Easter Reflection 2: New Thoughts

Read: Revelation 5 & Revelation 12

So here are my thoughts on Easter. No reflection on Easter can begin with Easter, it must begin with Good Friday. We must never forget that our salvation, that the triumph of God, came to be through suffering and death. Suffering and death are the doorways through which the Divine walks to bring about redemption. Jesus death, I think, must be understood on two levels. There are two cosmic truths being played out in the death of Jesus. 

The first is the forgiveness of sins. Jesus, in my view, is not some sacrifice God demands for sin. God isn't killing Jesus so He doesn't have to kill us. This standard view is known as propitiatory sacrifice. It is the idea that Jesus stands in for every sinner. I don't think this is right. I rather think of Jesus as a propitiatory victim. Jesus shares in the suffering of every victim of sin. God cannot forgive sins willy-nilly. It is not possible for a just God to forgive someone for a sin visited upon you or me, without making God unjust. But in Jesus Christ, pace Girard, I think God stands in the place of every victim of every sin. God shares the suffering of all people, and in Christ of all victims, and so God gains the moral position He needs to forgive in a way that is truly just.

The second level of Jesus' death I think is more about an objective fight between good and evil. The apocalyptic worldview attributes suffering in this world in part to the action of dark powers that stand between God and man. There is war in heaven, and in apocalyptic Judaism, the war creates collateral damage. We suffer from that collateral damage. The devil targets us because God loves us. Revelation 12 talks about this a little bit. Revelation 5 shows us that the suffering Jesus incurred on earth translates to power in Heaven. The horror of the cross is the horror of warfare. The terrible toll on the human person Jesus is an outward and visible sign of the epic battle Jesus waged against sin in the cosmos. His standing with every victim cost Him dearly in His incarnated self, but it raised Him up to the supreme level of Divine authority in Heaven. His blood and His suffering were the very weapons by which satan was defeated, according to Revelation 12:11. The propitiatory victimhood is part of the very key to this. For satan's power in Revelation 12 is said to be the power of 'accusation'. The devil has the power of judgment. By standing in the place of every victim, The Son gains the power to forgive, and thereby rob satan of his power.

Easter is the exercising of the power of Christ on Earth. It shows us who won that battle we saw being waged in Jesus' body. God won. He was the only one who could. The Resurrection is an event, a raw experience of the divine through Jesus after His death. We ignore the strangeness of the Gospels if we try to define what the resurrection was too tightly. It was an event beyond words' ability to fully describe. But it included a few important elements. It included JESUS. Jesus, after death, came and touched the disciples' lives. The Gospels are founded in part on the absolute conviction that Jesus was proved to be the divine instrument of salvation. The New Testament is actually diverse when it comes to trying to define what it means to say that Jesus saved us. But the conviction that JESUS saved us is foundational. In included GOD. Whatever the Resurrection was, it was a divine act. It was proof that God was completing HIS plan. Jesus founded His life on the idea that God alone could save us. The Easter Story does not leave His conviction behind. The central Christian belief in the divinity of Jesus stems in part from later post-Biblical theological reflection. It is doubtful that we can pull a simple dual-nature theology from any part of the New Testament. But the convictions from which those beliefs stem ARE in the New Testament. They are the convictions of the Resurrection: in Jesus' power as savior and in the need to have God alone be our savior.

Finally, the Resurrection included US. The Resurrection has to be in part about Jesus' rebirth within the church. Jesus gave His disciples a job to do. The battle that Jesus fought is over, and Jesus' work ensured the triumph of our side. It was the decisive battle, but not the last battle. Revelation 12 reminds us that after satan's defeat in Heaven, he has come to earth, and we must continue the fight here. Jesus has offered us unmediated access to God. We are now to confront satan on earth with the power of God. How do we do this? By imitating Jesus life, death and resurrection in our own lives. We must see in Good Friday and Easter, the key to everything. These events are the essence of reality laid bare. They are all life poured out in one life. We must put Good Friday and Easter, the Cross and Resurrection, at the center of everything we see and do. Life must become cruciform, and the universe must be seen as the triumph of being over non-being, consciousness over non-consciousness, life over death. If we can learn to see and live this way, then like Jesus we may be crushed down on earth, only to have great treasure and glory in Heaven. So may it be. Amen. 

