TomsBlog

Prayer for the Birth

2011-04-11T22:27:00.000-07:00

Lord, you came into the world to be with us, to meet us where we are, so that you could lead us to a new life. So also come into my life. Walk with me down the paths of this world. Be my guide and companion. Place your yoke upon my shoulders, and let my ways become your ways.

Prayer for the Visitation

2011-04-04T21:56:00.001-07:00

Mary hastens to share her joyous, fearsome burden with Elizabeth, her cousin, her friend, her family. Elizabeth marvels that the mother of her Lord should make her home her own, as the child John leaps for joy within her.

Lord, as Mary and Elizabeth shared the joy of your coming as friends and as family, so also let my household be a place of celebration of You.

Let our hearts leap with John’s joy at your approach.

Strengthen our voices. Steel our hearts against timidity and embarrassment. Give us the courage to proclaim you with a clear voice.

Thank you, Lord, for the impossible miracle of your presence within our family; for your Life within our children; for your Spirit within my wife. Marvelous and wonderful are all your works, and great is your love for us!

Prayer for the Annunciation

2011-04-03T23:01:00.000-07:00

Lord, your Word has pierced the dome of Adam, and burst forth into human history. Our world is flooded with your light; the fog of our forgetfulness is driven away. Never would we have found you, had you not called to us. Forever would we have lived this Dream, had you not awakened us.

Lord, as you announced yourself to this Maiden, announce yourself to me.
As you broke through the world’s barriers in order to set your great plan in motion, so break through mine.

I am a prisoner within walls of my own making. I am asleep and know it not. Call to me! Set me free! Awaken me!

1st John and the Long Lost Gnostics, Part 2

2009-07-11T23:24:00.000-07:00

Papyrus P9, oldest known fragment of the 1st Letter of John

"What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we looked upon and touched with our hands concerns the Word of life--

for the life was made visible; we have seen it and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was made visible to us--

what we have seen and heard we proclaim now to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; for our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ."

This stark and beautiful opening to the 1st Letter of John immediately calls to mind the beginning of the Gospel of John:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

He was in the beginning with God.

All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be.

What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it."

And in fact it is generally agreed that 1st John and the Gospel of John were written by the same person, a man styled "John the Evangelist." The tradition of the early Church fathers and the text of the Gospel itself suggests that this man was the "beloved disciple" who rested his head upon Jesus' chest at the last supper, and who was given charge of Mary as he stood at the foot of the cross at the crucifixion. He must have been a very young man at the time, because the Gospel and 1st John are believed to have been written toward the end of the first century, probably in the 90s, some 60 or more years after the crucifixion.

The 1st Letter of John is intended to be a warning, and also a source of strength and encouragement, for a community that was midst of a crisis. John paints the situation in the starkest possible terms: "Children," he says, "it is the last hour; and just as you heard that the antichrist was coming, so now many antichrists have appeared." These "antichrists" were people who had once been members of the community to which he writes, but who abandoned the Church for another. "They went out from us," he says, "but they were not really of our number; if they had been, they would have remained with us. Their desertion shows that none of them was of our number." John warns his readers that they must be vigilant against the missionaries of this false religion, telling them that they must "not trust every spirit but test the spirits to see whether they belong to God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world." To forestall the heretics and save the faith of the community, John eloquently lays out his case against the heresy, and tries to help his readers to recognize the power and value of their own faith.

The Opening Shot

The similarities in the opening verses of the Gospel of John and the 1st Letter of John are so overpowering that we tend to overlook one important way in which they differ: both are powerful and poetic descriptions of the mysterious, divine nature of Jesus, but woven throughout the opening paragraph of 1st John is an additional and not-so-subtle appeal to the authority conferred by John's personal witness to the living Christ:

What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we looked upon and touched with our hands concerns the Word of life--

for the life was made visible; we have seen it and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was made visible to us--

what we have seen and heard we proclaim now to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; for our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.

Perhaps the word "authority" conjures up the wrong image: John isn't dictating anything, he isn't saying "I knew Jesus and you didn't, so fall in line," but neither is he giving any quarter when it comes to the faith he proclaims. His teachings aren't open for discussion. He has complete confidence in his own fidelity to the will of God, a confidence based on his personal experience with Jesus during his Earthly ministry. "Our fellowship is with Jesus," he's saying, "and we know that we are true to him because we saw him with our own eyes, and heard him with our own ears, and touched him with our own hands. And we are happy to extend that fellowship to you if you will believe in the gospel that we proclaim to you now." Anyone is free to accept that fellowship or to reject it, but the nature of the choice is clear: you can side with a community that was founded by Jesus himself, or you can side with the pretenders.

To John, the Church is a community founded by and centered on Jesus, consisting of the Apostles and the disciples who knew him during his ministry, and radiating outward to those who would join in fellowship with them. This continuity of fellowship with the original community of the Apostles is what we call "Apostolicity", and it has been maintained by the Church down to this very day, a fact we affirm every time we say the Nicene Creed and declare the Church to be "one, holy, catholic and Apostolic." It's an idea that was also expressed by Clement of Rome, who was a contemporary of John's, in his letter to the Corinthians: "The Apostles received the gospel for us from the Lord Jesus Christ; and Jesus Christ was sent from God. Christ, therefore, is from God, and the Apostles are from Christ. Both of these orderly arrangements, then, are by God's will." And it is echoed in Jesus' commandment to the Apostles after the Resurrection, as related in the Gospel of John: "As the Father has sent me, so I send you."

And this provides an answer to the rhetorical question that was posed by Elaine Pagels, that I quoted in my last post:

[T]hose who called gnosticism heresy were adopting--consciously or not--the viewpoint of that group of Christians who called themselves orthodox Christians. A heretic may be anyone whose outlook someone else dislikes or denounces. According to tradition, a heretic is one who deviates from the true faith. But what defines that "true faith"? Who calls it that, and for what reasons?

Evidently she believes there is no objective criteria by which these things may be judged, that they are determined by the other Golden Rule (whoever has the gold makes the rules); whichever side wins gets to write the history books and claim the title of orthodoxy. But that's not what the early Christians believed. In John's opinion, the authentic Christian community is the one that has maintained a continuous fellowship with the Apostolic community that was founded by Christ. This is the objective standard by which all faith communities may be evaluated. And not only does this answer Pagels' question in the abstract, but I believe it directly answers her specific question, the question of how we can know that Gnosticism in particular is not the authentic a form of Christianity. Because as the astute reader has no doubt surmised from the title of this post, I believe that that the heretics that John was warning his community about in the 1st Letter of John were, in fact, Gnostics.

The Freedom of the Blogosphere

Now this is the message that we have heard from him and proclaim to you: God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.

If we say, "We have fellowship with him," while we continue to walk in darkness, we lie and do not act in truth.

But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, then we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of his Son Jesus cleanses us from all sin.

If we say, "We are without sin," we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

If we acknowledge our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from every wrongdoing.

If we say, "We have not sinned," we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

I often find Scriptural commentaries frustrating to read, because they can tend to be so cautious in their interpretations that they do little more than repeat the literal meaning of the text. This is especially true of 1st John, where so little is known about the context of the letter. There isn't even certainty about which heresy John's community was confronting. The introduction to the New American Bible calls it "a form of docetism or gnosticism," because that is as much as can be certainly proven from the text of the letter. This kind of caution is altogether fitting and proper for a scholarly study, where it is so important to maintain clarity about that which is absolutely known and that which is speculative. But this level of caution comes with a heavy price: it turns 1st John into a one-sided phone conversation, in which we only get to hear John's side of the dialog. We know his answers to the heresy he's confronting, but we don't know the questions. We don't know what the person on the other side of the line is saying, and this robs the text of a great deal of its meaning. When reading these oh-so-cautious commentaries I often find myself thinking that the author must surely have private opinions about the material that go way beyond whatever he or she is stating for the record. Well if there is any venue for stating those types opinions, then a blog post must surely be it, so I'm going to express some of my opinions about the letter here. But I do so knowing full well that in venturing away from that which is certainly known, I'm taking the risk that I could be wrong.

But I don't think that I am, because it appears to me if we do assume that the heresy in question is a form of Gnosticism, then the arguments John makes in this letter, though delivered in his restrained style, snap neatly into place to form an insightful, cutting, and ultimately devastating assault upon that heresy. Because having opened the letter with his strongest appeal, the strongest possible appeal to authority ("Listen to me, I knew Jesus and they did not"), John turns immediately to a set of arguments that would be sure to cut any Christian who is flirting with Gnosticism straight to the quick. John's assault begins with the passage quoted above, but if you aren't familiar with Gnosticism then you probably can't see it there yet. To do so we will have to spend a little more time reviewing some of the beliefs of Gnosticism.

Shedding Light on Gnosticism

God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.

Now Jews and Christians have long used the imagery of light their descriptions of God and heaven, but they have never used it to the extent that the Gnostics did. In fact, when reading Gnostic literature it often seems to me that light and darkness are the only images Gnostics ever used. Here are a few examples from The Apocryphon of John, in which it describes the Monad, who is the first, foremost and highest deity:

The Monad is a monarchy with nothing above it. It is he who exists as God and Father of everything, the invisible One who is above everything, who exists as incorruption, which is in the pure light into which no eye can look.....

He is immeasurable light, which is pure, holy (and) immaculate....

And in speaking of the conception of Christ, who in some Gnostic cosmologies is described not as the son of Yahweh, the God of the Jews, but as the child of the Monad and Barbelo:

And [the Monad] looked at Barbelo with the pure light which surrounds the invisible Spirit, and (with) his spark, and she conceived from him. He begot a spark of light with a light resembling blessedness. But it does not equal his greatness. This was an only-begotten child of the Mother-Father which had come forth; it is the only offspring, the only-begotten one of the Father, the pure Light. And the invisible, virginal Spirit rejoiced over the light which came forth...

The light of the Pleroma, the heavenly realm, is contrasted with the darkness of the outer world, the world of matter, as related in the Gnostic text On the Origin of the World:

Now the eternal realm (aeon) of truth has no shadow outside it, for the limitless light is everywhere within it. But its exterior is shadow, which has been called by the name 'darkness'....[M]atter came into being out of shadow.

Light and darkness are indeed apt metaphors for the Gnostic conception of good and evil, which in their worldview are essentially the same as knowledge of or ignorance of the Pleroma. Knowledge and ignorance are all-important concepts in Gnosticism--the word "Gnostic" comes from the Greek word "gnosis," which means "knowledge." It takes a little while for a modern Christian to grasp just how important these concepts are to a Gnostic. One way to understand it is by reading the Gnostic creation stories.

Gnostic Genesis

The specifics of the Gnostic creation stories vary greatly from sect to sect, but they convey similar theologies. These are very different stories than those of the Jews, and the differences are deeply revealing. As I described in my last post, in Gnostic mythology Yahweh, the God of the Jews, is not the first and greatest Creator of all things that he is in the Jewish tradition, nor is he the Father of Christ as the Christians believe. He is instead the bastard child of Sophia, who was one of the least of the aeons. He was "created...in ignorance," and in his ignorance he deceived himself into believing that he was the one and only God. Appalled by this blasphemous self-deception, the true divinities from the realm of light chastise him as "the god of the blind," their voices booming in from out of nowhere. Yahweh flees from them, flees to the world of matter, an evil world that he makes his own, and shapes after the pattern of his own ignorance.

As related in the Gnostic Hypostatis of the Archons, after Yahweh and his minions arrived on Earth, they created Adam, the first man, molding him out of earth. They modeled him on a glimpse they once had of a divine being of the Pleroma, which they saw in a reflection on the primordial waters of the Earth, as it looked down upon the world from above. But Yahweh lacked the power to give Adam a spirit, and so the newly-created man was unable to stand; he could only writhe about pathetically on the ground. But then a divine being descended from the Pleroma and granted Adam a spirit, which gave him life and the freedom of movement.

Yahweh and his minions respond by placing Adam in the Garden and causing a deep sleep of Ignorance to fall upon him, so that he would forget the divine spark of life that had been given him by the divinities of the Pleroma. And while Adam slept Yahweh created Eve from the flesh of his side, and the spirit granted to Adam by the divine beings of the Pleroma came to rest in her. Armed with a real spirit and not yet under the spell of Ignorance (and in this version of the story, escaping from Yahweh's attempt to rape her), she takes the guise of a wise serpent, and talks Adam into eating of the fruit of knowledge, which awakens him from his sleep and opens his eyes: "And their imperfection became apparent in their lack of knowledge; and they recognized that they were naked of the spiritual element, and took fig leaves and bound them upon their loins." As punishment, Yahweh and his minions expelled them from the Garden, throwing "mankind into great distraction and into a life of toil, so that their mankind might be occupied by worldly affairs, and might not have the opportunity of being devoted to the holy spirit."

The Secret Knowledge

The primary aim of the Gnostic, then, is to awaken from this slumber imposed upon us by Yahweh through the distraction of worldly affairs, and to reconnect ourselves to the divine inner spark that underlies our evil outer natures. This idea that within each of us lies a spark of light from the Pleroma is common to most if not all forms of Gnosticism. As Jesus says in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas,

Anyone here with two ears had better listen! There is light within a person of light, and it shines on the whole world. If it does not shine, it is dark.

and again

If they say to you, 'Where have you come from?' say to them, 'We have come from the light, from the place where the light came into being by itself, established [itself], and appeared in their image.'

This is why Elaine Pagels, in her book The Gnostic Gospels, argues that the word "gnosis" is, in the way that Gnostics use it, better translated as "insight" rather than "knowledge." Or, I would suggest, "enlightenment." It is a looking-inward to rediscover the inner light of the Pleroma. It involves both a direct, mystical experience of the divine, and it involves secrets that can only be revealed to the initiated. It is not rational or logical; it can't be learned in a book. It is, rather, experiential. Like Mahakashyapa in the story of the Sermon of the Lotus Flower that forms the genesis of Zen Buddhism, the Gnostic initiate must come to realize that gnosis cannot be expressed in words. Only when that understanding is reached can the deeper, secret gnosis be revealed. In the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas this is illustrated this way:

Jesus said to his disciples, "Compare me to something and tell me what I am like."

Simon Peter said to him, "You are like a just messenger."

Matthew said to him, "You are like a wise philosopher."

Thomas said to him, "Teacher, my mouth is utterly unable to say what you are like."

This is the answer Jesus was looking for; he's quite pleased:

Jesus said, "I am not your teacher. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring that I have tended."

This scene is repeated in the other Gnostic gospels, with the protagonist changing to whichever disciple that particular gospel is named after. Once the wise disciple is identified, Jesus always follows it up by taking him or her off camera in order to reveal his secret knowledge:

And [Jesus] took [Thomas], and withdrew, and spoke three sayings to him.

When Thomas came back to his friends they asked him, "What did Jesus say to you?"

Thomas said to them, "If I tell you one of the sayings he spoke to me, you will pick up rocks and stone me, and fire will come from the rocks and devour you."

There are many theories about what this secret knowledge might have been--ways of producing states of ecstasy through meditation or other means, wherein the Pleroma may be directly experienced; magical incantations for bringing about liberation from this evil world, etc. The fact is that we'll never know exactly what it was. The Gnostics' deepest secrets shall remain forever secure, in their graves.

A World Without Sin

Noticeably absent from all of this is any notion of sin and repentance. As the neo-Gnostic author of Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing, Stephan Hoeller, says,

In many ways, the Gnostic concept of salvation is close to the concept of liberation found in the Hindu and Buddhist traditions; Gnostics look to salvation not from sin (original or otherwise), but from the ignorance of which sin is the consequence.

Indeed, in the creation story related above in The Hypostasis of the Archons, there is no possibility of an original sin on the part of Adam and Eve: all of the sinning in the story is done by Yahweh against them. But in truth, even Yahweh's actions aren't "sinful" in the Judeo-Christian sense of the word. As Hoeller notes, in Gnosticism "the chief characteristic of [Yahweh] is ignorance, not evil." Ignorance is the (dare I say it?) "original sin" that produced Yahweh's evil nature. The ignorance of his mother, Sophia, who conceived him without the knowledge and consent of her male counterpart because she failed to understand the limits of her power and place in the divine order; and the ignorance of Yahweh himself, who did not know that there were divinities superior to him, and who upon learning about them fled into the twisted ignorance of self-deception, in order to escape the knowledge of them.

