categorized (and then dismissed) as a “misogynist celibate”? Turning to 1 Corinthians 7, Chadwick reconstructs the context. While, in the previous chapter, Paul had been arguing against antinomians who believed that Christian freedom meant that “all things were lawful,” here Paul confronts “a group which deduced from the doctrine of the higher life of the spirit a radical rejection of the body,” including the renunciation of marriage. After all, it could be considered, in antiquity if not presently, that such renunciation “freed the soul from the downward pull of matter, elevated it above the distractions of earthly things, and laid it open to inspiration from higher powers.” (Philo believed that Moses “dedicated himself in continence so as to be ready at any time to receive the inspiration of prophecy” – the sort of claim that later proved influential in the Christian embrace of clerical celibacy.)

Paul actually agrees in principle with this group, but his practical recommendations would displease them: “because of cases of immorality every man should have his own wife,” Paul says, and he instructs married couples, “Do not deprive each other,” except for times of prayer, “so that Satan may not tempt you through your lack of self-control” (1 Cor 7:2, 5). Paul accepts the arguments that there is a “celibate ideal” (“It is a good thing for a man not to touch a woman,” 1 Cor 7:1), and that marital relations should be temporarily avoided “to be free for prayer” (1 Cor 7:5). Nevertheless, as Chadwick says, “The Corinthians are on no account to suppose that baptism marks a discontinuity with the past so radical and so absolute that marriage is abrogated by it.” We sense a double resistance: against the view that celibacy is unnatural, but against the dualism that would completely reject marriage and raising a family as worldly. (Vincent Wimbush suggests that Paul here recommends a “life of tension”: “The believers were to be worldly enough to gain converts, but they were to be enough detached from the world not to be distracted and frustrated by its challenges.”)

Paul’s treatment of marriage and celibacy, then, is ambivalent – an ambivalence that obviously persists in the history of Christianity. This ambivalence usefully resists our desire for unequivocal answers. It also shows Paul’s method: “To the Jews I became like a Jew to win over Jews; to those under the law I became like one under the law–though I myself am not under the law–to win over those under the law” (1 Cor 9:20). Paul shows us the complexity of missionary activity (and perhaps Christian life in general). Chadwick writes of 1 Corinthians 9:

This passage is considerably illuminated by two passages in Philo of Alexandria when he tells us that there was lively discussion in the Greek synagogues about the intellectual integrity of the missionary apologist, seeking to interpret his faith to people with strong prejudices. How far might he go in accepting their language and principles in making his faith intelligible and acceptable to them? His purpose, says Philo, is to save whom he can; yet there are limits imposed by personal integrity and by loyalty to the truth. What are these limits, we at once ask. But at this critical moment Philo’s discussion tantalizingly breaks off. At least it is evident that he regarded a certain flexibility and adaptability as both necessary and right. He felt it a merit to use tact in presenting a case, and no doubt wisely declined to lay down a general rule. These texts of Philo are important evidence that Paul’s procedure was in line with a recognized line and not merely the unprincipled vacillation of a trimmer, as his critics took him to be when they accused him of “pleasing men” (Gal.i.10 etc.) or of writing with such uncandid subtlety and irony that one could not be sure of the meaning (the charge rebutted in 2 Corinthians iii-iv).

We can see this flexibility when Paul writes of the Jewish Law. Should Gentiles accept circumcision and follow the Law? Or was the Law now superseded and forbidden even to Jewish Christians? Paul sees the Law as valuable, but provisional: “the law was our disciplinarian for Christ, that we might be justified by faith” (Gal 3:24).

Of course, all of this ultimately means that we must read Paul with good judgment. We must become aware of the “prejudices with which we have allowed our spectacles to be colored” – our attempts to put Paul in a box. And we have to realize that Paul will always remain enigmatic to us. Part of that has to do with the inevitable remoteness of the first century to us. But, Chadwick writes, part of it has to do with “his temperament, the sudden quality of his mind, the intensity of his psychological and religious insight.” These things “put him apart from us, at the same time as they bring him alive and enable him to speak with perennial power.” Ironically, our inability to finally grasp Paul – to render him predictable, just more of the same – means that we keep reading him. We then find our place in the history of the church, alongside all of the other readers of this enigmatic St Paul.

We’ll miss Henry Chadwick.

 

Christians, Jews, and Psalm 1

(This is Neil.) As you may have noticed, I haven’t been posting all that much, in part because it is Lent. But I’d like to begin looking at the Psalms. Here, drawing on a recent article by the Anglican theologian Mike Higton, we’ll look at Psalm1 in the light of Christian-Jewish dialogue. We should note that the Catholic-Jewish dialogue has had its difficult moments – perhaps, most recently, regarding the Good Friday prayer in the 1962 missal. It isn’t hard to imagine some frustrated Catholics wondering, “Why should they care about how we pray?” (And, if it is, one can perform a Google search.)

Of course, there are very good answers to that question. But, likewise, some Catholics might wonder why we should read Scripture alongside Jews. Wouldn’t we just end up with nothing more than a catalogue of our unavoidable differences? To briefly answer that question, we can turn to the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s The Jewish People and Their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible. Christians will say that Jesus Christ fulfilled the Israelite Scriptures, but that document tells us that we should imagine this fulfillment as both continuity and discontinuity. It isn’t a matter of absolute continuity, because the Christian interpretation of the Old Testament is a “retrospective perception,” made in light of the events of the New Testament, which lets us “discover in the text an additional meaning that was hidden there.” (For “additional,” another translation would read “surplus of.”) It isn’t a matter of absolute discontinuity, either, because the Christian interpretation “fully appropriates the great themes of the theology of Israel”: Jesus Christ universalizes the “blessing given to Abraham” and does not erase it.

Imagining fulfillment as both continuity and discontinuity opens the space for dialogue. If we were to instead imagine this fulfillment as absolute continuity, we would have to conclude that the Jews were incapable of reading their own texts (instead of merely being incapable of perceiving its “additional meaning” in the light of Christ). If, however, we were to imagine this fulfillment as discontinuity, we would have to suggest that the rupture between the Testaments is so great that Judaism only appears to us as the darker background against which the light of Christ might shine. In either case, there would be no point for dialogue with the supposedly blind or superseded Jews. But grasping that fulfillment is both continuity and discontinuity allows us to see that “Christians can and ought to admit that the Jewish reading of the Bible is a possible one, in continuity with the Jewish Sacred Scriptures from the Second Temple period, a reading analogous to the Christian reading which developed in parallel fashion.”

Both readings are “irreducible,” but Christians “can, nonetheless, learn much from Jewish exegesis practiced for more than two thousand years, and, in fact, they have learned much in the course of history.” And Jews can learn from Christian exegetical research as well. But perhaps this only becomes clear when we turn to particular passages of Scripture.

So let us turn to Psalm 1:

Happy those who do not follow the counsel of the wicked, Nor go the way of sinners, nor sit in company with scoffers.

Rather, the law of the LORD is their joy; God’s law they study day and night.

They are like a tree planted near streams of water, that yields its fruit in season; Its leaves never wither; whatever they do prospers.

But not the wicked! They are like chaff driven by the wind.

Therefore the wicked will not survive judgment, nor will sinners in the assembly of the just.

The LORD watches over the way of the just, but the way of the wicked leads to ruin.

Mike Higton begins his article by describing three possible interpretations of the Psalm. First, we can imagine Israelite reciters associating the “tree planted near streams of water” with the trees found in the temple precincts and then recalling that “temple-flavored imagery had been used to speak about the security provided by Torah.” Thus, the Israelite could conclude that wisdom is surely found in the knowledge passed down from parents to children, but also through the course of a life regulated by participation in temple rituals, and that it is mostly firmly anchored in the Torah of God.

But Christians will read the Psalm through a Christological lens. Thus St Augustine:

“Blessed is the man who has not gone off in the counsel of the ungodly.” This should be understood to be about our Lord Jesus Christ, the man of the Lord. “Blessed is the man who has not gone off in the counsel of the ungodly,” as the earthly man did [i.e. Adam, see 1 Corinthians 15:47], who gave in to his serpent-deceived wife, and transgressed the commandment of God. “Nor stood in the way of sinners.” For although he entered the way of sinners, by being born as sinners are, he [our Lord Jesus Christ] did not “stand” in it, because the enticements of the world did not hold him.

This Christological reading is not one held by every Church Father (see Basil and Hilary and Ambrose), but for Augustine and much of the West, it is the literal meaning of the text, reached without any obvious strain. Once one presupposes that Jesus Christ is the wisdom of God, this reading seems obvious.

And now perhaps we are at an impasse. The Christian will tend to read the Psalm Christologically, the Jew simply will not. And there is nothing more to say. But Higton pushes us further. He has us read a third exegesis – that of Luther:

Whatever is said literally concerning the Lord Jesus Christ as to his person must [also] be understood allegorically of a help that is like him, and … tropologically of any spiritual and inner man against his flesh and the other man. Let this be made plain by means of examples. Blessed is the man who walks not [in the way of sinners] (Ps 1:1). Literally this means that the Lord Jesus Christ made no concessions to the designs of the Jews and of the evil and adulterous age that existed in his time.

Luther will later say that the Psalm’s description of the wicked as chaff “applies to the Jews first of all,” because “they have no fixed home but at every moment are exposed to such a wind,” their “minds are carried in all directions by the wind of many doctrines,” and “on the Last Day they shall be scattered by the eternal stormwinds of the unbearable wrath of God.”

