Christ is risen! Alleluia!! Easter greetings to all readers :)
The present and future of our faith in Christ is always about our encounter with the risen Christ. Either Jesus Christ is alive today and, in some meaningful way, "available" to us, or he is not alive and we are to be pitied (1 Corinthians 15:19).
The Gospel "resurrection narratives" tell stories of what gave rise to the conviction of the first followers of Jesus that he was no longer dead but alive.
The epistles spread both a conviction that Jesus Christ had been raised from the dead and a hope that every believer would also be raised with Christ - a conviction, we could say, that the experience in this life of relationship with the risen Christ will not itself be overcome by the death each of us will die. (See, for example, the epistle reading for yesterday, Colossians 3:1-4).
When we die we also will be raised with Christ into the presence of God. (This conviction, by the way, being somewhat different to a common "Kiwi" hope that beyond the grave lies various forms of reunion with loved ones. Such states of reunion may be part of God's future for us, but the primary hope of the resurrection is full (re)union with Christ.)
What gave rise to the conviction that Jesus was no longer dead but alive?
In one word, appearances. (Yes, the empty tomb was important, but that could have been due to mischief making by the authorities or others with removal of the body of Jesus.)
When Peter preaches to Cornelius and his entourage, he says,
"... but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead." (Acts 10:40-41)
When Paul, who does not feature in the Gospel resurrection narratives, describes his own encounter with the risen Jesus, he writes,
"... and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared ... then he appeared ... then he appeared ... Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me." (1 Corinthians 15:4-8)
The resurrection narratives are occasions when the witnesses to the resurrection (female and male disciples) "saw" the risen Lord and in some narratives (in Luke, John) the seeing involved extensive conversations, sometimes over a meal - note Peter's "who ate and drank with him" above.
The variety and number of appearances not only affected the individuals who met the risen Jesus in this way, it also created a collective conviction among the first Christians that their distinction was to follow a living Lord and Teacher. Beyond the Ascension as the historical end to (for want of a better description) "appearances of Jesus in everyday life on earth", this conviction nurtured both the first believers who had experienced such appearances and those new believers who had not had such experiences.
In some way, their sense as a body of believers that they not only followed a living Lord and Teacher "in the abstract" but also "in reality" was continually boosted and refreshed by a conviction that when they met to break bread eucharistically together, Jesus was in their midst. "The Lord's day", each Sunday, was not only a remembering that it was on the first day of the week that Jesus rose from the dead but also a description of a special day each week when eucharist was celebrated and Jesus their Lord was especially in their midst.
The Emmaus story in Luke 24 makes this point, not only about the evening of the Day of Resurrection but also about every eucharist subsequently.
"Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread." (Luke 24:35).
In 1 Corinthians 11 a different point is made when Paul writes,
“For every time you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord, until he comes.”
The eucharist simultaneously looks back and forward: to the death of the Lord and to the Lord’s return, which means that, “known to them in the breaking of the bread” as he was, nevertheless a fuller experience of the risen Lord was yet to come.
In 2023, we continue to live in the same in-between time as the Corinthians, and our reality as church is that our best life during this time is not primarily determined by getting plans and budgets sorted (though they help) but by our faithfulness in proclaiming the death of the Lord, through preaching, through practical deeds of love and through participation in the eucharist, with a sense of anticipation - the Lord is returning soon (Maranatha!) - and a sense of excitement and joy - the Lord is with us, near us and in us.
Resurrection is now, or nothing. It is not something which only happened in narratives and reports composed long ago, into which we may dig like archaeologists to find out what happened in ancient times past.
Rather, the event of the resurrection of Jesus continues. Jesus lives. The church is the body of Christ on earth. We are the people of the risen King.
Do we live as resurrection people?
Is the church alive with the joy and hope of resurrection?
Let's be honest. Sometimes we cannot answer such questions with the assurance we would like.
And all God's people said,Dear Lord Jesus,
You are alive.
May nothing in my life or the life of the church distract from this glorious truth.
Amen.
41 comments:
Thank you +Peter! In comments on your last post Bowman advised me, "we should start with our own baptism".. so I've been trying to do that. Our little church didn't have a pool for baptism so I was baptised in a river by the sea.. all our full immersion baptisms happened there. I remember coming up out of the water while those attending sang the customary:
Up from the grave he arose with a mighty triumph o'er his foes
He arose a victor from the dark domain
and he lives forever with his saints to reign
He arose, he arose .. Hallelujah, Christ arose.
This memory may well be a factor in why I'm keen to learn more about Christ's descent! And not just the descent but all the things that were happening in the resurrection narrative, it's really powerful. Btw Bowman, I've also been reading some of Rethinking the Atonement by David M. Moffitt via Scribd which you'd previously mentioned to Moya. It's hard going - but still interesting!