Easter Reflection 1: From My Book CONVERSATIONAL THEOLOGY

Jesus Christ As Reconciler of God To Man

I have suggested that the central conversation in the New Testament surrounds the question of what it would mean for Jesus to be savior that the question of what a messiah must be is the question Jesus struggled with, as did the majority of those who came after Him. It is, indeed, a question we must continue to struggle with today. One common practice is to try to go back and discern what Jesus and His immediate followers thought about this question, and try to adopt that view, trusting Jesus' self-understanding over and above later commentators. I would argue that this is a massive mistake, at least from a conversational point of view. The point is that whatever God was saying and doing in and through Jesus, whatever it means for Jesus to have salvific significance is something that remains huge, difficult, and mysterious. Jesus self-understanding was the first, not the last, important word on the subject. Jesus struggle within Himself and with His followers began the process, began the conversation, and every thing that has come since has been important commentary, and often has been grounded in God itself. We can only understand who and what Jesus Christ was when we look at the entirety of the New Testament, and consider much of what has come since. A wide array of influences plays a role in my own comprehension of Christ, and I will be bringing much of it to bear as I give my own understanding of what it means to say "Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior."

Let me say that I think that Jesus sowed the seeds of His identification with God Himself within His own self-understanding of Messiah. To be sure, Jesus did not think of Himself as Divine, and He always put the focus on The Father rather than Himself; but in some ways Jesus' own convictions led logically (when put into the context of what happened later) to the idea of Jesus' divinity. Jesus' rejection of political messianism and His own adoption of the "Man From God" and "Suffering Servant" messianic theologies are of supreme interest here. Jesus' conviction was that God and God alone could save mankind. The moral community Jesus sought to form was never going to usher in the Kingdom by it's own power, rather it was merely setting the stage for actions Jesus thought could be accomplished by God alone. He believed military and political power to be a satanic temptation, which in theological terms translates into the idea that there is no moral or human answer to the problems of evil or the intractability of sin. Put simply, Jesus contended that people could not save themselves. The repentant 'remnant' He hoped to form was more like an attempt to fulfill scripture so that the rest of the transformation could then proceed. His own role was to proclaim that God alone could bring about the change His followers wanted to see, and to represent God's call to perfect faith, obedience and repentance. In short Jesus' role was to clarify God's place in human salvation, and to remove from his disciples any trust in man's own power to usher in The Kingdom.

Of course, the usage of the "Man From God" theology naturally conjured up the image of a semi-divine individual, since that is how we see the man from God presented in the words of the prophets. Jesus probably thought that the miraculous healings that were taking place around Him were fulfillments of this aspect of scripture (Matthew 11:4-6), anyone who read those writings would notice that the Man From God or the Son of Man spoken of in the prophets had power of cosmic proportions. But its not clear to me that Jesus emphasized this cosmic element in His own self-understanding, and rather focused on the cosmic consequences of His work. In other words, He kept the cosmic power in the hands of God, while still appropriating for Himself the special mediatory role of the Man From God or Son of Man.

More important in my view, Jesus seems to have adopted the Suffering Servant idea after John's arrest. I suspect that He expected His suffering to culminate with a fulfillment from God Himself. The humble acceptance of the cross was an act of obedience to God' perceived Will, but nothing ended as Jesus originally suspected. As we move on, we'll see that this juxtaposition of the suffering servant idea with political messianism will be vital to my own addition to the conversations about Jesus' significance. For now, let me say that I find the insistence on God alone as savior to be compelling, and the doubts about any political or military solution to the human problem reflect my own feelings about sin.

