Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
This will be my last post for 2024 and the next post will be circa mid January 2025 so the little grey blogging cells have a chance at a recharge. I have updated this post a little to reflect concerns raised in the comments about inaccurate, even heretical thinking. I have used italics to indicate the updates
Continuing one theme this year past (and other years), What is going on in the gospels?, especially as we try to make sense of the differences between the gospels, and the significant difference between the Synoptic Gospels and John's Gospel, I have a few thoughts about "Christmas" and the gospels.
For instance, if we think about what is essential to all four gospels and what is not, then we see that across all four gospels it seems essential to the shared core gospel narrative, that John the Baptist features, there are miracles, there is teaching by Jesus, there is recognition of Jesus being the Son of God, there is building conflict between Jesus and Jerusalem-based religious authorities, one part of this conflict involves an incident in the Temple in which Jesus' upsets economic activity there, a plan is hatched to do away with Jesus, Judas is drawn into the plan, Jesus is betrayed, arrested, placed on trial, Peter denies knowing Jesus, Jesus is committed to being crucified, he is crucified, dead, buried by Joseph of Arimathea, and rises again on the day after the Sabbath which follows the day of crucifixion.
What is not essential is a narrative about the conception, birth and infancy of Jesus: Mark has none, nor does John.
What unites the gospel writers is that Jesus has an origin: Mark locates Jesus' origin in the prophetic scriptures of ancient Israel, and comfortably reports him described as "the Son of David." Behind the Markan Jesus is Israel's history fuelled prophecies, that a new David would come to Israel. Matthew locates Jesus' origin in genealogical terms (descended from Abraham) and spiritual action (conceived by the Holy Spirit), with numerous prophecies fulfilled in his birth, infancy and adult mission. Luke locates Jesus' origin in spiritual action-come-angelic announcement (conceived by the Holy Spirit, connected to a miracle overcoming barrenness in a relative who will be the mother of John the Baptist), connects him genealogically further back than Abraham, to Adam the son of God, while also locating Jesus into the prophetic tradition of Israel, his active role in Israel's life fulfilling ancient prophecies about the restoration of Israel.
John whizzes past David, Abraham and Adam to locate Jesus' origin in the very being of God: Jesus is the Word through whom the world is created, the Word become human flesh, the revelator of God who comes into the world from the very heart of God.
If Matthew and Luke tell a narrative in which Mary is the mother of Jesus and God the Holy Spirit is the agent by whom Jesus is conceived of a human mother without a human father, then John tells a narrative which invites us into the intimacy of Jesus God's Son with God Jesus' Father. Put another way, Matthew and Luke open up the question, What does it mean that God is Jesus' Father and Jesus is God's Son?, and barely offer an answer. John takes up the question and provides a full answer to it.
Yet, not to neglect Mark, if Mark is the earliest gospel, then Mark presents the reader with Jesus doing God-in-action things: forgiving sins, healing people, delivering demons, feeding multitudes, ruling nature. Matthew and Luke also present Jesus in this way, but develop Jesus the teacher imparting wisdom, law, announcement of Good News. John takes up what all three propose and develops their proposals: In Jesus God is present in the world, through divine actions of Jesus God offers life for the world, what Jesus says and does is a full and complete revelation of God. To see Jesus is to see God; to seek God, you should meet Jesus because only in Jesus is the fullest representation of God to be found in the context of human history.
Essential to the Gospels, all four, is encounter with Jesus is the means to eternal/abundant life.
24 comments:
Is Jesus the Word? Might a better, orthodox answer be Yes and No rather than simply Yes.
"In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.'
*Not*: "In the beggining was Jesus and Jesus was with God and Jesus was God."
The Word became flesh as Jesus, in a very specific way, at a specific time, and spoke in the form of Jesus of Nazareth, Mary's son, Joseph's son, such and such's cousin.
Possibly born in a manger.
But before Abraham was, Jesus did not exist. I Am existed - for sure. Jesus is the wonderfully unique, specific, first century Jewish master, teacher, prophet...messiah indeed, Son of God. The one in whom God the Word became incarnate, truly, fully, and mysteriously.
But Jesus - as fully human - had a human birth, parentage, life, and death. The Word does not.
Jesus is the Word incarnate *and* the Word existed long before Jesus was born.