Peter, I was interested to read in Psephizo, the blog by the English NT scholar Ian Paul, a piece summarising Sir Colin Humphrey's "The Mystery of the Last Supper", where Humphrey argues that some of the contradictions or differences between the Synoptics and John on the Last Supper and the events of Holy Week can be cleared up if we conclude that a. Jesus used a different solar calendar (as apparently the Zealots and others did) from the Jerusalem authorities; b. the Last Supper was on Wednesday, not Thursday; and c. the second Sanhedrin trial was on Thursday, in daylight as the Mishnah requires. Humphrey also notes that Pope Benedict in a 2007 Holy Week sermon also speculated whether Jesus was following a different (Qumran Essene) calendar, following Annie Jaubert (La Date de la Cène, 1957). The article intrigued me, so I read Humphrey's book as a Holy Week discipline. Most of it is quite straightforward but it does get into some involved astronomical details about eclipses and new moons,
I wonder if you have ever pondered this question? The Synoptics and John do raise interesting questions about the date of Passover and the sequence and length of events. On the Emmaus incident, IIRC, Richard Bauckham suggests that Cleopas may have been a relative of Jesus (or at least Joseph) and that here we have a named eyewitness of the Resurrection whose testimony was eventually incorporated in the Gospel.
At any rate, it was good to take a fresh look at this old question, just as Kenneth Bailey has done for us on the Nativity accounts.
Pax et bonum,
William Greenhalgh
Thanks Liz and William
William: I have looked at that question a bit. I think the simplest explanation is that John “plays” with things such as dates in order to make his theological points. Most obviously this occurs with the cleansing of the temple which he dislocates from its actual date/setting (i.e. Close to the arrest and trial, according to Synoptic timetabling). His last supper and subsequent events is timed to have Jesus dying on the cross as the passover lambs are being slaughtered (concurring with Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world) but this is at variance with the Synoptics, for whom the lambs are slaughtered before the Last Supper which is the Passover meal. Just as there is no need to propose two cleansings of the temple, there is no need to propose two passovers/two calendars … nor two Pentecosts (John’s and Luke’s)!
Peter: interesting. So what you are saying (as someone famously said to Jordan Peterson) is that the Passover lambs had already been slaughtered and the Passover was already over and therefore John has fictionalised his accounts. The numerous time markers in John are quite specific, so presumably you don't think these are historical either but symbolical (or at least fictional)? Would you say the same about the other specific Johannine material - miracle at Cana, Nicodemus, woman at well, pool of Siloam, previous visits to Jerusalem, John 21?
If so, Bultmann et al would readily agree with you! But sometimes "the simplest explanation" doesn't turn out to be so simple after all.
If we know anything about pre AD 70 Palestinian Judaism (to use a terribly anachronistic expression), it is that it was really quite diverse and decentralised - and therefore "simple explanations" can be too simple. Multiple calendars (Essene, Zealots, possibly Galilee) were in fact in use pre-70, as Annie Jaubert showed in 1957, and many others have demonstrated since. Occam's razor can sometimes cut the user's fingers.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
Hi William
John's Gospel undoubtedly contains accurate historical information and, in some instances, that information may contradict the Synoptics.
Whether, for instance, the wedding at Cana occurred as told is reasonable to suppose: there is nothing in the Synoptics which contradicts it.
Whether, for instance, Nicodemus accommpanied Joseph of Arimathea at the burial of Jesus is reasonable to suppose: there is nothing in the Synoptics which contradicts it. But we can add that there is nothing in the Synoptics, who mention Joseph, which supports it either.
Whether, for instance, the Synoptics or John or (on the basis of diverse calendars etc) both are correct re the date of the Last supper/crucifixion is difficult to determine, but they do both seem to be talking about the same meal - on the night before Jesus died etc - and thus, whether that makes me a Bultmannian or not, it is not unreasonable to wonder if one is correct and the other is, well, doing something theologically imaginative.
I do not think the diverse calendrical approach is particularly simpler than mine: not only does it require that there were diverse calendars, it also requires that we know this, but not from the Gospels themselves, which don't tell us about such diversity.
Peter, 1 Corinthians 11.23 does NOT say "on the night before he died" (which is, I suppose, your Anglican liturgical practice) but "on the night he was betrayed" - Paul does not say that Jesus was executed the following day - just as Luke makes no mention of a donkey, inn (pandechion), innkeeper or inhospitable Bethlehemites, and Matthew doesn't say the Magi arrived at the birth - devastating as this is for school nativity plays and medieval painters.
Incidentally the Catholic liturgy reads "on the night before he was to suffer", leaving open how much time elapsed between Last Supper and Crucifixion. Humphrey thinks Jesus spent all of Thursday in custody.