John Weighs In

This freedom from even the idea of sin may be one of the chief attractions that Gnosticism has for modern-day neo-Gnostics, for people who have become weary of what Hoeller calls "the threats and anger of the Old Testament Creator God," but it is precisely this idea that John assails first in his case against Gnosticism. He begins with this attention-getter:

God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.

I believe it's no coincidence that John starts with a description of God as "light": the Gnostics' ears have perked up now--he's speaking their language. And now that he's gotten their attention, consider how the following passage would sound to a Gnostic:

If we say, "We have fellowship with him," while we continue to walk in darkness, we lie and do not act in truth.

But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, then we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of his Son Jesus cleanses us from all sin.

If we say, "We are without sin," we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

If we acknowledge our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from every wrongdoing.

If we say, "We have not sinned," we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

You may like the idea of a world without sin, but look into your own hearts, John is saying, and ask yourself if you really believe in it. You know sin exists, and if you tell yourself otherwise you are lying; you are deceiving yourself! To a Gnostic, these are fighting words: lies and deception are the penultimate evil in the Gnostic worldview.

The Not-So-Secret Knowledge

And consider how the following passage would read to a Christian who is sitting on the fence between Gnosticism and Christianity. The Gnostics claim to have secret knowledge that will lead their adherents to a deep experience of God--what does orthodox Christianity have that can compete with that? John continues:

My children, I am writing this to you so that you may not commit sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous one. He is expiation for our sins, and not for our sins only but for those of the whole world.

The way we may be sure that we know him is to keep his commandments. Whoever says, "I know him," but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him.

But whoever keeps his word, the love of God is truly perfected in him. This is the way we may know that we are in union with him: whoever claims to abide in him ought to live (just) as he lived.

John's answer is simple: knowledge of God is not hidden in secrets reserved only for a chosen few. Rather, the path to God is open for anyone to see: "The way we may be sure that we know him is to keep his commandments." In the original Greek the word "know" actually appears twice in this verse: "καὶ ἐν τούτῳ γινώσκομεν ὅτι ἐγνώκαμεν αὐτόν ἐὰν τὰς ἐντολὰς αὐτοῦ τηρῶμεν." "The way we may know that we know him is to keep his commandments." Although the word "Gnostic" ("knower") hadn't been coined yet as a name for these people when 1st John was written, the word "gnosis" ("knowledge") must have already been associated with them, because word play such as this is common. (One of my favorite of these is at the beginning of chapter 3: "The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him." John is lumping the heretics in with the "world" here--elsewhere he implies that they are "lovers of the world." Yeouch! The Gnostics, who believe that matter is evil, are lovers of the world?! Who "know" neither Christ nor the Christians?! John really knows how to twist the knife.)

John never works a single argument at a time: he alternates from one to another, weaving two arguments together, proceeding to another, weaving that one back into the first, and so on. So how is it that following the commandments and example of Jesus enables us to "know" him? John weaves his answer into the idea of Apostolicity:

If we say, 'We have fellowship with him,' while we continue to walk in darkness, we lie and do not act in truth.

But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, then we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of his Son Jesus cleanses us from all sin.

Doing good and avoiding sin enables us to maintain our fellowship with one another--with the Church, the Apostolic community founded by Christ. This doesn't mean that to be Christians we have to be perfect. Quite the opposite: John reassures us that if we do sin we have an Advocate with the Father in Jesus, and "if we acknowledge our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from every wrongdoing."

But there appears to be something else going on here as well. Some Gnostic groups developed antinomian (which is to say, 'anti-moral law') ideas, and many were accused of licentiousness. There are a number of reasons they developed these ideas; their motivations probably varied from one group to another. One reason was that the moral law was created, according to Jewish tradition, by Yahweh, and anything that comes from him could only be a deception whose true, ulterior motive is humanity's enslavement. Another reason was the notion that a Gnostic, having achieved liberation through gnosis, had 'left the world behind' so to speak, and had moved on to bigger and better things. Once gnosis was achieved, nothing that happens on this meaningless, shadowy, material plane of existence could possibly matter, so you may as well do whatever you want.

It appears likely that John was confronting just such a group, because he presses this point about the necessity of avoiding sin and the vanity of evil, not just once but again and again throughout the letter, intimating that the heretics may have fallen into "sensual lust, enticement for the eyes, and a pretentious life," that they commit "lawlessness", indicating that they not only disbelieve in sin, but that they are itinerant sinners. John attempts to refocus his readers' minds on the true benevolence of the moral law, and the real gravity of sin, by reminding his readers what Jesus' commandment was, and by emphasizing what it really means to behave as if sin doesn't matter:

Whoever says he is in the light, yet hates his brother, is still in the darkness.

Whoever loves his brother remains in the light, and there is nothing in him to cause a fall.

Whoever hates his brother is in darkness; he walks in darkness and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

John reminds us that one of Jesus' primary commandments is to love your neighbor. To say that sin doesn't matter is to say that hatred of your neighbor is no big deal. How can someone claim to know God while living in hatred? To John the idea is ridiculous. And to which would you rather aspire: knowledge or love? Which would you rather avoid: ignorance, or hatred? To John the answer is obvious.

Freedom Now

Finally, against the Gnostic promise of eventual liberty, through initiation into the secret gnosis, from the bonds of ignorance that enslave us in the darkness of this current existence, John offers liberty now. And not just liberty for the individual Christian, but liberty for all of creation. Because according to John, we are living in a new era, in which already "the darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining." Christ has torn away the veil that has covered the world in darkness since mankind was cast out of the Garden due to the sin of Adam and Eve. The light of Christ is already streaming throughout the universe; there is no longer any darkness from which to escape. All knowledge required to triumph over evil has been granted to us through him. In this rousing send-up, John cheers his readers with the knowledge that the Gnostics have nothing to teach them:

I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning.

I am writing to you, young men, because you have conquered the evil one.

I write to you, children, because you know the Father.

I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning.

I write to you, young men, because you are strong and the word of God remains in you, and you have conquered the evil one.

....You have the anointing that comes from the holy one, and you all have knowledge.

I write to you not because you do not know the truth, but because you do!

1st John and the Long Lost Gnostics, Part 1

2009-06-02T18:49:00.000-07:00

A fragment of the Gnostic Gospel of Judas

A New Gospel

In the year 2006 a team of scholars at the University of Geneva in Switzerland announced that they had translated the long lost Gnostic Gospel of Judas. This was the product of five long years spent painstakingly tweezering together the crumbling fragments of a manuscript that had been lost for nearly 1700 years. I remember listening to an NPR interview at the time with an expert on this newly-discovered gospel. They talked about the religion that had produced this gospel--Gnostic Christianity--and about what it had to say about Jesus and Judas. And at the end of the interview, I remember how the NPR reporter dropped his voice into a deep and husky reverence, as he breathed his final, burning question: "Do you believe, doctor, that Christians will one day think of the Gospel of Judas as a fifth gospel alongside those of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John?"

Christians in Wonderland

Ah, hmmm, "No." Christians aren't likely to recast Judas as the hero of the Passion anytime soon, which is how he is portrayed in the Gospel of Judas. Nor are we likely to replace our concept of the Trinity with the idea that Yahweh, the God of the Jews, was actually one of the lesser gods in the pantheon of aeons that emanated from the Monad, that he is really the twisted, evil offspring of Sophia, the aeon of Wisdom, who emanated from one of the descendants of the aeons that emanated from Christ, who was himself the offspring of Barbelo and the Monad, as described in the Apocryphon of John, another Gnostic text. With several entire books of the New Testament dedicated to opposing Gnosticism, Christians are not likely to add any of the scores of Gnostic gospels, acts and apocalypses to the canon of the Scriptures, now or ever.

Indeed, a Christian who enters the world of Gnosticism feels like Alice descending into Wonderland, into a world turned upside down, where not only Judas but all the villains of the Bible are transformed into heroes, and where Yahweh--God himself, who the Gnostics call 'Yaltabaoth'--is the principle villain. It is a world in which God orders Adam and Eve to refrain from eating of the tree of knowledge in order to enslave them with ignorance. In which the serpent who tempts Eve is really a liberating spirit from the realm of light, whose tempation leads not to a Fall, but to freedom from the Garden and escape from the clutches of Yaltabaoth. It is a world in which Cain and Abel are the products of the rape of Eve by God. In their writings, the Gnostics delight in heaping insults upon the God of the Jews: He was conceived in a moment of sinfulness by his mother Sophia, who "wanted to bring forth a likeness out of herself without the consent of the Spirit, - he had not approved - and without her consort, and without his consideration." When Sophia looked upon her offspring, she found it deformed and hideous, with the "form of a lion-faced serpent. And its eyes were like lightning fires which flash. She cast it away from her, outside that place, that no one of the immortal ones might see it, for she had created it in ignorance." He became the "Demiurge," the semi-creator, not powerful enough to create a world on his own, but the one who would shape the matter that was thrown off of his mother into the world as we know it, a world, like Yaltabaoth himself, of ignorance, evil and deception. He stupidly believes that he is the ultimate source of Creation. He is "full of ignorance," the "god of the blind," "the arrogant ruler," the "deceiver." His rape of Eve "planted sexual desire in her" and is the source of all lust in the world, for it "inspired [her descendants] with his counterfeit spirit." These are not ideas that can be easily incorporated into orthodox Christianity.

The Neo-Gnostics

If the NPR correspondent I listened to three years ago didn't realize the absurdity of his question, some unconscionable reporting by the National Geographic Society at the time no doubt bears some of the blame. The Society, which funded the translation project and made it the cover story of their May 2006 issue, as well as the subject of three books, advertised their findings with this teaser:

The Gospel of Judas gives a different view of the relationship between Jesus and Judas, offering new insights into the disciple who betrayed Jesus....

During the first centuries A.D. Christianity grew from humble origins to become the official religion of the Roman Empire. Through time lines, maps, and photos explore the world of early Christianity. And learn where the Gospel of Judas fit into the divergent philosophies within the new religion.

The picture presented here is that Gnostic and orthodox Christians were in the earliest days all part of the same big, diverse Christian family, and that the Gnostic gospels have the same claim to historical truth as the canonical ones. These ideas have been most famously advocated by Elaine Pagels, a professor of Religion at Princeton University who advised the Society on their story, and whose book The Gnostic Gospels is widely viewed as having spawned a modern, modest resurgence in Gnosticism. In her book she writes:

[I]deas that we associate with Eastern religions emerged in the first century through the gnostic movement in the West, but they were suppressed and condemned by polemicists like Irenaeus. Yet those who called gnosticism heresy were adopting--consciously or not--the viewpoint of that group of Christians who called themselves orthodox Christians. A heretic may be anyone whose outlook someone else dislikes or denounces. According to tradition, a heretic is one who deviates from the true faith. But what defines that "true faith"? Who calls it that, and for what reasons?

...If we admit that some of these fifty-two [Gnostic] texts [discovered at Nag Hammadi in 1945, including the Gospel of Judas,] represents early forms of Christian teaching, we may have to recognize that early Christianity is far more diverse than nearly anyone expected before the Nag Hammadi discoveries.

...[T]he canon of Scripture, the creed, and the institutional structure [of the Church] emerged in its present form only toward the end of the second century. Before that time, as Irenaeus and others attest, numerous gospels circulated among various Christian groups, ranging from those of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, to such writings as the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, and the Gospel of Truth, as well as many other secret teachings, myths, and poems attributed to Jesus or his disciples.

...Yet by A. D. 200, the situation had changed. Christianity had become an institution headed by a three-rank hierarchy of bishops, priests, and deacons, who understood themselves to be the guardians of the only "true faith." The majority of churches, among which the church of Rome took a leading role, rejected all other viewpoints as heresy. Deploring the diversity of the earlier movement, Bishop Irenaeus and his followers insisted that there could be only one church, and outside of that church, he declared, "there is no salvation." Members of this church alone are orthodox (literally, "straight-thinking") Christians. And, he claimed, this church must be catholic-- that is, universal. Whoever challenged that consensus, arguing instead for other forms of Christian teaching, was declared to be a heretic, and expelled. When the orthodox gained military support, sometime after the Emperor Constantine became Christian in the fourth century, the penalty for heresy escalated.

The story presented is this: that in the century and a half after Jesus' death, Christians struggled to come to grips with the meaning of his ministry, with many different viewpoints being expressed--some somewhat Gnostic, others more orthodox--but none with any more valid claim to fidelity to Jesus' teachings than any other. And out of this cacophony of voices there arose, sometime around the end of the second century, a new outlook, which we today think of as "orthodox" Christianity, that sought to unify Christianity by suppressing any Christians with Gnostic tendencies. This is an eminently coherent, self-consistent story that would be perfectly sensible, if we were given a different set of historical facts than the ones we have. As it is, I find this viewpoint profoundly a-historical and illogical.

Rebuttals

Because from the very beginning, the historical evidence shows us that there was an orthodox, Apostolic Church that organized itself around the Apostles and their descendants, that carefully preserved the succession of its bishops from the original Apostles, and that perceived a crystal clear delineation between itself and the Gnostics. Irenaeus, in his book Against Heresies, written around the year A.D. 180, which was no more than 80 years after the last of the New Testament Scriptures were written, has this to say:

We have learned the plan of our salvation from none other than those through whom the gospel came down to us. Indeed, they first preached the gospel, and afterwards, by the will of God, they handed it down to us in the Scriptures, to be the foundation and pillar of our faith....They went forth to the ends of the earth, spreading the good news of the good things which God has sent to us, and announcing the peace of heaven to men, who indeed are all equally and individually sharers in the gospel of God. Matthew also issued among the Hebrews a written Gospel in their own language, while Peter and Paul were evangelizing in Rome and laying the foundation of the Church. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, also handed down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter. Luke also, the companion of Paul, set down in a book the Gospel preached by him. Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord who reclined at His bosom, also published a Gospel, while he was residing at Ephesus in Asia.

...It is possible, then, for everyone in every Church, who may wish to know the truth, to contemplate the tradition of the Apostles which has been made known throughout the whole world. And we are in a position to enumerate those who were instituted bishops by the Apostles, and their successors to our own times: men who neither knew nor taught anything like these heretics rave about.

And elsewhere Irenaeus says:

[T]he Church, having received this preaching and this faith, although she is disseminated throughout the whole world, yet guarded it, as if she occupied one house....For while the languages of the world are diverse, nevertheless, the authority of the tradition is one and the same.

Neither do the Churches among the Germans believe otherwise or have another tradition, nor do those among the Iberians, nor among the Celts, nor away in the East, nor in Egypt, nor in Libya, nor those which have been established in the central regions of the world. But just as the sun, that creature of God, is one and the same throughout the whole world, so also the preaching of the truth shines everywhere and enlightens all men who desire to come to knowledge of the truth.

Of course Pagels would have us believe that Irenaeus was, through statements such as these, making himself one of the principle architects of a new orthodoxy, one that had not existed before he and like-minded people began this campaign against the Gnostics. But if we look at what Irenaeus is saying here, we can see that he is not arguing that the Church must become catholic and Apostolic, he is arguing that it always has been that way. He is saying that the Church has so jealously guarded the succession of the bishops from the Apostles, that he could, from his vantage point in history less than 80 years after the death of the last Apostle, list the men called upon by the Apostles to become bishops, as well as every one of their successors down to his own day. He is saying that the Church has worked so hard to maintain the unity of its teachings that he can confidently say that the churches in the far Western end of the known world, the churches in the far Eastern end of the world, and the churches dispersed everywhere else in between, maintain a single tradition, and speak with a single voice.

Anyone who would wish to dismiss statements such as these as fabrications should think about the reason they believe in the existence of China. Most of us have never seen China and never will, so we cannot personally verify its existence. We believe that China is a real place, and cannot be a hoax, because we know that it would impossible to prevent such a hoax from being exposed, given the ease with which other people can determine the facts. So too would it be impossible for Irenaeus to publicly proclaim these things about the Church, and to believe that his proclamations will carry weight with his readers in his fight against Gnosticism, if they were a lie.

