The Working of God in History

The Book of Revelation is about an apocalypse. There are several books that deal with this topic—some of them are part of the Christian scriptures and others did not make the canon. The first one to be written was Daniel. Others include 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, 4 Ezra, the Shepherd of Hermes, and the Apocalypse of Peter.

These books share many similar themes. They prophesize that the end of history is near, and that there will be a final judgment where the good are saved and the evil will burn. These books were all written during times of distress and persecution (see Revelation 1: 9 and 2: 10) for the purpose of encouraging the faithful. It may not look like God controls history, but he does. Keep the faith, and God will soon intervene to reward you. All of the above books make this claim about God controlling history, and none of their predictions have come true. God must be controlling history in ways that humans cannot see or understand.

In the Jewish scriptures, God acts in ways that most honest people would find to be repugnant. In leading his people out of Egypt, God shatters the enemy, crunching his foes, devouring them like stubble (Exodus 15: 3-8, see also my book on Evangelical Christianity). A similar view is found in the book of Joshua. The central theme of Joshua is holy war. God leads his people in battle. In that role, God destroys towns and murders innocent women and children. His wrath kills everyone. This is a story about ethnic cleansing. God’s actions are comparable to Slobodan Milosevic. If this is the way God acts, I want nothing to do with him.

Again, let me return to the Jewish scriptures. It is a central article of Jewish belief that God acts in history. God acted to make a covenant with Israel, gave his people Law at Sinai, guided them out of Egypt, led them in battle to conqueror the land of Canaan, and established a monarchy to rule a united Israel. The question I have is why did God stop acting on behalf of his people? Israel as a united state ceased to function following the death of Solomon three thousand years ago. God’s chosen people suffered colonial oppression beginning with the invasion of Assyria in 721 BCE, a condition which continued virtually without interruption until the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948. Had the allies not intervened in World War 11, Hitler would have succeeded in exterminating God’s chosen people. I find it hard to understand how any Jew or Christian can accept the central premise of the Jewish scriptures that God acts in history.

Let me conclude this blog with a story that illustrates the belief of many Christians that God continues to act in history. Ten years ago my wife and I were driving from Colorado to our home in the mountains of North Carolina. At a gasoline stop in rural Tennessee, I picked up a local newspaper. It contained an amazing story. A week prior to our arriving, a tornado had ripped through a nearby town in the middle of the night. A young couple awoke the next morning after the tornado and could not find their two year old son. The section of their trailer where their son slept had been destroyed by the tornado. After a two hour search of the surrounding area, they found their son in his bassinette lodged in the branches of a tree virtually unharmed. The minister of their church proclaimed on the following Sunday that a miracle had taken place, that God had entered history to save that two year old boy. In proclaiming this miracle, the minister forgot to mention that the tornado killed five people in the town. Do you want to believe in a God that picks and chooses in that way?

Christians maintain their belief that God acts in history by crediting God with all the good that happens and finding another explanation for the bad things that happen. The claims of God acting in history in the Jewish and Christian scriptures are deeply flawed. The failure of the expectation of God to intervene to save Christian saints described in the Book of Revelation lends further credence to this point of view.

The Nature of Divine Revelation

Many Christians believe that the Book of Revelation speaks to them today, that the revelations received by the prophet John are a blueprint for their future. The most important reason for this belief is the claim that these revelations came to John from God through Jesus Christ (Revelation 1: 1-2). These revelations are seen as the word of God (1:2) which is viewed as eternally valid and communicated perfectly to God’s special representatives.

In The Case Against Evangelical Christianity, I examine the question of the nature of divine revelation at length. There is no evidence in history that such a word of God exists. Consider a few problems from the Judeo-Christian tradition. Millions of Christians believe that God spoke directly to Moses when giving him the Ten Commandments. Read chapter 34 in Exodus. If you do, you will learn that God in fact gave Moses two separate and different sets of Ten Commandments. The question is: which set represents the word of God?

The classical prophets—Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel—were commissioned by God to speak his word. In my book, I list the predictions they make when speaking God’s word, and then compare these predictions with known historical events. The prophets were correct in their predictions less than ten percent of the time. Something must have happened in their receiving that word from God. The word of God was somehow lost.

The same problems exist in the New Testament. Most Christians believe that Jesus spoke for God, that he was in fact the incarnation of God. The central theme of Jesus’ preaching was the coming of the kingdom of God. As I pointed out in several blogs on the Synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew, and Luke), Jesus announces that the kingdom is imminent, that God will intervene to bring in the kingdom within the lifetimes of his listeners. Paul makes the same assertion. How does one explain the two thousand year delay? Was God really speaking through Jesus in announcing the imminent coming of his kingdom? Does Paul speak the word of God when he makes the same mistake?

Sadly, many claims to speak with divine authority have had profoundly negative consequences. As I pointed out in my blog entitled “The Jewish Conflict in John,” the gospel of John blames “the Jews” for the death of Jesus. This is not historically accurate. The Romans crucified Jesus. This false claim, a claim that many Christians believe to be the word of God, has resulted in two thousand years of anti-Semitism. The apostle Paul is well known for his attacks against homosexuality, and his views about the secondary status of women in the church. When viewed as the word of God, these views of Paul have had negative consequences that continue to influence the policies of some churches. Did God speak to Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, and grant him the right to have several wives? Does God speak to Osama bin Laden?

Confusion over the nature of divine revelation has turned religion into a source of human problems rather than a solution. Revelation is about an encounter of love—period. It has no content. There is no such thing as “the word of God.” The word of God expressed in the Book of Revelation indicates that the events prophesized would take place soon, within the first century (1: 1-3, 22: 11, and 22: 16-21). The fact that these events have yet to take place as predicted lends further evidence to the idea that there is no such thing as the word of God.

The Book of Revelation

The Book of Revelation is written by a man named John, a Christian prophet, who lived at the end of the first century. The consensus estimate for the time of writing is 95 C.E. The name John has led some to connect the work with the Fourth Gospel, but it is highly unlikely that the authors are the same. The Revelation of John is a book about the end of history, about an apocalypse that was imminent, about a utopian kingdom that would follow on the earth for the elect and would last for 1,000 years. The ideas relating to the kingdom of God are very different in the gospel of John.

The prophet John encounters Jesus in heaven, one like a Son of Man (1:14), where he receives his initial revelation from God. This revelation pertains to seven churches in Asia Minor. Christ dictates letters to each church. These letters discuss the problems facing each church, and the courses of action each church should take to resolve the problems (see chapters 2 and 3). Christ praises church members who have been good, suggesting that their reward will be great. In contrast, he castigates those who continue to sin and warns them that their fate will be dire. The thinking behind this section sounds quite different from Paul’s doctrine of salvation by faith in Jesus Christ.

The revelations become more intense in chapter 4. The prophet is taken up through a window in the sky to heaven and the throne of God. Around the throne, he sees many fascinating things, the most important of which is a scroll with seven seals. Jesus breaks the seal of each scroll which unleashes a specific catastrophe upon the earth—war, famine, pestilence, etc. With the sixth seal, a violent earthquake takes place, the sun goes black, and the stars fall on the earth. That should finish things, but the seventh seal unleashes a whole host of new disasters.

The end finally comes when evil becomes centralized in “the beast” (13:1). In the final battle, Christ comes with his heavenly armies to defeat the beast and destroy Babylon (chapters 15-19). The enemies of God are crushed, Satan is imprisoned, and Christ and his saints establish a utopia on earth which lasts for 1,000 years (20: 1-6). Following the 1,000 year kingdom, the final judgment comes when all people are raised from the dead and rewarded according to their deeds. People who have the misfortune of siding with Satan are thrown into a burning lake (20: 7-15).

In this final revelation, the prophet has a vision of a new heaven and a new earth (chapters 21 and 22). In this vision, Christ comes down from heaven to establish a new Jerusalem where he will reign eternally in a kingdom for the saints, those who have performed good deeds, a group numbering 144,000. At the end of the book, the prophet asserts that his vision is true and will be fulfilled very soon (22: 10 and 22: 16-21).

The prophet’s revelations contain many strange figures and bizarre images. At times his visions tumble out into each other and lead to nonsense. As I pointed out above, when the sixth seal is broken, the sun and moon are destroyed and the stars fall into the earth. This obviously would be the end of the earth, including the 144,000 saints, but that does not end the wrath of God. Even worse disasters ensue with the opening of the seventh seal. The prophet uses numbers to give his predictions an authentic ring. The number seven symbolizes perfection. The number six symbolizes the fall from perfection. The beast is numbered 666.

Many contemporary Christians think that the Book of Revelation is written for today. They take the symbols and numerology and interpret them to explain conditions in the twenty-first century. This is both amazing and stupid. It shows that when reading the Bible they pay little attention to what the Bible actually says and focus instead on reinterpreting scripture to say what they want it to say.

What does the Book of Revelation say? To begin with, the prophet makes clear both in the beginning of the book (1:1) and at the end (22: 10 and 22: 16-21) that these events will take place very soon. The vast majority of scholars who have studied the book argue that the symbols and numerology point to the first century. If you spell out Nero in Hebrew and add up the letters, you arrive at the number of 666. Nero, of course, was the Roman emperor in the first century who was persecuting Christians. The symbol of Babylon clearly refers to Rome. When Christians come to my door to save me, I tell them not to waste their time because there is no room in heaven for me. Salvation is reserved for an elect of 144,000, and I am sure that all the space has been taken up. I express the hope that they are included within that number. My guests either don’t know what I am talking about or reinterpret the number.

The place of heaven and the idea that they are saved are firmly held beliefs for many Christians with deep psychological roots. These conditions create an ideological screen for reading the Bible which makes it very difficult for them to focus on what the Bible actually says. While I am not at all sure about what happens to humans after we die, I am quite confident that events will not unfold as they are pictured in the Book of Revelation.

The Book of Revelation raises two issues that interest me: does God in fact speak directly to human beings and does She control history? Those are the topics of the next two blogs.