Sometimes (always, in fact) reading the Scriptures without folkloric filters is the better way to proceed. And while I endorse (as a general guide) the Occamic principle of parsimony - not multiplying entities beyond the necessary - this begs the question 'what is necessary?' I did not say 'the diverse calendrical approach is simpler" than your belief that John fictionalised the date of the Jerusalem Passover. It isn't- but sometimes 'simpler' doesn't mean 'truer'. In the 19th century many astronomers believed there was another planet, Vulcan, near the sun which was apparently causing Mercury's orbit to follow a slightly different path from what Newtonian calculations predicted: what else could it be other than the gravitational interference of an otherwise unobserved planetary body? Occam's 'Law' again. But it took the genius of Einstein in 1905 and the observations of Eddington in 1917 to show the actual explanation (parallax, the gravitational bending of light waves).
Your last paragraph misses the point: the Gospels were not written in the first instance with us 21st century people in mind but rather people of the first century. Every writing from every historical period makes assumptions about what its contemporary readers should know, and those statements are often puzzling only to those readers separated by time and space from the original context. It would not be strange for someone in Moscow to show up for the Christmas Liturgy on 7 January but it would be in New Zealand (unless he or she was an Orthodox Christian). And even the Orthodox themselves disagree on the Calendar! Have you never heard the expression "Two Jews, three opinions"? Oi vey!
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh (March 30, 2023, Julian Calendar)
Hi William
No one would be more delighted than me to find all such calendrical puzzles are resolved but, looking at the Psephizo post for instance, I think some kind of special pleading is going on in the Humphreys' line about the timing of the meal each gospel relates.
I also note that - if I understand the proposed resolution correctly - we have an urgent need to change Good Friday to Good Thursday and Holy Thursday to Holy Wednesday.
In another words, the church has been in error for a long time :)
Peter: no, Humphreys does not say that Jesus died on a Thursday but on a Friday - in AD 30 or 33 (he opts for 33). But he places the Last Supper on Wednesday, not Thursday of Holy Week, and argues that the events that precede the trial before Pilate on Friday morning - the trial with multiple witnesses, the dream of Pilate's wife etc - cannot easily be fitted into the early hours of Thursday morning on the traditional chronology.
I am sure you know that the date of Easter was disputed at least from the second century (and is a major topic in Bede's Ecclesiastical History), while I suspect you don't think Jesus was born on December 25. In other words, you are saying the church has been in error for a long time? ;)
Pax et bonum,
William Greenhalgh
THanks William
I stand corrected re the day of Jesus' death but not re when we re-enact the last supper!
Whereas Holy Week/Easter dates have some rationale re history of Passover, lunar calendars etc, and thus, while disputes, they are disputes over this and that, but not over pure speculation.
25 December is, I think we are agreed, a date plucked from thin air!
Whether the church has the days right is really immaterial! Jesus said, ‘The sheep know the shepherd’s voice’ and the living Lord has been speaking to his people, in his people and through his people for 2000 years. I am remembering today the many things I have heard from him on and off for over forty years, with great thanksgiving. Yes, he is alive. May we hear his voice and follow!
Dear William
On the date of Jesus’s death and associated dates, we might both be wrong …
https://www.pure.ed.ac.uk/ws/files/10489469/Dating_the_Death_of_Jesus_Memory_and_the_Religious_Imagination.pdf
Best,
Peter
Moya, the issue is not really "whether the church has the days right" but whether there is real and substantial (not simply formal) contradiction between the Synoptics and John and whether the Gospels are historical in what they relate here. This is important for at least two reasons.
1. In the mid 20th century some Jewish writers, including those with a polemical edge like Hyam Maccoby, attacked the Gospels for "antisemitism" for depicting things the Mishnah forbids, like night time trials. Maccoby claimed these elements were "Christian slander" - although it seems to have escaped Maccoby just how divided and even violently antagonistic early first century Palestinian Judaism was (Sadducees, Herodians, Pharisees, Essenes, Zealots, Judeans versus Galileans - and where do you place the Samaritans?). Post-70 Judaism was a lot simpler.
2. It has long been standard in Liberal Protestant circles to explain the differences between John and the Synoptics by saying that John is late and much less anchored in history, the product of a "creative community" of unknown name and location - religious fiction, in other words. So you will find a long list of writers asserting that John simply invents speeches (including the famous 'I am' discourses), events (like the encounter with the Samaritan woman) and dates (like the Passover in Jerusalem) to suit his literary-theological purpose.
So more is at stake than just "the church getting the days right". There has been pushback in recent years against the old Liberal Protestant view of John as a writer of fiction rather than history - Bauckham argues that John im written with readers of Mark in mind, Craig Blomberg defends John's historicity as well - and Professor Humphreys adds his testimony as a scientist. All grist for the mill.
