If you don't like the look of this week's blogpost, then how about reading Edward Feser's fascinating post insteadfascinating post instead? He talks appreciatively of one of my favourite philosophers!
Was Jesus mad is a question which arises from this coming Ordinary Sunday 10's gospel reading?
Mark 3:21: When [Jesus'] family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, "He has gone out of his mind." [NRSV; other translations, equally possible re the underlying Greek, have "He has gone mad."]
Neither Matthew nor Luke follow Mark on this particular note, which, arguably, was embarrassing for followers of Jesus.
This Markan passage also raises the question whether people around Jesus, possibly even his own family, were gaslighting him (i.e. making statements about him which may have unsettled him and paradoxically may contribute to a person accused of madness becoming convinced that they are mad!)
For those unfamiliar, gaslighting has been defined in this way: "Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse or manipulation in which the abuser attempts to sow self-doubt and confusion in their victim’s mind. Typically, gaslighters are seeking to gain power and control over the other person, by distorting reality and forcing them to question their own judgment and intuition." As an aside, some diocesan training the other day, looking at bullying, also discussed gaslighting.
In at least one sense, Jesus was "mad". If we define "mad" as "at odds with the widely accepted norms of society, going against the grain of culturally acceptable behaviour", then Jesus as "mad": by this time in Mark's account of his life's work, he had taken on the role of God in forgiving a paralysed man his sins, he had called people to leave their safe and secure jobs to follow him, he had confronted demons and delivered people of them, he had healed people and he had generally defied the religious (i.e. cultural) authorities of the accepted Jewish way of life, especially in breaking sabbath keeping rules. The passage which follows Mark 3:21 involves a severe charge against Jesus that he was himself an agent of the devil (a charge which even Matthew and Luke do not shy away from reporting).
Two thousand years later we think Jesus the man was full of sound wisdom and good life guidance, and his healing work led ultimately to the medical systems millions if not billions around the world benefit from, and the first followers have become the well-known, well-established church of God with its footprint in nearly every country in the world. Jesus, from this present day perspective was not and is not "mad" but a very normal bloke!
Nevertheless, there is a lingering question prompted by Mark's account: was Jesus someone who we would not feel that comfortable around? Yes, we would be drawn, like the crowds, to his genius as a teacher-communicator, and to the stories of his miracle working prowess. Yes, we might be inspired to follow him, leaving our nets etc. But might we also wonder who he really was? What his "deep" agenda actually entailed? Whether there was something very odd about this charismatic-yet-enigmatic figure?
Of course Mark does not exactly shy away from Jesus as a figure with several if not many layers to personality and agenda. He emphasises the "messianic secret" - the fact that Jesus' had a deeper agenda than people assumed at first sight when encountering him. He presents a Jesus who is all comms and public relations with the crowds and yet likes to withdraw and be alone. From near the very beginning of his Gospel, Mark develops the "dark theme" that Jesus will die, that his crowd-pulling ministry will lead to death - and death at the baying cries of pretty much the same crowd.
And, let's be honest with ourselves as readers of Mark's Gospel: in the Gospel passage for this Sunday, Mark 3:20-35, Jesus is a "maddening" man: he puts his family into second place, if not cast to some outer place, owning to a new family, the ones who do God's will as better than the natural kith and kin to which he belongs, and which Jewish law bound him to support and cherish.
Of course, we read this passage with all the perspective of post-resurrection readers: God worked out a plan for the universes through Jesus, a plan which puts all "normal" human relationships into perspective, and a plan which calls out the deepest and most long term allegiance to the key agent of the plan, Jesus the Son of God!
Peter, yes, it's an excellent post by Feser, and it put me in mind of a couple of significant "intellectual light bulb moments" in my own life. The first was hearing John Lennox and Bill Craig a few years ago discuss the multiverse theory which is sometimes prayed in aid by atheists to explain how this life-permitting universe exists - despite the practically impossible odds against it (the 19 cosmological constants of exquisite fine tuning built into the singularity). Why so? Because (we are told) there are an infinite number of other worlds and this one has the winning lottery ticket! Eat your heart out, Willie Wonka.
ReplyDeleteTwo problems, though (at least). First, we could never know if other parallel universes really existed because access to them from this spacetime continuum would be impossible. Second, the cosmological explanation of why *those hypothetical worlds exist still remains, it has just been magnified an infinite number of times. So not a solution, just a deferral. Is the multiverse theory really like astrology - beyond proof or refutation?