The Epistles of John

1,2, and 3 John are three letters most probably written by the same author from the same Christian community that produced the gospel of John. The three letters address a problem within a local church community. 2 John is a one page letter from a Christian leader to the local church that is experiencing the problem. It seems to function as a cover letter for 1 John. 3 John is another one page letter from the same church leader to a member of the community in trouble named Gaius. The letter is written to lend support to Gaius during these troubled times.

The letter we will focus on is 1 John, which though labeled a letter is much more like a sermon written to persuade the members of the troubled community to keep the faith. Although the author of the three letters is most probably the same person, most scholars do not believe that the author of the epistles wrote the Fourth Gospel. The letters seem to come from the same church community that produced the gospel, but at a later time. The problem addressed in the letters is the docetist heresy, the idea that Jesus was God and not also fully human. The references in the epistles to an established church leadership suggest a later date for the epistles toward the end of the first century.

Many of the themes in the letters are similar to the gospel of John. Jesus is portrayed as the preexistent son of God (1 John 2: 14). He is the atoning sacrifice that defeats the power of sin (1 John 4: 10). A sharp contrast is drawn between the world of light and the world of darkness (1 John 2: 9-11). One must reject the world, and live instead in the love of Christ (1 John 2: 15-17). Finally, mutual love is the essence of Christianity (1 John 3: 11). There are only two commandments: to believe in the name of Jesus Christ, and to love one another (1 John 3: 23-24).

The one key difference between the letters and the Fourth Gospel is eschatology. As I pointed out in discussing the gospel of John, a realized eschatology exists in the gospel side by side with an apocalyptic eschatology. A realized eschatology posits that the kingdom of God has arrived in the teachings and acts of Jesus, and that this kingdom is essentially a matter of a renewed heart. The kingdom is within. In the letters a more traditional approach to eschatology is advanced involving judgment and the return of Jesus from heaven. These events are seen as imminent (1 John 2: 18).

As I indicated above, the problem the letters address is the heresy of docetism (1 John 4: 1-3 and 2 John 1: 7). Docetism denies the human Jesus. These believers see Jesus only as divine, as God walking on the earth. Jesus only appeared to be human. 1 John makes clear that Jesus was fully human as well as divine. He was seen, heard, touched, looked at (1: 1-2). He came in the flesh (2 John 1: 7). His real blood is what brings salvation (1 John 1: 7). This heresy led to a split within the community with the docetists leaving the church (1 John 2: 19).

As so often happens in disputes of this nature, it became personal. The dissenters are accused of not practicing the commandments of God (1 John 2:4). They fail to love their brothers and sisters in the community (1 John 2: 9-11 and 4: 20). An us versus them mentality is created in which members of the community are to have nothing to do with the dissenters who are viewed as traitors to the faith ( 2 John 1: 10-11).

The Epistles of John represent what is best about the Christian faith, and also one of its real problems. The essence of religion is love (1 John 3: 11), a love that must go beyond mere words and talk. It must be real and active (1 John 3: 18). That’s all that matters. The problem is that, although mutual love defines the essence of the Christian community, that love does not extend beyond the community. You love those who share your values. That’s easy love; and sadly, because it is confined, it has not been able to heal the problems of the larger society.

Jude and 2 Peter

The letter of Jude is less than two pages in length, and has little to offer. The author of the letter claims to be Jude, the brother of James, the leader of the Jerusalem church, and by implication a brother of Jesus. This family connection is doubtful. Jude, the brother of Jesus, was a Galilean peasant who spoke Aramaic. This letter was written in Greek with no claim to have been dictated. There is also no evidence that Jude ever left Palestine. In addition, the letter defines religion in terms of correct belief, a characteristic of the late first and early second century, rather than in Paul’s terms as faith in the power released by the death and resurrection of Jesus.

As a result, the letter is almost certainly pseudonymous. It also has little to offer modern Christians. The letter is a polemic against false teachers, and is filled with nasty name calling and vitriolic. It’s amazing that it was included in the canon.

2 Peter has similar problems. The vast majority of scholars agree that this letter was not written by Peter, the disciple of Jesus, despite the claim of the author that this was so (1:1). The author further claims to have been with Jesus at the Transfiguration (1: 16-18), and asserts that this was his second letter to the faithful (3:1). Several arguments are presented to deny these claims. The letter is in Greek, and Peter was an illiterate peasant. There is no suggestion that the letter was dictated. In addition, much of chapter 2 is taken directly from Jude. Why would an eye witness copy material in this way? The author, like Jude, defines the Christian faith as a set of beliefs, rather than trust in the power of God (Paul). Finally, there is no reference to the letter until 220 C.E., and it was not widely circulated until the end of the third century.

Like Jude, much of the letter is a polemic against false belief. It does contain one interesting section, however (see 3: 1-15). Apparently there were some members of the Christian community who began to harbor doubts about the impending Judgment and the return of Jesus. They even went so far as to deny that God was in control of history. The author of 2 Peter responds forcefully to these heretical beliefs. He argues that God both controls history and the Judgment is coming, but that God’s time is not like our time. With God, one day can be a thousand years, and a thousand years can seem like one day (3:8). Be patient, the delay has been ordered by God to allow the maximum number of people to come to Christ, and by implication this resolution to history will come within their lifetimes.

I have argued in several places in these blogs that Christians believed that the kingdom was coming in the first century, that most believers in Jesus thought that it would come within their lifetimes. I have also argued that there was no dissent, that this was the near unanimous view presented in the New Testament. I still stand by that position. Although 2 Peter provides evidence to the contrary, this letter does not belong in the canon. It is a forgery. The author obviously lies about his presence at the transfiguration, and by doing so destroys his credibility. As with Jude, I am amazed that 2 Peter was allowed to become a part of the canon.

1 Peter

1 Peter is a general letter addressed to a wide group of churches. Although the author claims to be a disciple of Jesus, there are reasons to doubt this claim. We know that Peter, the disciple, was illiterate (Acts 4: 13), and that his native language was Aramaic. The letter under his name is written in highly literate Greek with the author using the Septuagint when making reference to Jewish scriptures. The letter also assumes a level of church organization (5:11) that probably did not exist until after the death of the disciple Peter.

On the other hand, the letter claims to be dictated by Peter to Silvanus (5: 12). One thing we do know is that the letter was most likely written in Rome (5:13), and Peter was reported to have been there. As a result, it is possible that Peter was the author, but it could also have been written by one of his disciples there or by an admirer. Though I am not fully convinced one way or the other, I lean toward pseudonymity because the letter does not have the ring of a Palestinian peasant. There is also no attempt to suggest that the author was with Jesus when.

With the question of authorship set aside, it is apparent that the letter states several well known Christian positions. Jesus’ death on the cross is seen as a once and for all atoning sacrifice for the defeat of sin (1:18 and 3: 18-19). Jesus is also proclaimed to be God’s preexistent son whom God raises from the dead (1:20-21). Salvation is defined as a future hope which is attained through faith (1:3-6). The letter also contains a great deal of practical advice for ethical living and for dealing with specific problems of concern to the addressed communities.

One important reason for the letter is that Christians are being persecuted. In a spirit that reminds me of Mohandas Gandhi, Christians are urged to respond to persecution with reverence and gentleness (3: 15-16). The goal of such a strategy is to shame your enemies into changing their behavior (3: 17). The author also reassures his readers that there will be an end to their suffering. Salvation is coming soon (4: 7) for those who remain faithful to Jesus Christ (4: 17 and 5: 10).

One final note of interest is the question of worldview. Jesus dies in his body, and is raised to life as spirit. In spirit form, he descends into hell, a place beneath the surface of the earth, to preach to those in prison there (3: 18-19). Why? Because judgment comes to all humanity—both those who are dead and those who are alive. It is important that the dead receive the good news of the gospel so that they too might be saved ( 4: 5-6). This scenario presents an interesting picture. The earth is seen as a flat surface. Heaven is a place where God lives above the earth, hell is a place below the earth’s surface where the dead are held in chains. I have asked several committed Christians how such an arrangement works. They don’t want to answer the question. They just want to believe it.

The Letter of James

The letter of James contains a powerful moral exhortation directed toward the early church. The author is James, but who is that? There were many James’ living in the late first century. Christian tradition claims that this James was the brother of Jesus, and the first leader of the Jerusalem church. Most scholars dispute that claim, arguing instead that the author was either a disciple of James or an admirer of him. To support this position, these scholars argue that the letter is written in Greek. While there are many references to the Jewish scriptures in the letter, these references come from the Greek translation, the Septuagint, of these scriptures and not the Hebrew translation. It is very unlikely that the brother of Jesus could read or write Greek. Finally, the level of church organization implied within the letter suggests a dating for the letter toward the end of the first century. James, the brother of Jesus, was stoned in the early 60s.

Though referred to as a letter, this work is more like a sermon. It reflects the piety of the early Jewish-Christian community living in Palestine. The author defines the essence of religion in terms of the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself (2: 8-9). The central thrust of the letter is to urge those with faith to demonstrate it by the way they live (1:22-25). You must express your faith in action by controlling your speech (3: 1-12), helping the poor and oppressed (1: 27), treating people from different classes equally (2: 1-4), being merciful (2: 12-13) and living as a peacemaker (3: 18).

Martin Luther hated this letter because he saw it as conflicting with Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith. The key offending passage reads: “Faith is like that: if good works do not go with it, it is quite dead (2:17).” A person is justified by doing something good, not only by what he believes (2: 24-25). Some scholars disagree that there is a fundamental difference between Paul and the author of James on this issue. They point out that Paul and James are not talking about the same thing. For Paul, the central issue is salvation. One is saved by faith in the power of Jesus’ death and resurrection. The central issue for James is the difference between talk and action. You cannot be a Christian without acting as one. Paul, these scholars note, would agree.

While there is some truth to this position, I think that the weight of evidence supports Luther. To begin with, the author of James seems to deliberately attack Paul when he says that: “Abraham our father was justified by his deed, because he offered his son on the altar (2:22).” Paul clearly makes the point in Romans that Abraham was justified by his faith (4: 1-17). In addition, the author of James seems to suggest that humans can act morally (3: 13-14, 4: 7-8, and 4: 17). He also urges his listeners to keep the Law (4: 11). For James, the whole point about religion is ethics. Much of what he says in his letter reminds me of the Sermon on the Mount. As I pointed out in an earlier blog, Jesus and Paul differ on the issue of justification. I come down on the side of Jesus and the author of James.