Yes, I believe we hear His voice today. But that's on the basis of faithful witnesses.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
"Yes, I believe we hear His voice today. But that's on the basis of faithful witnesses."
Thanks for that which you've shared above, William (5:30). I'm left wondering what you mean by the final line.. i.e. who are the "faithful witnesses" that make you "believe we hear His voice today". Genuinely keen to know!
Yes, I guess I do understand the need for historicity and am currently reading Bauckham’s ‘Jesus and the Eye Witnesses’, which is very helpful. But I wonder if establishing historicity in dating the events of Jesus’ life, will actually impact the current sense that Jesus has little relevance to life in the 21st century?
Peter, thanks for the link to Helen Bond's paper which I have (over-) quickly perused. I am glad that she has recognised the astronomical work of Waddington and Humphreys, although she has not really appreciated it or given any consideration of Humphreys' (and Paul Barnett's) preferred date of 3 April 33.
I knew a little of her work as an able historian of secondary NT characters like Pontius Pilate and Caiaphas. Her NT approach reads like soft Formgeschichte, in which hazy "pre-Markan" memories (whose? Peter's? some nameless "community"?) have emerged in a lumpy stew of inconsistencies (Markan "redaction" of an ordinary meal made it into a Passover seder; Barabbas wasn't released then; Simon of Cyrene hadn't come in "from the country" then, etc).
So far, so Bultmannian, I guess. Maybe one day they'll discover a copy of Ur-Markus. Or a first edition of Q.
Pax et bonum,
William Greenhalgh
William, further to my Q, I guess you mean NT writers.. duh!
William, does that mean that we only hear from the Lord through words of the Scriptures? That’s not all my experience, though it happens at times, and I don’t think I am deluded. The truths of God can be conveyed in many ways, consistent with the Scriptures.
Hi, Moya - the truth is always "relevant", though men and women are often slow to perceive how and why, or, as Pascal noted, too easily distracted to consider their own wretchedness. But once in a while a person's life is upended (or a traveller to Damascus is de-horsed) and grace finds an entrance. I hope you pray for politicians north and south of the equator, whose stock in trade is to promise what they can't deliver. Have you prayed that the Dalai Lama will find Christ?
One of my growing convictions is that there is no such thing as "pure knowledge", existing in an unreachable hyperborean world. G. H. Hardy thought pure mathematics was like that - of no application at all to the "real world" - and he said so in 'A Mathematician's Apology' - but the sort of abstract things he was interested in (prime numbers, Riemann's hypothesis) turned out to be central to the way we do computer encryption today. If Christ is the Logos (and He is), that truth will always break through, despite the best efforts of man to keep Christ in His tomb.
Pax et bonum,
Wiliam Greenhalgh
Second, *experience* often comes up hereabouts as a proposed fourth leg for a tripod of *scripture*, *reason*, and *tradition*. This tripod is also known elsewhere but has been especially beloved by broad-church Anglicans.
A stool missing a leg will not stand up, and as that metaphor suggests, the tripod is a *negative criterion* of what cannot be right doctrine. Theological monopods and bipods are not sound.
Three solid legs are nevertheless useless if they are unattached or unequal. Sound teaching does makes coherent sense of what the three legs together suggest about the matter at hand. But there is usually more than one teaching that does this, and because the tripod alone does not tell us which is best it is not helpful as a *positive criterion*.
Experience? This was first invoked against interpretations of the scriptures (eg Romans viii 29-30) that implied predictions about personal spirituality that seemed to be disconfirmed in actual lives.
Here up yonder, the usual example is the prediction of early Puritan settlers that the sanctification of each particular soul must necessarily follow his or her election, calling, and justification. For although believing, many of their children and grandchildren could not discover that they had been sanctified as predicted.
http://www.digitalpuritan.net/Digital%20Puritan%20Resources/Edwards,%20Jonathan/Questions.pdf
Since, applying the Reformed teaching of double predestination, those not demonstrably elect were presumably reprobate, the usual imperfections occasioned not a little anguish in ordinary folk (cf 39A XVII). And-- if God means to punish the wicked anyway to vindicate his glory, then might it not redound to his still greater glory for them to feel miserable about it? Their very despair at this conclusion could seem to confirm they were indeed faithlessness.
https://northamanglican.com/exposition-of-the-thirty-nine-articles-article-xvii-part-1/
Had the Puritans been more dogmatic, they could also have been more cheerful. After all, the whole problem is alien to say Orthodox, Catholics, and Lutherans who refrain from it on various dogmatic grounds.
But this was not mere gaslighting. Reading the Bible in a scrupulously Latin way, the M2 schoolmen had followed it like the grin of the cheshire cat out onto some weak limbs. With the best progressive intentions, Calvin and the Puritans climbed past them to the brittle ends. When the branches snapped, the perplexity was genuine and the fall was painful.