The resurrection event, in my view, is the Rosetta Stone to understanding the nature of salvation. I don't pretend to have any notion about what the resurrection is or isn't beyond a direct revelation of Christ's continued presence with the disciples and confirmation of His place as savior. But whatever it amounts to, without this event, without God making Jesus' salvific significance clear to the early followers of Jesus, His story would be one of ultimate failure, and deserve barely a footnote in history. But in and through that confirmation of His significance, we can cast His entire life in a new light. The resurrection confirmed that Jesus is our savior; it functioned as proof that He was Messiah and that through the Messiah God had begun the work of Redemption, and that The Kingdom had started to take form. But Jesus' conviction implies that God alone could do that. The move from Paul onwards towards assigning Jesus a position closer and closer to God, was a natural outgrowth of those convictions looked at through the lens of the Resurrection. In Jesus the man, we have God Himself acting decisively to grant mankind salvation, but only God can save us. So whatever else is true of messiah, and thus of Jesus, He must in some sense be God, for God alone can be our Savior.

This reasoning isn't explicit in Paul, but I suspect Paul's own moral pessimism and his general metaphysical picture is part of the reason why he winds up associating Jesus more and more with the Divine in a special way. I have already commented that I myself find a lot in Paul's views that are concomitant with my own experiences...the cosmic nature of sin, moral pessimism, etc. I also think that Pauline and Johannine emphases on the cosmic drama involving Jesus is vital to our own understanding of what it means for Jesus to be Messiah. And while I agree for reasons I'll state in a moment that Jesus death and resurrection are central to His salvational power, I do not think they are solely what matters, and can't imagine why anyone would. God's confirmation of Jesus as Messiah, and thus His implicit self-identification with Jesus is about Jesus in toto, Jesus the man from birth to death and resurrection. In fact, if we didn't glean anything from Jesus' teachings that had salvific import, we wouldn't have been able to run down the logic that gets us to the conviction that Jesus is Divine, a conclusion that buttresses Paul's overall view. Here the Gospel writers I think got it right. With John I also find a lot of value in his emphasis on the Logos, for reasons I've stated before and for reasons dealing with messianic theology I'll deal with in a moment.

So why did God identify with Jesus and save us through Jesus? Put simply, there was no other way to do it. What we really have in the conversations about messiah are continuations of conversations we found in the prophets, particularly surrounding the prophetic problem and the problem of evil, or put another way, we have two kinds of sin we have to find a cure for, in order to effect salvation for mankind: moral sin and metaphysical sin (notice how all our earlier conversations now seem to come into close contact in these New Testament messianic dialogues). Metaphysical sin, the not rightness of the universe, makes belief in God difficult. How can we believe in God in this evil world, how can we love Him if He abandons us to this terrible darkness? Paul's answer is eschatological, John's is to make Jesus' death the beginning of a cosmic transformation, an idea I think has merit and I'll return to later. But none of these answers is really satisfactory to the question of theodicy. I find more substance in the Church Fathers' fascination with God's kenosis, His self-emptying (Philippians 2:1-11) into the man of Jesus Christ, as a central reason for maintaining Christ's Divinity. Certainly, they did not posit this as the answer to cosmic evil, and instead adopted eschatological answers as did the prophets and Paul did, but for us it can serve as an answer to that pressing problem. Paul sees the darkness in the world, and posits Jesus as central to answering the question 'why is everything so bad'...the answer I glean from that meditation on the man Jesus is this: God is far different than what we expected Him to be. God is not like the Babylonian king, but is much more like the suffering servant, the Crucified Carpenter. God reveals to us this: I identify with this man Jesus. If you want to understand Who and What God is, and how God operates in the world, look at the whole of Christ's life. No doubt, the resurrection represents triumph, an act of creation and redemption. But look at what it takes to bring that creation and redemption about: suffering and death. God is that which exposes itself to the evils of the world, shows it undeserved love, and thereby ultimately transforms it. God's acts of creation are in and through His self-exposure to suffering and evil, and the taking on the consequences of evil into Himself. God is more like the woman in labor pains, than the sculptor or clock maker. God's power is suffering love, and that being the case, there are some things we just cannot expect God to be able to do. One of those is to ensure that we will be able to escape life without suffering.