The Letter to the Hebrews

The Letter to the Hebrews is a writing of beauty and power. Because the author doesn’t name himself, he remains unknown. Early Christian tradition attributed the letter to Paul, but that is highly unlikely because of the many differences between Hebrews and the Pauline letters. These differences include both writing style and theology. Among the many differences in theological emphasis, an interesting one concerns the role of faith as the way to salvation. For Paul, faith related to trust in the power of Jesus’ death and resurrection to save. For the author of Hebrews, faith refers to confidence that God’s promises will be fulfilled (11: 1-40).

Although billed as a letter, this New Testament document reads more like a theological sermon. The target audience was probably a church within the Jewish-Christian community sometime toward the end of the first century. The theme of the sermon is clear: Jesus Christ replaces Judaism. The religion brought into the world by the death and resurrection of Christ is superior in every way.

The word of God is eternal and unchanging. Throughout history, God has chosen specific individuals through which to communicate his word. At one point, God chose the prophets. Now he speaks through his own son. The revelation brought into the world by Christ is superior to that of the prophets (1: 1-3). Christ also brings to the world the new and perfect covenant promised by the prophets (8:6-13).

Likewise, Christ is superior to Moses and Joshua. While Moses brought the Law to Israel, Christ brings salvation (3: 1-6). With regard to Joshua, he brought peace to Israel for a time while Christ brings perfect and everlasting peace (4: 1-11).

Jesus also replaces the Jewish priesthood. Sadly, the Levitical priests were unable to make people right with God. Their repeated sacrifices could not defeat the vicious cycle of sin (4: 14-5: 10). Jesus makes an atoning sacrifice for all time and for all people. Because of his act of obedience on the cross, sin is defeated once and for all, and humans are made right with God (10: 1-18). I often wonder how much has changed. There doesn’t seem to be much evidence that the power of sin has been broken for Christian believers.

Finally, Jesus is the new High Priest, the ruler of the faith. He is the supreme High Priest, the High Priest in heaven (4: 14). The Jewish High Priest who presided over the Temple was unable to bring the people of Israel to perfection. Only Christ has the power to do that (9: 1-28). When, I wonder? Maybe in heaven at some time in the future because things haven’t changed much around here.

The sermon also contains several exhortations to the congregation. People will only attain the salvation promised by God if they remain faithful to the church. Those who reject the faith will be judged and consumed by fire when Jesus returns to reward the faithful with salvation (10: 29-30).

Many scholars have pointed out the influence of Plato on the author of Hebrews. There is a sharp distinction made between the phenomenal world of sin and corruption and the spiritual world which is pure and eternal. Law and Judaism only reflect a shadow of the spiritual world. What is truly real is only found in Christ (10: 1-2).

The Pastoral Letters

The Pastoral Letters include First and Second Timothy, and Titus. Although the claim is made that all three letters were written by Paul, the vast majority of scholars believe them to be pseudonymous (written by someone other than Paul). The letters assume an established church, not the missionary movement which was the work of Paul. In addition, religion is about correct belief. One is saved by belief in doctrine, not by faith in the experience of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

I myself wonder why these letters are part of the Christian canon. It is one thing to name a work after a well known figure to support the ideas of that figure. That was a common practice in the ancient world. These letters go well beyond that. In each case, a deliberate attempt is made to trick the reader into thinking that the letter is from Paul. The author of First Timothy has Paul recall events in his early life (1: 13) while the author of Second Timothy invents what sounds like a farewell speech by Paul (4: 6-8). For me, such deception represents fraud.

All this wouldn’t make much difference except that some controversial ideas are found in these letters. First Timothy was written toward the end of the first century after Paul had died. The historical Timothy was a traveling companion of Paul. We know that the letter was not written by Paul because of the attention to church officers—Bishops, Deacons, and Elders—which did not come until after Paul’s time (3: 1-13). The letter contains a rather nasty polemic against false teachers (1: 3-7). More troubling are some well known teachings about the role of women in the church (2: 8-15). Women are not allowed to teach, or to have authority over men, and will be saved by childbearing. These unfortunate second century views continue to determine policy in some churches today.

The author of Second Timothy congratulates Timothy on being a third generation Christian—his grandmother and mother preceded him (1:5). Obviously this Timothy was not the traveling companion of Paul, and the apostle was not the author of this letter. As I indicated above, this letter contains the famous farewell speech of Paul. “I have fought the good fight to the end. I have run the race to the finish (4:6-8).” The letter is also directed against false teachers (2: 14-26) with an emphasis on correct belief. The one idea of interest to me is the author’s claim that all scripture is the inspired word of God (3:6). People will obviously differ as to the precise meaning of inspired. As I have suggested throughout this blog, the books of the New Testament are very human creations. The deliberate use of deception by the author of Second Timothy helps to make this point.

The historical Titus was a Gentile who Paul converted to Christianity. Paul brought him to the famous meeting in Jerusalem where questions concerning the conditions under which Gentiles would be admitted to the faith were decided. The Titus of this letter is not the one who traveled with Paul to Jerusalem. Again, the letter deals with matters of interest to an established church, rather than the household churches founded by Paul as part of his missionary movement (1: 5-9). The letter contains a vicious attack against false teachers (1: 10-16), and an emphasis on sound doctrine as the path to salvation. Beyond that, the letter offers little else of interest.

I recommend that Church leaders meet together as a Council, and vote these three letters out of the canon. Please read them yourself. You may have a different opinion.

Ephesians

The letter to the Ephesians is not addressed to a specific church, but is written as a circular letter, a letter to be read in several churches. Many of the central ideas are very Pauline. Christians are reconciled to God by Jesus’ death on the cross (1: 7 and 5: 1-3). Salvation comes as a gift. It is not accomplished through obedience to religious law. Rather it results from belief in Jesus Christ (2: 7-10). Finally, ethical living flows from a spiritual revolution that takes place in the human heart. Christians become a new creation (4: 22-24). The letter contains a major focus on the type of living that results from this new self (4: 25-5:20).

Despite these similar themes, it is highly unlikely that the letter was written by Paul. To begin with, the writing style and vocabulary are very different from the language usage in the authentic letters. In Ephesians, the sentences are longer and far more complex than what is found in the authentic letters. Different expressions are also used in Ephesians. Saved by faith replaces justified through faith in the authentic letters. The church is also referred to in the singular. All churches are seen as one with Christ as the head (1:23). In the authentic letters, Paul did not write about a universal church, but several churches. When speaking of the church, Paul always used the plural.

There are also subtle differences in the ideas expressed. The conflict between Jews and Gentiles seems to be healed which suggests a later date for the letter after Paul’s death (2: 11-18). The view of marriage is greatly changed. Love between husbands and wives is described as a thing of beauty. The marriage between a man and a woman is compared to the relationship between Christ and the Church (5: 21-33). This exalted view contrasts quite sharply with Paul’s attitude in 1 Corinthians where he counsels couples not to get married unless they are unable to contain their sexual passion. Finally, Ephesians contains hints of a realized eschatology in which Christians participate in Christ’s resurrection now (2:4-6). This contrasts sharply with Paul’s view in the authentic letters that Christians are saved only in the future when Christ returns to meet them in the air.

Ephesians contains a wonderful vision of the Christian church (4: 1-16). It is the place where people are reconciled to God through mutual love. It is also the place where a realized eschatology is achieved. The mutual love practiced among the members is what defeats the forces of evil. Finally, the church is the body of Christ where members use their individual gifts to build up their brothers in Christ rather than to seek their own self aggrandizement.

The letter to the Ephesians claims to be written by Paul. It has a similar organizational scheme as the authentic letters with a greeting in the beginning, the main body of the letter, and comments of a personal nature at the end. Despite these similarities, the many differences from the authentic letters noted above, suggest that the author is probably a member of Paul’s school and not the apostle himself.

Colossians

Colossians is a tough call for me. Although a growing number of scholars believe that the letter is not authentic to Paul, I am not sure.

The central issue that the letter addresses is the development of mystical views within the church. There seems to be a group of people who worship angels and are deluded with visionary experiences (2: 18-19). The author of the letter points out that this love of higher experience is really a form of self-centeredness. It is based on human achievement, and has nothing to do with the unity of Christ which comes as a gift from God. This argument could certainly have come from Paul.

Within the letter, there is so much that sounds like Paul. Christians are reconciled to God by the death of Christ on the cross (1: 22). Christ overrides the Law (2: 14). Rules no longer play a role in religious life (2: 20-23). With regard to circumcision, one is circumcised not by a human hand, but the whole body is stripped of flesh through a relationship with Christ. (2: 11-12) Good behavior flows from a recreated self (3:10). Finally, church meetings take place in a house (4: 16). There is no hint of an established church organization which came after Paul, and is an important factor in declaring other letters to be not authentic.

Scholars who suggest that the letter was not written by Paul point out that the vocabulary and sentence structure are different from the original letters. They also suggest that there are hints of a realized eschatology, the idea that the kingdom has already arrived in some form. The author claims that Christian believers have both died and been raised with Christ (2: 12-13). In the authentic letters, Paul insists that Christians are not raised to heaven until the second coming of Christ.

Another hint that the author may not be Paul comes in 3:11. The author states the famous Pauline formula that all are one in Christ—Jew/Gentile, slave/free—but omits male/female. This omission may point to a different author or may be nothing more than an omission. When all the evidence is taken together, I think it is safe to conclude that the letter was written by Paul or by a close disciple shortly after Paul’s death.

2 Thessalonians

In the ancient world, the designation of author did not always have a precise meaning. There are three possible relationships between the writer and the work written. The first possibility is that the writer is the author of the ideas expressed. Paul wrote Romans. The second possibility is that the writer comes from the author’s school. In this case, the writer may attribute the name of the school’s founder to the work to enhance its credibility. The author or school’s founder, however, remains the authority behind the work. The work contains the ideas of the school’s founder. The third possibility is deception or outright fraud. In this last case, the writer attributes the work to a famous person to enhance the writer’s ideas not the ideas of the famous person whose name is attributed to the work.