To save the prediction without abandoning the descendants, the Half-Way Covenant was devised to admit even unregenerate ones to the Lord's Table. Because this arrangement breached other Latin assumptions, it began generations of controverse about sacraments and church order. The Great Awakening was a conservative reaction against it, although one that savaged what remained of Reformed eucharistic theology. Many New Englanders ultimately abandoned particularist Puritanism for fiery Universalism, friendly Unitarianism, or foggy Transcendentalism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-Way_Covenant
The old Puritans were too confidently modern to check their theology by rules of prudence. There is no way to know today what theology either reformers or papists would have offered their revolutionary time if only they had known then what ecumenists have learned in the last two centuries. But some still argue that a fourth leg of *experience* would have spared say French Jansenists, English Puritans, and Continental Quietists the error of taking a single sort of believer to be typical of all. Maybe.
BW
"fiery Universalism"
Several eschatologies have circulated under the word Universalism.
Moralists here up yonder enjoy denouncing an *Adolf Hitler sipping cocktails with Mother Teresa in heaven* variant in which Universalism is hellessness is antinomianism. But sober adherents of this view are seldom seen in the wild, and they are never tracked back to an organized church.
The scholarly New England variant mentioned above was organized into the Universalist Church. That surprisingly liturgical church had a fiery gospel: the loving God's purifying fire will burn the hell out of you and everyone else on the planet, but if you live today in Christ's transformative love you will mostly survive this apocalypse to walk the streets of the New Jerusalem with Him.
One could say that those old Universalists (late C18-early C19) read the minatory passages of the NT through six lenses- (a) the only end that pleases the Creator is the *apocatastasis* found in some fathers, (b) the Creator's divine justice is necessarily and demonstrably reparative rather than retributive; (c) the Creator's metaphysical fire purifies souls (cf Stoicism); (d) sanctification and vocation, not justification, are central to salvation; (e) churches promote salvation in all souls everywhere on earth, but not all who will be saved belong to them; (f) other churches teach a dilute and discouraging but still helpful distortion of the gospel. The movement was post-Puritan but some of these themes anticipate ideas that would get wider traction over the following two centuries.
Where is it now? Most of it merged with New England's other contribution to world religions, the Unitarian Association, although several local churches were received into The Episcopal Church.
The choice came down to christology. Where the divinity of Christ was regarded only as an implication of his sacrificial death-- optional in a soteriology of purgation-- it could make sense to join Unitarians. Where the divinity of Christ was understood as necessary to his union with those seeking holiness and service in him, only a church of the creeds, scriptures, and fathers like TEC was viable.
Among the U-Us around Boston, there is a small movement to retrieve Universalism from the bookshelves and practice Christianity. This interests me as one of the few *natural experiments* I know in which some return from the *spiritual but not religious* matrix to traditional faith without any accompanying anti-modernism or reactionary politics. I wonder what Moya makes of all of this.
BW
Lovely to find your "quick notes", Bowman :D
A Soren Kierkegaard quote was in an article* I read a few hours ago:
Evangelicals often think that being a Christian means the individualistic acceptance of Jesus as their personal Savior. But this is quite different from following the example of Jesus we find in the Gospels. “He never asks for admirers, worshipers or adherents,” Soren Kierkegaard observed. “No, he calls disciples. It is not adherents of a teaching but followers of a life Christ is looking for.” I was quite taken with this..
especially so, given that yesterday in the Apostles Creed the line, "He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit" really stood out for me.. how in our new life we ourselves are "born from above" as Jesus described to Nicodemus in John 3:3.
I'll be pretty quiet for a while now, I've so much material to get on with including these "quick notes" of yours! You certainly stre-e-etch my learning [thank you]
*from a Washington Post OP by Michael Gerson, 01 Sept 2022.
I am interested in experience as a fourth leg of the stool, but know it is not reliable by itself. As William said, it needs relevance to the truths of the gospel or it can lead one astray. But without it, as I was for years, the faith can be accepted but only as head knowledge. In Romans 5, Paul says the love of God has been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit he has given us, which means experience I think. A favourite hymn of mine is Charles Wesley’s ‘And can it be’ which is theology enlivened by the Spirit into a blessed experience. We need all the legs of the stool to be wise.
PS I have a friend who is a Unitarian but when I listened to her favourite speaker, I was mystified why an intelligent woman could appreciate what he said! I emailed her my Good Friday rich sense of being in the Holy of Holies by the blood of Jesus but I don’t think I will get a response…
Hi, Bowman, I am glad you gave come across Ed Feser's work, via that lecture he gave in Fermilab back in 2018. I have been mentioning Feser's work here for a long time now - please note he has developed his thoughts on science most in "Aristotle's Revenge". Feser also makes very acute comments on politics and sociology, and his latest book "All One in Christ", which I read a couple of weeks ago, totally eviscerates "Critical Race Theory", the current obsession of Progressive Democrats, along with "Transgenderism". I encourage you to read this short work, which is more about sociology and logic than theology.