We instinctively flinch at Luther’s exegesis, especially given recent history, but it forces a question upon us: Is this the terminus of any Christological reading of the Psalm? Of course, we can immediately reply that Luther’s exegesis has to do with other exegetical principles – his sensus literalis must always be a sensus propheticus, referring to Jesus Christ, and it is here clearly combined with his belief that “Salus extra Christum non est.” Furthermore, Luther (and later Protestant interpreters) emphasize justification by faith alone and think badly of Jewish adherence to the law (see the work of Uwe F.W. Bauer here [PDF]). But, still, Uwe Bauer reminds us that Catholic exegetes have also historically failed to recognize the Psalm as anything but Christian, not granting that this is a text “in the first place by and for Jews.” And the question remains: Is any Christological reading of the Psalm inevitably going to be anti-Judaic? If that is so, despite the beautiful claims of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, there can be no dialogue. There is no possible space for a Jewish voice.

Higton suggests that the Christian exegete stop at this point and ask again, “Well, what does happen if I take Psalm 1 to be about Jesus?” He notices that in the Psalm the wicked appear to at first be rather substantial: they have a “way” and have “company,” after all. But appearances can be deceiving. Jesus had nowhere to “lay his head” (Mt 8:20) and he reveals that the true tree that “yields its fruit in season” is the Cross. Jesus’ “way,” despite its seeming instability, is the only way to survive judgment. Higton notices that this particular reading remains Christological but “would already have been possible within the Hebrew canon.”

After all, this exegesis opens up a horizon already found in Job, Ecclesiastes, or other Psalms, where the final prosperity of the righteous is hoped for even though we now see the apparent stability and “prosperity of the wicked”: “They are free of the burdens of life; they are not afflicted like others” (Ps 73:3, 5). Furthermore, the way of the cross need not be opposed to the “law of the Lord” for “not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law” until heaven and earth pass away (Mt 5:18) and Jesus’ commandments to love God and neighbor as oneself are what the whole law has depended upon (Matt 22:40). So, Higton says, “the Christian reading need not be seen in opposition to the field of possible Jewish readings, but as a particular position within that field.”

But, wait, it isn’t this easy to reconcile Christology with Jewish readings. The Jewish reader, Higton says, can retort that the way of the righteous involves “the continuity and stability of people and observance” and the “material conditions” of law, people, and land. The Jewish reader can gently accuse the Christian of reducing the Torah by “spiritualizing” it. And when the Christian reader responds by suggesting that there is already a “trajectory” in the Old Testament “whereby land and temple are relativized or redefined in favor of delight in and obedience to Torah,” the Jewish reader can sigh and claim that this is the usual Christian path of individualization and internalization. Higton supposes: “Once again, the Jewish interlocutor might say, Torah is being too easily spiritualized by the Christian reader.”

What is the resolution? Higton does not intend to sketch a “path toward consensus.” Instead, we can imagine the Scriptures – and the voices of Christian and Jewish readers – yielding abundant and unexpected fruit through conversation freed from the control of a single tradition. Christians, for instance, will have to question their interpretation of the righteousness of the Jesus who never followed “the counsel of the wicked.” We Christians will also have to get beyond the usual (sometimes, unfortunately, seemingly obvious) binaries – one of which, posing the material conditions of Jewish communality against an individualized and internalized Christian faith, has deep roots going as far back as Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette’s 1811 commentary on the Psalms. This doesn’t mean giving up Christology. It means working out the implications of Christology in the presence of the Jewish people whose God is the God of Jesus Christ. This means giving space for a Jewish voice, which means admitting the possibility of Jewish exegesis, which, in turn, means understanding that the Christian interpretation of the Old Testament manifests both continuity and discontinuity.

If we can discover that it is valuable to study Scripture with our Jewish brothers and sisters – that it frees us for a new accountability before the Word of God – perhaps then the answer to the question “Why should they care about how we pray?” will also become clear.

Sorry that I’ve gone on for so long. What do you think?

P.S. For a little more on “Scriptural Reasoning,” see my post here.

 

Wedding Lectionary: 1 Corinthians 12-13

(This is Neil.) This post is my belated contribution to Todd’s series on the texts usually chosen for wedding readings. It will offer some brief exegesis on the famous discourse on love in 1 Corinthians 12:31-13:8, a very common second reading at weddings. The following will be drawn from an interesting book I recently read on the epistle, Michelle V. Lee’s Paul, the Stoics, and the Body of Christ.

A few verses before St Paul speaks of the “more excellent way” of love, he tells the Corinthians that they are the “body of Christ” (1 Cor 12:27). We can begin to explore Paul’s discourse on love by looking more closely at that phrase, “body of Christ.” It will be familiar to us, but that familiarity might hide a depressing lack of comprehension. Is it literal or a metaphor? Is its meaning clarified by saying that we are a “supernatural” or a “mystical” body of Christ? Professor Lee helpfully tells us that we should look to Stoicism to understand Paul’s idea of bodily unity. Parallels between the New Testament and Stoicism have been noticed since the time of the Church Fathers. Of course, we will also see that Paul departs from Stoicism in a significant way.

But, first, the parallels. The Stoics would speak of a city as a body to illustrate the importance of cooperation and the ideal of a unified entity. But they would also see the universe itself as a living being with a body. This universal body was held together by pneuma (or spiritus), which was itself corporeal. As the first century Stoic Manilius claimed, this divine spirit arranged “mutual bonds between all parts, so that each may furnish and receive another’s strength and that the whole may stand fast in kinship despite its variety of forms.” Pneuma engendered sympathetic agreement between the different parts of the one body. And, as Lee tells us, if God as pneuma held the universe together as one body, God as nous governed it in order. For the Stoics, God, pneuma, and nous are roughly interchangeable words.

Moral behavior for the Stoics meant living according to the order of the universe, which could simultaneously mean the order of the city, preserving harmony. The recognition that bonds always already existed between human beings led the Stoic philosopher to act for the common good of the universal brotherhood of mankind (communem humani generis societatem). Put bluntly, they would say that one must consider one’s actions from the perspective of the whole, not the isolated individual.

As Epictetus claimed, bringing us back to the idea of a body:

What, then, is the profession of a citizen [of the world]? To treat nothing as a matter of private profit, not to plan about anything as though he were a detached unity, but to act like the foot or the hand, which, if they had the faculty of reason and understood the constitution of nature, would never exercise choice or desire in any other way but by reference to the whole.

Some of the parallels with St Paul are obvious. Paul speaks of a body, pneuma, and the need for morality to make “reference to the whole.” But there is a difference. And that is Christology. For Paul, true knowledge comes by the Spirit (pneuma), but the sign of this is the confession that “Jesus is Lord” (1 Cor 12:2). As the exegete Anthony Thiselton tells us, this confession is “no mere ‘floating’ fragment of descriptive statement or abstract proposition, but is a spoken act of personal devotion and commitment which is part and parcel of a Christ-centered worship and lifestyle.” The Spirit inaugurates its recipients into a new transcendent unity, as they are the distinctive body of Christ, called into fellowship (koinonia) with Christ (1 Cor 1:9) and one another. They are all baptized in the Spirit into Christ (1 Cor 12:13), just like Israel was baptized in the cloud and sea into Moses (1 Cor 10:2). The members of the Body of Christ drink of the one pneuma and are the Temple of God because that pneuma dwells in them.

In this new, corporate humanity, one must act for the good of the whole body, as the Stoics would say. But the Christological center of Paul’s thought radicalizes it. The Stoic body preserved traditional hierarchies – as Lee tells us, “The ‘haves’ were urged to rule benevolently, and the ‘have-nots’ to submit to their rule.” There is a reversal of status in the body of Christ. This is because it is the body of the crucified Christ. It is Christ who is the “power and wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1:24). This might seem to be foolishness and a stumbling block, but the Corinthians are to be converted through the Spirit (pneuma) to the “mind” (nous) of this Christ (1 Cor 2:16). What is low deserves honor, and he who is the “world’s rubbish” (1 Cor 4:13) might truly be an apostle.

Obviously, this could be shocking. And it could be political – there are clear similarities between Paul’s language and the language of political homonoia speeches. The nous of Christ could be a threat to the nous of Caesar.

Paul’s focus on Christ also radicalizes the meaning of love, Paul’s “more excellent way.” Of course, the Stoics spoke highly of love, which could obviously contribute to the very deepest unity. As Seneca wrote, “Nature engendered in us mutual affection (amorem), and made us prone to friendships (sociabiles fecit)” that would bind us together. Cicero wrote that this friendship really was “more excellent” and that it sprung “from an inclination of the soul joined with a feeling of love (sensu amandi) rather than from calculation of how much profit (utilitatis) the friendship is likely to afford.” The Stoics would likely agree with Paul that love should be patient and kind, not boastful or arrogant, given willingly, and involve taking loss for another.

Where is the radicalism of Christian love? While the Stoics valued friendship, it was meant to be a friendship between equals. This friendship was a relationship in which one would both give and receive gifts over time, preserving if not enhancing one’s social status. But Christ died for us when we were hardly of equal virtue with him. In his Epistle to the Romans, Paul writes, “God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8). When Paul says that love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Cor 13:7), he is forgoing the usual limits on love and friendship. This is based on the selfless example of Christ, who, as we read in Philippians, was downwardly mobile, taking the form of a slave despite his equality with God. For the sake of love, we should likewise be willing to accept shame.

What does this mean for marriage? A family, the late John Paul II told us, is a “domestic church” because of its realization of ecclesial communion (see Familiaris Consortio), so a couple planning to marry should consider whether their relationship bears the marks of the body of Christ.

We can ask a few questions:

1. Has the Spirit bound the couple together into a transcendent unity that affects how they think and act, or do they still behave like isolated individuals who are getting married for individual benefit?

2. Are they willing to submit to one another, or do they believe that only one of them is deserving of honor?

3. Are they willing for their marriage to be countercultural?

4. Is the love between them reminiscent of Christ’s selfless love, or merely an exchange between equals? Would they stay together even if one of the spouses were to become much less attractive, intelligent, wealthy, or powerful?

 

St. Paul in Prison

(This is Neil.)