In the next three blogs, I will examine Second Thessalonians, Colossians, and Ephesians. These letters are attributed to Paul, and fit either category one or category two as described above. Following these three letters, we will look at the Pastoral Letters—First and Second Timothy and Titus. These last three letters are fraudulent. They fit into category three.

Scholars are evenly divided as to whether 2 Thessalonians was written by Paul. On the one hand, the author claims to be Paul. “Surely you remember me telling you about this when I was with you” (2:5). The author further states that the letter was hand written by Paul (3:8). The basic message is also Pauline: Jesus is coming for those who suffer and believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Those who do not acknowledge God and refuse to accept the good news of the gospel will burn (1:7-8).

The letter addresses a specific problem. There were some members in the congregation who were so convinced that the end was here that they had stopped working (3:6-15). The author’s message was that though the end was coming soon, it may not be right away, and that those who had stopped working should return to work.

The issue regarding authorship centers around the subtle shift in eschatological expectation. In Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, he urges the congregation to remain on the alert because Jesus will return without warning like a thief in the night. This message is consistent with the theological views presented in the other authentic letters. In 2 Thessalonians, the author says that there will be plenty of warning. Jesus will return only after the Rebel, the antichrist, has established his throne in the temple of Jerusalem, and declared himself to be God (2:4-5). There is no mention of an antichrist in the authentic letters.

Paul is either writing toward the end of his ministry and responding to a different type of problem (the refusal of some to work) or a disciple of Paul’s school is using Paul’s name in order to provide greater credibility to the message in the letter. Because the message of the letter is in the main Pauline, we can rule out fraud as described in category three above.

I take the side of pseudonymity, that the letter was written by a disciple of Paul, because of the different approach to eschatology contained within the letter. The vast majority of conservative biblical scholars believe the letter to be authentic. Regardless of who is right, I don’t believe that this academic debate has much significance!

Final Thoughts on Paul

Paul is the founder of the Christian religion. Jesus inspired Christianity and was the life force behind it, but Paul developed the ideas and successfully sold those ideas to the world. Much of what he created is a thing of beauty. The religion of Paul is all about love and living love. There are some underlying assumptions to Paul’s ideas that I find troubling, however.

The first problem is with the idea of Jesus dying for our sins, the concept of the atonement. It is a silly idea. Jesus dies to pay the penalty for the sins of all of humanity. In creating this idea, Paul links the death of Jesus to the original sin of Adam. Because of one man’s sin, humans are alienated from God. Because of one man’s obedience, humans become reconciled with God. (Romans 5:12-21)

If that was God’s purpose for Jesus, why doesn’t Jesus talk about it? You would think that the atonement idea would be a central theme of the gospels, but it is not. The idea is not even mentioned in Mark, Matthew, or Luke.

In addition, the idea of atonement does not explain Jesus’ death. Jesus was crucified, a Roman punishment. The Romans would not have been concerned with a man who came to pay the penalty for human sin. The Romans cared a lot about a perceived threat to the established order. Judas most likely informed the authorities that Jesus was bent on establishing a new kingdom. It is because of this perceived threat that Jesus was crucified.

The Adam part of the equation is equally silly. First of all, Adam and Eve were not historical people. Secondly, Adam’s act of disobedience, as described by Paul, has cosmic significance. It is the act that brought sin into the world. Because of its significance, you would think that Adam’s act would be discussed throughout the Old Testament. It is not. In fact, the story of Adam and Eve is not mentioned again in the Jewish scriptures. Finally, as I pointed out in my book on Evangelical Christianity, the Adam and Eve story is not really about sin, but rather the idea that God and humans are essentially different.

Finally, the atonement theory says something rather silly about God. A God who requires human sacrifice as a condition for restoring the divine/human relationship seems rather petty to me.

The second problem I have with the religion of Paul is that it is based on the need for a profound experience of love. This experience is life changing. It makes the recipient into a new creation. The problem is that few people have such experiences.

There is evidence in the psychological literature that people under great stress may have such experiences. Paul is probably a good example of this type of person. The literature on near death experiences presents many cases of people who have had profound experiences of love that are life changing. If you add together the cases of people under great stress and people who have had near death experiences, you come up with a tiny fraction of the general population.

You also read about profound experiences of love in the mystical literature. Again, the experience is transforming. The problem is that mystics are like extreme athletes. Their experience of love comes after many years of engaging in spiritual practices. Some of these extreme athletes never get there. I, for one, have failed in these efforts.

There are many Christians who claim to have had such experiences. They have been “born again.” The problem is that there is little evidence that the experience they describe leads to inner transformation. They feel good about themselves, but they do not seem to behave in new ways. In my book on Evangelical Christianity, I cite statistical studies that support this conclusion. People who have had born again experiences do not behave differently on ethical matters from the general population.

So Paul’s religion, while genuine, is misleading and not very helpful. As I confessed in my blog dealing with the Sermon on the Mount, I prayed for years asking Christ to come into my life and to make me into a new creation. Nothing happened. Maybe God has hardened my heart.

Third, as I indicated in discussing the rapture (1 Thessalonians 4: 13-18), I do not understand how the final end of Paul’s religion works. To resummarize, at the trumpet of God, Jesus will come down from heaven. The elect who have died will rise first, and then those who are still alive will rise to join them. They will meet Jesus in the air. Where is this heaven? Where are the dead saints being stored? Most of them have been left in this storage facility for a long time. What happens to their bodies? Paul claims, again and again, that this final solution is imminent. Why has it been 2,000 years, and these events have yet to unfold?

Finally, despite Paul’s passionate arguments to the contrary, I find that the religion of Jesus works. As I argued in the blog dealing with the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus was a Jew. He believed that humans could save themselves by obeying religious law. The point of Jewish law is summarized in the commandment to love your neighbor. If you are honest about it, such love does not come easily. To succeed, I have had to learn to reduce the control of ego over my awareness. As this happens, I create space for divine love to enter. My awareness becomes filled with love which in turn allows me to love my neighbor. It’s hard work, but it is possible. The message of Jesus encourages me to persist. When I succeed, my life is filled with purpose and meaning. I find that this spiritual end of meaning and purpose makes more sense than the rapture.

The Social Teachings of Paul

Paul’s positions on social issues are well known and continue to have consequences within the Christian community. Some conservative churches refuse to ordain women as pastors because of passages like 1 Corinthians 14: 34-35, which claims that women should remain silent in church meetings. In addition, some Christians believe homosexuality to be a sin because of statements such as Romans 1: 26-27 which condemns homosexuality along with other “degrading sexual passions.”

These issues provide for interesting debate topics. I for one believe that Paul has been misunderstood with regard to the role of women within the church, that he in fact had a high regard for woman for a first century man. All are one in Christ. There are no distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female (Galatians 3: 28-29). There is also plenty of evidence in Paul’s letters that women played prominent roles in the churches he established. Finally, as I pointed out in my blog entitled “Mark’s Resurrection Story”, many textual scholars have argued that the anti-women statements in Paul were placed there by scribes and not part of his original letters.

But this is not the tact I want to take here. I do not want to debate these issues. The more important question for me is whether Paul speaks in his letters as a first century man or as an especially appointed apostle of God with the authority of God.

He claims the latter, to speak for God (1Corinthians 1:1 and Galatians 1: 13-15), which suggests that his teachings are not time bound and deserve special consideration for Christians living today. I am not convinced. If Paul speaks for God, how can he be so wrong about the most important part of his message which proclaims that the kingdom of God is imminent, that the events relating to the end of the world and the raising of Christians to heaven will take place within his lifetime? We are still waiting for these events to unfold.

Case closed. It is absolutely true that Paul wrote some of the most beautiful statements about love that have ever been written. It is also true that he was not a fan of democratic government (see Romans 13: 1-7). Why is this passage from Romans not considered to be “the word of God” among most American Christians?

The real point is that there is no such thing as “the word of God.” If you are interested in this topic, read my book on Evangelical Christianity. That is the central point of the book. There are so many historical misstatements in both the Old and New Testaments regarding “the word of God” that the idea that such a word exists is without meaning.

Paul’s teaching concerning women, homosexuality, and authoritarian government reflect the opinions of a first century human being. As a result, though some may find them to be interesting, they have no special authority for Christians living in the twenty-first century.

The Christian in the World

Christian Ethics for Paul is really a simple matter. If one is in Christ, that person becomes a new creation. The old person passes away, and a new one is born. This love from Christ leads to behavior changes (Romans 12: 2 and 2 Corinthians 15:18). Moral life is not the result of reason controlling passions or moral striving to obey religious rules, but the result of God’s transformation.

To love and to be loved is the essence of Christianity. Nothing is forbidden. By loving one’s neighbor, that person fulfills all the teachings of the law (Romans 13:10). This is a beautiful vision. The question we will examine in the concluding blog on Paul is whether this experience of love actually produces the changes that Paul suggests.

Paul’s vision of the Church is equally beautiful. The Church is the place where God’s love invades the world. It radiates love outward into the world. It is a community within the world and not separate from it. Paul encourages his followers to separate themselves from the values of the world, but not to withdraw from the world (1 Corinthians 5: 9-13).

Unfortunately, there were splits within some of the churches that Paul established (1 Corinthians 1: 10-16). He reminds his members in Corinth that the primary gift of the Holy Spirit is love. Members of the Christian community are urged to use that love to build up others within the community. Life in the Christian community is one of mutual service for the common good. (1 Corinthians 14: 26-27).

Finally, Paul teaches that the Church is one body unified in Christ. As a body, the Church has several parts. Members each have special gifts which they are to use for building up the community and not for their own aggrandizement. The individual member, like a body part, has no life on his own. An arm only has meaning if it is attached to a body. As a result, Church members should always use their gifts to work for the good of the whole community (Romans 2: 3-13 and 1 Corinthians 12: 21-30).