But I must "warn" readers here that Feser, a onetime atheist who recovered his faith through William Lane Craig, is an Aristotelian-Thomist and that means the telos of all things (Aristotle's fourth cause) is central to his thinking, And for God's rational creatures, hunan beings, tbat means the centrality of Natural Law - a topic I spoke a lot about here last year and was a little surprised to discover that modern liberal Protestants knew nothing about it and were frankly hostile to it when it was explained to them.
I was surprised because orthodox Protestantism has always endorsed Natural Law, even as it debated the extent of the Fall on human nature. That was why C S Lewis could write a little masterpiece like "The Abolition of Man" with its defence of Natural Law and its appendix on "the Tao". Today Progressives would write "The Abolition of Woman". It isn't just US Democrats who struggle to say what a woman is - New Zealand's current Prime Minister also struggled to answer this rather basic question when asked by a journalist.
Well, the 1992 Casey judgment in the US Supreme Court did say each one of us has the right, nay the power, to define the meaning of life and the universe, so I guess we are all nominalists now.
After all, if there is no Natural Law governing the true telos of our body parts (including our chromosomes), why can't Dylan Mulvaney decide to be a Girl? Something to think about as I sit back with my can of Bud Light,
Pax et bonum,
William Greenhalgh
"not adherents of a teaching but followers of a life"
Agreed, Liz, but then how do we explain so much adhering and so little following? When ordinary people were anxious or terrified about their status before God, the **feeling** of serene, grounded, and rational confidence that each was *justified by grace through faith in Christ apart from works of the law* was the ideal antidote. The dread passed; the antidote became a diet.
"the faith can be accepted but only as head knowledge."
Moya, I've gradually stopped believing this. On one hand, it does not make neurological sense: emotion stimulates the protein synthesis that enables the long-term memory even of verb paradigms or mathematical theorems and so certainly of events we usually care more directly about. On the other hand, I've prayed in liturgical communities (eg Byzantine, Moravian, Lutheran) whose language so integrates thought and feeling that one cannot say "now I am thinking thinking thinking and do not care... now I am emoting emoting emoting but know not why..." So I now think it more likely that the opposition of thought and feeling that keeps coming up in these ADU threads is a cultural artifact of our churches with which + Peter's excellent readers have lost patience.
At such times, a certain comparison between the opening questions of the catechisms of Westminster (1647) and Heidelberg (1563) is customary--
Q. What is the chief end of man?
A. Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever. #
Q. What is your only hope in life and in death?
A. That I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ.
He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free
from all the power of the devil.
He also preserves me so that without the will of my heavenly Father not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, all things must work together for my salvation.
Therefore, by his Holy Spirit he also assures me of eternal life and makes me heartily willing and ready from now on to live for him. #
Both catechisms are informative, but where the Heidelberg prioritizes a mature emotional response to its facts, the Westminster seems so have forgotten that emotion too is information.
"In Romans 5, Paul says the love of God has been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit he has given us, which means experience I think. "
When I ponder that verse, I do not hear a little burst of feeling in some faraway solitary alone under an apple tree in a meadow. Instead I hear "shed abroad in our hearts" as spiritual contagion caught together by a throng of worshipers. Jointly and severally, St Paul and his listeners are encountering the Spirit in the heightened way of humans participating together through the spiritual sense that they all have.
That is still something consciously felt, so we could certainly call it experience, but in the flow of St Paul's rhetoric it does not seem individual or solitary or private. Which is not surprising since by convention we can infer from the text itself that it was composed to be read aloud in Rome by Phoebe (xvi 1).
Some resist the thought that the epistle was the script for an audible performance. But then some also resist the thought that Shakespeare's plays were written for performance in theatres.
"I don’t think I will get a response..."
Neither do I. But you had the right idea.
BW
Phoebe of Cenchreae may have been the bearer of Paul's letter to the Romans but there is no evidence that she read it to the churches there, let alone "interpreted" it. Peter Head of Oxford (formerly of Cambridge) dealt with this novel claim pretty comprehensively in his 2012 paper to SBL, looking at about 1300 extant letters from the Ciceronian time to the NT era, of which about 10% have named bearers, and he concluded that in no case did the bearer also read the letter. Of course letters to communities were read out to those gathered communities (the NT makes this clear) - but by the actual leaders of those churches. To call an epistle "the script for an audible performance" shows a real confusion of genre. Romans is not Hamlet! - or even the plays of Seneca, popular at that time in Rome. (Did Paul ever meet Seneca? Hmmm..)