Several days ago, Todd asked for suggestions regarding an upcoming parish presentation on St Paul. In response, the Concord Pastor mentioned that, when he remembers that Paul occasionally wrote from prison, it “never fails to add depth to his words as I read them.” Dale Price wrote that Paul “far from being some grim caricature, was a man of joy,” and then recommended that Todd encourage his congregation to “read the Epistle to the Philippians first.”

As it happens, the Lutheran exegete James L. Bailey, Professor Emeritus at Wartburg Theological Seminary, wrote a very interesting article on Paul, imprisonment, joy, and the Epistle to the Philippians published in the Trinity Seminary Review last year (the entire issue can be found in PDF form here). In gratitude to our commenters, then, I’d like to quickly summarize the article.

Bailey tells us that two letters definitely written by Paul were composed in prison – besides Philippians, Philemon. Three (at least conceivably) deutero-Paulineletters, though – Ephesians, Colossians, and 2 Timothy, also speak of Paul as a “prisoner for the Gospel.” These three, combined with the descriptions of Paul’s imprisonment in Acts, “demonstrate that by the last third of the first century CE ‘Paul’s chains’ were symbolically and inextricably linked to his apostleship that involved extensive hardship and suffering.”

Before we explore what all of this means for Christians today, we should first say something about Roman imprisonment. It was awful. State prisons were often underground and overcrowded. Guards practiced torture in Roman prisons to obtain confessions or merely to humiliate and break the abused prisoners. Imprisonment for life was actually considered worse than death – Suetonius writes that, “when Tiberius was inspecting the prisons and a man begged for a speedy death, [the emperor] replied: ‘I have not yet become your friend.’”

Paul seems to have been held in military custody. In Philippians, he speaks of his imprisonment being well known “throughout the whole praetorium” (Phil 1:13) and communicates the greetings of the “holy ones … of Caesar’s household” (Phil 4:22). This, mercifully, was less severe than custody in a state or even a city jail. But, still, Paul would most probably have been shackled to a guard (which might explain a reticence to speak about his condition). And imprisonment brought a great deal of shame. Bailey tells us that a prisoner might be abandoned by family members, friends, and close associates.

Where was Paul imprisoned? Bailey follows Richard Cassidy’s Paul in Chains: Roman Imprisonment and the Letters of Paul, which argues that Philippians 1:13 and 4:22 point to a relatively late custody under the emperor’s own personal guards in Rome. This suggestion – as opposed to the hypothesis of an earlier imprisonment in Ephesus – dates Philippians as Paul’s last extant letter, written in custody in the late 50s or early 60s, considerably after the composition of the Epistle to the Romans. The “late” Epistle to the Philippians would then be written under the reign of Nero, which would explain its pessimistic account of imperial power, in obvious contrast to Romans 13. For what it is worth, Bailey and Cassidy’s suggestion is also compatible with the ending of Acts.

But are these details of Paul’s imprisonment merely of antiquarian interest? Actually, they allow us to reread the Epistle to the Philippians with a deeper attentiveness. The awareness that Paul is in a humiliating condition that might lead to the even greater debasement of a trial and execution directs us to pay closer attention to his fear that “I will be put to shame” and his hope that “Christ will be magnified in my body, whether in life or in death” (Phil 1:20). Writing to the Corinthians, Paul had already claimed that the Gospel was not rendered incredible because of his own weaknesses. That concern is now intensified, given “the stigmatizing effect of Roman imprisonment” and the disgrace of capital punishment. Paul here assures the Philippians – and perhaps himself – that his imprisonment has “happened for the advancement of the Gospel” (Phil 1:12) which is now better known. As he had written to the Corinthians, “when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor 12:10).

If we remember that Paul is imprisoned, we also sense his fear of abandonment. Some, we are told, are preaching Christ out of “good will,” perhaps redoubling their efforts in the absence of Paul. Others, however, “preach Christ from envy and rivalry … thinking that they will cause me trouble in my imprisonment” (Phil 1:15-7). Who are these people actively seeking to distress Paul? They are presumably those who believe that Paul’s connection of “my imprisonment” and “the defense and confirmation of the gospel” (Phil 1:7) is completely misguided; imprisonment, to them, brings the Gospel into contempt. Robin Scroggs has suggested that these “envious” preachers consequently proclaimed a truncated, but safely apolitical, Gospel to avoid any conflict with the political authorities.

We also become aware of the importance of Epaphroditus, “brother and co-worker and fellow-soldier” (Phil 2:25) to the imprisoned and dangerously marginalized Paul. Epaphroditus has been healed of illness through the mercy of God, but he has been lonely, and Paul sends back the “minister to my need” to the Philippians. Obviously, the relationship of Paul and Epaphroditus is not businesslike. Epaphroditus is an embodiment of the Philippians’ solidarity with Paul. Besides bringing material aid – “it was kind of you to share in my distress” (Phil 4:10), Epaphroditus, Bailey tells us, was the Philippians’ “direct envoy and public minister (the Greek word leitourgos suggests a public and perhaps priestly function) to Paul’s need when others were abandoning the imprisoned apostle.” His sending was not without risk, and the thanksgiving with which Paul begins his letter is surely heartfelt.

If we remember that Paul is in prison, we will also be struck to notice that Paul (as Dale Price reminded us) actually experiences joy, even in his custody. In this epistle, Paul uses the noun chara five times, and the verbs charein and sygchairein eight times. How can this be? Bailey quotes the prominent Evangelical exegete Gordon Fee:

Paul the theologian of grace is equally the theologian of joy. Christian joy is not the temporal kind, which comes and goes with one’s circumstances; rather it is predicated altogether on one’s relationship with the Lord, and is thus an abiding, deeply spiritual quality of life.

Paul does tell us to “Rejoice in the Lord always” (my emphasis; Phil 4:4). But is this escapism? In chapter 4, Paul tells us that he is content, echoing the Stoic-Cynic notion of “self-sufficiency” (autarkes). Paul, however, revises “self-sufficiency” into a “Christ-sufficiency”: “I have the strength for everything through him who empowers me” (Phil 4:14). Paul experiences joy because its source is something fundamental, something that remains, despite his circumstances. Jesus is still somehow there, with and for Paul in chains.

Paul also does not despair because his situation is not anomalous, some grotesque aberration from what was supposed to happen. His imprisonment is a graphic reminder that Christian life in the present necessarily involves suffering (and martyrdom itself, as the Pope just reminded us, is “not an exception reserved only to some individuals, but a realistic possibility for all Christian people”). Paul uses the words of athletic competition to describe the Christian life that every member of the Body of Christ shares: “Yours is the same struggle (agona) as you saw in me and now hear about me” (Phil 1:30). Professor Bailey writes, “In chains, the apostle sees with amazing clarity the nature and scope of the believers’ clash with the ardent supporters of the Roman imperial world.” We might add here some of the exegesis of NT Wright, who claims that Paul’s proclamation in 3:20 that “our citizenship is in heaven” means that “Jesus is Lord, and Caesar isn’t,” so that life in Caesar’s parody-empire involves considerable tension, and, inevitably, suffering.

But what might this mean for Christians today?

Professor Bailey has written about more recently imprisoned Christians (you can read an article in America here). There are clear parallels between their experiences and Paul’s. Prison served as a crucible for them; they were tested, yet still came away convinced that their imprisonment was “a defense and confirmation of the Gospel.” They too depended upon solidarity with the larger Christian community. Their imprisonment gave them a new perspective on their society and “its idolatrous tendencies” – its continued allegiance to Caesar’s parody-empire. They were able to say, with Paul, “I have the strength for everything through him who empowers me.”

And, finally, to return to Dale Price’s point, contemporary imprisoned Christians have, like St Paul, experienced joy even while in chains. Bailey’s fellow Lutheran Gerhard Fischer was imprisoned for six months for opposing the activity of the former School of the Americas. His pastor, Amy Reumann, stated:

I think joy is full awareness of God’s presence, which is why joy can take place either amidst happiness or amidst sorrow … it’s separate from the external conditions that surround you. And [this joy] is going to grow despite what happens.

Dietrich B0nhoeffer made the very same point (my emphasis):

Where will the call to discipleship lead those who follow it? What decisions and painful separations will it entail? We must take this question to him who alone knows the answer. Only Jesus Christ, who bids us follow him, knows where the path will lead. But we know that it will be a path full of mercy beyond measure. Discipleship is joy.

So, even in prison, we can rejoice.

 

The Meanings of Crucifixion

(This is Neil.) The title here might seem to be obvious, perhaps even offensively so. Crucifixion meant a great deal of pain and certain death. But there is something else. Crucifixion was also a brutal form of satire.

As the Duke exegete and Episcopal priest Joel Marcus reminds us in a recent Journal of Biblical Literature article (125:1 [2006]),that I thought about a bit during this past Holy Week, the Gospels seem to present crucifixion as, ironically, a form of exaltation. In the Gospel of John, Jesus himself refers to being “lifted up (hupsoo) from the earth” so that “I will draw everyone to myself” (Jn 12:32). After Jesus was scourged, the soldiers had placed a crown of thorns on his head, clothed him in a purple cloak, and called him “King of the Jews” (Jn 19:1-5). Obviously, we know that Jesus was really a king, so that the cruel soldiers – though they believed that they were mocking a failed prophet and revolutionary – had unwittingly pointed to a reality that they could not even begin to understand. Likewise, when Jesus is “lifted up” on the cross, this is not merely the physical position of execution, but a very real exaltation. The executioners unconsciously, despite their hatred, showed the truth about Jesus. The irony is anything but obscure.