Paul's Encounter with the Resurrected Jesus

In a previous blog ( The Resurrection in Matthew), I described Paul’s encounter with the resurrected Jesus. To resummarize, Paul met the resurrected Jesus in a vision experience. He saw the glorified body of Jesus in heaven, not as a physical presence on earth. This encounter takes place on the Damascus Road where Paul is suddenly engulfed by a light from heaven. Jesus then speaks to him from heaven (Acts 9: 1-9). In Second Corinthians 12: 1-12, Paul makes clear that his experience of the resurrected Jesus came as a vision, and that his experience was the same as the experiences of the other disciples.

This encounter with Jesus in heaven was a profound and life changing experience for Paul. He came to believe that Jesus had died for him. The deep experience of love redefined how he saw the world. God had chosen him. His salvation was a gift. It had nothing to do with obedience to religious law. He was saved by the experience.

The experience led him to redefine religion. Salvation was no longer seen as the establishment of a kingdom of God for a renewed Israel. Instead, salvation was for individual believers in heaven. The specific path for achieving salvation is the subject of next week’s blog.

The death and resurrection of Jesus was a cosmic event. It marked the end of history as we know it. Jesus was seen by Paul as the first fruits of a general resurrection in which others chosen by God would soon follow (1 Corinthians 15: 19-20). Once the elect were taken to heaven, the world would be judged, punished, and the end of history would follow. Paul expected these events to unfold within his lifetime. He makes this point again and again, and again. See Romans 13:12, 1 Corinthians 7: 29-31 and 10:12, and 1 Thessalonians 5: 1-11.

The most vivid description of these events comes in 1 Thessalonians 4: 13-18. At the trumpet of God, Jesus will come down from heaven. The elect who have died will rise first, and then those still alive will be taken up in the clouds to meet Jesus in the air. Amazing! Where is heaven? It’s a place where Jesus lives in a transformed body—flesh and blood do not inherit the kingdom of God. I’m still looking for the place. I continue to wonder why the events that Paul expected to take place in the first century have yet to unfold. Finally, I am puzzled why Christians stubbornly cling to the idea of a physical resurrection when Paul, the first one to describe the event, so clearly believed it to be a vision experience.

The Religion of Paul

According to Paul, Jesus does two things for us. His first gift is to die on the cross. Paul received a powerful experience on the Damascus Road. Despite the fact that he had been persecuting Christians and may have had a role in Jesus’ death, God chose to save him. His experience reconciled him with God. Because of it, he came to believe that Jesus had died for him.

Paul takes his experience of the death of Jesus on the cross and gives it cosmic significance. In doing so, he invents the idea of the atonement. Sin, for a Jew, was a crime, and thus it must be paid for. Jesus dies to pay the penalty of sin for all of us (Romans 3:23-25).

In creating this doctrine, Paul links the death of Jesus to the original sin of Adam. Because of Adam’s sin, humans became alienated from God. Because of Jesus’ obedience on the cross, humans are reconciled (Romans 5: 12-21 and 1 Corinthians 15:23). Adam becomes the symbol of man’s rebellion against God. Jesus’ act of obedience on the cross becomes the symbol of self emptying love that leads to reconciliation with God.

The second gift that Jesus gives us is deep love. In addition to seeing sin as a crime that must be paid for, Paul views it as a moral disposition. Sin is a turning away from God, a disposition to see the world through self, through ego. It is life of the flesh, and it has power, a power that humans are unable to defeat on their own (Romans 7: 14-25). The deep love that Paul encounters on the Damascus Road is what saves him. He literally felt that he had been taken over by Jesus. It is no longer I that lives, but Christ that lives in me (Galatians 2:20).

Only God can make humans righteous. The death and resurrection of Jesus brings this deep experience of love into the world (11 Corinthians 5: 14-16). All that matters is the love experienced in Christ. This love recreates humans (Romans 6:5-7). Faith, by which humans are saved, is not belief in doctrine, but a response to this profound experience (Galatians 5:6).

The love unleashed on the world by the death and resurrection of Jesus is available to all on an equal basis. God has no favorites. All are one in Christ—Jew/Greek, male/female, slave/free (Galatians 3:28-29). Gentiles, Paul’s main concern, need only confess their love of the God of Israel, and accept Jesus as their savior. This acceptance releases God’s transforming love (1 Thessalonians 2: 13-14). It also rescues one from the wrath that is coming. The future for Christians is a glorious existence in heaven in a transformed body (1 Corinthians 15: 35-50).

As mentioned above, only God can heal the divine/human divide. Obedience to religious law cannot. Humans cannot save themselves by their own devices. Paul argues that religious law was given to Israel as a temporary custodian of righteousness until Christ came. It is fine as a guide for human behavior, but it has no power to recreate human life and thus defeat sin. Law provides the knowledge of human sin, but not the solution (Romans 3: 20 and 7: 7-13, Galatians 3:22). The only solution is the deep love experienced in Christ.

As I pointed out in my blog entitled “The Sermon on the Mount,” the religion of Paul and Jesus are different. Jesus has a much higher view of human nature. Humans have the ability to obey religious law. The kingdom of God is given to those who bear good fruit. Jesus urges his followers to obey religious law, to be perfect as God is perfect. The best summary of Jesus’ position on these issues comes in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:1-7: 29). The gospel of Matthew is consistent throughout in espousing this position.

Christians must choose whether to be followers of Jesus or followers of Paul. The vast majority have chosen to follow Paul. I think this is a mistake which I will address in my concluding blog on Paul.

Introduction to Paul

The Apostle Paul is the founder of Christianity. Jesus inspired Paul and his crucifixion produced the experience that changed Paul’s life; but the ideas that resulted from this experience, not the ideas of Jesus (see my blog entitled “The Sermon on the Mount”), are what most Christians affirm today.

Paul, the man, was riddled with contradictions. He was loving and very generous, and yet subject to violent mood swings. He was passionate about his mission to preach the gospel in the Gentile world, and intolerant toward those who opposed him, suggesting at one point that his opponents should castrate themselves (Galatians 5: 12).

We know little about his early life. Most scholars place his birth between 5 and 10 CE in Tarsus Syria, an important center of Hellenistic culture. From his letters we learn that he was a proud Jew from the tribe of Benjamin. He also claimed to be a Roman citizen, which suggests that he came from a prominent family.

As a Pharisee operating in Jerusalem, he admits to persecuting early Christians. We learn by his own admission that he played a role in the stoning of Stephen, and may have been involved in the crucifixion of Jesus.

This opposition to the early Christian movement all changed following his dramatic vision experience on the Damascus Road where he saw Jesus in heaven, and received his commission from Jesus to bring the gospel to the Gentile world. The experience took place around 33 CE, and he began his missionary work four years later.

Paul always insisted that he had been commissioned by God himself, and was not in any way dependent on the Jerusalem church. He also insisted that his gospel was the only true path to salvation. These strongly held views had consequences within the early Christian community because there was debate regarding how Gentiles would be admitted into the Christian community. Did they have to become Jews first and be circumcised? Did they have to live as Jews by worshipping in the Temple and obeying Jewish food laws?

Paul answered these questions with a resounding no. Circumcision or the obligation to live as a Jew have nothing to do with the new standards of relating to God set in motion by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Not all members of the Jerusalem community agreed with this position despite the best efforts of Acts to smooth over these differences.

Paul worked tireously as a missionary for thirty years before dying in Rome around 67 CE. On his last trip to Jerusalem to donate funds to the Jerusalem church for helping the poor, he was arrested, placed in prison, and eventually sent to Rome. There, tradition speculates, he was executed by Nero as a scapegoat for the fire that burned Rome.

During the course of his missionary work, Paul wrote letters of instructions to the churches he established. These letters are the source of his theology. The authentic letters include Romans, First and Second Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, First Thessalonians, and Philemon. There is virtually universal agreement among scholars that these letters were written by Paul.

The same near unanimous consensus exists among scholars for rejecting First and Second Timothy and Titus as coming from Paul. Serious scholarly debate concerning the authenticity of Second Thessalonians, Colossians, and Ephesians continues to exist among commentators on Paul.

The next five blogs will develop Paul’s theological ideas from his undisputed letters. Once this is completed, I will discuss the arguments for and against Paul as author for the disputed letters as well as the theological focus of each letter.

Acts: Odds and Ends

On Fulfilling Scripture (Acts 1:15-22) As part of the parallel structure that I discussed in introducing Acts, we discover that certain activities within the church fulfill scripture. In Luke, the actions of Jesus fulfilled scripture. In the case of Acts, Peter argues in his first speech (1:15-22) that the death of Judas was predicted by David in Psalms 69 and 109. If you will read these Psalms, you will see that there is no connection to Judas. The Psalms cited by Peter are not about a traitor, but rather, in each case, about a man who wants God to rescue him from his enemies.

The Last Disciple (Acts 1: 21-26) When Mattias is chosen to replace Judas as a disciple, that is the last we hear of twelve disciples. The notion of twelve disciples relates to the salvation of Israel as a nation where there were twelve tribes. Jesus suggests in Matthew (19: 28) that in a new Israel each disciple would sit as judge of one of the tribes. As the church rapidly moves into the Hellenistic world, the notion of salvation changes from a corporate Israel to the individual. With such a change, there was no longer need for twelve disciples.

The Christian Community (Acts 2:44-47 and 4: 32-37) These two passages describe the community established by Jesus’ early followers. This community was based on shared wealth, shared meals, and a radical equality between men and women. It was a community based on mutual love and caring. This was Jesus’ solution to the problem of Roman occupation. How do you survive these horrible times? By living in communities of mutual love and caring. In this way, it was possible to ignore the Romans and to wait for God to provide for liberation. It was a brilliant strategy!

Ideology v. Love (Acts 10: 28-37) As this passage indicates, the Jews taught that it was forbidden to mix with people from a different race. Peter introduces this idea to explain the significance of a vision he received from God in which God told him that all people are clean regardless of race. This passage provides a vivid contrast between religion as ideology and religion as love.

Curing the Sick (Acts 10:39) In an address Peter gives to a group of people in Cornelius, he describes for them an aspect of Jesus’ ministry in which Jesus went about doing good and curing all who had fallen into the power of the devil. You will note here the first century worldview regarding the nature of disease. Disease was caused by the invasion of the body of evil forces. People living then had no concept of the biological nature of human disease.