We cannot expect more from existence than God gets. Bonhoeffer said once "cheap grace is grace without the cross...costly grace is the gospel. Grace cost God, it cost God the life of His only Son, and nothing can be cheap to us that is costly to God". I would expand this to say that we cannot expect to exist, to be, especially to exist in the midst of goodness, without suffering, since even God cannot exist without it. Jesus could not have known it, but even in His greatest moment of defeat, when all He thought was going to happen failed to, He was fulfilling a salvific role. I have already mentioned the moment on the cross when Jesus cries out "Eloi Eloi, lama sabacthani", or "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Traditionally, Christianity has tried to paint this moment as a moment of Jesus greatest humanity, but I say no, in this moment you get the clearest image of what Divinity really is all about. Understand God as a man turning to God in defeat, and you'll understand the whole of the gospels. We now can get a clear view of how Jesus can be all God and all man. Jesus is God's Word come to life, God revealing who God is through a human being. In much the same way I can give you a diary that will show you who I am and what I'm about...a way of getting to know me perhaps even more effective than direct contact with me, God gives us a human being who shows us what it really means to be God. So in one sense Jesus is, just a man, just as my diary is just paper and ink. But in another sense, it is the very heart and soul of God revealed, as well as God's activity in the world explained. Just as that diary in a real sense is my very self, my very soul, poured out on paper.

In this context, the juxtaposition between political messianism and Jesus' messianism takes on an important role. Christ's appearance was not incidental, He came at a time when many had adopted the view that Caesar was Divine, and Roman Power was something like "The Kingdom of God" made manifest. God's decision to self-identify with the carpenter on the Cross is a decision also to DIS-identify with the Caesar and with all political and military power. It is as if God said "is that what you think God is? I'll show you what God is, but you're probably never going to be able to accept it fully". Jesus' self-identification with the suffering servant was His living out God's Nature within Him. It was His revealing who God was, however unconsciously. And there is also a lasting moral relevance to all this. One can find it in Matthew 25. God's identification with the lowest and the weakest brought with it a call to treat these people as continued manifestations of God on Earth. To live in service to the weakest is to live in service to God, in that sense Jesus death also reinforced His call to a new moral community, which was radically different from the other human communities He encountered. This is what is known as the 'transvaluation of human values', the transformation of rational ordering of values into something IRrational, where the lowest is made highest, and the least important is made most important, it is an inevitable result of God's decision to reveal Himself in Christ.

This kind of Being, One who creates through suffering and by self-exposure to evil and danger, One who redeems us by taking the consequences of evil into Himself, is not one we can rightly get angry at for the evils of the world. To do so is to blame the victim. Now we understand the prophetic insight that we can discover God through our sufferings without resorting to the absurd formula that therefore God sent our suffering. Reconciliation after the prophets had to be two-sided, we needed God to be something we could accept and love, and we needed to be made acceptable to God. This kenosis idea is a hint of the answer the first half of that formula.

Before I begin talking about the second half, our own reconciliation to God, I want to address one issue that probably is bubbling under the surface. Often I am asked how we can worship a God that is not omnipotent, not like that Babylonian King in terms of power. I have had some put the question this way: well in what sense is that God at all, in what sense is such a god "worthy of worship"? Whenever I hear these comments I cannot help but think of the Romans putting a crown of thorns on Christ's head, and mocking the idea that He is a king. I do not know what 'worthiness of worship' amounts to, what I do know is that knowledge of a love this great forces me into a position of worship, and prayerfulness, even more than the idea of some omnipotent Divine potentate. "Amazing Love, how can it be, that you my King would die for me?" God doesn't have to bother with us, He doesn't have to relate to us intimately, and share in our own pains, but He does, because He loves us and wants to help us make of ourselves something meaningful and valuable. God as Christ is the source of all love, and the very ground of meaning and value. The very idea commands my worship, the very thought of this suffering love calls me to worship and prayer. Indeed, God as this man also means more responsibility for me, and less guarantees in life, it may mean that life in a world with God is harder, rather than easier, than the alternative. We must now take up our cross and bear it. I think we get angry at Christ; we get angry that God isn't what we thought He would be. We wanted someone who would give us political prestige, a Divine Potentate who could tend our every whim and smite our enemies. Christ frustrates human concerns and desires...a fact that is in itself concomitant with the important prophetic experience. Christ just isn't the kind of king we wanted. But, I would argue, He's the King we need. The God we yearn for, in our deepest hearts.