But the strange if visibly obvious connection of crucifixion with being “lifted up,” or exalted, had a long and very dark history. The crowd in John 12 already understands that Jesus’ prediction of being “lifted up” to “draw everyone to myself” seems to allude to crucifixion. As early as Genesis, the “lifting up” of the crucified was quite possibly paired with social elevation for ironic effect: Pharaoh will “lift up” (nasa’) the head of one servant and restore him, but will “lift up” (nasa’) the head of another by hanging him from a tree (Gen 40:13, 19).

(In fact, the ironic connection probably comes from the crucifiers themselves. Fr Marcus reminds us that Greco-Roman society was fixated on rank. And rank was often expressed in terms of height. The New Testament reflects this: “My friend, move up to a higher position” (Lk 14:10), “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled” (Mt 23:12). It would have been clearly noticeable, then, that crucifixion actually placed the punished on a higher level than the executioners. Certainly, that meant that more people would have seen the crucified’s agony and the deterrent power of this terrible form of death would therefore be intensified. But, surely, as Marcus notes, there was something incongruous about the elevation of the doomed criminal above the heads of his punishers.

As he goes on to say, the crucifiers embraced this incongruity. In a cruel way, it could be funny. “[T]his strangely ‘exalting’ mode of execution was designed to mimic, parody, and puncture the pretensions of insubordinate transgressors by displaying a deliberately horrible mirror of their self-elevation.… Crucifixion was intended to unmask, in a deliberately grotesque manner, the pretension and arrogance of those who had exalted themselves beyond their station; the authorities were bent on demonstrating through the graphic tableau of the cross what such self-promotion meant and whither it led.”

(As Michel Foucault would say, crucifixion was a “penal liturgy” meant to show the essence of a crime. Much like Kafka’s “The Harrow,” crucifixion reinforced the transgressed law with the flesh of the criminal. The crucified is raised in obvious mockery of his fatal pretension – the condemnation of his unlawful arrogance is written with his very body as a sort of ideogram.

The height of the cross could even be increased in proportion to the criminal’s perceived insolence. Suetonius tells us that Galba responded with contempt to the protestations of a poisoner by giving orders “that the cross should be changed for one that was painted white and which stood much higher than the rest.” (White happened to be a color associated with the praetorship.) Within Scripture, Zeresh, the wife of Haman, tells her husband that he should punish the Jew Mordecai, who had not risen to acknowledge him, with a cross no less than seventy-five feet high (!) (Est 5:9).

Other Roman punishments, Marcus tells us, also had a parodic element. The aforementioned Galba, we are told, once amputated the hands of a dishonest moneylender and nailed them to the table on which he had defrauded others. The Harvard classicist Kathleen Coleman, commenting on that particular passage from Suetonius, concludes, “the retributive aim automatically involves the humiliation of the offender in that he receives his come-uppance in public and frequently in a manner that mocks the perpetration of his crime.”

So, quite obviously, the Romans wished to satirize what they saw as Jesus’ insurrectionary presumption by using wood and nails to “elevate” him to the position he had supposedly grasped for. Jesus would get only a little support from the cross’ small wooden peg, the sedile whose name also happened to be used for a royal chair. Humorous for a Roman, one supposes. But the joke backfires, badly. How? 

As Marcus writes, “The danger of parody, however, is that it may turn into reality.” When Jesus is placed, however grotesquely, in the position of royalty, his position shows forth a surprising reality – far from being completely and comically incongruous, he is actually deserving of the exaltation. Even in the darkness of the Passion in St Mark’s Gospel, we read, “Now when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, ‘Truly this man was God’s Son’” (Mk 15:39). Even a centurion can potentially see this.

Now the joke has been turned on the jokers. Earlier, Pilate had ridiculed Jesus, “Are you the king of the Jews?” Jesus responded, “Thou sayest” – Your own deeds, he seems to tell the unbelieving prefect, will show me to really be a king. And so, as St Paul will say, the cross will still appear as “foolishness” to those who see nothing more than the audacity of Jesus held up for ridicule, but, in what Marcus calls a “reversal of a reversal,” it is the “real power of God” to those who correctly understand that Pilate had unknowingly shown Jesus to be a real king (1 Cor 1:18).

What is the lesson here? Although, thank God, our governments generally don’t put on “penal liturgies” anymore, we might still be subjected to parody. Jesus’ example might show us that “foolishness” can become the “power of God” to those who look closely. There is no need to react badly.

We might also be tempted to subject our own enemies to vicious parody. Holy Scripture might warn us to beware. The joke might really be on us.

 

The Attribute of Mercy: Reading the Book of Jonah

(This is Neil.) I must admit that, even after a few hundred posts to this blog, I’ve never really drawn on rabbinic scholarship. I would like to do so in a small way here in this post. (See the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s claim that, although Jewish exegesis is “irreducible,” “On the practical level of exegesis, Christians can, nonetheless, learn much from Jewish exegesis practiced for more than two thousand years, and, in fact, they have learned much in the course of history.”) I’ve just read an article by Rabbi Hayyim Angel of Congregation Shearith Israel in New York, published in a 2006 issue of Jewish Bible Quarterly, and found it to be quite interesting. It is on the Book of Jonah, and, more specifically, the vexing non-ichthyological question of why Jonah fled from his mission to Nineveh. 

Perhaps Jonah feared that Israel would look bad if non-Israelites repented. Perhaps he worried about being seen as a false prophet if these non-Israelites did not repent. Perhaps Jonah feared for Israel’s future at the hands of the Assyrians, and would rather die than strengthen Nineveh, their capital city. None of these explanations, Rabbi Angel says, are persuasive. Couldn’t Israel repent after seeing Nineveh’s example? Might not Nineveh repent after hearing Jonah’s words? And, the rabbi notes, Nineveh is never described in the Book of Jonah as the capital of Assyria – there is no political context here and the kings of Assyria and Israel go completely unmentioned.

So why did Jonah flee from his mission to Nineveh? Rabbi Angel draws our attention to a passage from the Jerusalem Talmud: 

It was asked of wisdom: what is the punishment for a sinner? She replied, Misfortune pursues sinners (Prov. 13:21). It was asked of prophecy: what is the punishment for a sinner? She replied, The person who sins, only he shall die (Ezek 18:4, 20). It was asked of God: what is the punishment for a sinner? He replied, let him repent and gain atonement. 

Perhaps, then, the prophet might wish that sinners be summarily punished instead of being given a chance to repent. But this doesn’t sound quite right, either. As Rabbi Angel reminds us, most prophets accepted the ideas of repentance and divine mercy: “Why should Jonah alone have fled from his mission in so dramatic and rebellious a manner?” 

The answer has to do, apparently, with Jonah’s disapproval of God’s extension of mercy to pagans.

We sense this theme in the very first chapter. The pagan mariners on the ship to Tarshish appear like rather good people. After they throw Jonah overboard at his own suggestion, they will even beseech God not to charge them with murder and they subsequently make vows to him. Beforehand, amidst the tumult of the sea, their captain, seeming almost like a prophet, had roused Jonah to call upon his God. These men have many gods, but they do not look depraved at all alongside Jonah, who is fleeing in disobedience against God.  

But after Jonah is identified as the cause of the tempest, when asked his identity and business, he answers with apparent pride, contrasting his recognition of the true God with their unbelief, “I am a Hebrew (Ivri anokhi) … I worship the Lord, the God of Heaven, who made both sea and land” (Jon 1:9). This is the emphasis in the text, which does not similarly render Jonah’s account of running away from the Lord in direct speech. Jonah answers in a way to starkly contrast himself with the pagans. But, the text tells us, it is he who stands against God here, not the pagans. 

Jonah is then swallowed by a very large fish. After three days, he finally calls to God out of distress: 

Those who worship vain idols forsake their source of mercy. But I, with resounding praise, will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay: deliverance is from the Lord.

He is still contrasting himself to pagans, whether the pagan mariners whose vows he supposes will not be kept, or the pagan Ninevites who presumably will stubbornly cling to their idols. Here is Rashi’s reading of these verses (Jon 2:9-10): 

They who cling to empty folly: those who worship idols; forsake their own welfare: their fear of God, from whom all kindness emanates. But I, in contrast, am not like this; I, with loud thanksgiving, will sacrifice to You.

Jonah does not really repent, but, nevertheless, the fish spews Jonah on the shore. And so the reluctant prophet gets to Nineveh. Then, shockingly, after only a single day of prophesizing the imminent destruction of Nineveh, the city repents. All people and beasts are covered in sackcloth. God does not destroy Nineveh. I suspect that every reader of the Book of Jonah is at least a little amazed at this turn of events. But Jonah is displeased and angry:

He prayed to the Lord, saying “O Lord! Isn’t this just what I said when I was still in my own country? That is why I fled beforehand to Tarshish. For I know that You are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in kindness, renouncing punishment. Please, Lord, take my life, for I would rather die than live” (Jon 4:2-3).

What is wrong with Jonah? He is still contrasting himself (Ivri anokhi) to pagans. He wishes his true God to punish these pagans so that this essential contrast is brutally confirmed. But God has instead extended mercy to them. When listing God’s attributes, Jonah changes the usual formula (“abounding in kindness and faithfulness” [Ex. 34:6]) to “abounding in kindness, renouncing punishment.” “Faithfulness” (ve-emet) has become “renouncing punishment” (ve-niham al ha-ra’ah) because this is what Jonah has seen with his own eyes in pagan Nineveh. And he is not happy at all. 

His concept of God has been threatened. As Rabbi Angel writes, “For Jonah, true justice required punishing even the penitent Ninvevites, because they were still pagans.” This is clear and understandable. But God is not like this. He desires repentance, but he has patience for apparently misguided beliefs. He is compassionate: 

“You cared about the plant, which you did not work for and which you did not grow, which appeared overnight and perished overnight. And should I not care about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not yet know their right hand from their left, and many beasts as well!” (Jon 4:10-11).