Leadership of the Christian Community (Acts 15:19) The Catholic Church and Christians generally have assumed that Peter was the first leader of the Christian community. The gospels imply this fact, and Jesus specifically designates Peter as leader of the church in Matthew 16: 13-20. I have often wondered about this issue. The gospels reflect the views of the Hellenistic church, the church established after 70 CE when Judaism was destroyed in Palestine and the Christian religion rapidly moved into the Hellenistic world.

The picture in Acts seems different to me, a picture of the church in Palestine before the horrible war with Rome from 66 to 73 CE. Here Peter appears as an ambassador to the Hellenistic world with James, the brother of Jesus, as leader of the first Christian community. Read about the Jerusalem Conference (Acts 15: 5-21) where the church decided the conditions under which Gentiles would be admitted into the fellowship. This was an important issue, all prominent members of the community were there. At that meeting, Peter made a speech, but James decided the issue (15:19). See also Acts 21: 1. When Paul travels to Jerusalem, it is reported that he goes “to visit James and all the elders were present.”

Paul’s Traveling Companion (Acts 16:11) Some New Testament scholars have argued that the author of Luke became Paul’s traveling companion toward the end of the apostle’s life. This idea comes from the intriguing insertion of we into the dialogue after chapter 15. “Sailing from Troas, we made a straight run for Samothrace (16:11).” I do not find this idea convincing because the views of Paul and the author of Luke are so different on so many issues. Take for example the resurrection. In last week’s blog, I pointed out that the author of Luke saw Jesus’ resurrection as a physical event while for Paul it was a vision experience. I wonder how such a difference could exist among traveling companions.

Conflicting Views of the Resurrection in Acts

In an earlier blog entitled “The Resurrection in Matthew,” I pointed out that the New Testament contains many conflicting stories concerning the resurrection of Jesus. Mark’s story is clearly an add on, not original to the author, and lacking in details. Matthew’s story is the most spectacular involving an eclipse of the sun, two earthquakes, the return to life of Jewish holy men in Jerusalem, and the physical return to life of Jesus on a mountain in Galilee. Although in Luke the resurrected Jesus often appears as a ghost as he flies through doors and walls, his appearance to the disciples in Jerusalem is very physical. In John, Jesus meets with his disciples in a closed room in Jerusalem, and then again in Galilee along the sea of Tiberias. It is clear from John’s account that Jesus is physically present. In Acts, Jesus is very physically present with his disciples in Jerusalem for forty days after his death on the cross (1: 3-5), and then the disciples watch while he physically ascends to heaven (1:9).

But Acts also contains the story of Paul’s encounter with Jesus on the Damascus road. See Acts 9:1-30, 22: 1-21, and 26: 9-20. This resurrection encounter was clearly a vision experience. While on the way to Damascus, a light came from heaven surrounding Paul, the soon to be apostle fell to the ground, and Jesus spoke to him from heaven, explaining to Paul that he had a special job for him to do. In Acts 26: 16-19, both Jesus and Paul confirm the fact that this encounter was a vision experience. In 1Corinthians 15: 3-8, Paul claims that his experience of the resurrected Jesus was the same as the experiences of the disciples.

What are modern Christians to do in sorting out all this confusion. This is an important question because the resurrection of Jesus is the foundation of the Christian faith. Let me answer that question by telling a story of my own.

I am married to a ski patroller. Eight years ago Lyn changed jobs requiring that we move our winter residence from Summit County Colorado to Leadville, a tiny town in central Colorado that sits at over 10,000 feet. The news of her new job came to us in North Carolina, requiring that we make our plans for housing over the internet.

Our new digs were different—tiny, dark, with furniture that belonged in a landfill. When our son came to visit, he pulled me aside and asked: “Dad, when did you and Mom take up smoking pot? This place reeks of it.” I explained that we hadn’t done so yet, but that it might help create a brighter glow to the place.

One morning I was working on a novel alone in the apartment, and I needed to consult a reference book that was stored in our bedroom. The bedroom was dark and without windows. As I entered the door, I saw my wife’s dresser, and the beautiful face of her mother jumped out at me.

Instantly the meaning of the resurrection became clear. Love does not die. I felt a pulsing of love for this wonderful woman who had died the year before. It was obvious that her love was an ever present reality for my wife. Her picture was the only item of beauty in the apartment.

That’s what happened two thousand years ago. Though he had died on a cross, the love between Jesus and his disciples continued as an ever present reality. His close followers encountered that love in dreams, vision experiences, and in retelling stories about their shared time together. Love is real. It is part of the created universe. You cannot kill or destroy it. Over the forty or fifty years it took for these love stories to find their way into gospels, the stories took on legendary characteristics and were crafted to reflect the Jewish belief in a soon to come general resurrection. The most damning evidence for the physical resurrection of Jesus comes in Acts 10: 41. Here the author comments that “God raised him to life and allowed him to be seen, not by the whole people, but only by certain witnesses God had chosen beforehand.” A God of love would not operate that way!

Introduction to Acts

When introducing the gospel of Luke, I pointed out that the gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles were almost certainly written by the same author around the time of 90 CE. Acts begins with the words, “In my earlier work.” Both works are dedicated to Theophilus, an unknown person, most probably a Roman official. There are striking similarities in grammatical style and the vocabulary used in the two works. There is also a logical progression to the two works. Luke presents the story of Jesus while Acts documents the activities of the early church.

Acts examines the history of the early church from the resurrection to the house arrest of Paul in Rome. The author describes the spread of the early Christian movement from its beginnings in Jerusalem outward into the Hellenistic world. The Holy Spirit comes to the followers of Jesus at Pentecost (2: 1-4) which guides their efforts as they preach the good news in Judea and Samaria and later to Paul for his work as a missionary in the Gentile world.

A central theme of Acts is the unity of the church in this effort. It is unified by the Holy Spirit. Yes, there are conflicts as is seen in the debate over whether Gentiles must be circumcised, but these conflicts are healed by the intervention of the Holy Spirit. At the Jerusalem Conference (15: 1-21), the issue of whether Gentiles must become Jews first in order to be saved is taken up. Following a spirited debate, James, the brother of Jesus and leader of the Jerusalem Christian community, rules that they do not. James’ decision heals the split within the community.

An important question regarding Acts is whether the author’s presentation is historical. It is certainly not history as we know it. There are three problems. First, the book contains several speeches—four long ones by Peter, Stephen, Paul, and James, and shorter ones by an array of characters. It is not possible that these speeches are accurately reported fifty or sixty years after taking place. Obviously they were not recorded, and there are no hints that the author was there.

Second, there is a parallel structure between the gospel of Luke and Acts which is troubling from an historical perspective. In Luke, Jesus heals the sick, casts out demons, and raises the dead. The apostles in Acts perform identical actions. At his trial as described in Acts (24:1-27), Paul stresses that he has done nothing against the Jewish people. After examining his testimony, the Roman authorities find him to be innocent. Paul’s problem is with the Jewish establishment. Sound familiar!

The last historical problem is the picture in Acts of Paul as a good Jew to the end. He accepts the main tenets of Judaism, his differences with the Jerusalem Christian community are played down. This picture of harmony contrasts sharply with Paul’s letters where the apostle to the Gentiles portrays himself as a Jew who has definitely moved to a new place. To cite but one example, in Galatians 2:21 Paul tells his Gentile followers that for them to obey Jewish law is an affront to God. The author of Acts clearly wants to demonstrate the work of the Holy Spirit in minimizing conflict within the Christian community. The question is whether this harmony accurately reflects the early history of the Christian movement.

One of the most important topics presented in Acts is Paul’s resurrection encounter of Jesus in heaven on the Damascus road. Paul describes it three times—Acts 9: 1-30, 22:1-21, and 26: 9-20. You might want to read these three passages in preparation for next week’s blog.

John: Odds and Ends

The Disciples Get It (John 1: 40-51 and 2:12). The disciples immediately recognize Jesus as the Messiah, which is so different from the picture given in the Synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke).

The Conversation With Nicodemus (John 3: 1-10). Nicodemus is attracted to Jesus, but he doesn’t understand what Jesus means when he says that a person must be born from above or born again to enter into the kingdom of God. Instead of putting his arms around him, admitting that this is a rather strange way of looking at things, and gently providing an explanation, Jesus lectures him and criticizes him for his failure to understand. Unless you think of Jesus as a self-righteous preacher throwing red meat at the choir, this is the work of an editor.

An Inclusive Movement (John 4: 1-42). Jesus the Jew tells the Samaritan woman all about her past, brings her to faith, and stays with the townspeople for two days. Jews hated Samaritans. This example offers evidence that Jesus led an inclusive movement. As I pointed out last week (“The Christian Community in John”), the author of the gospel has a different view. For John, the Christian community is an exclusive club.

The Cure of the Nobleman’s Son (John 4: 43-54). This is the story of the cure of the son of a royal official. Compare John’s version of the story with the versions presented in Matthew (8: 5-13) and Luke (7:1-10). The differences illustrate what happens to stories when they are subjected to an oral tradition. Note also that there is no attempt to hide the cure from the general public. Read the story of the cure of the man born blind (John 9: 1-41). Jesus cures him so that the works of God can be displayed in him (9:3). Miracles have a different purpose in John than they have in Mark. The point is to bring people to faith, to tell the world all about these glorious signs. In Mark, miracles come in response to faith, and their results are to be kept hidden. The work of two different editors!

The Death of Jesus (John 11: 45-54 and 19: 12-37). The reaction of the Pharisees to the raising of Lazarus is fascinating. They are worried that this remarkable feat will make him a hero, which will threaten Rome and lead to Rome attacking Israel. Caiaphas, the chief priest, speaks for all when he says, “better for one man to die for the people, than for the whole nation to be destroyed (11: 50-51).” This is the first expression in the gospels of the idea that Jesus died for others. John further develops this idea at the end of the gospel. Jesus dies at a different time than in the other gospels, in the afternoon of the Day of Preparation when all the lambs are killed. For John, Jesus is the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. After long reflection on the death of Jesus, the Christian community comes to see it as an atoning sacrifice.