Aaaarrrrggh! Heresy, Peter! The Holy Spirit is NOT the father of Jesus! Jesus has no human father (other than St Joseph, his foster-father). The Virgin Mary conceived by the Holy Spirit, but Jesus's conception has no analogue to human conception, and certainly not to Greco-Roman mythology, as enemies of the Virgin Birth have often averred. It is a good thing at this time of year to dip into that great tome on the subject by the Protestant theologian J. Gresham Machen written about 100 years ago when Modernism was rampant.
I think it's also the case that Mark has rather more to say on the pre-existence of Christ than many have realised. Simon Gathercole of Cambridge wrote an excellent little book some years ago called 'The Pre-existence of the Son'focusing on expressions in the Synoptics 'I have come so that etc'. Note also that Mark 1.2 modifies the quotation from Mal 3.1 to read 'before *your face' instead of 'my face'. Who is being addresed? This reads like a heavenly conversation between the Father and the pre-incarnate Son. Of course, the divinity of Christ is clear to anyone reading Mark carefully (forgiving sins, nature miracles etc).
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
Thank you for your posts this year, and Happy Christmas/New Year!
Many other humans in Jesus' time and culture, and outside have forgiven sins and performed miracles, so this isn't a good basis for Jesus's uniqueness and divinity (which I don't deny BTW).
"...only in Jesus is God to be found." (Peter).
Really? This is hardly biblical. Unless you are saying that Jesus is the same as the Word, which is getting very blurry, and in which case God as Jesus is everywhere.
So either God is found in Jesus and in many other places too ("For your immortal spirit is in all things"), or God as Jesus who is being conflated with the Word is found everywhere.
Thanks All for comments.
William and Mark: I have made some adjustments to the post, in italics, to attempt correction of my erroneous ways.
Happy times Peter! But I can’t find a name for the heresy I’m accusing you of. “Particularism?” If this were the case, we might end up anathematizing left, right, and centre!
I appreciate your focus on ‘Jesus as having an origin’, perhaps a divine origin, as what unites the Gospel writers’ accounts of his birth. William is keen to emphasize the doctrine of the virgin birth. I do struggle with this. It appears in only Matthew and Luke – is that right? – though it became codified into the ecumenical creeds. What are the good reasons for affirming this? To fulfill the Isaiah prophecy? To affirm Matthew and Luke? To express the human archetype of the divine origins of the God-man through a virgin’s birth? The virginity of Mary, much less the “perpetual virginity” of Mary (gulp!), has too often become fused with a destructive fear and rejection of human sexuality, particularly female sexuality, with brutal consequences down the centuries and ongoingly so.
Both masculine and feminine, in heaven and on earth, are needed to conceive the divine child.
I also feel puzzled by the notion of a pre-existent *Son*, and of describing the second person of the Trinity as a “Son”. It seems as particular and limited as describing the first person of the Trinity as “Father”. Our Infinite Source, the Ground of all Being, the “Ocean of Being” (David Bentley Hart) who is beyond all particular names and forms and images, as limited to the particular image and form of a Father? And the eternal Word, the Logos, the active divine mode of being, that enlightens every being coming into the world, as limited to the form of the “Son”? I realise that human beings need personal images and forms to relate to, but it is more than a little bit curious that the personal forms that keep turning up for God are resolutely masculine.
The particularist heresy is deeply entrenched! There are promising signs that the present generations are moving towards more gender-critical, female-inclusive, and universalist visions of faith, but the tail of the beast wags hard. It might be another thousand years before we finally root it out!
The ins-and-outs of the particularities in this discussion are way over my head. At a simpler level, in my current personal understanding, I've no issue with Father/Son language and feel content with the same.
However, I'd be keen to see a kinder and truer teaching in the Church about women. Better that is, than what I grew up with among conservative evangelicals. Especially, teaching about how Jesus upheld the dignity and value of women - if only we would see this consistently lived out in the lives of church leaders! The Church would be so much safer and welcoming to women, with benefits for everyone.
Not being learned, my specific ideas on this were vague, but I got an immediate excellent result from an online search..