What More Is There To Say?

What Is Love? What is faith?

I don't know what other people experience, I cannot share in the phenomenal content of your experiences. It is epistemologically impossible for me to do so. In philosophy they call this "the problem of other minds". So maybe you experience love differently than I. But this is what love is like FOR ME. It is as if all the great myths of man's history are true. It is like there is something truly eternal in the world, something beyond the realm of the senses, something transcendent, alive, and caring (i.e., not indifferent, meaning that what you do makes a different to him/her). In other words it is AS IF there were a God. That God stands between me and the other, holding both of us in Her embrace. I love you, I God you. It as if all those great cosmic stories are true, and standing with me, I'm within them. I have been blessed to have so, many, relationships that are truly divine in this way. I get to say "I love you" a lot. Each one is different in important ways, of course. But behind the differences there is essential unity, a unifying quality and principle, and it is this religious truth. Maybe the feeling is just a feeling. Maybe it is only LIKE those thing ate true. But the experience is what it is. Plus, what wonders are open to us if what seems to be true in love, is true. How important is living into that truth, if love and truth are one. Giving oneself over to that thought, taking that chance, living that (possible) truth. What is that, but faith?

Another Great MavPhil Post

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2013/03/good-friday-at-the-mercy-of-a-little-piece-of-iron.html

How I Prepare For Spiritual Warfare

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y70vcs3oV14

The Full Jedi Armor Of God

Religion without imagination is dead. Doctrines are anchors that help keep us from idolatry, but if they stifle creativity in the religious life altogether, then they themselves become idols, and kill the Spirit. Ephesians 6:10-17 is a famous passage where a writer, purported to be Paul, talks about putting on the 'full armor of God'. Many Biblical scholars doubt that it was Paul that actually wrote the letter, most suspect one of his disciples wrote it about a decade or so after he had passed. The reasons for this are interesting, and I'll probably touch upon them in another post. I only mention it because I like to be clear when it comes to whom I am talking about.

The full armor of God is, in my view an imaginative endeavor on the writer's part. Seems obvious to me (though as Hilary Putnam says, "it ain't obvious what's obvious"). The writer is probably in jail or under house arrest himself, and is using the most colorful description of warfare of the day, that of the Roman soldier. He is literally writing what he is seeing. But I think it wrong to believe that the description of the armor is a one-to-one correlate with some heavenly reality. It is an imaginative undertaking, a way to speak poetically and in an empowering way about the simple fact that life is spiritual warfare, that the Combat Motif points to something real, something outside of the human mind. It also reminds us that we are not without weapons or significance in that war. We have a place to play in the battle, and we have power, real power given from God with which we face down the evil spiritual forces that threaten and oppress God's world. And to that idea I say unequivocally, "Amen".

Yes, life is veiled, and behind the veil there is indeed a war going on. And we have power in that war. I experience this almost daily and nightly. Throwing myself into that war with reckless abandon has made me a happier, and a morally better, person. I find myself able to see what is coming with more accuracy, I am able to predict better.

But my symbols I think are richer and more exciting than Pseudo-Paul's. If I want to get people excited, to make them feel empowered, I have to use different imaginative language to make that happen. I feel like I have better fuel for the fire, and I use it. That is part of the reason I embrace comics, movies, nerd-dom in general. It allows me to get more fired up for the Lord.

So here is my own imaginative re-interpretation of "the full armor of God". When faced with the dark spiritual forces that oppress us, we should stand fast with the telekinetic powers of truth, surrounded by the energy shield of righteousness so we can deflect our enemies' attacks. Our feet will be shod with the Iron Man rocket boots of the gospel of peace with which we fly circles around them. In all circumstances we hold faith as Captain America's shield, to quench all the bullets of the evil one. And we take magic infinity gem of faith upon our brow, and the light saber of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.