The Passion Narrative (John chapters 18 and 19). John presents the same outline as Mark’s story, but there are some significant differences. There is no panic at Gethsemane or charge of blasphemy. Jesus voluntarily surrenders to the Temple guards who are reluctant to arrest him. There is also less emphasis on the miraculous as Jesus dies—no mention is made of an earthquake, eclipse of the sun, or the tearing of the Temple veil. The Roman centurion plays no role in the interpretation of Jesus’ death. His final words are “It is accomplished”, suggesting that God’s purpose has been achieved. Finally, his burial is the most spectacular in all the gospel accounts. He is buried in his own tomb, in a garden, with his body wrapped in spices and covered with expensive lotions. This is patterned after the burial of a king. These differences reflect the work of an editor who wants to place his own spin on these events.

The Christian Community in John

The Farewell Discourses in John (13:33 through Chapter 17) where Jesus gives final instructions to his disciples before his arrest and crucifixion are a Christian treasure. They are all about building a community on the foundation of mutual love.

Love is the only commandment (13:34-35, 15: 12-13). Followers of Jesus achieve union with God through mutual love between each other. This love nourishes the community as a vine nourishes its branches (Chapter 15). Ethics or good works flow from loving relationships.

Though Jesus must leave them, he promises to send an Advocate to teach and guide the community in his absence. The Advocate will come in the form of the Holy Spirit (14: 26). The Farewell Discourses provide a wonderful vision of a joyful, loving community led by the Holy Spirit. Religion is about mutual, indwelling love which flows from serving one’s neighbor.

And yet there’s a problem. The love commandment only applies to the community. The believer’s only duty is to the community. There is no larger responsibility to the world. The Christian community that inspired the writing of this gospel is deeply alienated from the world. The world and the church are in an antagonistic relationship with one another (see 14:19, 15: 18-19, 16: 8, and 17:9).

Christianity under such circumstances becomes an exclusive club. There is an us versus them mentality. The only way to know and relate to God is through Jesus (14:6). Love your fellow member, and the rest of the world be damned is the operational mode of such a community.

Many religious groups from a wide array of spiritual traditions take on such characteristics. It is one of the great problems with religion. It creates intolerance, a dangerous self-righteousness, and sparks violence between competing communities of faith.

We need to redefine John’s vision. Religious communities are uniquely designed to teach and promote mutual love. Membership in such communities creates joy, and provides meaning and purpose for life. But the point must always be to apply what you learn and gain from such a community to a larger arena. The goal must be to extend love beyond the immediate community to the world. In this way, religion becomes a tool for healing larger problems. It becomes an important solution to global problems rather than a primary cause of those problems.

The Jewish Conflict in John

There is real bitterness against Jews in the gospel of John. John mentions “the Jews” over seventy times in his gospel in disparaging ways, which is more than the other three gospels combined. The Jews represent all those who reject Jesus. They become a symbol for all that is evil in the world. There is intriguing evidence in John that the conflict between Jews and Christians had become so bitter that Jews were expelling Christians from the synagogue (9:22).

A good example of this problem comes in John’s account of the Passion Narrative. Read his story of Jesus before Pilate (18:28-19:16). In the story, we see a Pilate that believes Jesus to be innocent, and “the Jews” who want him crucified. I have already pointed out the historical problems with Mark’s account of the Passion Narrative (See the blog under that title.). The same problems apply to John’s story.

To briefly summarize these problems, it is extremely unlikely that Jesus was buried. Victims of crucifixion were left on the cross to be eaten by animals. It was part of the horror of the punishment. Second, trials were not held. The victim was arrested and placed on a cross. The hearing with Pilate in John is fiction. Finally, the Romans killed Jesus. Crucifixion was a Roman punishment. If the Jewish Sanhedrin had wanted to kill Jesus, he would have been stoned. As I explained in the blog relating to Mark’s account, Jesus was crucified by the Romans because he was seen as a political threat.

Despite this history, John places the blame squarely on the Jews. This distortion of history has had important historical consequences. Biblical literalism can present real problems.

James Carroll, in a fascinating book entitled Constantine’s Sword, points out the profound consequences of the anti-Semitism which originates in the gospel of John. He demonstrates how Christian thinkers from Marcion in the second century, to Ambrose, Augustine, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and Martin Luther developed theologies that were anti-Semitic and inspired by the gospel of John. These theologies created a climate of opinion which explains the First Crusade of 1096 which was directed against Jews, the Spanish Inquisition in the 15th century which led to the massacre of thousands of Jews, and the holocaust. The point Carroll makes is that Hitler killed the Jews, but the anti-Semitism that originates in John created a climate of opinion that made the holocaust possible. Read Carroll’s book. It is well researched and deeply disturbing.

The anti-Semitism of John also worked to change the religion of Jesus. This unfortunate consequence was aided by the Roman/Jewish War (66-73 CE) which killed 600,000 Jews. Those Jews that survived were exiled throughout the Hellenistic world. The result was that Jewish Christianity was destroyed. The Christian religion was then reconstituted in the Hellenistic world. This fact plus the anti-Semitism of the gospels, especially John, led to a divorce between the new Christian religion and its Jewish origins. The result was that individual salvation became the central focus rather than creating a relationship with God that centers around the practice of ethics and loving your neighbor. See my blog entitled “The Sermon on the Mount” which summarizes the interest of Jesus in the practice of ethics. This practice of ethics became a secondary concern for Hellenistic Christianity, and yet it is in doing this hard work that one finds God. Sadly, many Christians miss this point.

As the two examples above suggest, biblical illiteracy and scriptural literalism have important consequences. These consequences linger today. When Mel Gibson’s movie “The Passion of Christ” was released, an Evangelical church in Denver gleefully proclaimed “The Jews Killed Jesus” on its roadside sign. The Biblical Literacy Project is dedicated to fighting these problems.

John's Concept of the Kingdom of God

In the blog entitled “Mark’s Jesus and Jewish Eschatology,” I argued that three views of an eschatological future were swirling around Palestine at the time of Jesus. Let me review them for you. The first, labeled apocalyptic eschatology, called for the destruction of the world with the establishment of a kingdom in heaven. It was mean-spirited in that a favored group would be saved while the vast majority of us burned. The second approach, prophetic eschatology, argued for a new order for this world, a renewed Israel in which God’s anointed would rule as king. The third approach, realized eschatology, posited that the kingdom was here, that it had arrived in the teachings and acts of Jesus, and that it was essentially a kingdom of the heart—a kingdom within.

The clearest expression of realized eschatology in the New Testament comes in the gospel of John. The key story is the raising of Lazarus, a story found only in John (11:1-54). Lazarus was an old friend of Jesus. The sisters of Lazarus, Mary and Martha, send word to Jesus that their brother is gravely ill. Hearing the news, Jesus sets off for Judea to visit him. When he arrives, he finds that Lazarus has been dead for four days. In consoling Martha, Jesus tells her that her brother will rise again. Martha assumes that Jesus means that he will rise again at the general resurrection at the end of days (apocalyptic eschatology). In fact, Jesus means that he will rise now, and he does. “I am the resurrection. If anyone believes in me, even though he dies he will live, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” (11: 25-26) Eternal life is redefined in qualitative terms. It is about knowing and loving God. It is about living in a community defined by mutual love. See also John 4:36, 5: 24-25, and 12:46.

A new idea about judgment comes with this realized eschatology. In the well known story concerning the instruction of Nicodemus, the Pharisee (3: 1-21), Jesus spells it out. He explains that God did not send him into the world to judge it, but to save it. Those who refuse to believe in Jesus, judge themselves (3:17). Jesus is the light of the world. Those who see the light and live by it, participate in a new quality of existence—eternal life now. Those who prefer darkness to the light, judge themselves. See also John 7: 8 and 12: 47-48.

Though the main thrust of the gospel posits a realized eschatology, a softened idea of apocalyptic eschatology emerges from time to time. Jesus tells his disciples that he is returning to heaven and will come back for them at a later time. See John 13: 37, 14: 1-3, and 6: 40-44. There are also several references in the gospel to Jesus as the Son of Man (3:13, 5: 27-28, and 6:53-54). I say a softened apocalyptic eschatology because none of these references point to some horrible fate for those left behind. These references do, however, make clear that salvation will be for believers in heaven. As Jesus tells Pilate, he is not a king of this world (18:30).

It is possible that the author of John intends for these two concepts of the kingdom to exist together in a paradoxical relationship. It is also possible that the two contrasting views represent two distinct voices within the gospel. In this second scenario, the voice of realized eschatology comes from the author of John after many years of reflection on the meaning of Jesus’ life and death and the fact that the expected kingdom had not come. The voice of apocalyptic eschatology is added by the early church in an attempt to make John’s gospel more like the other three in this regard.

No matter, realized eschatology is an idea that makes sense for modern Christians. Who knows what happens when we die. It is life’s last great mystery. What is important is how one lives now in this life. Realized eschatology posits a kingdom that resides in the heart. You enter it when you know God and love your neighbor. It is found when one lives in a community defined by the mutual love described in the Farewell Discourses (John 13:33 through chapter 17). It is an approach to spiritual life that focuses on the here and now rather than the hereafter. It is a concept of the kingdom of God that Christians should more carefully consider.

God Becomes Flesh

In the beginning was the word. This is not about prophetic revelation—words from God spoken to a prophet. This is about the divine logos—a deep mystery, the creative power of the universe, the mind of God which creates order out of chaos, the grand pattern for the universe. In the Prologue of John (1:1-18), the author proclaims Jesus as this logos, the incarnation of this logos of God.

Matthew and Luke see Jesus as an Old Testament Messiah, the king born in Bethlehem. This is different. John pictures Jesus as pre-existent, as existing with God from eternity, as the creative force in the universe. Jesus is a divine being who comes from heaven and returns to heaven.