Of course, Douglas Campbell does make the claim that Romans 1.18-3.20 are really the words of The False Teacher and Romans 5-8 is The Genuine Paul, but Francis Andersen calls this (with academic understatement) "somewhat fanciful".
Fortunately Tom Wright has given us the true interpretation of Romans, "the mystery hidden for long ages past but now revealed through his prophetic writings" (Romans 16.26) - or is that James Dunn? Or Ed Sanders? Or? Wreteched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of work?
Pax et bonum,
William Greenhalgh
Experience: how do you here at ADU understand this? As something that's 'felt'..a feeling of some kind? Or something that's happened that can be told as a story.. one's (or a group's) experience? .. or both these?
Hi William
Does it not, nevertheless, remain the case that natural law has limitations?
If we agree that natural law underlines/underpins all talk of marriage being between a man and a woman, and the primary purpose of marriage being procreation, what does natural law have to say about other purposes of marriage (such as companionship, sex for pleasure, etc)?
And how does natural law assist the determination of the people of God in respect of pastoral response to the breakdown of marriage?
Does natural law actually provide any guidance in respect of how homosexuals (i.e. people whose personal nature is such that they cannot marry-for-procreation) are to enjoy companionship and loving intimacy?
Perhaps I and others here have been too dismissive of natural law, but there are limitations to the capacity of natural law to guide human decision-making ... a rather obvious point when we find that God has provided us with revelation-through-scripture!
Thanks so much for the Richard Blackaby podcast BW. I know of his father’s book and his thoughts really resonated with me, as part of what I have experienced. Bless you!
Lesslie Newbegin left us no podcasts, but Carey Nieuwhof's first conversation with Tim Keller comes as close as we will get--
https://youtu.be/zNve3Hexh28
BW
"the [value to mission] of natural [teleology] [informing] [regenerate] human decision-making [between the aeons]"
Peter, I think that this is nearer the open question.
Modern empiricism methodically avoided attributing purposes to anything natural. This had some heuristic value in say separating impetus theory from physics and chemistry from alchemy.
But today the old modernity is gone and the old empiricism is an inadequate account of accomplished reasoning about the natural world. What might recognition of purpose in nature as known today do for Christians reasoning now?
BW
Thanks for interacting on the question of natural law, Peter.
I am the first to agree that natural law has its limitations, along with natural theology.
St Thomas Aquinas was quick to affirm as much agreement as he could with Aristotle, the philosopher par excellence of common sense and empirical reason, while pointing out where the 4th century BC pagan Aristotle fell short: viz. in having a limited understanding of God (Aristotle knew nothing of the Trinity, the imago Dei, the two natures in Christ, his atoning death, or the life of heaven), the world (Aristotle knew nothing of creatio ex nihilo) or the human soul (Aristotle thought the human soul died with the body). Consequently Aristotle did not know that the full telos of human beings is to share in the Beatific Vision of God in the resurrected life.
Therefore to Aristotle's ethical understanding of human beings (founded on the four cardinal Platonic virtues of justice, temperance, courage and prudence), Thomas adds the theological virtues of faith, hope and love; which are not human achievements like the first four (the Nichomachean Ethics explains how) but divine gifts of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of believers. It is Socrates rather than Aristotle who comes closer to the Christian ideal because Socrates was willing to die as a martyr for the truth rather than pursue his own comfort by escaping from prison when he had the chance. Socrates died not knowing whether there was a post-mortem blessedness for noble souls, but he certainly hoped there was. This is why Kierkegaard coupled Socrates with Jesus as two models for living and dying, and why the Church Fathers could talk of the "anima naturaliter Christiana".
Aristotle also thought some humans were "naturally slaves", and he considered women as "naturally inferior" to men, so his vision of the truth about humanity and human dignity fell short of the Bible's revelation in other ways as well.
Nevertheless, Scripture speaks approvingly of natural law as a guide to human conduct (Romans 2.14-15) as a universal guide to "Gentiles without the law". At the same time, such is the effect of the Fall on our human nature that there are limits to our capacity to see the truth or to obey it.
Natural law understands among the goods of marriage not just procreation but companionship as the remedy for loneliness and for emotional and physical support (because we all get sick and old and need the help of others). Pagan Greeks and Romans understood this vision of marriage without the help of the Bible (look at the legend of Deucalion and Pyrrha), while some among them thought friendship among (aristocratic) men was a higher good than marriage. It is Christianity that transforms and subverts the pagan ideal of friendship as an association of likeminded people in a common enterprise (philia, C. S. Lewis called it in 'The Four Loves') by the infusion of agape, the Christ-love that seeks the good of the other without seeking anything in return. Many years ago I read the Anglican ethicist Oliver O'Donovan's 'Resurrection and Moral Order' and I have a hunch I should read it again. O'Donovan states that 'Christian ethics is evangelical ... because it arises from the evangel, the gospel itself. More precisely, it stems directly from the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which both affirms and vindicates the created order, and renewing it, carries it forward to its ultimate goal in the redeemed universe." That is how I see natural law fulfilled and subsumed by Christ.