What happens in the silence that follows? Rabbi Angel writes, “Jonah’s stark silence at the end of the Book reflects his apprehension of the gulf between God and himself. He remained an ‘Ivri’ to the very end.” Do we find ourselves sitting in this same stark silence, foolishly wondering how God can be merciful with those who seem obviously, maddeningly wrong – those who are always “them” to us? 

A midrash, Rabbi Angel says, puts one final line in Jonah’s mouth, “Conduct Your world according to the attribute of mercy!” That humility is what Jonah should have learned. That humility is most probably what we still need to learn.

 

Jesus as Stranger: Thanksgiving and St Luke

This is Neil here (as if the awkward title didn’t already make this painfully obvious). But this, for better or worse, will be my Thanksgiving post.

Thanksgiving, of course, is a day when we receive and extend hospitality to family and friends, recognizing that the bonds of love have survived geographical separation, the passage of time, and even our human failings. But Thanksgiving also should make us aware of those who have been left – sometimes very unjustly – outside of these bonds. Perhaps this is rather obvious. Nearly all churches, one would expect, extend hospitality to the poor and abandoned during Thanksgiving by providing dinners and assistance and offering friendship. In fact, this post might begin to sound like a description of the plot of the standard Thanksgiving episode of a typical Eighties sitcom. But there is a deep theological significance to the extension of hospitality to strangers. I once posted part of a sermon by the Anglican priest Nicholas Sagovsky that reminded us that “to be hospitable we must be filled with gratitude to God for his generosity to us; then we can surely welcome others with the same spirit of generosity that we have experienced.” And, I think that we can go even further and say that Luke’s Gospel portrays Jesus as a stranger, suggesting that his followers too must live as strangers in this world, so that when Christians encounter a stranger they must see him as a brother and as a representative of their Lord.

This might require more elucidation, and I will from here on be indebted to an article in the 2005 volume of Louvain Studies written by Fr Adelbert Denaux of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Fittingly for this day, he happens to be a member of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission. To begin our exploration of how Luke’s Gospel portrays Jesus as a stranger, he directs our attention to its very last chapter. There, one of the two disciples on the way to Emmaus asks Jesus, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” (Lk 24:18). This is doubly ironic: Jesus is hardly ignorant (the disciple is), and Jesus is a paroikos, or stranger, visiting Jerusalem in a much deeper and different way than the disciple imagines. The two disciples are only able to understand the real “strangeness” of this stranger when Jesus explains the Scriptures concerning himself. After all, Jesus, in the Gospel of Luke, is the only person possessed of wisdom. The disciples must only offer hospitality to this stranger: “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over” (Lk 24:29).

Luke has already portrayed Jesus as a stranger several times. Jesus is born away from his hometown, and, even then, in a manger, away from normal human society. Soon enough, as a boy, he makes it clear that he is a stranger in his parents’ house, for his real home is the Temple in Jerusalem (Lk 2:49). Young Jesus grows up to be a wanderer “through cities and villages,” “towns and villages” (Lk 8:1; 13:22), dependent on others for support. Where could he fit in? The denizens of Nazareth almost throw him off a cliff, and, when the people of Capernaum (where Mark, incidentally, suggests that Jesus was “at home” [Mk 2:1]) try to get Jesus to stay, Luke has him leave (Lk 4:30). Jesus is homeless: “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head” (Lk 9:58). Those around him are called to grant hospitality to this outsider.

Fr Denaux suggests that this portrayal of Jesus as a stranger is hardly accidental – it is how St Luke sets forth his Christology. Jesus is a heavenly stranger. Luke would know about divine visitors in Graeco-Roman religions, as he would describe the crowds at Lycaonian reacting to St Paul’s healing of a cripple by exclaiming, “The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men!” (Acts 14:11). Furthermore, the Old Testament has accounts of God coming to visit humanity, most famously dining with Abraham as three strangers (Gen 18) in a scene that inevitably makes one think of Rublev’s famous icon. St Luke appeals to the Old Testament precedents, Denaux tells us, especially with his use of the terminology of episkeptomai, which means ‘to look upon’ or ‘to visit’ (thus, episkopos, which we translate as ‘bishop,’ literally means ‘overseer’). This is evident in the canticle of Zechariah. God is there praised because “he has visited (hoti epeskepsato) and accomplished redemption for his people” (Lk 1:68). Zechariah’s son, John the Baptist, will now “go before the Lord” because, through God’s mercy, the “Sunrise from on high will visit (epeskepsato) us” (Lk 1:78). Later, John will ask Jesus if he is indeed the “coming one” (Lk 7:19), this stranger from on high.

But, as with the disciples at Emmaus, Jesus must explain his “strangeness” himself. We can only give him hospitality, as do Mary and Martha (Lk 10:38-42) and Zacchaus (Lk 19:1-10). As a result of Zacchaus’ reception, Jesus is able to say that “salvation has come to this house.” But others do not receive Jesus. He weeps over Jerusalem, declaring that her enemies “will smash you to the ground and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another within you because you did not recognize the time of your visitation (episkopè)” (Lk 19:44). And so Jesus is crucified. The divine stranger bringing salvation has been rejected. But the descent of the Holy Spirit – the “coming down” that led to Mary conceiving a strange child without a human father – has not been for nothing. Jesus rises from the dead, and St Luke, rather uniquely, describes the divine visitor returning to heaven in the Ascension: “He parted from them and was carried up to heaven” (Lk 24:51). The singular work of the Lord has been completed.

So, Jesus is a stranger, whose visitation brings salvation for sinners who will grant him hospitality. Those who follow in Jesus’ footsteps must then also be strangers in this world. “Beloved, I beseech you as aliens (paroikous) and sojourners to abstain from the passions of the flesh that wage war against the soul” (1 Pet 2:11). The second century letter to Diognetus memorably states about Christians:

They live in fatherlands of their own, but as aliens (hôs paroikoi). They share all things as citizens, and suffer all things as strangers. Every foreign land is their fatherland, and every fatherland a foreign land … They pass their days on earth, but they have their citizenship in heaven.

Jesus is fully human, yet fully divine – one of us, yet a stranger; our brother, homeless in our world. The baptized must, in a sense, share this strangeness. Whenever we see a stranger, then, we see someone who is strangely familiar, who reminds us about who we really are. We should also see someone who reminds us of our Lord. Thus, the author of the Letter to the Hebrews warns us, “Do not neglect hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unaware” (Heb 13:2). And, even more directly, in St Matthew’s Gospel, before the seat of judgment, some disciples ask Jesus, “When did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee?” and receive the response, “As you did to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Mt 25:38-40).

Thanksgiving, then, is about hospitality to family and friends, because of our bond of love with them, but also to the “least of these,” because of our bond of “strangeness” with them.

 

Job the Pious

What is going on in the Book of Job? In a recent article (Zeitschrift fur die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 117 [2005]) the distinguished exegete Michael V. Fox suggests that its teaching is “essentially pietistic, which is to say, it makes faith the prime virtue. It teaches the need for humble acquiescence to God’s inscrutable will and a firm conviction in his justice even in defiance of one’s own experience, in the belief that one’s suffering ultimately has meaning.” We discover this when we realize that there are no less than “two dimensions of reality in the book of Job”: the world of Job and another world above the narration where the author communicates directly to the reader.

We will first look at the world of Job. From this world, we learn about God’s power, justice, wisdom, and approval. To be sure, Job realized God’s power, but he feared that “With a tempest he might overwhelm me, and multiply my wounds without cause” (Job 9:17). Instead, Job becomes “privy to the counsels of God” (Job 15:8), a possibility that Eliphaz had thought was ridiculous. God reveals that he cares for his creatures; his theophany confirms the declaration of the psalmist, “How varied are your works, Lord! In wisdom you have wrought them all; the earth is full of your creatures” (Ps 104:24). God’s power is not amoral, even if Job is not at its center – after all, God does act “to bring rain to no man’s land, the unpeopled wilderness” (Job 38:26), even if no human being can enjoy this act.

Job also learns that God is just. God asks Job, “Would you refuse to acknowledge my right?” (Job 40:8). God says, “From the wicked the light is withheld, and the arm of pride is shattered” (Job 38:15). God implies that he “tears down the wicked and shatters them” (Job 40:12). There is justice in the world, even if it only seems to ensure the punishment of the wicked, not reward for the righteous Job. God also asserts and exalts his wisdom. But this comes as a reprimand to Job, who is revealed as ignorant. Job repents: “I have dealt with great things that I do not understand; things too wonderful for me, which I cannot know” (Job 42:3).

Intriguingly, Professor Fox suggests that the Book of Job’s fascination with language also shows the failure of human wisdom before the divine wisdom that founded the earth and fixed its measurements. Fox writes, “It is as if everyone believes that the terrible problems of existence can be wrestled to the ground by talk, lots of it.” This is simply Kafkaesque – Fox quotes Margarete Susman on Kafka’s (and Job’s) world:

Just because people no longer have a world in common, because the loneliness has become so hopeless, they engage each other in constant discourse. They cannot find each other, they cannot recognize or understand each other – and for precisely this reason they are compelled to search incessantly for this understanding. They talk to each other without stopping, without ceasing – and without comprehension.

Thus, Job’s friends. And, so, what God ultimately desires is not speech but humility. Job’s confession is neither cynical nor ironic: “Therefore I disown what I have said, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 43:6). God accepts this confession.

But all of this might be deeply unsatisfying. God is revealed as moral, just, and wise, but Job’s sufferings are never explained. As Professor Fox writes, “Job never does learn what it was all about, why he had to go through hell in order to be reconciled with a God with whom he never was in conflict. Job must live in ignorance like everyone else.” And, so, we must remember that there is another dimension of reality in the Book of Job: the other world above the narration where the author communicates directly to the reader. I do not mean to assert here that the same author composed both the prologue and the dialogues (that seems unlikely). But the narrative frame is there for a reason. It gives us another perspective on “what is was all about.”