In John’s gospel, Jesus sees himself as God made flesh. “The Father and I are one (10:30).” He makes several “I am” statements, a symbol of the divine nature which comes from Exodus where God defines his nature as “I am” (Exodus 3:14). I am the bread of life (6:48), I am the light of the world (8:12), I am the good shepherd (10:11). Before Abraham was, I am (8:58). Note that Jesus does not say before Abraham was, I was. Instead he uses the divine designation of I am.

He also acts like God. In chapter 5, Jesus has a typical confrontation with the Jewish establishment, but the story is really about the relationship between the Father and the Son. The Son functions for his Father in the world. The establishment is mad at him because Jesus sees himself as God’s equal (5: 16-18).

The scenes describing his arrest, crucifixion, and resurrection are informative. Jesus explains to his followers exactly what will happen (chapter 14). He encourages his arrest, chooses to die, with the arresting authorities falling on their knees in acknowledgment of his divinity (18: 1-9). He controls his crucifixion (chapter 19). He carries his own cross, seemingly suffers little, and utters “it is accomplished” as his final words. When the soldiers come to break the legs of the three victims on crosses, they leave Jesus alone because the paschal lamb does not have broken bones ( Exodus 12: 46). At the resurrection (chapter 20 and 21), he appears to whom he wants, when he wants. In all of these events, Jesus is in control. He functions like God.

The gospel of John is a glorious statement of faith by an author writing for a Christian community in the Hellenistic world who believed that Jesus was the incarnation of God. It is not history. It does not have to be our statement of faith if the idea of God walking around on earth is troubling. Marcus Borg makes a strong case that the “I am” statements come from the early church. These statements come in long speeches made by Jesus. There is no way that these speeches were remembered. They were obviously invented by someone. I have already pointed out the historical problems with Mark’s version of the passion narrative. The same problems exist with John’s story which I will point out again in the blog two weeks hence on the Jewish conflict in John. We don’t have to accept the worldview of first century Hellenism where people routinely expected gods to roam the earth.

In a blog entitled “The Resurrection in Matthew,” I pointed out several problems with the resurrection stories. These problems apply to John’s story of the resurrection. I would like to add an additional problem. John’s Jesus appears to Mary of Magdala as a gardener, to the disciples in an upper room in Jerusalem, and then eight days later to Thomas and the other disciples in that same room (chapter 20). He makes his last appearance to the disciples on the Sea of Tiberias in Galilee (chapter 21). Why does Jesus only appear to Mary and the disciples? This picture of the resurrection makes the religion of Jesus into a small, select group. A God of love wouldn’t act that way. Such a God would insist that Jesus appear widely to the masses of the people. The religion of Jesus would be open to all.

If one rejects the worldview of John, does this gospel have meaning for Christians living in the twenty-first century? Absolutely! Jesus is the logos, the pattern of God in the world for all to see. Before Jesus, the pattern of God was enshrined in Law, now it is found in a flesh and blood human being. With God as the source, Jesus reflects that source and is the light of the world (8:12). We see this light in the mutual love described in the Farwell Discources of chapters 13-17. We see this light in the inclusive community of followers created by Jesus. We see this light in the love communities established by those followers after Jesus’ death (see Acts 2: 42-47 and 4:32). We see that light in the parables in Luke (see blog on the topic), and the teachings in the Sermon on the Mount. The problem is not seeing this pattern in the gospel of John, it is living it. I keep trying!

An Introduction to John

I wrote a term paper on the gospel of John for a New Testament class in college. I chose John because I knew nothing about the gospel and wanted to correct the problem. It was a mistake. After reading the gospel three or four times, I had no idea what it was all about.

The gospel of John is different from the Synoptic gospels. There is no virgin birth story, and the implication is that Jesus was born in Nazareth, the result of the normal biological union between a man and a woman (see John 6: 42-43 and 1:45-47). Further, Jesus is not baptized by John in this gospel, nor is he tempted by Satan in the wilderness. There is no transfiguration, no institution of the Lord’s Supper, no trial before the Sanhedrin, and no charge of blasphemy. Jesus never tells a parable or casts out a demon. There is no Sermon on the Mount or concern with ethical teachings. Nor does Jesus focus much attention on the imminent coming of the kingdom of God. The gospel is all about identity. Jesus speaks about himself.

The organization of the gospel is also different. Jesus’ public ministry spans three years instead of the one year posited in the Synoptic gospels, and he goes back and forth between Jerusalem and Galilee with most of the action centering in Judea. Jesus throws out the money changers at the beginning of his story rather than the end as with the first three gospels. The four authors use this story to make different points.

Finally, most of the stories in John are unique to his gospel. The different style of story telling jumps out at you. The gospel of John is filled with long, reflective discourses rather than the more straight forward biographical style of the first three gospels. The author quotes Jesus making long speeches. Obviously, this is not history. There is no way these speeches could have been remembered word for word sixty years later.

The gospel of John is the story of the cosmic Jesus. This Jesus was present with God from the beginning. He is a Jesus that came from heaven and returns there. It is the story of the incarnation, of God becoming flesh. It is also the story about a new religion. The cleansing of the Temple symbolizes the end of sacrificial religion. Faith in Jesus is the road to eternal life.

The gospel begins with a prologue, the famous poem that introduces the theme of incarnation. The second section known as the Book of Signs, John 1:19 through 12: 50, consists of miracle stories designed to bring people to faith. The third section contains the Farewell Discourses, chapters 13 through 17, where Jesus teaches his disciples in private about mutual love and the future of the Christian community. This section is followed by a passion narrative, the resurrection, and an appendix that describes an additional resurrection encounter at the Sea of Tiberias in Galilee.

The gospel contains several text related problems. The story of the adulterous woman (7:53-8: 11), as I pointed out in the blog dealing with Mark’s resurrection story, is an insertion. The story is not found in the earliest manuscripts of the gospel, and the language and grammar are different from the rest of the gospel. The appendix in chapter 21 is an addition to the original gospel. The gospel has a natural ending in Chapter 20:31, and again the vocabulary and grammar of chapter 21 reflect important differences with what comes before. Finally, there are several examples of rough transitions between stories. In 5:1, Jesus goes to Jerusalem where he heals and teaches. In 6:1, we find him on the other side of the Sea of Galilee. These transitional problems are interesting because they show an author putting stories together as if he were constructing a patchwork quilt.

The gospel claims in the appendix that the story was written by Jesus’ favorite disciple, John of Zebedee (see 21:24). This claim lacks validity for several reasons. The author of Acts describes John as an illiterate peasant (see Acts 4: 13), which doesn’t fit with the gospel’s poetic style and deep philosophical reflection. There are also hints that the gospel was written rather late, a time when it is extremely unlikely that John was alive. The author mentions that many Jews were reluctant to accept Jesus as the Messiah for fear of being expelled from their synagogue (see 12:43). Such conflicts did not take place until late in the first century. Most scholars date the book between 90 and 110 C.E. As a result, though it is possible that the author was a follower of John, it is unlikely that the author was the disciple of Jesus. Ancient writers often used pseudonyms to add credibility to their work.

The gospel of John describes the faith claims of many Christians today. These faith claims are explored in the blogs that follow. The most important one dealing with the incarnation is the subject for next week.

Luke: Odds and Ends

Conflicts With the Pharisees. Luke tones these conflicts down. In the story of the disciples picking corn on the Sabbath (Luke 6: 1-5), the Pharisees wonder why the disciples are doing something that is forbidden on that day. Compare Jesus’ answer in Luke with his answer to the same story in Matthew (Matthew 12: 1-8). You will see that Luke edits the answer and takes out some of the venom from Jesus’ response.

In the next story, Jesus cures a man on the Sabbath (Luke 6: 6-11). The Pharisees are furious. In the Luke story, the Pharisees withdraw discussing the best way to deal with Jesus. In Matthew’s version (Matthew 12:9-14), the Pharisees discuss how to destroy him.

Finally, in Luke 13: 31-32, the Pharisees warn Jesus that Herod wants to kill him. In 7: 36 and 14: 1-2, we see Jesus eating with the Pharisees. These three stories are only found in Luke.

On Faith and Miracles. A woman with a twelve year hemorrhage touches Jesus and is cured (Luke 8: 48). Jesus comments that her faith restored her to health. It is interesting that in Mark, Matthew, and Luke, faith produces miracles. As we will see with the gospel of John, the relationship is reversed: miracles produce faith.

A Textual Insert. “Up to the time of John it was the Law and the Prophets; since then the kingdom of God has been preached, and by violence everyone is getting in (Luke 16: 16).” This is a strange statement which does not relate to what comes above or what follows below. It seems to me best explained as an insert by one looking forward to a violent apocalypse, the voice of the early Church.

Jesus the Jew. “It is easier for heaven and earth to disappear than for one little stroke to drop out of the Law (Luke 16:17).” This follows immediately after the statement above that speaks to the kingdom resulting from violence. It also appears to be an insert from someone who thought of Jesus as a Jew.

Jesus Teaches in the Temple (Luke 19:47-48). From this passage, it is clear that the crowds love him while the Jewish establishment opposes him. This statement is probably the most accurate historical expression of the relationship between Jesus and the Jewish masses. In Mark and Matthew, the crowds are not so sure about what they think of Jesus.

The Last Supper (Luke 22: 14-20). I grew up in the Episcopal Church where Holy Communion plays a central role in the service. This ritual is centered around the forgiveness of sin. If you read the account of the Last Supper in Luke (22: 14-20), you will see that it has nothing to do with sin. It is a memorial service. Matthew’s version of the story is more in keeping with the Episcopal tradition (see Matthew 26: 26-29). There forgiveness of sin is a central focus. I suspect that the early church is responsible for Matthew’s version of the story.

The Time of Crisis In Luke 22: 35-38. Jesus tells his disciples that at the time of crisis they will need a sword. This is a strange teaching for a man who preached turning the other cheek, and most probably reflects the voice of the early Church.

The Meaning of the Cross (Luke 23:44-46). The cross is a symbol of obedience in Luke, not of suffering. God’s plan was fulfilled because Jesus was obedient. He is a model of self-control and courage. Note that Luke changes his last words. The cry of abandonment and anguish in Mark and Matthew has been replaced with “into your hands I commit my spirit.”