Pax et bonum.
William Greenhalgh
Tried to learn a bit about natural law yesterday and this doc happened to show up in one of my searches.. very pleased to find it!
"It is evident that not all are able to labor at learning and for that reason Christ has given a short law. Everyone can know this law and no one may be excused from observing it because of ignorance. This is the law of divine love. As scripture says, The Lord will quickly execute sentence upon the earth.
"This law should be the standard for all human actions. In the case of products of human manufacture, each product is considered right and good when it conforms to a standard. So also each human act is considered right and virtuous when it conforms to the standard of divine love. But when a human act does not conform to the standard of love, then it is not right, nor good, nor perfect.
>> The law of divine love is the standard for all human actions -- St Thomas Aquinas
From a conference by St. Thomas Aquinas (Opuscula, In duo praecenta... Ed. J.P. Torrel, in Revue des Sc. Phil. Et Théol., 69, 1985, pp. 26-29.
https://www.vatican.va/spirit/documents/spirit_20010116_thomas-aquinas_en.html
Liz, the best introduction I know to natural law is J. Budzsizweski "Written on the Heart". Other books he has written in this vein are "The Revenge of Conscience" and "What We Can't Not Know". Natural Law in Thomist thought is of course just one part of the Eternal Divine Law, and Budzsizweski's largest work is a Commentary on Thimas's Treatise on Law.
Pax eg bonum,
William Greenhalgh
https://www.scribd.com/book/423576970/Written-on-the-Heart-The-Case-for-Natural-Law
https://www.scribd.com/book/399742921/The-Revenge-of-Conscience-Politics-and-the-Fall-of-Man
https://www.scribd.com/book/552331575/How-and-How-Not-to-Be-Happy
BW
From down under but here up yonder--
Wesley Wildman https://youtu.be/Y8uCC-wpjkA Comparative Natural Theology
BW
Thanks William and Bowman for the links and info re natural law, I've been delving into whatever I can access for free. Tbh my initial impression's somewhat negative; I have misgivings. But when I came in to say thanks, I re-noticed your "down under/up yonder" video BW and quickly had a peek at the start.. looks promising! I'll watch more when I can.
Liz, everyone of us has an implicit sense of natural order if not natural theology and every one of us has some grasp of natural law. Even virulent atheists have deep faith convictions about the world which they believe but can't prove or explain (which is why Bertrand Russell was such a tedious bore): that the world has mathematical structure, order and predictability and nature is uniform (or so we assume).
Natural theology takes these facts - or apperceptions - a step further to ask about the atemporal non-material origin of spacetime. And if we are religious (which is to say, fully human), this inquiry will be shaped by an awareness of wonder and our finitude and dependence which will lead us to Jesus Christ. That is why for me, the two greatest philosophers since the ancient world are Pascal, who showed the aridity of Cartesian rationalism, and Kierkegaard, who showed the madness of Hegelian Idealism - the Idealism which is the driving force of modern progressive politics, whether the US Democrats, NZ Labour - or mytho-Greenism.
Natural theology takes us out of atheist rationalism and post-modern mystical paganism (like the synthetic invention of the neo-Maoritanga
mythology currently being pushed) but it is not the gospel, only a praeparatio evangelica.
Similarly, natural law is not the same as the Sermon on the Mount but it is the first few steps up the hill. "Consider the lilies of the field", says our Teacher.
Pax et bonum,
William Greenhalgh
Thanks William, your response offers me plenty of learning opportunities!
It interests me that you describe natural law as "the first few steps up the hill" and yet you've used natural law in support of your POV on ADU when discussing the homosexual issue. It leaves me wondering to what extent you employ natural law in your own thinking.. often or occasionally? On a wide range of issues or a select few? How much weight you give to it? And I especially wonder how in the course of such reasoning one can distinguish between natural law --as opposed to-- the effects of long-time influence of social conditioning/culture?
Picking up the Tim Keller podcast that BW recommended, Tim talks of the current search for an identity that individuals have to establish and maintain in contrast to the secure identity that is received in Christ. We have something to offer young people who are struggling.
I also found it interesting that he describes what he sees as the four main values that were present and counter-cultural in the early church: justice, racial equality, pro-life, and sex within a traditional marriage. He says (at least in USA) that there are red evangelicals and blue evangelicals according to what values they mainly uphold but few churches hold all four together. I wonder if that is true here down under? I guess some ADU readers would also want to query the four values…
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