For instance, regarding God’s justice, we learn that God usually does govern the world justly. But sometimes God overrides justice for other goals – here he ruins Job “without cause” (Job 2:3) for a wager. Then, as we know, Job lets God down. Job does “curse” God, for there is no other way of interpreting his angry disparagements (e.g., he accuses God of complete injustice, “Both the innocent and the wicked he destroys” [Job 9:22]). The Adversary wins the bet. This sounds rather horrible, but, from this perspective, God’s theophany is an “act of grace to a man who failed him.” Professor Fox continues, “Unwarranted mercy, no less than unwarranted suffering, disrupts the equation of strict justice, for it means that someone has not received the punishment he deserves.” We might remember some of Job’s moving words, “I know that my Redeemer lives and that he will at last stand forth upon the dust” (Job 19:25). This does come to pass for the undeserving Job, despite the lost wager. Here I also remember some of Pope Benedict’s words about God’s love, “It is so great that it turns God against himself, his love against his justice.” We see some of this from the narrative frame.

The narrative frame, the second dimension of reality in Job, also highlights the sheer disjunction between human and divine wisdom. As much as the friends talk, the further they are from God. The only truth that we are left with is: “Behold, the fear of the Lord is wisdom; and avoiding evil is understanding” (Job 28:28). Our stance, it is reiterated, must be one of piety and humility.

Lastly, the narrative frame tells us something about what God wants. From the time when God asks Satan whether he has noticed “my servant Job, and that there is no one on earth like him, blameless and upright, fearing God and avoiding evil” (Job 1:8), it is evident that God cares deeply about the stance of human beings towards him. “Yahweh, like any ruler, naturally wants his subjects’ loyalty, but only the reader learns just how important it is to him. He needs it. He takes pride in it. He wagers on it. He breaches his own justice to make it possible.” While Job is right to piously state, “Behold, I am of little account” (Job 40:4), God cares deeply about his relationship with Job.

Perhaps we have felt like Job. The first dimension of the Book of Job reminds us to trust God and to abandon our attempts to rationalize divine providence or reduce wisdom to the narrowness of a human perspective. We must trust in God and avoid sin. This might seem to leave us swinging wildly from fideism to skepticism. But, as we have seen, the narrative framework goes further and tells us to keep faith in suffering, because, despite all appearances, our loyalty is valuable to the Redeemer who, in his mercy, “will at last stand forth upon the dust.” The believing victim, in the midst of her pain and failure, has a role of cosmic importance and retains a sign of honor. Professor Fox quotes Nietzsche, “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.”

 

A Short Post on the Song of Songs

The question that this post will seek to answer is: What should we hope to learn from the Song of Songs? I asked myself this question in the weeks leading up to my marriage, especially after my then-fiancé and I chose to include a song in the ceremony that was taken from the Song of Songs. This post, however, will not consist of my musings, but be taken from an essay by the considerably more erudite Anglican priest and Fuller Theological Seminary professor John Goldingay. He begins with a few stories about certain conservative Christian cultures that will strike us as alarming, but aren’t necessarily exceptional.

A student of his from southern Africa, while writing a paper on gender violence in Isaiah and Judges, told stories from her own life. She knew of an abused woman who used to run away to her brother’s house. The brother would always quickly surrender her back to her husband because she was considered to be her spouse’s property. Eventually, her husband killed her with an iron bar. Dr Goldingay writes, “The same property understanding of marriage means that women have no right to withhold themselves sexually from their husbands when the latter have contracted AIDS or HIV through their promiscuity, so that many of the countless women who have died from AIDS were infected by their husbands.”

Another student wrote about Korean culture, which is also strongly patriarchal. If a woman’s first child is a girl, Christians there might wonder if she had committed a sin. Furthermore, a newly married couple is expected to live under the roof of the groom’s parents and under their authority, which often causes a great deal of tension, and, unsurprisingly, presents a “major reason for divorce and Korean emigration to North America.”

Dr Goldingay suggests that we can learn an “alternative style of being” in which the recognition of sexual love might challenge institutional structures maintained only for the procreation of (preferably male) children and the (sometimes violent) ownership and protection of women. The Song of Songs is a biblical recognition of the “happiness and fear, the anxiety and fulfillment of sexual love.” But to grasp this, we have to avoid thinking that the Song of Songs is solely an allegory for the relationship between God and his people. I do not want to dismiss the allegorical reading, but Dr Goldingay is surely right to point out that “the scriptures never speak of our emotional relationship with God in terms of passionate love.” Love for God, who is far different from us in status and power, is more of a matter of commitment. Psalm 18, which reads, in part, “[David] said: I love you, LORD, my strength,” using the unusual qal form of the verb raham, is an exception that proves the rule.

The claim that the Song was only placed in the canon on the basis of first having been understood as a treatise on the relationship between God and Israel is incorrect, even if the rabbis did warn about singing it in the banquet hall like any another piece of music (e.g., b. Sanh. 101a). Furthermore, we cannot say that the Song of Song is necessarily about the institution of marriage. We do have a memorable picture of a wedding procession (“look upon King Solomon … on the day of his marriage, on the day of the joy of his heart,” Song 3:11). “Bride” is also used as a label (“Come from Lebanon, my bride, come from Lebanon, come!” Song 4:6). But that is all. This makes sense – even if sexual relations should only occur in a marital relationship, even if the couple in the Song are on their way to such a relationship, sexual longing and anxieties still occur both within and without marital relationships.

The Song of Songs is, once more, uniquely about the “happiness and fear, the anxiety and fulfillment of sexual love.” Dr Goldingay wants us to recognize the “shocking directness” of its opening: “May he kiss me with the kisses of his mouth” (Song 1:2). Shocking as this might be, it is realistic. Furthermore, although the book is attributed in a vague way to Solomon, the opening words are those of the woman, clearly “questioning any assumption that the man has to make the approaches or set the pace in a relationship.” This is also realistic, but at the possible cost of – again – being shocking: in a Christian circle of graduate students that I myself participated in, women were subtly discouraged from making approaches.

Through the Song of Songs, the relational always goes with the physical. When we imagine “the physical,” we probably conjure up images of impossibly youthful and well-exercised bodies. But the Song of Songs’ place in Scripture reminds us that “the physical” has to do with everyone. If we deny our need for physical intimacy (and authentic celibacy is not a denial of this need), the repressed feelings might reemerge in a self-destructive way. The Song of Songs testifies to a universal need for physical self-recognition and acceptance. The woman is “dark-but lovely” (Song 1:5) in the gaze of the beloved and, in the light of one another’s love, the man and woman can even imagine themselves as prince and princess (Song 3:6-11).

The Song of Songs reminds us that relationships will always involve risk. This cannot be avoided. Separation brings pain: “If you find my lover- What shall you tell him?- that I am faint with love” (Song 5:8). There are desires that cannot yet be fulfilled, except in our dreams: “On my bed at night I sought him whom my heart loves …” (Song 3:1). There are allusions to inevitable suspicions and the need to follow social constraints – the woman fantasizes about a scenario that would let her bring her beloved “into the home of my mother” (Song 8:2). Above all, relationships involve strikingly deep passion:

For stern as death is love,
relentless as the nether world is devotion;
its flames are a blazing fire (8:6).

The couple surely needs time alone (“Arise, my beloved, my beautiful one, and come!” Song 2:9). To an extent, passion can be controlled. The woman says

I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem,
by the gazelles and hinds of the field,
Do not arouse, do not stir up love
before its own time (2:7).

But it cannot be completely managed. Being in love is like being “ravished”: “You have ravished my heart with one glance of your eyes, with one bead of your necklace” (Song 4:9). The thorny question of desire raises the possibility that the flame of love can come and go – only to unexpectedly return once more, confirming, all in all, the wise counsel of Proverbs, “And have joy of the wife of your youth, your lovely hind, your graceful doe. Her love will invigorate you always, through her love you will flourish continually” (Prov 5:18-19). We can have confidence in marriage, then, but a couple cannot ever take one another for granted “and need to see themselves as still on the way.” Again, a certain degree of risk cannot be avoided.

How might the Song of Songs, scriptural recognition of the “happiness and fear, the anxiety and fulfillment of sexual love,” challenge the patriarchal cultures of southern Africa, Korea, and elsewhere? The biblical recognition of sexuality, particularly the sexuality of women, reminds us of the sheer cruelty of suppressing the human need for intimacy for the sake of male children or social control. But it also tells us that passionate love is a “blazing fire,” and that might serve as a needed warning for a more libertine culture.

 

“God, Who Does Not Lie”: Reading the Epistle to Titus

(This is Neil.) I would like to continue to post on Scripture, at least as much as my limitations allow. The following comes from Fr Raymond F. Collins’ article in a recent Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses, “The Theology of the Epistle to Titus,” which focuses on the epistle’s understanding of God. This God, we are told in the salutation (1:1-4) “does not lie” and is both “our Savior” and “Father.” Our author might be more mysterious, for Fr Collins, like most scholars, believes that the epistle to Titus is pseudonymous. As for the recipient, Titus, we have already encountered him as an uncircumcised Gentile convert at the Jerusalem meeting (Gal 2:1-3), carrying St Paul’s letter written “with many tears” from Ephesus to Corinth (2 Cor 2:4), and sent to Corinth once more to gather the collection for Jerusalem (2 Cor 8). Here, Titus has apparently been “left in Crete” (1:5) to appoint presbyters. Perhaps, though, the setting is yet another feature of the epistle’s pseudepigraphal character. The Cretans, as the epistle takes care to remind us, were famously called “liars, vicious beasts, and lazy gluttons” by Epimenides in the sixth century BC, and would be likely deviators from orthodoxy in need of instruction in “the knowledge of the truth” (1:12,1).