Jesus’ Extraordinary Treatment of Women by Barbara Leonhard OSF,
via Franciscan Media (November, 2017)
https://www.franciscanmedia.org/st-anthony-messenger/jesus-extraordinary-treatment-of-women/
In addition I'd wish to highlight how Jesus "upbraided" "the eleven" about their "unbelief and hardness of heart, because they believed not them which had seen him after he was risen." - most of whom were women! Mark 16:14
"...I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty." [last part of 2 Cor 6]
Presumably the miracle of the virgin birth, and not the miracle of the loaves and fishes (though wouldn't that be cool), is included in the Nicean Creed as a way of proving and symbolizing that Jesus Christ is both fully human and fully divine. Why the incarnation is so hostile to sperm (and to women falling pregnant through sexual intercourse) is beyond me, though notions of Adam's sin being transmitted through concupience/the male seed, and women's sexuality being both tremendously desired and feared by men, might go far in explaining some of this.
If the virgin birth happened it happened, but to make it a non-negoiatable article of orthodox faith seems to encourage a great deal of ink-spilling on something which is non-essential. Instead we might spend more time on the beautitudes, say, or the kingdom of God - you know, things that actually seemed important to Jesus.
"An evil and adulterous generation craves a sign. Yet no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah...".
"If a woman is made in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:27), where does she go to encounter the feminine dimension of the God in whom image and likeness she is made in?"
- Joy Ryan-Bloore
Hi Liz,
I don't have a problem with Father and Son - as images for God they are drenched with significance and intimacy throughout Christian history - so long as (1) nwe can flexibly include Mother and Daughter as equally valid, and (2) recognize that all forms are ultimately partial and limited for the One who is beyond all names, forms, genders, and images.
The quote made me think for a bit, Mark. What comes to mind is the story of Jesus talking with the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4). And how, after that conversation, she went back to her city to summon the men:
"Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ? Then they went out of the city, and came unto him."
She understood herself as fully seen by Jesus, and in her turn she recognised the Christ.
The men responded to her call, meeting Jesus and inviting him to stay, and Jesus "abode there two days". After listening to him, many more believed.. "this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world".
Jesus is all we need.
*
But earthly power structures generally favour able-bodied men over women/children and other vulnerable groups. Jesus was attentive to the plight of those marginalised, rejected and denied justice. When religious leaders themselves were guilty of hypocritical and abusive behaviour, Jesus publicly called them out.
In the Church it really ought to be normal for pleas from victims/survivors to be listened to with attentive compassion and care. There should be accountability, transparency, and determined diligence to avoid the same things happening over and over.
“Apology, after apology, after another bloody apology will not do!”
[From a speech to CofE General Synod]
We long for the Church to be a place where worshippers really do "worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him."
Men and women, sons and daughters of the Father.
One more post before wishing everyone a happy Christmas, a decent break, and heading off into restful silence...
I'm not saying the virgin birth didn't happen, or accounts of it in Matthew and Luke shouldn't be received and contemplated as spiritual truth.
But I am hostile to it (or other origin claims being used as a sort of literal/historical proof for Jesus's divinity, just as people sometimes/often use the supposed historicity of the Gospels and accounts of Jesus' resurrection to "prove' Jesus was divine. Jesus himself resisted those who wanted simple and clear "signs". I don't think Jesus's divinity can be proved, only encountered.
And I do believe the "light" of whatever rich symbolic truth is conveyed in the notion of Virgin Mary (a very clear, unconditioned, trusting, spiritual quality..?) has also been accompanied by a disturbing "shadow" (fear and oppression of female sexuality and power) and we are wise to be and remain conscious of this.
Thanks Peter, thanks everyone, for your patience with me and being part of this year-long dialogue.
The virginal conception of Jesus was the very means *through which* the Incarnation took place: "The Holy Spirit shall come upon you: THEREFORE the Holy One shall be called the Son of God." (Luke 1.35). That's what the "therefore ' is there for.
The Virgin Birth is regularly attacked by people who have a naturalistic, anti-miraculous view of the world. Whether they know it or not, they are really the spiritual great-grandchildren of Hume and Kant, via Schleiermacher. At its heart, Liberal Protestantism has always imagined Jesus as a (non-Jewish) teacher of morality, probably a socialist reformer. Schleiermacher added "Gefuehl" to the picture but didn't change the ontology. The VB does get in the way of that picture, do it has to go.
Even (or especially) Karl Barth understood this when he started writing books in the late 1930s strongly defending the virgin birth, to the chagrin of his Neo-orthodox fanbase.