The second occasion for me was discovering Popper's 'The Open Society and ite Enemies' as a first year student deep in the bowels of the university library and devouring it over the next few days, with varying levels of incomprehension. My philosophy professor had been a student of Popper and invoked his name with reverence, but what I hadn't known was that Popper was a Jewish refugee from Vienna who had fled to Chrishtchurch, where he wrote the book. (I had a similar conversation with Paul Oestreicher years later, whose family fled to Dunedin in 1938 from Berlin. Oestreicher went to King's High School, then Victoria Wellington. ) What Popper's book of 1943 did for me, besides affirming the necessity of a liberal society (something that is rapidly disappearing in the west), was to show me the falsity of Marxism and Freudianism, even though both ideologies were soon to become dominant in the post-war world. In recent years, I have taken Popper's arguments on falsification to become increasingly sceptical about the third pillar of the modern world, Neo-Darwinism.
On the existence of God, I think Popper remained an agnostic, so it is interesting to see in this post that Feser employs a couple of arguments from his book "Five Proofs For The Existence of God": the Aristotelian argument from movement or change (from potentiality to actuality), and the Auguustinian "argument from mathematics" (actually the argument from seminal ideas and the existence of abstract ideas and universals in the eternal mind) - argumentswhich Feser claims are unfalsifiable. Feser has very recently summarised his book in a series of highly condensed 20 minute lectures 'Six Arguments for God' (he now includes Avicenna's argument) on Bishop Robert Barron's "Word on Fire" website. I've been watching these and using them in my own teaching.
In a day when more than half of New Zealanders declare they have "no religion", isn't it time for Christians to argue that belief in God is not a private option but a clear rational conclusion that a right thinking person could fairly arrive at - even though this God is still less than the Lord revealed in Scripture? This is Paul's point in Romans 1, and to accept less is to be gaslighted by the father of lies,
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
I wonder if it is something about the power of the Holy Spirit that creates a situation akin to madness? Several of the ancient prophets were asked to do some peculiar things in their inspired ministry, that could have led to the charge of madness. And at Pentecost the disciples were thought drunk!
ReplyDeleteI am not surprised at Jesus’ family reaction. After all, until about the age of thirty, he was apparently living quietly at home with them, and running a business, albeit unmarried, which was not common but not mad. Then he disappears for over a month, comes back looking thin and promptly starts wandering around the countryside calling people to follow him, forgiving sin, doing miracles, teaching crowds and all the rest. No wonder the family was worried. It upset all their preconceived ideas of who he was and what he was meant to be doing! (I suspect that Mary knew better but was coerced by the rest of her family to join them in trying to bring him to his senses.) He certainly had a different agenda for his life from what they understood.
Saints who have followed him since have also done apparently crazy things to take the Gospel to places where it is not known, bless them.
Maybe we need more of Pentecost?
It's not clear to me, and maybe it's not clear in the text, though I'm interested in others' views, who is saying (of Jesus) "He has gone out of his mind". It feels this belongs with the words and views of the 'Jerusalem scribes' (who are accusing him of being inspired by the devil) and not of his family or supporters.
ReplyDeleteWe do know that Jesus' active ministry has long been prefigured and known (to some extent) to those closest to him - to his family at least, if not all his apostles (but in what mysterious ways may they have been prepared for this moment, too?). But in Mark, everything is off to a flying start - no birth narrative and ancient whakapapa (as in Matthew and Luke), no announcement of the incarnation to Mary and no intimate dialogue between Elizabeth and Mary (as in Luke), no presentation of Jesus in the temple and dialogue with teachers (as in Luke), no unpacking if what it means to be born again (to Nicodemus - as in John).
Mark is almost the gospel for type A personalities - proclamation, baptism, healing, healing, calling apostles, boom boom boom. It does feel rather mad at times, at least to the non A-personality writing this current post.
And maybe that's how it feels to the scribes and pharisees - and to the scribes and the pharisees inside us too - to those with no familiarity, no intimacy with Jesus? This man appears out of nowhere doing and saying outrageous things.
But of course his family, even though they must have known his specialness, must also be seriously unnerved at times. And have no clear idea where it's heading. At least let him eat! As a parent, I can imagine calling for that.