As for Pagels' claim that the Church only "became an institution headed by a three-rank hierarchy of bishops, priests, and deacons" at the end of the second century, Clement of Rome, writing 100 years before that, sometime around the years A.D. 80 - 99, would disagree. In his Epistle to the Corinthians he writes:

The Apostles received the gospel for us from the Lord Jesus Christ; and Jesus Christ was sent from God. Christ, therefore, is from God, and the Apostles are from Christ. Both of these orderly arrangements, then, are by God's will. Receiving their instructions and being full of confidence on account of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and confirmed in faith by the word of God, they went forth in complete assurance of the Holy Spirit, preaching the good news that the Kingdom of God is coming. Throughout the countryside and city they preached; and they appointed their earliest converts, testing them by spirit, to be the bishops and deacons of future believers.

Clement's letter is so ancient it was written before some of the books of the New Testament. But we don't even have to take Irenaeus' or Clement's word for it, because the evidence that the Church had this perception of itself from the beginning, and that it considered Gnosticism as being something other than Christianity, can be found in the New Testament writings themselves. As we will see in my next post, it can be found specifically in the first letter of John.

Wanderings along the road to Emmaus

2009-05-02T08:31:00.001-07:00

On the day of the Resurrection two companions, disciples of Jesus before their hopes had been dashed by his death, were walking along the road from Jerusalem to the town of Emmaus, when they met a mysterious stranger, and struck up a conversation. They spoke of the tumultuous events in Jerusalem of the previous few days, of the Messiah and of the reports of Jesus' Resurrection. And then, "beginning with Moses and all the prophets, [the stranger] interpreted to them what referred to [the Messiah] in all the scriptures." Luke continues:

As they approached the village to which they were going, he gave the impression that he was going on farther. But they urged him, "Stay with us, for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over." So he went in to stay with them. And it happened that, while he was with them at table, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them. With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him, but he vanished from their sight.

Then they said to each other, "Were not our hearts burning (within us) while he spoke to us on the way and opened the scriptures to us?"

So they set out at once and returned to Jerusalem where they found gathered together the eleven and those with them who were saying, "The Lord has truly been raised and has appeared to Simon!" Then the two recounted what had taken place on the way and how he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread. Luke 24:28-35

"The breaking of the bread" is what the earliest Christians called the celebration that we today call the Mass (see, e.g., Acts 2:42). And if the liturgical significance of this episode still isn't obvious enough, consider that both halves of the Mass are represented in this story: the Liturgy of the Word, in which the Scriptures are read and explained, and the Liturgy of the Eucharist, the re-enactment of the Last Supper. How important then must be the Mass! In Luke, the institution of the Mass is both the last thing Jesus does in this world before the Passion, and the first thing he does once he was raised.

But that only begins to hint at the incredible mystery and significance of the Mass. "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which will be shed for you" Luke 22:20, Jesus says. "This cup is the new covenant in my blood." With these words Jesus places the Mass at the very center of God's salvation plan. It is the covenant. It is the Passion. Indeed, the mystery of the Mass is woven throughout the whole of the salvation story laid out for us in Scripture. It appears at all of the most significant moments in history. In God's ancient covenant with Abraham, the covenant that created the Jewish people and bound them forever to God, the covenant that Jesus fulfills and supersedes with his "new covenant" at the Last Supper. It appears on the doorstep of the Exodus, on that terrifying night when the Angel of Death spared only the children those who had marked their doors with the blood of a lamb, a night ever after commemorated by the Jews in the Passover celebration, by Jesus at the Last Supper, and by Christians in the Mass. It is there with the Jews in their Exodus through the desert, in the manna, the mysterious bread from heaven that sustained them on their journey, just as the Eucharist sustains us on our journey through life: "I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world" John 6:51. It is there in Abraham's sacrifice of bread and wine with the mysterious, ancient pagan priest Melchizedek (Genesis 14:18), before there even was a Jewish people, in a time so ancient that Abraham still had no problem worshiping God with pagan priest. It is there in Jesus' parable of the grain of wheat that must die in order to produce fruit (John 12:24), it is there when he says "I am the vine," (John 15:5), in the multiplication of the loaves (John 6), and in the "give us this day our daily bread" of the Our Father. It saturates the Book of Revelation. It is present throughout the long history of sacrifice by the Jews in the temple, all of which was intended to prepare us to understand the sacrifice that God would one day make for us.

The Bible is an amazing thing, easy enough to lead even the simplest people to God, hard enough to occupy the greatest minds, the minds of men like Aquinas and Augustine, for a lifetime. I once read a review of Moby Dick in which the reviewer noted that the story was so saturated with metaphors layered upon imagery layered upon story elements, each interacting with another, deepening the others' meaning, adding new perspectives and twists, that the story became something that even Melville himself could never have explained. The Eucharist in Scripture is like that. Each thread is a path leading to a deeper understanding of God's salvation plan, but the paths soon intersect with and weave into one another until no mind is subtle enough to comprehend the tapestry of the whole. I certainly am not able to follow every path. In Revelations and in the priestly sacrifice of the Jews I can perceive at a distance whole continents of meaning, the journey through which I have not the time nor the training to undertake.

But to have a blog you have to have words. So I will try to follow a few of the paths that have most occupied my mind throughout my life. To start, I have to say that I am not a fan of the term, "the Mass." It is a random, meaningless word unconnected with the early Church. It serves only as a barrier between Catholics and other Christians, separating us from one another with its other-ness. According to Mike Aquilina, author of The Mass of the Early Christians,

Mass is a medieval English coinage derived from the Latin rite's words of dismissal: Ite, missa est ("Go, it is ended"). The first generations of believers called their worship by many other names, each evocative and some even poetic. In the beginning it was most commonly referred to as "the breaking of the bread." This, however, was immediately supplemented by "the sacrifice," and related terms such as "the offering" and "the oblation"; for the Mass was understood to be the Church's participation in the once-for-all sacrifice of the new covenant. Some called the new rite "the liturgy," from the Greek leitourgia, meaning "public service." The Latins, from an early date, used the term "sacrament," while the Greeks favored "the mysteries." Some terms were merely descriptive, such as "the table of the Lord," "the Lord's supper," "the chalice," and "the altar." Others were compact, but rich in meaning: "the passion of the Lord," "the presence," "the communion." Overwhelmingly though, the title that won the day was "the Eucharist," from the Greek eucharistia, which means, literally, "thanksgiving."

Using this spectacular web site we can see that "εὐχαριστήσας" (eucharistia) is the Greek word used by Luke and the other New Testament authors to describe Jesus' actions at the Last Supper: "and he took bread, gave thanks (eucharistia), and broke it, giving it to them." So for the rest of this post I will use the word "Eucharist" in place of "the Mass." This helpfully blurs the distinction between the ceremony and its object. This is useful because Jesus and the Church themselves blur the distinction between them, and between the Passion and the covenant and the mystery of salvation itself. "This cup is the new covenant in my blood." In the Eucharist we are transported back to Calvary. The past is made present, and the covenant is made manifest.

In his book Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis says that he found in Christianity just that aura of the unexpected that characterizes real things. "Reality," he says, "is usually something you could not have guessed. That is one of the reasons I believe Christianity....If it offered just the kind of universe we had always expected, I should feel we were making it up. It has just that queer twist about it that real things have." Nowhere is this more true than in the Eucharist. Not only is it unexpected, it is shocking and often scandalous, unasked for and even unwanted. We would not have thought to ask God for it, and had we thought to ask, we would not have dared to do so. One of the saddest scenes of the Bible occurs in John 6, when Jesus was abandoned by his disciples because of his teaching about the Eucharist: "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him," he said, and "then many of his disciples who were listening said, 'This saying is hard; who can accept it?'....As a result of this, many (of) his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him. Jesus then said to the Twelve, 'Do you also want to leave?'"

It's impossible to read this passage without contemplating the sad loss of fellowship between Catholics and Protestants, who because of the sinfulness of the Reformation-era Church abandoned, not the person of Jesus, but his teaching about the Eucharist, or at least the long unbroken understanding of those teachings that the Church had held since the earliest days, since Paul penned the first known written description of the Eucharist in 1 Corinthians 11, and warned that "anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself." Because of the neo-original sins of the Reformation-era Church, which drove out the Reformers, and because of the sins of the Reformers themselves in turning their backs on a Church that Jesus himself promised never to abandon, we find ourselves in the sad state we are in today, unable to come together as Christians and share in the profound mystery of the Eucharist, the mystery of salvation itself.

"This cup is the new covenant in my blood." With these words Jesus ties a thread from the Eucharist into God's ancient covenant with Abraham, the original covenant in blood. With this covenant God promised the land of Israel to Abraham and his descendants. With this covenant God bound himself to the people of Abraham, with his promise that "I shall be your God and you shall be my people." With this covenant the Jewish people came to be. In Genesis 15 God said to Abraham, "I am the LORD who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans (in modern-day Iraq) to give you this land as a possession. 'O Lord GOD,' he asked, 'How am I to know that I shall possess it?'" Abraham asked this not because he lacked faith in God's promise, but because it seemed appropriate to him that the bond be formalized by some concrete act. He asks God for guidance, and God answers, "Bring me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old she-goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtle-dove, and a young pigeon."

The ceremony that God then performed was one familiar to the ancient Semitic tribes: it was the formation of a covenant relationship. When we today hear the word "covenant", we tend to envision a kind of contract, but that is not at all the picture that the ancient Semites would have had. In a modern contract, two sides agree to be bound by the terms of the agreement, or else to face the consequences of the law. But among the wandering tribes of the deserts of the ancient Near East, law was not the strongest force that bound one people to another; the strongest bonds were those of family, clan and tribe. When two tribes formed a covenant with one another, those were the bonds they were attempting to extend to one another. They were saying, "Our two tribes are now united, we are one and the same family, and we will treat an attack upon you as we would an attack on one of our own." A contract may be nullified if one of the parties fails to live up to the terms of the agreement, and the two parties may then go their separate ways. But a covenant can never be nullified, any more than your father can stop being related to you just because he breaks a promise to you. Tribes entering into a covenant relationship were pledging a kind of union that by its very nature cannot be broken. It is exactly like marriage used to be: indissoluble, "the two become one flesh" (Genesis 2:24). This is why the Passion and the Eucharist are so often referred to as the wedding ceremony between Christ and the Church, particularly by Paul and in the book of Revelation. The new covenant, like the old one, is a marriage, an indissoluble union between God and humanity, the two made one flesh, God and man united as never before conceived. From here lead other threads that may be followed to a deeper understanding of the Eucharist, but that will have to wait for another day.

In the ancient world of Abraham, when two tribes formed a covenant they would perform a ceremony that seems strange and barbaric to us today: they would cut a cow in half, the two pieces would be separated, and the tribes would walk together between the pieces. Blood would have been everywhere--this was intended to be a very bloody ritual. Blood was the symbol of life among the Semitic tribes. By walking together through the blood the tribes were signifying the new unity of their formerly separate lives. This also explains why the sign that God chose to mark his covenant with the Jews--circumcision--is such a bloody one, and together with the location of the cut obviously signifies the union of the life of Jews and their descendants with the life of God.

"[Abram] brought him all these, split them in two, and placed each half opposite the other; but the birds he did not cut up." Lest we doubt the gore of this scene, performed in the heat of the desert sun, Genesis continues, "Birds of prey swooped down on the carcasses, but Abram stayed with them. As the sun was about to set, a trance fell upon Abram, and a deep, terrifying darkness enveloped him....When the sun had set and it was dark, there appeared a smoking brazier and a flaming torch, which passed between those pieces." In a change-up, God walks alone through the bloody pieces, while Abraham remains in a trance. This will be an unequal covenant, a covenant of God sharing his life with us; we have little to offer to God in this arrangement. Jesus' new covenant would be similarly one-sided, a bath of blood through which God alone must walk, in order that his life could be shared with us. But from Jesus' side on Calvary flowed not just blood, but blood and water, and the sign of the new covenant in the people of God would not be a bloody one like circumcision, but Baptism, a sign of water. Blood, the symbol of life in the flesh, would be superseded by water, the symbol of life in the Spirit. Thus in the new covenant are we united to God in a new and deeper way, and even Baptism is enmeshed in the threads that emanate from the Eucharist.

If the blood of the Passion, which is the blood of the Eucharist, derives from the blood of the Abrahamic covenant, it derives no less from the blood of the Passover lamb, for the Eucharist is nothing other than the continued Christian celebration of the Jewish Passover meal. On that terrifying night of the Passover, when God unleashed the tenth and final plague upon the Egyptians for their enslavement of the Jews, the Jewish people were spared from the wrath of the Angel of Death only by the blood of a lamb splashed across their doorways, the blood of an innocent shed to protect the guilty. We as Christians also have the blood of Christ upon our dwelling places, marking us as a people set apart, protecting us from Death and freeing us from our slavery to sin. And just as the Jewish Passover meal was celebrated with unleavened bread, so too is the Eucharist today, celebrated with the waybread of a traveling people, a people who can't tarry long enough in one place to give their bread time to rise. Thus the Eucharist is also food for the journey, "our daily bread" that sustains us in our long travels through the deserts of this life.

So through the Eucharist Jesus' sacrifice upon Calvary is made present for us; we are allowed to receive it directly, in person, not as something that happened long ago in some distant land. We are given a seat at the wedding feast of the Lamb, the marriage covenant that binds Jesus to the people of God. We are allowed, like Abraham, to witness God walking through the blood of the new covenant. And we, like the Jews in the deserts of the Sinai, are blessed with the daily miracle of the bread that comes down from heaven, which becomes food for our long journey through the deserts of life.

All this we can perceive and, within our limited capacity, can understand by following the trails that are woven through salvation history as recorded in Scripture. And yet none of this lessens the raw shock of the central truth of the Eucharist: that God, creator of all the universe, loves us so much, so desires intimacy with us, that he wishes to literally feed us with himself. "Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you." The long ages of sacrifice by man, Jew and pagan alike, of food for the gods to eat, has been turned on its head, and we are faced with a God who wishes to sacrifice himself for us, that we may have him as food to eat. There would appear to be no bottom to the insane humility of this God, who descended from the heights of glory to become one of us, as if a man were to want to become a worm in order to save worms from their sins; who washed the feet of his disciples; who underwent an unjust, unspeakably tortuous death for us; this God wants also to become the food that sustains us in our journey through life. We cannot truly fault the disciples of Jesus who abandoned him over this insane teaching, nor the Protestants who could no longer trust in a doctrine as shocking and bizarre as this, when delivered by a corrupt and broken Church. All we can do, when faced personally with the question that Jesus posed to the Twelve when the rest had abandoned him over this teaching--"Do you also want to leave?"--is to recall, as did the disciples on the road to Emmaus, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he spoke to us and opened the Scriptures to us?" and to answer as Simon Peter answered: "Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life."

The One, True, Loving, Islamic, Green Bug-Eyed, Pantheistic, Pagan God of the Cylons

2009-04-04T10:00:00.000-07:00

Well the new Battlestar Galactica TV show has drawn to a close, and the mysterious identity of the One True God of the Cylons has been revealed, at least as much as it ever will be. So it's time for some final thoughts on a show on which religion played a rather unique role. On Galactica the Cylons, who are a race of intelligent machines waging a war of extermination against humanity, are monotheists who worship the One True Loving God, while humanity is literally pagan, worshiping the same same gods that ancient Greeks did.

The Islamic God of the Cylons

Who was the One True Loving God? According to the show's producers, the show's religious landscape was originally inspired by the Western-Islamic conflict, with the Cylons cast in the role of religious jihadists bent on destruction of the pagan infidels. It was a great idea, and could have led to all kinds of delicious storylines. Our modern society's descent into the neo-paganism of consumerism and scientific materialism could have provided the basis of many episodes. Cylons could have made converts among the humans and imposed Sharia law, etc. But the producers quickly lost interest in this storyline. They were content to exploit the creep-out factor of having machines serenely say to the nuked-over remains of the human race, "God loves you and has a plan for you, and if He wants you to survive He will protect you from me now."

The Green Bug-Eyed God of the Cylons

But religious rhetoric was a constant feature of the series, and the mystery of the identity of the One True Loving God was one of the shows main "teaser" elements. His or her identity would only be revealed in the final episode. So who was this God? Throughout the show my money was on this:

Which is to say, some green bug-eyed (OK red-eyed in this case) monster giving orders from a hidden base ship orbiting the Cylon home-world. A real, flesh and green-blooded creature would have satisfied what I like to call the Midi-Chlorian Principle, which is this:

In any work of science fiction, every mysterious physical, mental or (seemingly) spiritual phenomenon can and must be given a materialistic, pseudo-scientific explanation, no matter how ridiculous or how destructive it is to the story.