Mark, it is time to give up that Jungian psychological talk about "shadows" and the Neo-Marxist "hermeneutic of suspicion" about "fear and suppression of female sexuality and power". It is tired, untrue and the atheist product of American university faculty rooms. Remember that the unproved and unprovable allegations one makes against the secret psychological motivations of others can be returned with interest. Freud belongs in the trash bin and do does Jung.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
William the virgin birth, the resurrection, and all the Jesus miracles pale in comparison to Joshua stopping the sun and the moon. This has to be the greatest miracle of all!
Merry Xmas, Thomas
No, Thomas, the virginal conception of Christ does not surpass 'the Grand Miracle' which is the Incarnation. The supremacy of this event is explained in detsil in C. S. Lewis's "Miracles. A Preliminary Investigation". The VB is however, the means whereby the Incarnation occurred, as I explained above. Perhaps you don't believe the Incarnation or the virgin birth really happened. But as you seem interested in cosmological questions, have you an explanation for these three undoubted events which atheist and theist alike agree have happened?
1. The emergence of life and consciousness from non-living chemicals on earth, and the sheer complexity of the "simplest" cell. Do you know any possible pathways for the Origin of Life? I don't know of any researchers who can explain this?
2. The existence of a life-permitting universe, given the more than astronomical odds surrounding the 19 cosmological constants built into the initial inflationary state of the universe at Planck time. Fred Hoyle said, "It looks like a super-intelligence has monkeyed with the laws of physics. Was he right?
3. Why does anything exist at all? Can literally nothing produce something? Have we any analogue of this happening?
If you have any explanations for these three mysteries (which certainly happened), I would be happy to venture some thoughts on the solstice in the Book of Joshua.
Merry Solstice.
Pax et bonum,
William Greenhalgh
William, I am short on time and would love to “dual” with you on these topics but must wait until the NY. I don't usually want to give advice to people about their religious beliefs ;-) but I do think that it's not smart to bet against the power of science to figure out the natural world. It used to be, a thousand years ago, that if you wanted to explain why the moon moved through the sky, you needed to invoke God.
Blessings and regards Thomas
Thomas, I accept your surrender. It's clear that you do not have even an off-the-shelf answer to my three questions and you won't have one in the new year either, because nobody has an answer to them. Are you a research scientist in cosmology or Origin of Life studies? I am not a scientist myself but have had a lay nterest for most of my life in the history and philosophy of science. And from all my reading, as well as discussions with a retired professor of physics, four convictions have emerged which challenge your rather superficial (or at least naive sounding) appeal to "the power of science":
1. There are actually several different but overlapping kinds of "science": theoretical, experimental and historical (inferring what happened in the past). Practitioners of science may not always understand exactly what they are doing and can confuse the types.
2. Science is a human enterprise and is always subject to change. Phlogiston, ether and spontaneous generation of life were once "scientific", as was the highly developed Ptolemaic system. Cornelius Ptolemy was no fool, his work was based on meticulous observation. But it could not survive the observations of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo. Read Thomas Kuhn on the structure of scirevolutions, and Michael Polanyi on personal knowledge.
3. As knowledge expands exponentially, it seems to me that mysteries deepen and we keep coming up against intractable questions. I gave you three above which you will not be able to answer in the new year because even Nobel laureates have no answer to them. You seem to think that all scientific questions can be reduced to a few simple principles. They can't. That's a 19th century answer that should have died with the 19th century. Rather, the more we learn, the more mysterious the world becomes. The universe is infinitely larger than even Edward Hubble imagined in the 1920s, the cell infinitely more complex than even Crick and Watson imagined.
4. Nevertheless, natural science is described and predicted in the strangest and most remarkable ways by mathematics (e.g., sine waves in calculus actually described electromagnetic radiation long before man knew this stuff existed - read about James Clark Maxwell). Why does mathematics, which is purely abstract and non-material in nature, somehow map onto physical matter? Read Eugene Wigner if you want to grasp the problem. Read John 1.3 for the solution.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
Ohhh William, Happy New Year and no surrender here my friend, I have a life outside of this blog! I’m back in coverage for a moment…yours is classic god of the gaps strategy that was condemned by the theologian Bonhoeffer. Creationists like yourself eagerly seek a gap in knowledge and or understanding and instantly assume god must fill it. This worried Bonhoeffer and it should worry you too, the gap shrinks as science advances, god must be threatened with having nothing to do! Scientists by and large simply worry about other things.
Regards Thomas.