See, when my God equips me, He doesn't chintz out on the latest technology ;-)

The Disciples, Betrayal, and The Foot Washing

I have long suspected (and it is only a suspicion), that the Gospels gloss over the disciples' full role in the betrayal of Jesus. I think most if not all the disciples were in on it. I  believe that those who opposed Jesus came to them and told them they could sell Him out and save their own necks, and I think that is what they did. There is a book A LIFE OF JESUS by Shusako Endo that argues this, and I think persuasively. I do not recommend the book, it isn't that well written, but on this point Endo I think gets it right.

Some evidence from the text:

1) The disciples are not arrested when Jesus is. It would've been easy enough to just wipe out the entire group with one stroke. But the rest of the disciples are all but untouched, as if they aren't even there. The most reasonable, historical reason one can give for this is simply that they had cut a deal to save their own necks.

2) Only one of the disciples are there when Jesus is crucified. Certainly, if they were still loyal it would've been easy enough to at least be there with the man. It is unthinkable to me that only one man would show his face in the entire crucifixion process. Unless they were ashamed and couldn't face what they had, in fact, done.

3) In some of the gospels, when Jesus mentions that He is going to be betrayed, all of the disciples say "it isn't I, Lord is it?" This is a weird way of talking. Why would anyone question whether THEY were the one to betray Him? Wouldn't you know that? I think they were just fishing for some kind of forgiveness. The whole scene smacks of guilty conscience.

4) The sleeping in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus had just told them that He was going to be betrayed. Why are they so calm? I once heard a cop say that if you have two suspects in the clink for a crime, and leave them overnight, the one who is able to fall asleep is the guilty one. Something in that rings true, and it rings true here.

The third evidence I gave above also indicates that Jesus KNEW His disciples had sold Him out. I think this, too, is probably true. Assuming I'm right, and it is just a theory, then doesn't this increase the significance of the foot washing? I think so. I mean,  now Jesus is not only washing His servants' feet, but the feet of the men who were going to betray Him. That reinforces the message to us. Can we love even those who hate us, serve even those who oppress and betray us? How far does our love really go?

One-Post Wednesday: Homily on Luke 23

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugxf5O3EYSo

Appropriate for Holy Week, I think.

Stations of the Cross Pop Music Style

I'd like to do a pop music audio -visual Stations of the Cross. Here's my idea for the set list:

Station 1: Jesus Is Condemned By Pilate

"Eye of the Beholder"- Metallica

Station 2: Jesus Takes His Cross

"What If God Was One of Us"- Joan Osborne

Station 3: Jesus Falls For The First Time

"Fallen"- Sarah Maclachlan

Station 4: Jesus Meets His Mother

"Lightning Crashes"- Live

 Station 5: Simon The Cyrene Carries Jesus' Cross

"Moments"- Emerson Drive

Station 6: Veronica Wipes The Face Of Jesus

"One"- U2

Station 7: Jesus Falls A Second Time

"Broken"- Seether

Station 8: Jesus Meets The Women Of Jerusalem

"I Will Remember You"- Sarah Machlaclan

Station 9: Jesus Falls For The Third Time

"Down In A Hole"- Alice In Chains

Station 10: Jesus' Clothes Are Taken Away

"World So Cold"- Mudvayne

Station 11: Jesus Is Nailed To The Cross

"Dark Was The Night, Cold The Ground"- Blind Willie Johnson

Station 12: Jesus Dies On The Cross

"Amazing Love"- Hillsong

Station 13: The Body Of Jesus Is Taken Down From The Cross

"Show Me How To Live"- Audioslave 

Station 14: Jesus Is Laid In The Tomb

"This Is Not The End"- The Bravery

Veronica and Simon

It is interesting to reflect on the figures of Veronica and Simon the Cyrene, in the Stations of the Cross. Both stop to help our Lord at His lowest point. They are the figures of all people who work to alleviate the suffering of God. Yet they differ. Veronica comes to us as one who knows Jesus. Her interaction with Him is intimate and familiar. Simon doesn't know what is going on. He is a random stranger pressed into helping Jesus by the Roman guards. Might not Veronica represent the one who shares in salvation via choice and Simon by unwitting action? How many of our non-believing brothers and sisters have alleviated the suffering of God without even knowing it, without having any awareness of Jesus or His presence in the moment? Many, I'd wager. If our focus is not on the afterlife, but simply on the Pain of God, then all people can be brothers in Christ through their decision to fight for the right, through compassion and love. Veronica and Simon are reminders that Jesus was not alone in His plight, and He still is not. Every decision to work for the good is a decision to alleviate the suffering of Our Lord, and such an alleviation can never be accounted small.