The Midi-Chlorian Principle

Science fiction authors are relentless scientific materialists. Any time they incorporate any element in their stories that doesn't have a clear, scientific explanation, I imagine a little voice in the back of their heads torments them until they find something, anything, to explain it away. Perhaps the best, and worst, example of this came from the Star Wars series. The original series introduced the feel-good, gauzy religion of the Jedi, which grants the Jedi a mysterious power over the physical world, and which Yoda describes thus:

Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmph. And well you should not. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship.

I feel sorry for George Lucas. The little voice in the back of his head must have tormented him for decades, because by the time he got around to completing the second half of the series he somehow convinced himself that it was a good idea to offer this explanation for the source of the Jedi's power: it comes from the midi-chlorians, which are germs that infect the cells of all living beings, the Jedi more than others. They even have a blood test to detect your midi-chlorian count and determine whether you'll make a good Jedi.

There's a kind of storytelling perfection here: the midi-chlorians completely dissipate all trace of mystery from the Force without actually explaining anything, and they do it in a way that is laughably ridiculous. A worse storytelling element is hard to imagine. But at least the voices in Lucas' head are quiet.

The Pantheistic God of the Cylons

But alas, there was no green bug-eyed monster forthcoming in the final episodes of Galactica. Either the producers are immune to the Midi-Chlorian Principle, or they've doomed themselves to decades of torment from the voices in their heads. So I ask again, who is the One True Loving God of the Cylons? One opinion comes from Dr. Gaius Baltar, a character in the series, in the second-to-last episode:

Baltar: I see angels. Angels in this very room. Now I may be mad, but that doesn't mean I'm not right. Because there's another force at work here. There always has been. It's undeniable, we've all experienced it. Everyone in this room has witnessed events that we can't fathom let alone explain away by rational means. Puzzles deciphered in prophesy. Dreams given to a chosen few. Our loved ones dead, risen. Whether we want to call that God or gods or some sublime inspiration or a divine force that we can't know or understand doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It's here. It exists. And our two destinies are intertwined in its force.

(Agnostic) Cylon: If that were true, and that's a big 'if', how do I know this force has our best interests in mind? How do you know that God is on your side doctor?

Baltar: I don't. God's not on any one's side. God's a force of nature, beyond good and evil. Good and evil, we created those.

The good doctor is clearly a pantheist. Pan-theism is the idea that all things are a part of God, and that what God is, is simply all things. Pantheists tend to reject the notions of good and evil, since both are part of the world and form a part of God, and instead frame conflict as two sides of the same coin: positive and negative, hot and cold, male and female:

Yin and yang, classical Chinese symbol of conflict as parts of the whole

If only we could see the big picture, the really big picture, we'd see that evil isn't really evil and good isn't really good, that they're both necessary parts of the whole that is God.

It is said that there are two types of pantheism: naturalistic pantheism, which doesn't conceive of God as a sentient, conscious Person, and classical pantheism, of which Hinduism is the prime example, which may conceive of God as a conscious Person. But in any case, I don't know how pantheism could fail to be reductionist, because a creator (or Creator) must always be more than his or her creation. Ghandi's movement from "God is Truth" in his earlier years to "Truth is God" in his later years is a movement from recognition of an attribute of God toward a belief that God is "nothing more than" one of his attributes.

I don't pretend to understand the pantheist point of view; my thinking on this is the same as C. S. Lewis'. After logic led him inexorably and unwillingly to the conclusion that God exists, the atheist-turned-Christian Lewis says he briefly hoped to find that God was "more of a place than a Person." But he quickly rejected this idea. For a God to be the creator of personhood, he must be more than a person, not less. Any "force of nature" god is clearly sub-human, less than a person. In the Trinity Lewis found the more-than-a-person concept he was looking for.

The Pagan God of the Cylons

But the producers of Galactica don't appear to agree with Baltar's pantheistic notion of the Cylon God, because they depict God as much more than a force of nature. He's conscious, he sends his emissaries out into the world (Baltar's "angels," which are people that only Baltar can see), and he manipulates the course of history. The producers laid down their final card with the very last lines of the final episode, when the two "angels" are talking to one another, 150,000 years later (in modern-day Tokyo) about whether the human race is about to repeat the cycle of robot-against-human violence:

Angel that looks like a Cylon: "Let a complex system repeat itself long enough, and eventually something surprising might occur. That too is in God's plan."

Angel that looks like Baltar, leaning forward warningly: "You know he doesn't like that name."

So there you have it, the Cylon God himself rejects the title of "God." He is, therefore, a pagan god, and the whole series turned out to be a conflict between a pagan god that exists v. pagan gods that may or may not exist. Thankfully, this wasn't part of any grand religious scheme on the part of the producers. They themselves admitted that they didn't plan the series out from beginning to end, and it's almost certain that the "angels" in the series were first conceived as Cylon agents appearing to and tormenting Baltar using some unknown alien technology. The producers were therefore saddled with "angels" who initially acted more like demons, and settled in the end to define them as mischievous pixies, who toy with humanity in pursuit of their own hidden agenda.

Actually, this isn't so different than the green bug-eyed monster explanation. A pagan god is just a bug-eyed monster that never dies. Perhaps the producers will silence the voices in their heads by explaining to them that the Cylon god is actually orbiting his home world on a base ship somewhere. It's a far cry from the seamless blending of Catholic theology with the pre-Christian nature worship that you get in Tolkien, but I'll certainly take this whimsical ending to the series over the sincere, neo-pagan humanism of Star Trek.

The Score

Which leads me to the ranking of Galactica in the world of spiritual science fiction and fantasy:

Show/Story	Grade	Comments
The Lord of the Rings	A+	Tolkien's blending of Catholic cosmology with pre-Christian fairy tale elements is so seamless and unassuming that I read the whole trilogy without realizing it had a Christian underpinning. Only when you read The Silmarillion do you see how carefully Tolkien wove his fairy stories into a Christian universe.
Chronicles of Narnia	A-	C. S. Lewis says he wrote his fairy tales to be an antidote to the pagan worldview that he saw present in most fairy tales, most of which literally originated in pre-Christian Europe. The world of these fairy tales is dualistic, meaning that good and evil are depicted as being equally powerful, equally likely to win in their struggle with one another. In the Christian worldview evil is a mere corruption of good, and is infinitely weaker than good. Hence the White Witch retreats in fear before the all-powerful Aslan. C. S. Lewis' stories are refreshing in that they provide almost the only unique depiction of good and evil that you can find in all sci fi/fantasy literature, but his Christian allegories are so heavy-handed that the message often distracts from the story.
Battlestar Galactica	C+	It turned out to be much ado about little, a pagan god fighting pagan gods, but at least they kept us guessing until the end.
Star Wars	D+	The awfulness of the midi-chlorian storyline almost makes you forget that the Force of the original series was already pretty bad, pure saccharine-soaked Kool Aid calculated to offend the fewest possible audience members. But I feel we need to cut Star Wars a break, because it's aim was low to begin with. Star Wars is really a fairy story set in a futuristic world, and the Force was just an excuse to populate the story with wizards and sorcerers.
Star Trek (1990s version)	D-	The later editions of Star Trek lost some of the earlier shows' passion for humanism, and settled into a bland, comfortable scientific materialism, with just enough socialism thrown in to make you glad they never tried to explain their philosophy in any depth. They were never completely cured of the disease of humanism however, as in the movie where the Borg queen decides that humanity is just too darned special to destroy, and instead wants the mighty human race to become equal partners with the Borg. Pity the billions of other, poor races of beings that populate the Star Trek universe! All they can do is look upon us with envy, and like Spock, hope and pray (well hope anyway) that they might one day be as wonderful as us. Strange that in some 40 years of storytelling they've never managed to explain exactly why the human race is so darned wonderful.
Star Trek (1960s version)	F-	A reminder of the famous warning that when people lose their religion, the danger is not that they'll believe nothing, but that they'll believe anything. The original show put the human race on a pedestal with such fervor that it can only be described as true paganism, a true attempt to make gods of men. In some shows they intimated that the destiny of the human race was exactly that, to "evolve" into almighty, omniscient and virtually immortal gods.

What are you?

2009-03-29T20:19:00.000-07:00

It is said that soon after his enlightenment the Buddha passed a man on the road who was struck by his extraordinary radiance and peaceful presence. The man stopped and asked,

"My friend, what are you? Are you a god?"

"No," said the Buddha.

"Well, then, are you some kind of magician or wizard?"

Again the Buddha answered, "No."

"Are you a man?"

"No."

"Well, my friend, then what are you?"

The Buddha replied,

I am awake.

On the Role of Women in the Rise of Christianity, Part 2

2009-03-19T21:02:00.000-07:00

Woman of ancient Rome

In my last post I reviewed the abysmal status of women in the ancient, pre-Christian Greco-Roman world. In this one I intend to discuss the status of women in the early Christian subculture, and the ways in which Christianity must have appealed to women in this time period. These posts are based mainly on the book The Rise of Christianity by sociologist Rodney Stark.

Perhaps the most gruesome example of women's low status in Greco-Roman society was the legal and socially accepted practice of female infanticide, which resulted in an estimated 58% - 42% male - female sex ratio in Italy, Asia Minor and North Africa during this time period. But according to a number of sources cited by Stark, the situation in the early Christian Church was reversed: women greatly outnumbered men. Why might this have been so?

Christian Egalitarianism

Here I would like to quibble with Stark's analysis, which I think is oversimplified. His line of reasoning is simply this: women, for reasons beyond the scope of my book, convert to new religions at a much higher rate than men. Additionally, amongst Christians infanticide and abortion were forbidden, so the birth and death rates of males and females were restored to their normal balance. This produced a surplus of women among Christians, which according to theories of sociology will lead to greater status and increased welfare for women.

My problem with this analysis is that many of the benefits Stark lists as accruing to women due to their increased numbers come directly from the teachings of the Jews, of Jesus and of Paul, teachings that predate this period of male-female imbalance. I believe rather that we should consider the abundance of women and their increased status and welfare in the early Church as a situation of mutual causation - women joined because the Church treated them well, which led to a gender imbalance, which created a subculture in which women could more easily assert themselves and guarantee that the Church would treat them well. In truth I think Stark would agree with me, but being a sociologist he chose to stick to the sociological side of the argument.

At any rate Stark quotes 1 Cor 7:2-7 as evidence that women enjoyed greater status among Christians, but as I said, this is also reason for women to be attracted to Christianity:

But because of the temptation to immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband.

For the wife does not rule over her own body, but the husband does; likewise the husband does not rule over his own body, but the wife does....

Stark comments that, "The symmetry of the relationship Paul described was at total variance, not only with pagan culture, but with Jewish culture as well." This symmetry in marital responsibility is a feature of Jesus' teachings as well, as we can see in Mark 10:11-12 when he overturns the one-sided Jewish arrangement by which a man may divorce his wife, with this:

"Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her;

: and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery."

Stark argues that

[T]he more favorable Christian view of women is...demonstrated in their condemnation of divorce, incest, marital infidelity and polygamy. As Fox put it, 'fidelity, without divorce, was expected of every Christian' (1987:354).....Like pagans, early Christians prized female chastity, but unlike pagans they rejected the double standard that gave men so much sexual license (Sandison 1967). Christian men were urged to remain virgins until marriage (Fox 1987), and extramarital sex was condemned as adultery. Chadwick noted that Christianity 'regarded unchastity in a husband as no less serious a breach of loyalty and trust as unfaithfulness in a wife' (1967:59).

Christianity therefore provided a moral framework in which women's needs were not presumed to be of lesser importance than men's, which was revolutionary for that time and place. Nevertheless, our modern sensibilities take that for granted, and some of Scripture's more patriarchal statements about the role of women, which were probably considered scarcely worth noting in ancient times, sound harsh and unreasonable to us today. Stark takes the time to comment on one passage:

As to the status of women in the early church, there has been far too much reliance on 1 Cor 14:34-36, where Paul appears to prohibit women from even speaking in church. Laurence Iannaccone (1982) has made a compelling case that these verses were the opposite of Paul's position and were in fact a quotation of claims being made at Corinth that Paul then refuted. Certainly the statement is at variance with everything else Paul wrote about the proper role for women in the church.

I don't know how probable this interpretation of 1 Cor 14 is; I'd never heard of it until I read Stark's book. But I think it's sufficient to bear in mind the context of First Corinthians. The Corinthians were engaging in serious, if childish, abuses of the Mass. In those days each participant brought his or her own bread and wine to the service, and at Corinth the rich were refusing to share with the poor. They showed up hungry and behaved as if they were eating a meal rather than worshiping God: some got drunk while others went without. Women came to the service without the headdresses that were customary in Greece at that time, probably indicating a spirit of rebelliousness. (And if Paul's commandment that women keep their heads covered in church offends you, think about the last time you saw a man refuse to remove his hat in church or during the national anthem. As silly as these things are, people put great importance on them.) And on top of all that, parishioners, often several at a time, would start babbling forth in the nonsense language of tongues right in the middle of the service. If Paul's instructions are harsh it's because he's trying to put the hammer down, and stamp out these abuses by any means necessary.

There's no denying that Paul envisioned a patriarchal structure to marriage, in which the woman should be submissive to the husband, but again his instructions to married people embody the same symmetry of responsibilities between men and women that we saw in Jesus' prohibition of divorce, as can be seen in Ephesians 5:21-33:

Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is head of the church, he himself the savior of the body. As the church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. So (also) husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.

"For this reason a man shall leave (his) father and (his) mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the church.

In any case, each one of you should love his wife as himself, and the wife should respect her husband.

Paul sees in the relationship between husband and wife a reflection of the relationship between Christ and his Church, so the wife should be subordinate to the husband as the Church is to Christ. But in turn the husband must love his wife as Christ loves his Church. In Christianity to love is to serve with humility; Christ washed the feet of his disciples, an act that the Jews would not demand of their lowliest slave. This is why Paul is able to begin his instructions with, "Be subordinate to one another."

Appearing as it did in the midst of a society in which "males could divorce simply by ordering a wife out of the household," this is clearly a revolutionary vision of the proper relationship between men and women. It's small wonder women found it attractive.

Advantages of Being a Christian

Stark lists a number of clear advantages women had within the Christian subculture over their pagan counterparts. The first and most obvious is that they were allowed to live beyond their first day: as did the Jews before them, Christians absolutely banned infanticide, female or otherwise. Christians also banned all abortions, which caused so many deaths among pagan women, and banned all forms of contraception, which protected Christian women from some of the more demeaning forms of sexual activity that were common among pagans, such as anal and oral intercourse. And Christian girls were far less likely to marry young than pagan girls: according to one study, 44% of pagan girls were married by age 14, while only 20% of Christian girls were.

The Role of Women in the Church

Women within the early Church held also greater positions of power than was customary at that time. See for instance 1 Timothy 11-13, in which Paul describes the qualifications necessary for deaconesses. Stark notes that "Deacons were of considerable importance in the early church. They assisted at liturgical functions and administered the benevolent and charitable activities of the church." He asserts that

there is virtual consensus among historians of the early church as well as biblical scholars that women held positions of honor and authority within early Christianity (Frend 1984; Gryson 1976; Cadoux 1925). Peter Brown noted that Christians differed not only from pagans in this respect, but from Jews: 'The Christian clergy...took a step that separated them from the rabbis of Palestine...[T]hey welcomed women as patrons and even offered women roles in which they could act as collaborators' (1988:144-145).

In addition to the testimony of scholars and contemporaries of the early church, Stark offers as evidence the fact that a large number of early Christian martyrs were women: the Romans were known to target the leaders of any group they attempted to suppress.

Finally, Stark notes that although pagan women also sometimes held positions of power within the pagan mystery cults, those cults were not central to the lives of their followers in the way that the Church was for the early Christians. "Daily life revolved around the Church," he says, and so the women who held significant roles within the Church had more influence over the most important force that governed their lives than did their pagan counterparts.

Christianity's Aspirational Opportunities for Women

Stark offers two additional explanations for how Christianity rose to dominate Rome, which I would like to tie back to the issue of the role of women in Christianity. First, Stark argues that Christianity was strengthened, while paganism was weakened, by the two major plagues that struck Rome during this time period. Stark believes that Christian survival rates were much higher than pagans, owing to the superior manner in which the Christian community organized itself in response to plagues. As is evident from the lives and deaths of the martyrs, Christianity really did give its adherents courage of conviction in the face of death. And the Christian conviction in a time of plague was to care for the weak and the ill, even if it meant risking your own life in the process.