It is God, the Father and Savior who does not lie, whose identity is most important. St Paul is a “servant of God” (doulos theou), just as the Septuagint described such figures as Moses and David, and, as other letters have also told us, he is also an “apostle of Jesus Christ,” sent for the faith of God’s “chosen ones” (eklektôn theou) and their “knowledge of the truth.” The God who has chosen a people for his own, sends Paul for their sake, and, as Paul has already told us, God will acquit them from every charge on the last day (Rom 8:33). In particular, Paul is sent for their “knowledge of the truth that is in accordance with godliness (eusebeian).” This knowledge is more than a set of facts; it must lead to a “faith working through love” (Gal 5:6). Fr Collins tells us that the important term “godliness” corresponds to the Latin pietas, and “The religious response of pietas calls forth corresponding behavior, patterns of life that are consistent with being God’s chosen ones.” We must, we will see, “live temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age” (2:12).

St Paul, the “servant of God” and “apostle of Jesus Christ,” then confesses that he writes “in the hope of eternal life that God, who does not lie, promised before time began” (1:2). We will later be reminded that God acted to save us “through the bath of rebirth and renewal by the holy Spirit, whom he richly poured out on us through Jesus Christ our savior, so that we might be justified by his grace and become heirs in hope of eternal life” (3:5-6). The God who sent Paul for his “chosen ones” has promised eternal life “before time began,” and he acts from eternity to eternity, most decisively in Jesus Christ, without any possibility of mistake or deceit. Our ground for hope in eternal life is pietas. Elsewhere in the Pastoral Epistles, we learn that godliness is “valuable in every respect, since it holds a promise of life both for the present and for the future” (1 Tim 4:8). This life is life in Christ Jesus (2 Tim 1:1), and, as Fr Collins writes, “It is participation in the life of Christ, both in the present era of salvation and in the eschaton, when it will be realized to the full” in eternal life.

God, the Father and Savior who never lies, has acted most decisively for his “chosen ones” in Jesus Christ. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is a “true word” (pistou logou) (1:9) to which the bishop must hold fast, keeping to the chain stretching from Paul to Titus to himself. The credibility of Christianity depends on the pietas manifested by Christians in response to this “word,” from the hospitality of the bishop to the good faith of the slave who acts “so as to adorn the doctrine of God our savior in every way” (2:9). St Paul himself has been sent to preach this “true word,” because he “was entrusted by the command of God our savior” (1:3). Both verbs are technical terms suggesting formality and subsequent authority; Fr Collins writes, “The image is that of an imperial court in which the supreme benefactor, the Savior, confers a mission on one of his slaves.”

We learn more about the “supreme benefactor,” God, our Father and Savior, in the creedal fragment in chapter 3 (3:4-7), which is tellingly followed by the line, “This saying is trustworthy.” We learn about the kindness and generous love (philanthrôpia) and mercy of God the Savior, descriptions that, Fr Collins says, are “both attitudinal and concrete,” having been made “manifest in the appearance of Jesus Christ.” Intriguingly, philanthrôpia is probably meant to reflect the Hebrew notion of hesed (usually translated in the Greek bible as eleos), and, so, as Talmida has reminded us, it also then carries the meaning of “the devotion and faithfulness and loyalty and duty/responsibility/promise of the covenant.” This God, faithful to his covenantal relationship, acted to save us through the Holy Spirit poured out through Jesus Christ. “The graphic imagery,” Fr Collins says, “is that of a torrential downpour in which the gift of the Spirit is given to God’s people in power and lavish abundance.” This manifests itself in us as a changed life, distinguished by pietas. We have been no less than “reborn” in baptism through the Holy Spirit sent by God the Savior through Jesus Christ, who consequently also merits the epithet “Savior.” Fr Collins says that “the sure saying of 3:4-7 stands on the threshold of early Christian trinitarian theology.”

Another section of the Epistle to Titus has been identified as a baptismal confessional formula (2:11-14), and it tells us exactly where we are. We live between two epiphanies. “For the grace of God has appeared, saving all” and we still “await the blessed hope, the appearance of the glory of the great God and of our savior Jesus Christ.” Just as we were told that the creedal fragment in chapter 3 was “trustworthy,” we are here told to “Say these things.” We trust because the philanthrôpia of the God who never lies has already been manifest in the Savior Jesus Christ, through the commissioning of his servant Paul to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ so that God’s “chosen ones” might recognize pietas and hope for eternal life, and when we ourselves were reborn and renewed in baptism through the gift of the Spirit. God acts from eternity to eternity. We might not know exactly who wrote this epistle, but we know the God who never lies, Father and Savior, and we know that our “blessed hope” will come to pass.

I hope that this was at least somewhat useful. Comments are always welcome.

 

“So that you may be perfect and complete”: Reading the Epistle of James

I would like to look more closely at the Epistle of James. I hope that doesn’t sound so strange that I have to justify myself by suggesting some sort of usefulness for an immediate controversy. To be sure, what might first come to mind is an apologetic usefulness for Catholics, as we remember that Luther called the letter a “right strawy epistle.” And the letter does say that “faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead” (Jm 2:17). But I really don’t have any particular usefulness in mind. Luther is a good place to start, but this is because he raises provocative questions for our reading of the epistle. Why doesn’t the epistle mention the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ? And how do we deal with the perception that it seems “kein Ordo noch Methodus” (“without order or method”)? At the very least, I will try to give an explicit answer to the second question. Perhaps the answer to the first question will be implicit.

I might begin by pointing out that there has been a great deal of recent research on the once neglected epistle for a number of reasons, including a welcome reconsideration of the relationship of Christianity and Judaism and the introduction of new exegetical approaches. Compared to its richness, this might seem very flat indeed. I will be indebted throughout to an article by the Carmelite priest Huub Welzen of the Titus Brandsma Institute (“The Way of Perfection: Spirituality in the Letter of James,” Studies in Spirituality 13 [2003]).

That being said, we can begin our search for “Ordo” and “Methodus” in the epistle by first identifying it as wisdom literature. Wisdom, says Fr Welzen, is attained when we not only act according to the law, but also begin to appropriate it to become one with the law. The truly wise person, then, fulfills the aptly named “royal law according to the scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Jm 2:8). The epistle will go on to say, “Whoever keeps the whole law, but falls short in one particular, has become guilty in respect to all of it” (Jm 2:10), sounding very much like the Sermon on the Mount, “Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 5:19). Demanding, yes? This “becoming one with the law” would be depressingly impossible if wisdom were not a gift “from above” (Jm 3:17). Fr Welzen reminds us, “Wisdom is a gift from God; it is the opposite of all human wisdom and it turns the humble, poor and simple-minded into wise people.” The Epistle of James consists of the practical maxims and proverbs that are very much part of the Jewish Wisdom tradition – inclduing the teachings of Jesus Christ preserved in the Gospel of Matthew – so that we might really receive this wisdom “from above” through faith.

But we must be cautious. If we listen to the epistle, we will become aware of two paths that we might follow, which, when we happen upon trials, can lead us to either perfection or death itself. The very first Psalm poetically spoke of these two ways, “The Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish” (Ps 1:6). We can also recognize this bifurcation from the Gospels. One way is marked by the wisdom that is a gift “from above.” Faith is tested, but this only leads to perseverance. “And let perseverance be perfect, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (Jm 1:5). The other way begins with desire, the Jamesian counterpart to the Pauline “flesh” (Rom 7:5), which, when we are faced with trials, “conceives and brings forth sin, and when sin reaches maturity it gives birth to death” (Jm 1:15). How do we know whether we have received wisdom or are simply imprisoned within the funhouse of our own desires? We must go through the trial. This is discernment. We hold ourselves up to the light of truth and ask with honesty whether we really are peaceable and gentle, try to recognize whether the origin of our behavior is wisdom or selfish desire, and strive to remain faithful while purifying ourselves in the midst of our trials, trusting that the reality of who we are will unfailingly emerge as we are sifted by them.

To be honest, the picture of these diametrically opposed paths might seem rather disheartening. For many of us, “perfection” is but the prelude to despair, as we realize that we cannot immediately morph ourselves into St Francis (or even fulfill our mothers’ expectations) by a sheer act of will. What does James mean by “perfection”? The epistle’s use of teleos (“perfect”) may refer to the moral perfection in Stoic theory, but probably also reflects the Septuagint’s translation of the Hebrew tamim. Tamim described the wholeness and unblemished quality in sacrificial animals, but also quite naturally indicated a similarly whole and unblemished relationship with God. Jesus said, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect (teleos)” (Mt 5:48), telling us that this perfection must be preceded by an experience of the perfect Father. James also suggests that an experience of the Father’s perfection must come first, for “all good giving and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights” (Jm 1:17). We are then drawn to mirror God’s perfection in our own lives. “But the one who peers into the perfect law of freedom and perseveres, and is not a hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, such a one shall be blessed in what he does” (Jm 1:23). We begin with faith and go from there.

Perhaps we shy away from perfection because we assume that it should be within our grasp from the very start, and we then head quickly into despair when it clearly is not. We forget that the beginning of our spiritual journey is meant to be marked by the “fear of God,” since, after all, “The fear of Yahweh is the beginning of wisdom” (Prov 9:10). Perfection refers to the end. But, of course, the end is already there in the beginning. As the Carmelite friar Kees Waaijman, also of the Titus Brandsma Institute, writes, “Perfection (tmm) is completely contained already in our original integrity, integrity which via a process of gradual growth blossoms into the complete surrender which is the hallmark of perfection (Isa 18:5; Prov 20:7; Ps 18:26).” And there truly always must be a dynamism in our spiritual journey that continually bears fruits, even in the midst of trials.