The History of the Suffering Servant

In my last post I suggested that myth gave people a language with which to talk about experiences of meaning and of a religious nature. Biblical language in general functions this way. An idea doesn't just pop into existence, it develops over time. New experiences are looked at through old lenses. This helps enlighten the experience, and it can also change the way one uses the lens.

An important example for Christians is the Suffering Servant. The Suffering Servant first appears as a figure in a series of strange psalms in Isaiah (42:1-9, 49:1-7, 50:1-11, 52:13-53:12). Here God's salvation is seen tied to the suffering of some oppressed individual. Whereas to the world, this individual seems like something to be pitied or even hated outright, he actually plays a central role in God's plan for the world. In fact, the suffering of this individual is looked at from a sacrificial viewpoint: his pain and suffering is the result of the world's sins, and is the pathway by which the world will receive salvation. After his suffering and humiliation, God will reveal to the world his true semi-divine nature, and how his suffering was the key to all of their redemption. This crushed down individual will be raised up in the sight of the world, and forever vindicated as God's true chosen one.

The exact identity of the individual is never revealed. Scholars have debated this issue endlessly. For Christians, the connection to Jesus is undoubtable, and I will return to that idea in a moment. But Biblical scholars don't read these passages as real prophecy. They come off as an examination of events that are taking place contemporaneous with the author. Isaiah does not believe he is writing about the future, but about the present or the past. People haver alternatively suggested the figure to be Job, Ezekiel or the writer himself. But the general consensus is that Second Isaiah (generally held to be the writer of Isaiah 40-55) is writing about Israel herself. He is giving an alternative explanation for the exile. Whereas most prophets saw the exile as punishment for sin, Second Isaiah adds a second interpretation: that Israel's exile was vicarious suffering for the sins of the world.

For my purposes, it is less important to figure out who Second Isaiah was actually writing about and more important to examine the way this idea developed from this point onward. Over and over again, different writers began to see historical events through this framework. Second Maccabees paints the suffering of the martyrs during the Greek rule of Israel within a Suffering Servant framework. The mother of the family tortured in 2 Maccabees 7 asks God to make their suffering expiation for the sins of Israel. In Wisdom of Solomon Chapters 2 & 5 and 1 Enoch, the servant songs are painted as cosmic events, revealing the essential nature of virtue and sin in the human condition.

Jesus' death and resurrection, then, are painted in terms of the Suffering Servant. No doubt Jesus Himself saw His life through the Isaiah lens. These songs are further used by the disciples to talk about what happened to them. Christians see the original Isaiah passages as prophecies, but that is only part of the truth. The real truth is that the establishment of this idea of the Suffering Servant is an important component of the Incarnation. The idea had to enter into the world before Jesus could come and His message understood.

Mythopoeic Speculation In The Bible

Some people seem to want to discredit Christianity by comparing certain themes in the Gospels to mythological themes found elsewhere. Most of this is complete bunk. For instance, a lot of people try to argue that the story of Jesus grew out of Mithraism. They do this by pointing out similarities between the practices and imagery of the Mithra cult to early Christianity. They then point out that worship of Mithra pre-dates Christianity by hundreds of years.

But the truth is that the Mithra cult of the Roman soldiers which bares some resemblance to Christianity is only nominally related to the worship of the Persian God Mithra that predates Christianity. In point of fact, Roman Mithraism is a late mystery cult that re-invented the Persian God using new forms of worship and new belief systems. In point of fact, all of the archeological evidence that supports a connection between Christian beliefs and Mithral beliefs post-dates Jesus by at least 60 years. The vast majority of scholars reject the idea that Christianity somehow grew out of or copied Mithraism. The inverse is more likely. In fact, there probably was some intellectual and cultic cross-pollination between the two groups, but it took place after the writing of most of the Christian Canon, certainly after the gospels.