According to contemporary accounts, the usual response of pagan priests, and even of pagan doctors, to a plague was to flee to the countryside. The response of Christians was very different. The bishop Dionysius wrote of one plague

Most of our brother Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another. Heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ....

The heathen behaved in the very opposite way. At the first onset of the disease, they pushed the sufferers away and fled from their dearest, throwing them into the roads before they were dead...

While a Christian bishop is hardly an unbiased witness, there are many pagan accounts of ancient plagues that describe pagans behaving in exactly this way, and as Stark says, a bishop could hardly expect to get away with making a public declaration of this sort at a time when the plague he refers to was still raging if it were a total fabrication.

A community that organizes itself in the manner attributed to Christians will survive a plague in dramatically greater numbers than one that responds as the pagans did. By some rough but scientific measures, Stark estimates that 30% of the pagan population may have died during each of the two plagues, while only 10% of the Christian population would have. This could have had a significant effect in nudging the population of the Empire in the Christian direction, but I am currently more interested in the effect it would have had on Christian women.

Because it occurs to me that the role of taking charge of the sick, of attending their every need and ministering to them in Christ, is one that would naturally fall to women. In a society in which women were so undesirable that they were killed shortly after birth in large numbers, in which men largely held all the property, all the power, and all the opportunities for making a mark on the world through war or through business, Christianity offered women something that they could get in no other way: an opportunity to exercise heroic virtue. Christianity offered them a chance for greatness. For who could argue that the woman who stared down the plague in order to care for those who had contracted it was less brave than the man who faced death on the battlefield?

And these opportunities were not as isolated as you might suppose. Christianity, according to Stark, was largely an urban phenomenon in its early days, and the ancient cities provided ample opportunity for enduring personal suffering. In examining the historical record of one city, Antioch, over a period of 600 years, Stark calculated that between earthquakes, plagues, fires, famines, foreign invasion and riots, the city suffered a catastrophe involving significant mortality an average of once every 15 years. Women in this time period knew that sacrifices that are nearly unimaginable to us today could be demanded of them at any time, and Christianity gave them a way not only to face them, but to unite them to the suffering of a loving God, and through Him to conquer them with acts of virtue as heroic as those of any man on the battlefield.

A New Society

And they didn't have to become Joan of Arc to do it, which leads me to my final point. One of Stark's final explanations for why Christianity overtook paganism is that its doctrines revolutionized the way people related to God and to one another in a way that revitalized and reformed Roman society. As Stark puts it,

The simple phrase, "For God so loved the world..." would have puzzled an educated pagan. And the notion that the gods care how we treat one another would have been dismissed as patently absurd....

Indeed, as E. A. Judge has noted in detail, classical philosophers regarded mercy and pity as pathological emotions--defects of character to be avoided by all rational men. Since mercy involves providing unearned help or relief, it was contrary to justice....'Plato removed the problem of beggars from his ideal state by dumping them over its borders.'

This was the moral climate in which Christianity taught that mercy is one of the primary virtues--that a merciful God requires humans to be merciful. Moreover the corollary that because God loves humanity, Christians my not please God unless they love one another was something entirely new. Perhaps even more revolutionary was the principal that Christian love and charity must extend beyond the boundaries of family and tribe, that it must extend to "all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Cor 1:2). Indeed, love and charity must even extend beyond the Christian community....

But perhaps above all else, Christianity brought a new conception of humanity to a world saturated with capricious cruelty and the vicarious love of death (Barton, 1993). Consider the account of the martyrdom of Perpetua. Here we learn the details of the long ordeal and gruesome death suffered by this tiny band of resolute Christians as they were attacked by wild beasts in front of a delighted crowd assembled in the arena. But we also learn that had the Christians all given in to the demand to sacrifice to the emperor, and thereby been spared, someone else would have been thrown to the animals. After all, these were games held on honor of the birthday of the emperor's young son. And whenever there were games, people had to die. Dozens of them, sometimes hundreds (Baron 1993)....

[T]he issue here is not capital punishment, not even very cruel forms of capital punishment. The issue is spectacle--for the throngs in the stadia, watching people torn and devoured by beasts or killed in armed combat was the ultimate spectator sport, worthy of a boy's birthday treat. It is difficult to comprehend the emotional life of such people.

In any event, Christians condemned both the cruelties and the spectators. Thou shalt not kill, as Tertullian (De Spectactulis) reminded his readers. And as they gained ascendancy, Christians prohibited such "games." More important, Christians promulgated a moral vision utterly incompatible with the casual cruelty of pagan custom.

I can't help but believe that women must have found this new, Christian moral vision more to their liking than the pagan one.

On the Role of Women in the Rise of Christianity

2009-03-14T12:43:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading The Rise of Christianity, a book by sociologist Rodney Stark that attempts to find plausible explanations from a social science standpoint for how the tiny Jesus movement managed to emerge out of the cacophony of religious voices of the ancient Roman Empire, and within four centuries to overwhelm and ultimately bury them all. Stark is not a Christian, but claims instead to be agnostic. From reading his book I would describe him as a closet admirer of Christianity, both as a social organization and for its moral principles. I suspect his interest in Christianity was piqued in part by the hope that he might find some value for his own personal spiritual life there. I also suspect that he hasn't found it, at least not yet.

It's a good book that reminds me of an even better and more ambitious book, Guns Germs and Steel, which attempts to explain, and fairly well succeeds at plausibly explaining, all of human history from the standpoint of sociology, geography, climate and vegetation patterns. In many ways The Rise of Christianity has a more difficult task than Guns Germs and Steel however, in that it's attempting to explain a single religious movement in a very narrow (three and a half century) period of history, for which there is not nearly adequate historical data for the task.

Overall, Stark does a good job at providing insights into how and why Christianity grew at the incredible rate that it did. I didn't come away from reading it feeling that I fully understand the pagan mind, and in particular he doesn't shed much light on the phenomenon of Gnosticism. Instead, he focuses more on the state of the diasporan Jews, from which he suggests a majority or at least a significant proportion of converts came; the state of women in pagan society and Christianity's special appeal to women; Christianity's superior mechanisms for building the social networks that he considers key to conversion, especially during the two major plagues that occurred in this time period; and Christians' superior birth rates. He does spend some time discussing reasons for paganism's weakness in the face of Christianity, but I still came away from the book with the feeling that there's a gap in our understanding there.

But Stark does an excellent job of describing aspects of the spread of Christianity that often go unnoticed, and in particular I was struck by his depiction of the role of women in pagan society, and of the resulting attraction Christianity had for them. As he mildly puts it, "Amid contemporary denunciations of Christianity as patriarchal and sexist, it is easily forgotten that the early church was so especially attractive to women." Completely forgotten may have been more accurate. In reading this book I was amazed to hear in what low regard pagan society held women. It highlights how revolutionary Christianity must have seemed by comparison. And it was fascinating to hear how Christianity provided remedies to some maladies that we mistakenly think of as purely modern problems: low birth rates due to men postponing marriage (and living the life of the urban playboy) until late in life, rampant divorce, contraception and abortion, and the feelings of isolation that come from urban life. It seems to me that ancient Romans would have felt right at home among modern, Manhattan metrosexuals.

The State of Women in Pagan Society

Unknown Christian woman of the early church

Male-biased sex selection is a problem we normally associate with the abortion practices of modern India and China, but in ancient Rome it was not only common, it was legal and socially expected. Stark notes that "Dio Cassius, writing in about 200, attributed the declining population of the empire to the extreme shortage of females," and indeed by modern estimates the population of Italy, Asia Minor and North Africa as a whole may have been 58% male and 42% female.

This disparity was largely brought about by exposure of unwanted newborns to the elements, a practice that was legal for all female and malformed male children under Roman law, and encouraged by both Plato and Aristotle. According to Stark, "A study of inscriptions at Delphi made it possible to reconstruct 600 families. Of these, only 6 had more than one daughter." The Roman historian Tacitus "charged that the Jewish teaching that 'it is a deadly sin to kill an unwanted child' was but another of their 'sinister and revolting' practices." Women's status was especially low in the East. Stark describes the situation for Athenian women:

In Athens, women were in relatively short supply owing to female infanticide, practiced by all classes, and to additional deaths caused by abortion. The status of Athenian women was very low. Girls received little or no education. Typically, Athenian females were married at puberty and often before. Under Athenian law a woman was classified as a child, regardless of age, and therefore was the legal property of some man at all stages in her life. Males could divorce by simply ordering a wife out of the household. Moreover, if a woman was seduced or raped, a husband was legally compelled to divorce her. If a woman wanted a divorce, she had to have her father or some other man bring her case before a judge. Finally, Athenian women could own property, but control of the property was always vested in the male to whom she 'belonged.'

Stark caveats this depiction with a note that the situation was somewhat better for women in the city of Rome and in the West generally than in the East, but he also notes that Christianity took hold the quickest precisely in those Eastern cities where the status of women was lowest.

He mentions in the passage above that abortion was a factor in the unequal sex ratio in Rome. Again, we tend to think of abortion as a feature only of the modern world, but the ancient Romans practiced it with such frequency that, due to the primitive state of medicine in that period, researchers believe that it "was a major cause of death among women in the Greco-Roman world." In many cases, it was the husband who ordered the woman to abort the child. Under Roman law it was his right to do so; the woman had no legal option but to obey.

The subjection of women to men in Roman society could only have been exacerbated in the extreme by the practice of marrying young, often pre-pubescent, girls to much older men. While men tended to marry late, almost half (44%) of pagan women were married by age 14, and 10% by age 11, according to one study. It was normal and expected that these marriages be consummated immediately; we can only imagine the effect that must have had on these girls.

According to Stark, Rome had "a male culture that held marriage in low esteem." It also had very different standards of chastity for men and for women. He writes,

Although virginity was demanded of brides, and chastity of wives, men tended to be quite promiscuous and female prostitutes abounded in Greco-Roman cities--from the two-penny diobolariae who worked the streets to high-priced, well-bred courtesans (Pomeroy 1975). Greco-Roman cities also sustained substantial numbers of male prostitutes, as bisexuality and homosexuality were common (Sandison 1967).

As to why women were treated so poorly in the ancient world, Stark doesn't have a good explanation, though he argues somewhat circularly that men in societies in which men outnumber women will attempt to dominate them as "scarce resources."

But the fact is that it was so. It was into this world that Christianity came, with a vision of relations between the sexes that was not just attractive to women, it was revolutionary. Christianity would attract women in numbers that flipped the usual state of affairs in Roman society: among Christians women far outnumbered men. Within the Christian world they held positions of power and influence that were extraordinary in that time and place, and they were treated with a humanity that far exceeded anything they would have experienced elsewhere in Roman society.

But that will have to be a topic for another post.

Come and see

2009-02-12T22:59:00.000-08:00

They said to him, "Rabbi...where are you staying?"

He said,"Come and see."

With these simple words Andrew and an unnamed person (traditionally and most probably John the Evangelist, author of the fourth Gospel) became Jesus' first disciples.

St. Thomas Aquinas once said that we should pay attention to the little things that Jesus said, and he gave as an example Jesus' instructions to the man with the withered hand in Matthew 12:13: "Stretch out your hand." He doesn't say, "You're healed." Instead, he asks the man to do something, to make an effort, to reach out to him. To try. Little Scriptural gems like this are wonderful to behold, and when you find one you should cherish it.

This little exchange between Jesus and Andrew and John is one of my favorite of these. "Rabbi, where are you staying?" was an idiom used by the ancients to mean, "Teacher, we would like to learn from you. Where is your school, that we may become your students?" Jesus' response is revealing: "Come and see." He was not like other Rabbis. He didn't sit in a school with his select group of students. He moved from place to place, preaching amongst the people. If Andrew and John wanted to learn from Jesus, they would have to keep up.

As Christians we can't help but make Andrew and John's question our own. "Master, where are you staying? We want to learn. We want to understand." Jesus' response is direct and engaging. The words leap off the page; we can see him looking us in the eye as he says it: "Come and see." Jesus is a man of action, and like Andrew and John, if we want to learn from him, we will need to keep up. And unlike other teachers, he isn't here just to tell us something. He has something to show us, and we can only learn what it is by walking with him along the path that he walks.

Why can't he just tell us? What does he have to teach us that can only be learned by seeing him in action? I think there are two things. First, Jesus wants to teach us the way of perfection (and it's useful to remember that the early Christians described their religion as "The Way.") He wants us know what the perfect looks like, so that we'll know what we're supposed to be aiming for. He wants our aim to be true, though we may doubt our ability to hit the target. As Jesus says in Matthew 5:

"You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, 'You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment.' But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment, and whoever says to his brother, 'Raqa,' will be answerable to the Sanhedrin, and whoever says, 'You fool,' will be liable to fiery Gehenna.

"....You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one of your members than to have your whole body thrown into Gehenna. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one of your members than to have your whole body go into Gehenna.

"It was also said, 'Whoever divorces his wife must give her a bill of divorce.' But I say to you, whoever divorces his wife (unless the marriage is unlawful) causes her to commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

"Again you have heard that it was said to your ancestors, 'Do not take a false oath, but make good to the Lord all that you vow.' But I say to you, do not swear at all; not by heaven, for it is God's throne; nor by the earth, for it is his footstool; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. Do not swear by your head, for you cannot make a single hair white or black. Let your 'Yes' mean 'Yes,' and your 'No' mean 'No.' Anything more is from the evil one.

"You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on (your) right cheek, turn the other one to him as well. If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic, hand him your cloak as well. Should anyone press you into service for one mile, go with him for two miles. Give to the one who asks of you, and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow.

"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? Do not the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brothers only, what is unusual about that? Do not the pagans do the same?

So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.

It's easy to understand what Jesus is saying here: that the exterior proscriptions of the Old Testament point the way to interior perfection. "Thou shalt not be angry with your brother" is the interior perfection of "Thou shalt not kill;" "Thou shalt not lust" is the perfection of "Thou shalt not commit adultery." "Turn the other cheek" is the perfection of "an eye for an eye" (which was originally intended to limit retribution, not to encourage it).

But these would seem to us unattainable ideals were it not for the example Jesus gave us by living them. In fact, Jesus' divinity brings to these ideals a fathomless depth, gives them an entirely new dimension, and heightens the urgency with which we ourselves pursue them. Jesus is God, and yet he submitted to these principles in relation to us. How important is "turn the other cheek?" So important that God himself, who was perfectly innocent of any wrongdoing, perfectly blameless, submitted to this principle in his own life, when he was attacked by evil men, even to the point of torture and death.

God created the universe, and is farther above us than we are above worms. For him to carry out these ideals in his life among us demonstrates a depth of love that is almost impossible for us to imagine. In fact, I would be willing to bet that an inability to conceive of a God as loving as this is the second most popular reason that people reject Christianity's concept of God. (The most popular reason being, ironically, that a God that allows evil in the world is not loving enough.)

And if God himself was willing to put these principles into practice, how serious must he be about them? What excuse can we have not to make them our own? Jesus makes no bones about it: these aren't lofty ideals that we can raise a glass to, and then ignore. He tells us, "Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me," Mark 8: 34.

The second thing Jesus wants us to know, which can only be learned if we "come and see," is him. And this lesson is deeply intertwined with the other, as we see in John 14:

"Where (I) am going you know the way."

Thomas said to him, "Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?"

Jesus said to him, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, then you will also know my Father. From now on you do know him and have seen him.

....Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me. And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him."

Jesus wants us to come to know him, and through him, to come to know God the Father. He wants us to follow his example not just because it is the way of perfection, not just because it is supremely important to God, but out of love for him. If Jesus' example demonstrates God's unfathomable love for us, then the proper response is not just obedience, it is to love God in return. To love God we need to know God, and that is Jesus' mission in the world.

This is a great mystery. For us to understand God well enough to truly love him, for us to be capable of offering a love for him that approximates in even the smallest way the love he has for us, is a seemingly impossible task. Atheists like to challenge God with, "If you exist, why don't you show yourself? Why this game of hide and seek?" I'm not sure what they're asking for. Universal parlor tricks? The sun dancing in the sky? (And yet even when God provides such miracles they don't believe in them.) But God wants to reveal so much more about himself than that. He doesn't just want us to believe that he exists; that much he considers obvious. He wants us to know him, to understand him, well enough to be capable of loving him. Through all of God's 2000 year journey with the Jews, through all of history itself, God has been straining to reveal himself, yearning to be known, struggling to help us to overcome the sin that resulted from his gift of free will, which was necessary for us to be able to make the choice to love him, but which continually prevents us from doing so.