James outlines some of these trials. We are tempted by double-mindedness. We are tempted by class distinctions, foolishly clinging to transitory things because of a residual fear of the powerlessness of death. James reminds us that, despite our desperate measures, “The sun comes up with its scorching heat and dries up the grass, its flower droops, and the beauty of its appearance vanishes” (Jm 1:9). We must struggle against our wild tongues. Finally, we must struggle against our passions. James writes about the latter, “You covet but do not possess. You kill and envy but you cannot obtain; you fight and wage war. You do not possess because you do not ask. You ask but do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions” (Jm 4:1-3). How much of this describes our own present reality, even within the Church? As we move towards perfection, we must remember to practice discernment in the midst of all these trials, focusing on how our spiritual orientation manifests itself “in the things one actually does.”

To put it bluntly, none of us is perfect. But this is not cause for despair. James is speaking “from the point of view of the end.” Perfection is eschatological. What does this mean? Fr Welzen says, “We have to take into serious consideration that the perfection James wishes to point us towards will ultimately remain outside the scope of our lives.” This does not mean that we give up, but rather that we continue to pursue “the crown of life that he promised to those who love him” (Jm 1:12) more selflessly, trusting God’s promise without looking for its fulfillment as a reward for anything we might accomplish in the here and now, even as we see anticipations when we recognize ourselves as more “peaceable, gentle, compliant, full of mercy and good fruits, without inconstancy or insincerity” (Jm 3:17).

How do you read the epistle? 

 

Believing in the Resurrection

I am really not sure what to say about the first year of Pope Benedict’s papacy. I recall a recent John Allen interview with Fr Stephen Pisano, SJ of the Pontifical Biblical Institute that touched on the use of Scriptural imagery in Pope Benedict’s homilies. Fr Pisano said, “I’m delighted to see that. I hope that his constant use of Scripture, his constant references to Scripture in the talks that he gives at the audiences and so forth, will help stimulate a renewed interest in Scripture.” Recently, the Pope recommended the works of Cardinal Martini (for Martini on the Lord’s Prayer, please see my post here). Perhaps, then, the very best way to show gratitude for this first year of Benedict’s pontificate is to pay closer attention to Scripture.

I am sure that I am not alone in failing to be sufficiently attentive to Holy Scripture. During this Easter season, especially, I would like to try to remedy this. Let us look together at a text that we have heard and will hear proclaimed at Mass – the twentieth chapter of the Gospel according to St John. The following will be indebted to Kelli S. O’Brien’s recent article “Written That You May Believe: John 20 and Narrative Rhetoric” (Catholic Biblical Quarterly April 2005). Chapter 20 is a memorable chapter indeed in which a weeping Mary Magdalene turns to see her resurrected “Rabbouni” and Thomas moves from doubt to confession. Professor O’Brien reminds us that this is also a very important chapter that even takes the relatively unusual step of directly addressing its reader at its end, “These are written that you may (come to) believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name” (20:31).

But this might also be a rather confusing chapter. The other Gospels do remind us of the difficulty of believing in the resurrection of Jesus – regarding the eleven disciples, St Matthew’s Gospel says, “When they saw him, they worshiped, but they doubted” (Mt 28:17). But John 20 emphasizes this at considerable length. The story of doubting Thomas is about the failure to be convinced of the resurrection through the testimony of others and the consequent need for personal experience of the Risen Christ. We are reminded of the testimony of the Samaritans, “We no longer believe because of your word; for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the savior of the world” (Jn 4:42, my emphasis). Professor O’Brien explains the dilemma: “[T]he Fourth Gospel speaks to people precisely in Thomas’s situation, to people who were not there on Easter and who did not see or touch Jesus’ wounds, and its purpose is to proclaim to them that very same witness so that they may believe. So how can the Fourth Gospel, a report of other people’s experience, succeed?”

To grasp what might be going on here, we first need to remember that misunderstanding – the initial failure to be convinced – plays a large role in the Gospel of St John. The exegete C.K. Barrett wrote about St John’s “literary formula of enlightenment through initial misunderstanding,” as Nicodemus learns that being born anothen does not mean literally reentering his mother’s womb and the Samaritan woman comes to realize that “living water” is not merely a matter of unending physical sustenance. The characters have to discover that their first impressions and usual categories of thought cannot help them understand the meaning of Jesus Christ – they must move beyond what they have always known to then come into his light. And we the readers must ourselves make this move with them whenever we hear the Gospel proclaimed. The twentieth chapter of the Gospel of John “succeeds” insofar as we really take part in this “enlightenment through initial misunderstanding,” especially, I would say, if we should happen to think that we have attained a level of maturity or sophistication that makes such “enlightenment” unnecessary.

Belief is a difficult process in the Gospel of John. When many disciples leave Jesus after he tells them that his “flesh is true food” and his “blood is true drink” (Jn 6:55), we are told that Peter stays, trusting that his Master has “the words of eternal life” (Jn 6:70). We are not told that this faithfulness comes without pain; it is hardly clear that Peter understands his Master’s “hard” saying. Martha confesses her belief that Jesus is the “Messiah, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world” (Jn 11:27). But when Jesus commands that the stone of her brother’s grave be taken away, she protests, “Lord, by now there will be a stench; he has been dead for four days” (Jn 11:40). Jesus reassures her, and she must stay and believe despite her fears, without fully understanding what is happening or how it might glorify Jesus. The Gospel of John is the Gospel of coming to believe, of the Advocate that the Father will send (Jn 14:26). “I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now” (Jn 16:13), Jesus tells us.

I think that we will agree with Professor O’Brien when she says that we can and should identify with the initial confusion, uncertainty, and misunderstandings of the characters in John’s Gospel. But they must learn from their misperceptions; we immediately lose sympathy when they fail to obey or remain with Jesus, like the lame man who “told the Jews that Jesus was the one who had made him well” (Jn 5:15), or the disciples who, faced with a “hard saying,” “returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him” (Jn 6:66). (Interestingly, the Gospel according to St John does not even let us begin to identify with Judas, who is introduced as “he who would betray him” [Jn 6:71]). As Professor O’Brien summarizes, “The Fourth Gospel presents Jesus as Other, the one who descends from above, the one whom the world does not know, the one who is radically disorienting. In this context, misunderstanding is an essential step toward enlightenment, and belief is characterized less by correctness than by acceptance of the enigma and persistence in following.”

Let’s get back to the resurrection, then. It is easy to look down on Mary Magdalene, who initially thinks that she is speaking to a gardener, and Thomas, who seems to be very stubborn indeed. But they do seem to accept the enigma and persist in following – even if Mary appears, in the words of St John Chrysostom, “not sufficiently spiritual-minded to grasp the fact of the Resurrection from the grave-cloths,” she is still there at the tomb; even if Thomas, to Chrysostom, has a “dull mind” and demands proof for the “most crass of the senses,” he is still there with the apostles. And they are rewarded. Mary Magdalene is the “apostle to the apostles,” the very first to say “I have seen the Lord” (Jn 20:18). Thomas utters, “My Lord and my God!” – the late Fr Raymond Brown called this “the supreme christological pronouncement of the Fourth Gospel.” Again, we often concentrate on what we imagine are Our Lord’s rebukes to Mary and Thomas. But Fr Brown interprets Jesus’ command to “Stop holding onto me” (Jn 20:17) as nothing more than a reminder to Mary of her commission, suggesting that it might even be rendered, “Don’t just stand there! Go tell my brothers!” Jesus does ask Thomas, “Have you believed because you have seen me?” But there is no sign of anger here – it is even similar to his earlier question to Nathanael, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree?” (Jn 1:50). The blessing on those who believe without seeing, namely, future generations, is similar to Jesus’ subsequent statement to Nathanael, “You will see greater things than these.”

It is true that, in contrast to Mary Magdalene and Thomas, the Beloved Disciple seems to immediately believe, but the Beloved Disciple’s belief does not bring anyone else to faith, much less the reader. He gives no confession, no “My Lord and my God!” After he presumably comes to believe, rather strangely, “The disciples returned to their own homes” (Jn 20:10), and Mary Magdalene is left weeping alone by the tomb. The Beloved Disciple only really witnesses to us at the end of the Gospel – “It is this disciple who testifies to these things and has written them …” (Jn 21:24). The presence of the Beloved Disciple should not cast a negative light on the experiences of Mary and Thomas.

So, how do we come to believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ? The Gospel of John seems to suggest that we must encounter the risen Lord. But, then, “How can the Fourth Gospel, a report of other people’s experience, succeed?” Professor O’Brien writes of this Fourth Gospel:

[T]he author helps to recreate the experience of encountering Jesus and the journey of faith for readers by subjecting them to the initial confusion experienced by the first disciples and continually bringing them to new ways of seeing, new methods of interpretation so that they might gain a clearer understanding of what is not of this world. The author does so by creating interpretive difficulties, deliberately setting up misunderstandings, so that readers might learn how to correct them in light of the truth presented in Jesus, and by creating characters whose interpretive errors and corrections not only show the way but bring readers along with them.

I think, then, that we must resist two temptations. The first temptation moves us to retreat to an easier position whenever we encounter confusion, and we end up settling for the belief that the resurrection is merely a metaphor or a subjective experience. But I do not think that we can say that “Christ has trampled death by his death” on the basis of a metaphor or a subjective experience. Death is far too real. The second temptation seeks to avoid confusion by asserting that the resurrection is obvious, and we react with anger and impatience to any sign of ambiguity.

We must believe in the resurrection; as St Paul writes, “If Christ has not been raised, then empty (too) is our preaching; empty, too, your faith” (1 Cor 15:14). But we might find ourselves weeping as our God seems to be “taken away” and we might find ourselves plagued with doubts. In that case, we must let God, through the Gospel of St John, “bring us along” with Mary Magdalene and Thomas to an encounter with the Risen Lord.

Please let me know what you think (or if this is incomprehensible …)