Thomas, since you don't know me and I don't know you, I am not your friend, so let us not debase the language with false chumminess. I suspect you do not know much of Bonhoeffer's ideas. I have read a couple of his books (Life Together and The Cost of Discipleship) and a rather hagiographic biography but I claim no expertise in his thought. I think the later Bonhoeffer veered away from his earlier Barthian neo-orthodoxy into liberal speculation about "religionless Christianity ", but I haven't read his Ethics, so I can't comment at first hand. I suspect Bonhoeffer's reputation may have more to do with his execution by the Nazis than his actual theological achievement. Most German theologians or philosophers kept their heads down during the war, and therefore kept them. Only a few (Althaus, Heidegger) actively supported the Nazis.
Of course I am a creationist (but I am not and never have been a Young Earth Creationist). All Christians believe the universe is the creation of God and bears the marks of his intelligence and design.
I am not a scientist but a linguist and biblical scholar by training. But I have a keen interest in philosophy and the history and philosophy of science. So anyone who has read my comments here with attention and knowledge will understand that I am not a "classic god of the gaps" proponent but a much more classic God of the foundations believer: exactly what was taught by Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Boyle, John Ray, Linnaeus etc etc.
Are you a scientist yourself? If so, you will know what John Polkinghorne and John Lennox have said about cosmology and mathematics.
My suspicion is that you are not a scientist because you don't seem to be aware of the contemporary issues in cosmology (or quantum physics). Your understanding of science seems naive. But you can resolve these doubts by telling us your answers to these basic questions:
1. Has the universe always existed? Is it a brute fact or does it have a beginning?
2. Why does the universe follow "laws"? Whence these "laws"?
3. Why are these laws mathematical and why can human minds discover them? Why are most mathematicians Platonists?
4. What is the mind? Is consciousness real? Are abstract objects real?
If you understand these questions and have answered "I really don't know", you will grasp that science can never be finished. Start by reading Polkinghorne if you really want to understand the issues.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
"Most German theologians or philosophers kept their heads down during the war, and therefore kept them." In the context of your writing William, I had to laugh. But it also sent me burrowing into my browser bookmarks.
I saved a link last year to a Slate article discussing the opposition of Bonhoeffer's descendants to the misuse of Bonhoeffer's story in support of Christian Nationalism... a couple of selections from the text:
Bonhoeffer’s descendants told me that they were motivated by the same bravery, courage, and love that motivated their great-uncle and his parents and siblings, all of whom joined courageously together in a Resistance movement that would cost them their lives, and mark their family for future generations. [...]
“The longer the whole Resistance evolved, the more they had to rely on the military people, and that was a difficult thing. My family were quite distanced from military thinking. But Hitler had killed so many people. Eventually they had to join the military people to stop him, and they decided to use force as a last resort.” ~Bonhoeffer’s grand-nephew, Ruggero Schleicher-Tappeser
https://slate.com/life/2024/11/bonhoeffer-movie-2024-review-angel-studios-hitler-nazis.html
Thank you, William. I'm keen to learn more about Bonhoeffer over the course of the coming year. I realise Bonhoeffer had no direct descendants.. he had a fiancee when he died. A close-knit family though.. and "Bonhoeffer’s brother Klaus and his brothers-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi and Rüdiger Schleicher were also executed." The dissonance you refer to toward the end of your response interests me; it really does seem quite peculiar!
William, of course I am not your friend, it was posited in the colloquial context, surely you must have realised this? I doubt you really are a Linguist?! You are wrong (sorry), I am University trained in Biology, specifically Plant Sciences and Electrical Engineering. I note you are unqualified to talk about physics given your list of credentials. Polkinghorne disgraced himself with his thoughts on the Physics of the after life and the new creation.and this should have embarrass the religious fraternity. John Lennox is a great Mathematician, orator and communicator but stumbles
explaining the leap between a prime mover / first cause and a personal God (in Jesus) just like Ravi Zacharias and William Lane Craig.
It’s undeniable that the universe is shot through with mystery with regards to your list but science keeps on hypothesising and testing the physical world.
The difference is believers (like you) claim to have it all worked-out. Not just to know, but to know everything. Not just to know that God exists, and that he created and supervised the whole universal operation, but also to know what “he” demands of us — from our observances to who we sleep with. In other words, in a vast and complicated discussion where we know more and more about less and less, we still hope for some enlightenment as we move forward, yet, we have mutually warring religious factions with the sheer arrogance to tell us that we already have all the essential information. The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the minority.
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