And now God has taken the ultimate step to bridge the infinite divide that separates us from him. He has come to live among us, to show us by his example what love is, to love us even when we don't love him, to lift us out of the mire of sin from which we have failed time again to free ourselves. To be present for us in the most immediate way imaginable, in flesh and blood, that we may come to know him and believe in him. He stands before us with his hand outstretched, ready to lift us into a new life, if only we will come, and see.

There is no State

2009-02-07T10:26:00.000-08:00

Then the Pharisees went off and plotted how they might entrap him in speech.

They sent their disciples to him, with the Herodians, saying, "Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. And you are not concerned with anyone's opinion, for you do not regard a person's status.

Tell us, then, what is your opinion: Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?"

The scene must have been one of great anticipation; the Pharisees' "trick" not particularly clever. Jesus had been preaching and working miracles throughout Israel for three years. Many Israelites, longing to be free of Roman rule, had come to believe he might be the Messiah, the king from the line of David who, they believed, would overthrow their oppressors and restore the independent kingdom of Israel. Now Jesus had made his way to Jerusalem, on the eve of the Passover, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, the celebration of God's deliverance of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt. If ever Jesus would announce his kingship and begin the rebellion against Rome, this would be the time and the place.

Going to Jerusalem at this time was a nearly suicidal act on Jesus' part. Either he would begin the rebellion in a city that hosted a Roman garrison of overwhelming strength, or he would burst the hopes and expectations of the people, whose reaction to the disappointment might be severe. It would, in fact, be Jesus' final journey to Jerusalem; these were the last few days of his ministry before the Passion.

The Pharisees' "trick" was simply to force the issue. "Tell us now," they were saying, "which side you are on. Are we to pay homage to Rome or not?"

Jesus' answer to this question posed in Matthew 22:15ff is one of the most famous quotes of the Bible:

"Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God."

I remember when we covered this passage in Scripture class at Gonzaga. The Jesuit priest who taught the class (now I've forgotten his name) read the passage and said, "So you see how Jesus tricked them."

And I thought, "No." It seemed to me that he gave a straightforward, honest answer, though not the one the Jews wanted to hear. "My kingdom is not of this Earth," he seemed to be saying. "There's no conflict between Caesar's kingdom and mine. Pay your taxes, get along with the State so that your physical needs are met, so that you'll have peace sufficient to let you concentrate on what's really important, which is your relationship to God." Jesus seems to be arguing for a separation of Church and State.

This is in fact the message Jesus wanted his Roman listeners to hear, but this is the "trick" part of Jesus' answer. It's not the answer his Jewish listeners would have heard. It's ironic that many of us today who read this passage continue to hear, as I did when I was a college student, the "trick." We miss the real message Jesus intended for his Jewish listeners.

To understand the rest of Jesus' answer we have to pay attention to the seemingly innocuous verses that precede it:

Tell us, then, what is your opinion: Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?

Knowing their malice, Jesus said, "Why are you testing me, you hypocrites? Show me the coin that pays the census tax." Then they handed him the Roman coin.

He said to them, "Whose image is this and whose inscription?"

They replied, "Caesar's." At that he said to them, "Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God."

"Whose image is this?" To understand the affect these words would have had on Jesus' Jewish listeners we have to remember that the whole history of Israel was one long, life and death struggle with idolatry. The religion of the Jews was not, as we sometimes imagine, safely carried through the ages in the isolated little corner of the near east that they occupied. No, paganism was constantly infiltrating the land of Israel, brought in through intermarriage with the pagans who surrounded Israel, brought in through trade, through the cultural assimilation that was to be expected when a simple nomadic people settled down near far more advanced, cosmopolitan cultures. It was practiced by the people of Israel, it was practiced by the pagan wives of their kings, it was practiced by the kings themselves. We forget that on several occasions the religion of the Jews was in grave danger of being wiped from the face of the Earth, replaced entirely by paganism.

The struggle against paganism resulted in some of the bloodiest scenes of the Old Testament. Think of Jezebel, the pagan queen of Israel who promulgated the worship of her native god Ba'al Melkart throughout Israel. She was thrown out of a window, "and some of her blood spurted against the wall and against the horses," 2 Kings 9:33 prosaically reports. Then they ran over her with a horse, and left her to be eaten by dogs. In Israel, any lapse into idolatry was a serious thing, a matter of national survival. Nothing was more loathsome to a Jew than an idolatrous image.

"Whose image is this?" Jesus asked the Pharisees. The image of Caesar, the emperor of Rome. At the time Jesus asked the question it was only 70 years since Julius Caesar had become the first Roman emperor to declare his own divinity. It must have been particularly galling for the Jews, not only to be ruled by pagan kings, but to be ruled by someone who claimed to be a god himself. It was a wound that was still fresh.

What's most hilarious about this scene is that Jesus did not pull the coin out of his own pocket; he tricked the Pharisees into pulling it out of theirs. By pointing out the image on the coin Jesus is calling attention to the fact that in using Roman money the Pharisees are carrying little idolatrous images around with them every day.

"Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar." Having pointed out the idolatrous image on the coin the natural response of any Jew would be to throw it away from them, and Jesus completely agrees. "Give it back to him, give it all back to him," he seems to be saying. Don't just pay the tax, throw all his idolatrous money back in his face.

Should we refuse to pay the tax? Should we rebel against Roman rule? This is the "extreme" position the Pharisees hope to corner Jesus into taking, but Jesus shocks them into seeing that these are insignificant little half-measures, which betray the interior compromise the Israelites have already made with paganism, a compromise brought to light by the little pagan idols each of them carries about with them every day. Jesus demands more than rebellion, he demands that his listeners recognize the creeping idolatry that has developed with in their own hearts, and that they renounce it utterly. He demands that God and Caesar each be given his true and proper due in the hearts and in the lives of his listeners.

And what then, does belong to Caesar, and what belongs to God? How would Jesus' Jewish listeners have answered that question? Based on their training in the Scriptures, this is what they would have thought: "Did Caesar form the Earth or the waters? Does he make the rains fall and the crops grow?" As God says to Job:

Where were you when I founded the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its size; do you know? Who stretched out the measuring line for it?

....Who shut within doors the sea?....Have you ever in your lifetime commanded the morning and shown the dawn its place?

....Have you entered into the sources of the sea, or walked about in the depths of the abyss? Have the gates of death been shown to you, or have you seen the gates of darkness?

....Do you give the horse his strength?....Does the eagle fly up at your command?

What Caesar is due, Jesus is saying, is precisely nothing. He has no place in our priorities. God is everything. Separation of Church and State? No. Jesus is saying, like the little boy in The Matrix, "There is no State."

Forgiveness of the Cylon God

2009-01-25T20:43:00.000-08:00

I was watching an episode of the new Battlestar Galactica series yesterday. In the episode, a group of people find themselves in desperate need of forgiveness. Many of them are guilty of acts that saved their own lives at the expense of others. Their leader, in fact, through an act of self-centered carelessness, allowed the Cylons to discover defense secrets that led to the deaths of billions of people, effectively the entire human race. Now try living with that on your conscience!

This man, whose name is Gaius Baltar, has come to believe in the one true God, the God of the Cylons, and believes he has figured out the formula by which God will grant him forgiveness. It goes like this: "God loves us all. God is perfect, and God only loves that which is perfect. Therefore we are all perfect, just as we are." Baltar says this with conviction, as one receiving a great epiphany, to a round of weepy applause by all present. The actors are all excellent, and they try very hard to give the scene authenticity, but it doesn't work.

Why doesn't it work? Because people who have committed great sins, and people who have committed small sins who are attentive to their spiritual state, know that they are not perfect. "If we say, 'We have no sin,' we are deceiving ourselves, and truth has no place in us." 1 John 1:8. They will not be satisfied with being told that they're already perfect. They crave forgiveness, a fresh start, a chance to start over. And what's more, they want it to come in a tangible act, clear and visible. What they want, in short, is Baptism.

I am surprised about this. I've been versed in the symbolism of Baptism for some time, but it has remained for me a "not what I would have expected" sacrament: one of the many gifts of God that I would not have thought up myself, if I were designing a world. A rite that John the Baptist came up with many thousands of years ago that, inexplicably, captivated the nation of Israel for a brief time, before being adopted by Christ as the main rite of Christian initiation. But now that I've seen an artist's rendition of a God of Redemption without Baptism, it seems to me to be a much more natural and explicable rite; in fact, it seems to be the perfect response to a people suffering with their own sinfulness.

The symbolism of Baptism includes washing away ones sins; everyone knows that. What is probably less well known is that it also involves rebirth. The ancient Semites thought of water as a symbol of the Abyss, the nothingness that precedes existence. "In the beginning ... the earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God moved over the waters," Genesis 1:1-2. In pushing the repentant sinner into the water, all the way in as it was done in the early days, he or she is symbolically being pushed back into pre-existence, only to rise from the waters anew, reborn into a new existence. The ultimate fresh start.

The Apostle Paul likened the descent into the water to a descent into the tomb with Christ, and the rising out of the water to being resurrected with Christ into a new life. "For we are buried together with him by baptism into death; that as Christ is risen from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also may walk in newness of life." Romans 6:4. The early Christians referred to Baptism as being "born again."

Thus Baptism gives the sinner exactly what they desire. A repentant sinner has come to a clear-eyed assessment of their own sinfulness, and they do not like what they see. Baptism does not try to sweet talk them out of that assessment. It doesn't tell them that, "If only they could see the big picture, they'd see that their sins are not really sinful." They are in a serious mood, and it treats their sins seriously. It gives them the concreteness of a tangible act, a moment of truth, a metanoia, which Father Nigro, my old Scripture teacher, described as an "I was walking this way, and then I turned, and now I'm walking that way" moment. And it provides the symbolism of death to the old way of life, and rebirth into a new life as a child of the Resurrection, as a child of God.

Final thoughts on Philemon

2009-01-18T22:29:00.002-08:00

I began this series of posts with an attempt to look at early Christianity's attitude toward slaves and slavery, not because it's an issue that's been particularly on my mind, or even because it's a topic that catches my eye in the letter to Philemon, but ironically, because it doesn't. Having written these posts, I now realize that I have always skipped over the passages in the Bible that are directed toward slaves. "Doesn't apply to me," was what I was thinking I guess. An issue settled worldwide long ago, a rare example of moral progress in the human race. (There are still slaves in the world, but nowhere does anyone openly try to defend it.) Why would anyone spend any time thinking about the moral arguments surrounding slavery now? Even when reading the letter of Philemon I never gave the issue any thought; it's buried, really, beneath the overpowering personal story of Philemon and Onesimus.

What always noticed most about Philemon was the intense love Paul shows for his disciples, but I found it impossible to put an explanation of Philemon into words without confronting slavery. Not because of any interest in apologetics on my part certainly. Apologetics is a worthy activity, but it's not for me. Always thinking about what other people are saying about you is a distraction from progress in your own discipline, for me at least.

No, the reason I needed to confront slavery was because of a cognitive dissonance that forms when I try to put myself in the scene of the letter. Slavery is a barrier to our understanding the ancients. We feel revulsion at the thought of it; we can't understand how they could live with it in their midst. If we can't put ourselves in the author's place with conviction then there has to be something missing in our understanding of them.

In this instance I don't think I've broken that barrier. When I imagine myself in Paul's place I still see myself thinking, "All people belong to God, but that person owns that person; isn't that stealing?" "No man can serve two masters."

But as a result of these posts I have re-read some passages of the Bible that I'd never paid attention to before, and I have learned some fascinating things about the early Christians. They truly believed that a person's status as slave or free was beneath God's consideration: when people talk about Christianity containing the seed that ultimately destroyed slavery, they aren't just engaging in wishful thinking. I can now understand why Christianity was so popular among slaves. It showed them that in the only sense that really mattered, they were already free. I don't know if this idea was revolutionary at the time, but the fact that Christians really believed it must have been. If we can't put ourselves in Paul's position and understand how he could fail to denounce the institution of slavery, we can put ourselves in the midst a society that accepted slavery as the natural order of things, and understand how revolutionary this idea must have been, and how liberating it must have been for the slaves who accepted it.

Reading Paul's directive to slaves in Ephesians, that they must perform their services their masters as if they were serving Christ, also gave me a much deeper appreciation for the Christian directive to emulate Christ in his service of others. How often have we felt that God asks too much of us: "Sure, we should be humble," we think, "but do I really have to go that low? Do I have to tolerate that person? Perform that job?" Yet Paul felt that even being a slave was not humility enough, unless it were done with the same love Jesus showed for us when he made himself a slave for us. "No," is Paul answer, "You must not just tolerate that person or perform that job, you must make yourself a slave to that person and love them as Jesus loved us, and perform that job as if it were Christ himself that had asked you to do it."

Philemon part 4

2009-01-14T22:55:00.001-08:00

This is part 4 of a multi-part post. Here are the links to parts 1, 2 and 3.

In this series of posts I seem to be commenting as much on Ephesians as Philemon. Anyway, to continue with Paul's appeal for Onesimus:

(Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful to you and to me.)

A pun on Onesimus' name, which means "useful." I wonder whether this name tells us anything about Onesimus. It doesn't sound like a name a mother would give to her child; it sounds like a name for a slave. Does this indicate that Onesimus was a slave from childhood? I've never heard an opinion on that one way or another.

In any event, Paul is once again reminding Philemon here that any anger he may have over his loss of Onesimus as a slave should be washed away by his joy over gaining him as a brother in Christ. His value to Philemon as a slave is as nothing when compared to his value as a fellow Christian.

Now before diving into details again, it's good to savor the next few verses as a whole:

I am sending him back to you, sending my very heart. I would have been glad to keep him with me, in order that he might serve me on your behalf during my imprisonment for the gospel; but I preferred to do nothing without your consent in order that your goodness might not be by compulsion but of your own free will. Perhaps this is why he was parted from you for a while, that you might have him back for ever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother, especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.

This is an impossible task, commenting on Philemon. Like trying to convince someone of the greatness of a painting by talking about it. If you're not already touched by the incredible example of love that Paul demonstrates in this letter, and by his intense desire that harmony and love should reign among Christians, then no commentary will lead you there. And if you're not touched, well, you're not alone. I've yet to meet anyone else who enjoys this letter as much as I do.

Well anyway, to dive in again:

I am sending him back to you, sending my very heart.

A truly moving expression of Paul's love for Onesimus, and a formidable shield for Onesimus against Philemon's anger.

I would have been glad to keep him with me, in order that he might serve me on your behalf during my imprisonment for the gospel;

Paul's reluctance to part with Onesimus is another expression of his love for him. It's also a strong hint that Paul would like Onesimus to return to him. Paul attempts to blunt any anger Philemon may have toward Onesimus by encouraging him to look upon Onesimus' absence not in terms of labor lost, but as Philemon's opportunity to render service to Paul's mission.

but I preferred to do nothing without your consent in order that your goodness might not be by compulsion but of your own free will.

Paul won't even let the thought that Philemon might disagree with Paul's assessment of the situation enter into his mind; this is truly an offer Philemon cannot refuse.

In all seriousness though, Paul's motivation for sending Onesimus back is becoming clear. The rift between these two men cannot be healed simply by Paul demanding it. Paul wants these men to be truly reconciled. By returning, Onesimus is throwing himself upon Philemon's mercy. Philemon would be within his rights (legally) to have Onesimus tortured, branded on the forehead with an "F" (for "fugitivus"), fitted with an iron collar, or even killed. To us, looking upon this scene from a distance of two thousand years, Onesimus seems perfectly safe: the terms of Paul's letter render it inconceivable that Philemon would harm Onesimus in any way. But put yourself in Onesimus' shoes for a moment. The weight of all Roman society is against you. None of Philemon's friends or associates would have cared, or even given it any thought at all, if Philemon had treated Onesimus in the cruelest manner. There has to be real trepidation in Onesimus' heart. An act of mercy on Philemon's part will have real weight. It will mean something.

Perhaps this is why he was parted from you for a while, that you might have him back for ever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother, especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.

Paul hints that Onesimus' escape may have been part of God's plan for Onesimus, because it led him to Paul, who led him to Christ. And in any event, Paul encourages Philemon to realize that he should not want to have Onesimus as a slave, which as we have seen is a distinction God cares nothing about, and which will certainly not follow Philemon into eternity. What he should want for Onesimus is brotherhood in Christ, which matters a great deal to God, and which will last for all time.

Now it's time to savor Paul's final plea to Philemon on Onesimus' behalf:

So if you consider me your partner, receive him as you would receive me. If he has wronged you at all, or owes you anything, charge that to my account. I, Paul, write this with my own hand, I will repay it--to say nothing of your owing me even your own self. Yes, brother, I want some benefit from you in the Lord. Refresh my heart in Christ. Confident of your obedience, I write to you, knowing that you will do even more than I say.

Verse by verse:

So if you consider me your partner, receive him as you would receive me.

Given this instruction, it's hard to imagine Philemon harming Onesimus at all.

If he has wronged you at all, or owes you anything, charge that to my account.

Paul sweeps away any final objection Philemon may have to reconciliation and puts himself completely in Onesimus' place by offering to personally pay any debt Philemon feels Onesimus owes him.

There's something jarring about this descent into the concrete, "fleshly" matter of monetary compensation for Philemon, after all of the talk of receiving him in the brotherhood of Christ and the spiritual aspects of Onesimus' return. This is a reminder of the fact that Christianity isn't a religion of fuzz and gauze. Jesus didn't descend to Earth, preach the Sermon on the Mount, and then float off to heaven in a cloud. He lived among us, acted out his ministry here in this world, sweated and bled and felt the pain of this world. And neither are we allowed to try to escape this world in happy, gauzy platitudes. As James says, "If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,' but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it?"

I, Paul, write this with my own hand, I will repay it--to say nothing of your owing me even your own self. Yes, brother, I want some benefit from you in the Lord. Refresh my heart in Christ.

It was unusual for Paul to write his letters himself; most were dictated to a secretary. This we know because he points out the exceptions in several letters. E.g. in Galatians 6 he writes, "See with what large letters I am writing to you in my own hand!" Many have speculated that he had poor eyesight, and wasn't able to write for himself regularly.

The fact that Paul writes to Philemon in his own hand reinforces the personal nature of his plea and adds needed emphasis to Paul's offer. He is not making a token gesture; he will repay Philemon for whatever Onesimus owes him, without, we notice, even knowing what that might be.

Of course, there's again the air of an "offer he can't refuse" here. It would be inconceivable for Philemon to send Paul a bill. But just as Philemon's mercy is real, Paul's offer is real. We can have no doubt from reading this that if Philemon had sent Paul a bill, he would, with a heavy heart, have paid it.

Confident of your obedience, I write to you, knowing that you will do even more than I say.

If this letter is representative of Paul's powers of persuasion then it's small wonder he was able to almost singlehandedly build a worldwide Church. Philemon really has no choice but to comply with Paul's wishes, and even to do what Paul has not demanded explicitly, which is to grant Onesimus his freedom.

At the same time, prepare a guest room for me, for I am hoping through your prayers to be granted to you. Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, sends greetings to you, and so do Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, and Luke, my fellow workers. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.

Possibly one last nudge from Paul here in this reminder that Paul and Philemon may meet again one day. A standard farewell from Paul and a job well done.

I'll reserve a few final thoughts on Philemon for one last post before I (mercifully) move on to other topics.

Philemon part 3

2009-01-12T22:57:00.001-08:00

This is part three of a multi-part post. See part one here and part two here.

Continuing with the commentary, we pick up the text of the letter just after the greeting:

I thank my God always when I remember you in my prayers, because I hear of your love and of the faith which you have toward the Lord Jesus and all the saints, and I pray that the sharing of your faith may promote the knowledge of all the good that is ours in Christ. For I have derived much joy and comfort from your love, my brother, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you.

Paul offers thanks to God for the acts of love and charity that Philemon has performed on behalf of the "saints," i.e. his fellow Christians. What these acts are we don't know, but they must have gone beyond simply lending his house for Sunday services. He must have been a generous man, active in the community, a model for others demonstrating what a Christian should be.

Paul prays that Philemon will continue to be a good role model, that his efforts on behalf of the Christian community will "promote the knowledge of all the good that is ours in Christ." This sets up the appeal Paul is about to make to Philemon. He is about to ask Philemon to make some choices that may be hard for him, but that will be an example of Christian love and charity for all to see.

Accordingly, though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do what is required, yet for love's sake I prefer to appeal to you--I, Paul, an old man and now a prisoner also for Christ Jesus--I appeal to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I have become in my imprisonment.

As we get into Paul's deeply moving appeal on behalf of Onesimus, I'm again reluctant to interrupt the flow of the text with commentary. This letter is best read start to finish, without interruption. But I have to break in somewhere.

OK, bit by bit again:

Accordingly,

This one word shows that what Paul is about to ask follows directly from his desire that Philemon set an example of Christian love. To refuse would be to fail to live up to the high standards Christ demands of us.

though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do what is required,

Paul makes no bones about his authority over his converts. He has led them to eternal life; there's really no limit on what they owe him in return. It's hard to imagine a priest or bishop these days attempting to exercise this kind of authority over a parishioner; these days the Church is more circumspect when it comes to making demands on individual Christians.

Of course, part of the reason for Paul's boldness is that he is no ordinary priest or bishop, and he knows it. The clarity with which the Church fathers conceived their role in salvation history is astounding. They were standing at the apex of history, the great inflection point, to which all previous history had been pointing, and from which the world would be forever changed. All of God's 2000-plus year journey with Israel had had the single purpose of laying the groundwork for the moment at which the fathers now stood. Revelation had reached fullness. No such moment would ever come again.

Paul in particular, referred to himself as none other than the Apostle to the Gentiles. The Twelve's job was to convert Israel, Paul was to handle the rest of the world. He was God's spokesman on Earth, bearer of the final revelation. He was the guy who finally got to see the rest of God's plan, who got to understand what the prophets of old could only catch fleeting glimpses of, and it was his job to explain it all to the world. He knew that there would never be another like himself, because there would never be another moment like this in all time. As he says in Ephesians 3:

To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the inscrutable riches of Christ, and to make all men see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages and generations in God who created all things; that through the Church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and authorities in the heavens. This was according to the eternal purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness of speech and confidence of access through faith in him.

To conceive of this role for yourself you almost have to be insane, a megalomaniac. Yet the fathers never betray any hint of doubt about their mission, and manage to carry it out with a mixture of humility and piety that is, apart from their astonishing success, perhaps the most miraculous aspect of their ministries.

OK that was quite a detour. Back to Philemon:

yet for love's sake I prefer to appeal to you

A cynical person may see this as a good cop / bad cop act on Paul's part, an "I certainly hope you make the right decision, because I don't want to have to put the hurt on you" sort of thing. There's probably a grain of truth in that; after all the tone of this letter is both solicitous and firm. But I believe it's also true that Paul really does want Philemon to do the right thing for the right reason. He wants this to be an opportunity for Philemon to demonstrate real Christian love; for Philemon and Onesimus to become true brothers in Christ. It isn't enough for Philemon to begrudgingly forgive Onesimus only because he was forced to, and to forever resent him for it.

I, Paul, an old man and now a prisoner also for Christ Jesus--I appeal to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I have become in my imprisonment.

I just find this infinitely touching. Paul stands before Philemon as a father pleading for his child. Who could listen to this plea, the plea of a man grown old in the service of the Lord, who had suffered as much as any man ever has in God's service, who was even now imprisoned and facing an uncertain future; who could refuse this man's plea on behalf of his child? Because in reading this letter there really can be no doubt about the authenticity of Paul's feelings for Onesimus.

Philemon part 2

2009-01-11T21:42:00.001-08:00

This is part two of a multi-part post. See part one here. Part one was the warm-up. Somehow I wound up commenting on Ephesians in order to comment on Philemon. In any case, here's the actual commentary on Philemon.

Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother, To Philemon our beloved fellow worker and Apphia our sister and Archippus our fellow soldier, and the church in your house; Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

The ancients really knew how to start a letter. I actually saw a "loose" translation of the Bible once that had this as "Dear Philemon," and had the letter end with "Sincerely, Paul." AAACK! You might as well translate Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 as, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? No, but you're pretty damn good looking." I wanted to comment on some of the text within Paul's greeting, but I couldn't bear to chop it up. Take a moment to savor it before continuing.

OK now bit by bit:

Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus

Obviously this letter was written during one of Paul's many imprisonments for preaching the gospel. This is one of the Pauline letters considered indisputably authentic, i.e., written by the one and only Paul of Tarsus. Despite its brevity scholars have deduced a lot about where it was probably written, where Philemon probably lived, when it was probably written in relation to other letters, what brand of cereal Paul had for breakfast that day, etc. I was raised on the Historical Critical method. It was probably the first lesson I learned at Gonzaga, and I thought it was the greatest thing since sliced cheese. I'm still on awe of the fact that the Church has the guts to let the Scriptures undergo the same scientific analysis that would be given to any other ancient text. But I have to agree with the pope, that if you go overboard with it it turns Scripture reading into trivia hour (O.K. the pope didn't quite put it like that). At some point though, you've got to lay off the historicizing and listen to the text.

Back to the text then. Paul mentions his imprisonment here to emphasize the sacrifices he has made for the gospel, because he is about to ask Philemon to make a sacrifice for Paul (a much smaller one by comparison). It's also an opening of stark, poetic beauty.

and Timothy our brother,

One of Paul's companions, and recipient of Paul's Letter to Timothy.

To Philemon our beloved fellow worker and Apphia our sister and Archippus our fellow soldier

Philemon is the owner of the slave Onesimus, who hasn't received mention yet. As a slave owner, he must have been a relatively wealthy man. Paul greets him as a "beloved fellow worker," a colleague in the gospel. Apphia was probably his wife, and Archippus possibly a son.

and the church in your house

I recall reading that one possible explanation of this is that Philemon had a large household of servants and slaves, and that the entire household converted to Christianity when he did. But now I can't find any reference to that idea; all the references I can find agree that this indicates that Philemon must have regularly held the Church services that would one day be labeled (somewhat randomly) the "Mass" in his house. In these very early days, the Mass was celebrated in individual homes rather than in dedicated church buildings. See this for a nice description of what the early Mass looked like. This would explain the effusive compliments Paul lavishes on Philemon in this letter. Philemon must have been a leading figure in the Christian community in his city.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

A truly beautiful blessing to start the letter off.

Before the Letter to Philemon - Slavery and the early Church

2009-01-04T10:59:00.000-08:00

The little letter to Philemon is one of my favorites, but I'm finding it difficult to comment on. It is the shortest and most personal letter written by Paul, a letter that veritably pulsates with the warmth and magnetism of the Apostle. Paul is a man of fiery emotions, whether he's railing against the discord within the Christian community at Corinth in I Corinthians, or expressing his deep personal affection for his disciples, who he calls his "fellow workers", "beloved brothers," and his "children". Paul's heart seems unable to contain the love he feels for this new Christian community that he has created. It flows out of him like an irresistible force, drawing everyone around him into his orbit. From reading this letter it's easy to see why his missions were so wildly successful.

The intense warmth of this letter makes it so compelling, but when commenting on it I'm instantly ensnared in issues of slavery, because the two principal figures in the letter are a runaway slave, Onesimus, and his master Philemon. Paul does not intend this letter to be a commentary on slavery, but intends only to make a personal plea for the forgiveness of and (strongly hinted anyway) the emancipation of one individual slave, Onesimus. Regardless, the argument he doesn't make, that Onesimus should be freed because slavery is intrinsically evil, is what stands out most to the modern reader. It is an uncomfortable reminder of the fact that the early Church did not take a stand against slavery.

This has been explained in many ways. It's been said that the Church was too small to attempt to make such a large-scale change in society, and too weak to survive the confrontation with Rome that would have resulted. And it's been said that the Church's expectation of an imminent perousia rendered any such long-term projects pointless.

Well I think we can safely rule out the idea that the Church was too timid about confronting Rome to take on the issue of slavery. These were people, after all, who preferred in large numbers to go to the arena rather than participate in the rote emperor worship ceremonies of their day, and this at a time when nobody really believed in the divinity of the emperor. Rome was not Persia, where such things were taken seriously. Romans knew that emperor worship was merely an expression of fealty to Rome, but Christians, large numbers of them anyway, preferred death to participation in an act that so contradicted their faith. A lack of contrariness or courage was not their problem.

And it's difficult to judge how expectations of the perousia influenced the Church's attitude toward affecting social change. Certainly there are no passages in Scripture that I know of that say, "Let's hold off on this whole slavery issue guys, Jesus will be back next week anyway." Rather than speculate on that, it's better to draw inferences from what they actually did say about slavery. One of the most striking passages regarding slavery can be found at the end of Ephesians 5 and the beginning of Ephesians 6:

Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is head of the church, he himself the savior of the body. As the church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. So (also) husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.

"For this reason a man shall leave (his) father and (his) mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the church.

In any case, each one of you should love his wife as himself, and the wife should respect her husband.

Children, obey your parents (in the Lord), for this is right. "Honor your father and mother." This is the first commandment with a promise, "that it may go well with you and that you may have a long life on earth."

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up with the training and instruction of the Lord.

Slaves, be obedient to your human masters with fear and trembling, in sincerity of heart, as to Christ, not only when being watched, as currying favor, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, willingly serving the Lord and not human beings, knowing that each will be requited from the Lord for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free.

Masters, act in the same way toward them, and stop bullying, knowing that both they and you have a Master in heaven and that with him there is no partiality.

I am proving unlucky in blogging, because two of the first four posts I've made involve passages that talk about one of the topics most likely to repel modern readers -- subordination of women to men. Well, if anyone remains to read the rest of this, he or (less likely ;-) she should listen to this passage in its entirety, and consider what Paul is doing here. He is looking for ways in which people in all walks of life can subordinate their own needs and desires to those of others, and to follow Christ and the Church in the path of humble service. As Christ served the Church, and as the Church serves Christ, so should men and women serve one another in justice.

It's perhaps tangential to this post, and so should be reserved mainly for a future one, but Paul's commandment to husbands is no less demanding than his commandment to wives, i.e. to "love your wives even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her." "Handed himself over" of course refers to Jesus' being handed over to the Jewish and Roman authorities at the time of his Passion. This isn't, "Take care of the little woman, because she's weak and not too bright," which is what many people hear when they read Ephesians. Paul is asking men to dedicate their whole being to the service of their wives, just as Christ dedicated himself to the service of all, even to the point of torture and death.

As discussed in previous posts, the Christian path to God can be termed the "annihilation of self." As Jesus said in Luke 9: 23-24, "If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it." Christians' path to God is one of subverting their own needs and desires, their very lives, in order to follow Christ on the path of service, even though it should demand the ultimate suffering and sacrifice.

And what does this passage indicate about Paul's opinion of slavery? In the husband-wife relationship Paul finds a mysterious reflection of the relationship between Christ and the Church; in support of his vision of obedience in the parent-child relationship he appeals to the solemn commandment of God. But in contrast, Paul doesn't offer any cosmic significance for the master-slave relationship, nor any sense that it is grounded in true justice. Rather, he seems to be saying, "Pretend that when serving your master you are actually serving Christ. Use your service as an opportunity to act out on Earth the service you wish you could offer directly to Christ. And take heart in the fact that you don't really serve anyone but God, that you and your master will one day be judged by God for your actions, and not for your station in life." These words offer the slave a challenging and potentially fruitful path to Heaven, but hardly constitute a ringing endorsement of slavery.

And Paul's directive to slave owners is blunt and absolutely stunning: "Act in the same way towards them," where the "way" in question is service to the other as if that person were Christ himself. It is so stunning in fact that I had to verify the text in several different translations before I could believe that Paul really said it. I have to wonder how slavery could continue as a viable institution in a society where this directive was actually being carried out.

Still, if the Christian slave has this path to God, what reason would there be for opposing slavery? After all, what could be more important than one's salvation? The reasons that come first to the American mind are not the ones that would have come to Paul's mind: that all men are endowed by their Creator with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The concept of the rights of man would not be developed for many centuries. And from the standpoint of the individual Christian, it is not the healthiest argument to make. "What about my rights?" is antithetical to the Christian way of life: Christ did not demand his rights as he was being led to Calvary. The path of the Christian is one of self-sacrifice, not self-protection or self-fulfillment. (A Christian might argue that "If my rights are not protected then my neighbor's are not, so I act only on his or her behalf," but only someone in an advanced spiritual state can make that argument with honesty.)

I believe the Church today would make its argument against slavery on the basis of the dignity of the human person, which is grounded in reflection on the fact that men and women are created in the likeness of God, and are children of God. This sounds to me like the Church's version of the rights of man argument, but I really know very little about it. It may make a good topic for a future post.

So if thoughts about the rights and dignity of man were not sufficiently developed in Paul's time to serve as a basis for his reasoning, what arguments against slavery might have occurred to Paul, in fact did occur to Paul in the letter to Philemon? That is something I'll expand upon in the commentary on Philemon in the following post.

Genesis 3

2009-01-02T19:45:00.000-08:00

So much packed into so few words, and so difficult to interpret! We seem to love nothing more than to project our vision of the ideal man on primitive peoples. As we saw already with Harrison Ford's old movie The Mosquito Coast, so also with Jean M. Auel's Earth's Children series, we can't depict primitive Man without imbuing him with our vision of how we ought to be, how we were before society encrusted us with its crippling notions of right and wrong. In Auel's case, those encrustations prevent us from having lots of freewheeling, well, if you've read the books you know what I mean. But the first to do so was the Bible, and no one has ever done it better. Here's the text:

Now, the snake was the most subtle of all the wild animals that Yahweh God had made. It asked the woman, 'Did God really say you were not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?'

There's a real chicken-and-egg problem here. God told Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit. If they've never sinned, how can they feel tempted to disobey? The serpent breaks the cycle.

The woman answered the snake, 'We may eat the fruit of the trees in the garden.
But of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden God said, "You must not eat it, nor touch it, under pain of death." '
Then the snake said to the woman, 'No! You will not die!
God knows in fact that the day you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good from evil.'

Here we have the basic temptation of mankind, to make gods of ourselves, to put ourselves in a position that only God can occupy. Whether it's the sin of pride, where we claim credit for the gifts God has given us as if we had invented them ourselves; or the sin of passing judgment on others, where we place ourselves on the throne of God as if we were qualified to judge the hearts of others; this is the sin that underlies all the others. It's been discussed so much elsewhere that it hardly needs expansion.

The woman saw that the tree was good to eat and pleasing to the eye, and that it was enticing for the wisdom that it could give. So she took some of its fruit and ate it. She also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it.

Again, the paradox of a complete innocent succumbing to temptation is mind-bending, but we mustn't tarry.

Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they realised that they were naked. So they sewed fig-leaves together to make themselves loin-cloths

Shame, self-consciousness, etc.... This is another of the most commonly commented-on verses.

The man and his wife heard the sound of Yahweh God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from Yahweh God among the trees of the garden.

Now this is wonderful. What was the state of mankind before the Fall? What was his true, uncorrupted nature? He walked with God in the garden of Eden, "in the cool of the day." It is sin that prevents us from meeting God face to face. People wonder why God doesn't show himself more clearly. Rather, they should ask why they place the barrier of sin between themselves and God. The experience of the saints bears this out.

But Yahweh God called to the man. 'Where are you?' he asked.
'I heard the sound of you in the garden,' he replied. 'I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.'
'Who told you that you were naked?' he asked. 'Have you been eating from the tree I forbade you to eat?'
The man replied, 'It was the woman you put with me; she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.'

Love this; they've only just started sinning and they've already learned how to pass the buck.

Then Yahweh God said to the woman, 'Why did you do that?' The woman replied, 'The snake tempted me and I ate.'
Then Yahweh God said to the snake, 'Because you have done this, Accursed be you of all animals wild and tame! On your belly you will go and on dust you will feed as long as you live.

There's a bit of How the Rabbit Lost His Tail fairy tale charm here, but since the serpent represents Satan it also contains a real curse for the fallen angels.

I shall put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; it will bruise your head and you will strike its heel.

This is the verse that is always said to be a foreshadowing of Christ, the woman a type of Mary and her offspring Jesus. I guess because of Paul's use of Adam as an anti-type of Christ (if that's the correct word). Thus Jesus crushes the head the Satan the serpent.

To the woman he said: I shall give you intense pain in childbearing, you will give birth to your children in pain. Your yearning will be for your husband, and he will dominate you.

To the man he said, 'Because you listened to the voice of your wife and ate from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat, Accursed be the soil because of you! Painfully will you get your food from it as long as you live.
It will yield you brambles and thistles, as you eat the produce of the land.
By the sweat of your face will you earn your food, until you return to the ground, as you were taken from it.'

To our modern ears whenever Scripture speaks of men dominating women the verses fairly shout at us off the page. But this author isn't saying that the true nature of women is to be dominated by men. Rather, he's saying that the state of powerlessness of women in this ancient pastoral community is one of the curses resulting from the Fall. It's part of the suffering introduced into the world by the sins of mankind.

I hesitate to raise the subject, in the event that someone someday actually reads this post, but it seems to me that those who claim the Genesis story is sexist because it blames the woman Eve for the Fall more than the man Adam have it backward. It seems to me that the author of Genesis looked at the state of women in his society and concluded that their suffering was somewhat greater than the suffering of men, and so gave them a 'first among equals' status in the story of the origin of sin.

Overall, we see here that pain and suffering are the results of sin. As we saw in the post on Buddhism and Original Sin, this is similar to the conclusion that Buddhists have come to with their concept of dukkha, that suffering in the world is the result of a human nature that is out-of-joint, that is not aligned with its true self.

For dust you are and to dust you shall return.'

This is a verse of breathtaking poetic beauty.

The man named his wife 'Eve' because she was the mother of all those who live.
Yahweh God made tunics of skins for the man and his wife and clothed them.

This is touching. God doesn't just toss Adam and Eve out on their ears, yell 'Good riddance,' and slam the door. He clothes them - prepares them for live in the outer world - before expelling them.

Then Yahweh God said, 'Now that the man has become like one of us in knowing good from evil, he must not be allowed to reach out his hand and pick from the tree of life too, and eat and live for ever!'
So Yahweh God expelled him from the garden of Eden, to till the soil from which he had been taken.
He banished the man, and in front of the garden of Eden he posted the great winged creatures and the fiery flashing sword, to guard the way to the tree of life.

Obviously Christians see in the tree of life a type of Christ, who mankind cannot now access until properly prepared.

This leads to the question of how we go about fixing the state of brokenness in which we find ourselves. As Huston Smith says in World's Religions, "For the rift to be healed we need to know its cause, and the Second Noble Truth identifies it. The cause of life's dislocation is tanha....Tanha is a specific kind of desire, the desire for private fulfillment." Therefore a project of finding disciplines that will enable the annihilation of desire is the answer.

This is not the conclusion one would draw from the Genesis story however. Genesis tells us that the fallen nature of Man is a result of sin, and sin came about because of the loss of innocence - the knowledge of what is good and what is evil. That is a jinn that cannot be put back in its bottle; there's no point trying to unlearn the difference between good and evil. The only direction we can go from here is forward, which is why Christ had to come into the world. Only God himself could pull off the impossible task at hand: to lead us out of our current state of brokenness and into an even greater destiny than we would have had in our previous state of innocence, that of true adopted children of God.

What is original sin?

2009-01-02T15:40:00.000-08:00

As part of preparing for the last post on Buddhism and original sin I re-read some material on original sin, particularly this and this. I was surprised to find that many people in the Judeo-Christian tradition have and still do deny the existence of original sin. I'm especially surprised by Wikipedia's claim that original sin is not part of Jewish doctrine, since it appears to me to be nothing more than a commentary on Genesis 3, which is certainly part of Judaism.

I guess I'm as surprised to find that there are people in our tradition who deny original sin as I was to find that Buddhism embraces it, because if we disagree on such a fundamental aspect of our natures how can we agree on anything? And if we and Buddhists do agree at this level, then we must agree on many other things as well, because a lot must follow from the way we view ourselves.

But it's clear especially from this that the 670 or so words of Genesis 3 have spawned a lot of additional explanation, and I suspect that when people of the Judeo-Christian tradition reject the doctrine of original sin they are really rejecting one aspect or another of that explanation, and not the central ideas themselves.

So what are the central ideas of original sin? I'm sure I'm not qualified to begin to describe them. But I can describe what the central ideas are to me. To me, original sin is an attempt to explain the mystery of the predicament in which we find ourselves. Again, Paul says it best in Romans 7:15ff:

I do not understand my own behavior; I do not act as I mean to, but I do the things that I hate.
....
so it is not myself acting, but the sin which lives in me.
And really, I know of nothing good living in me -- in my natural self, that is -- for though the will to do what is good is in me, the power to do it is not: the good thing I want to do, I never do; the evil thing which I do not want -- that is what I do.

There is something not quite right about us. We know the kind of people we should be, but we are incapable of being that person. We do evil even though we know it does us harm. Somewhere along the way something went terribly wrong; we have been broken. How did this come about?

The term "original sin" comes from the act that led to this condition, but if we move on to that we've already skipped past the fundamental point. Because what original sin really refers to is this mysterious state of "brokenness" that we recognize in ourselves. I think I'm not alone in this assessment. The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes original sin this way (CCC 417):

Adam and Eve transmitted to their descendants human nature wounded by their own first sin and hence deprived of original holiness and justice; this deprivation is called "original sin."

(emphasis mine). It's the state of deprivation, the brokenness itself, that original sin primarily refers to, and not the act that led to it. How could any Christian reject this basic diagnosis of the human condition? After all, what need is there for a savior if we're not in a state of needing to be saved? Again, I suspect the beef is with some particular of the doctrine, and not with this basic idea.

Incidentally, an alternative view is presented by the old Harrison Ford movie, The Mosquito Coast. The protagonist in the movie, Allie Fox, believes that evil is learned, and that if you could just roll back the clock far enough and start society over you could create a perfect society without sin. So he leads his family on a series of expeditions, each one traveling deeper into the jungles of Central America in search of ever more primitive societies on which to build his perfect community, and each time finding that sin is already present there. He ends by saying he wishes he could evolve backward into animal form, because only there will a truly pure spirit be found.

One could imagine the question being empirically resolved. If sin is learned then one of the so-called "wolf children" who are lost in the woods as infants and raised by wolves, if there really are such things, would be free of it. You could imagine a psychologist examining such a child to resolve the issue once and for all.

Original sin and Buddhism

2009-01-02T09:56:00.001-08:00

What I know about Buddhism would fit on the back of an envelope, with room to spare. I've heard that it is a religion oriented entirely around the elimination of suffering. No doubt I picked this up from long ago reading C.S. Lewis' The Problem of Pain. The Buddha was a rich man who lived a pampered life, and when he finally encountered disease, poverty and death, he was shocked and disillusioned into spending the rest of his life in pursuit of techniques for training the mind and body in ways that would eliminate pain, by detaching oneself from this world that is the cause of pain. It sounds like a religion of escapism, but it's exactly the kind of religion I'd expect people to come up with "on their own," without the benefit of revelation. We either fear the unseen gods, and as pagans do attempt to placate them with elaborate rituals of sacrifice, or (better) we focus on what we see, that this is a world of pain, and we do our best to escape it.

These are the dots I connected in my mind, based on the few bits of information I had. But our understanding of others is always both clear, and incorrect, in inverse proportion to the amount of information that we base it on. So I expected to be found wrong when I picked up Huston Smith's The World's Religions, a nice little book that gives a 100,000 foot view of the world's major religions. Even so, what I found threw me for a loop:

The First Noble Truth [of Buddhism] is that life is dukkha, usually translated 'suffering'....Dukkha, then, names the pain that to some degree colors all finite existence. The word's constructive implications come to light when we discover that it was used in Pali to refer to wheels whose axes were off-center, or bones that had slipped from their sockets...The exact meaning of the First Noble Truth is this: Life (in the condition it has got itself into) is dislocated. Something has gone wrong. It is out of joint. As its pivot is not true, friction (interpersonal conflict) is excessive, movement (creativity) is blocked, and it hurts.

This assessment of affairs is what Christians call "original sin!" It's not just that we're living in a cruel world in which terrible things are constantly happening to us, we're living in a world in which something has gone fundamentally wrong with us. We're not fulfilling our true nature, and it hurts. Paul says it best in Romans 7:15ff:

I do not understand my own behavior; I do not act as I mean to, but I do the things that I hate.
....
so it is not myself acting, but the sin which lives in me.
And really, I know of nothing good living in me -- in my natural self, that is -- for though the will to do what is good is in me, the power to do it is not: the good thing I want to do, I never do; the evil thing which I do not want -- that is what I do.

Every Christian has felt the pain of the situation that Paul so eloquently describes. We know that we can be so much more than we are. We desire with our entire being to do good, and yet we don't. We know that we were destined to be better than we are, and that by doing evil we are constantly acting against our own true nature, but we can't help ourselves.

This worldview doesn't produce an escapist religion, but an aspirational one. Because if there's something about us that's not quite right, if something has gone wrong and it's preventing us from living up to our true potential, then the obvious question is, "How do we fix it?" If I was surprised to find that Buddhism and Christianity agree on the diagnosis, I was even more surprised to find that they offer similar cures:

For the rift to be healed we need to know its cause, and the Second Noble Truth identifies it. The cause of life's dislocation is tanha....Tanha is a specific kind of desire, the desire for private fulfilment. When we are selfless we are free, but that is precisely the difficulty--to maintain that state. Tanha is the force that ruptures it, pulling us back from the freedom of the all to seek fulfilment in our egos, which ooze like secret sores. Tanha consists of all 'those inclinations which tend to continue or increase separateness, the separate existence of the subject of desire; in fact, all forms of selfishness, the essence of which is desire for self at the expense, if necessary, of all other forms of life. Life being one, all that tends to separate one aspect from another must cause suffering to the unit which even unconsciously works against the Law. Our duties to our fellows is to understand them as extensions, other aspects, of ourselves--fellow facets of the same Reality.'

Smith's quote is from Humphreys, Buddhism, p91. Obviously this quote touches on areas where Buddhism is very different than Christianity. I know of nothing in Christianity that parallels Buddhism's idea of "Life being one." Paul's doctrine of the unity of the Church as the Body of Christ may come closest, but that still seems very different. But analyzing differences in religions is much more difficult than finding similarities, especially where Buddhism is involved, which is a religion that tries very hard to avoid dogmas that could be used for comparison, so I won't attempt it.

What does strike me though is that Buddhism posits self-centeredness as the most basic flaw in human nature, as does Christianity, and I imagine, Judaism, and denial of self as the cure. In Luke 9:23ff Jesus says:

'If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross every day and follow me.
Anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake, will save it.
What benefit is it to anyone to win the whole world and forfeit or lose his very self?

We see this also in the parable of the pearl of great price, in which the merchant sells all that he has to acquire the kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 13). And in the story of the rich man who asked Jesus what he must do to have eternal life, and is told by Jesus, 'If you wish to be perfect, go and sell your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me' (Matthew 19).

An obvious difference jumps out: the Christian's self-denial is an act of turning toward God, and in particular Jesus Christ, while the Buddhist's self-denial appears to be more of a turning toward his or her fellow creature. The Buddhist appears to have the "You must love your neighbor as yourself" half of the Jewish Law, but not "You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind" (Matthew 22:37ff), much less Jesus' "new commandment" to "Love one another as I have loved you" (John 13:34). This says it well:

Christian enlightenment, based on the gospel, remains irreducibly different from Zen or any other form of Buddhism.

[William Johnston, S.J.,] underscores the radical transcendence of God for Christians, including Christian mystics who use the language of nonduality. The climax of the Christian mystical journey is identifying with the Son and being filled with the Spirit and crying out: "Abba, Father!" At least on the level of expression and religious self-understanding, this is very different from Buddhist perspectives on nonduality, which do not address a transcendent in personal terms.

But again, analyzing differences in religions in difficult, and I know that many Christians have wondered if the Buddhist's nirvana isn't a vision of God of sorts, perhaps as clear a vision as the human mind can perceive without the aid of revelation. For me it's a great surprise, and a great comfort, to know that the Christian and the Buddhist have come to similar conclusions about the state of humanity, and spend the greatest part of their time responding to it in a similar manner: in the attempt to annihilate the self.