One has to have a thorough and subtle grasp of religious history to know all of this. So it is easy to mislead  the general public. The connections can be made for one, and one sees what one is told to see.

There are, however, some mythological elements in the Bible. The Bible borrows from Sumerian, Babylonian and Canaanite myths. The Bible is not simply history, but the meaning of history. Thus historical events are reflected upon, and looked at from various angles and through various lenses. So the crossing of the Reed Sea is spoken of using terms from Canaanite myths about a battle between El and these evil sea or river gods. In the Near East, as all of my readers should know by now, water represents chaos. So the battle between El and the sea and river gods is a battle between the forces of creation and the forces of chaos. It is not surprising, then, that this language was used to describe the crossing of the Reed Sea. The event is painted now in cosmic terms, and terms of creation. The Exodus is really a continuation of God's original act of creation.

Myth is a language, a way in which we can talk about not just what happens to us, but what it was like for us to have it happen to us. It is a way of getting inside one's first person perspective. It is a way of talk about the very meaning of one's own life within the context of a historical situation. The fact is that the story of Jesus dying and being resurrected has some connection, I believe, to Canaanite myths about a god entering the realm of death and returning, and through this act being able to save creation. But this doesn't bother me. It is no proof that the Gospels are 'merely myth'. Rather, it shows that the disciples needed some language with which to talk about what happened to them. Jesus was an event in their lives, and event that pointed beyond itself and to the eternal. To speak about this event, one needed a language with which to talk about it. One can see the very fact that they had access to this language as itself providential. Perhaps Christ could not even come, until a fully developed symbolic system developed that made it possible to properly reflect upon and communicate their religious experience. Tomorrow, I will talk about an example of this kind of 'language development', using the example of the Suffering Servant.

A Homily On Nahum & Jonah

This is the sermon I could not get to post on Wednesday, start the second link about 3 minutes in:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDfwTszH6kU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7XtGi-5Y1w

The Irony of Palm Sunday

Palm Sunday is, in my opinion, the most ironic Holy Day in the Christian calendar. It is strange if you think about it. Holy Week is generally a very somber and sad time. It is a time when Christians focus on the Pain of God, as revealed in the last days and death of Jesus of Nazareth. But that week begins with a celebration, a joyful day known as Palm Sunday.

Palm Sunday is a time when Christians celebrate Jesus' triumphant entry into Jerusalem. Jesus had been preaching in the countryside and the smaller towns for a while, and now He set His sights on the very center of Jewish life, Jerusalem. Jesus' ministry really combined two seemingly opposing movements that were around during His time. There was the zealot-like movement of those in the cities that sought to overthrow Roman power through force. These were bandits and revolutionaries, who often incited violence and saw themselves as holy warriors in the style of the Maccabees. Then there were those who thought that the Kingdom of God could come by divine power alone, and so eschewed military and political power. Most of these formed communities in the wilderness and desert, and avoided political conflicts.

Jesus was different in that He held to the ideology of the desert messianists, but was politically active in that He challenged the political order of the day, and in the very heart of the cities and towns. Thus, Jesus' entry into Jerusalem was a political statement. When people saw Him entering the city, they thought that His time of preaching was over, and that He was about to call for a military uprising against Rome. The palms laid at His feet were symbols of military victory. They saw the possibility that Jesus was indeed the messiah, but they could only figure on a messiah who was going to take power by force, who was going to be the ultimate divine warrior-king. This is the moment that Palm Sunday celebrates.

Of course Jesus was making as statement with His entry into Jerusalem, He was even deliberately provoking the political-military powers of His day to action, but He was NOT calling for the military and political upheaval that the people thought He was. Their laying down of palms and their celebrations are, then, in the Bible, ironic. They celebrate the coming of the messiah, but they have no idea as to what that really means. So there is something strangely sad behind their celebration. It is the celebration of people who don't 'get it'. As soon as the people around Jesus realize what is really going on, they all but abandon Him. The crowd, denied the revenge they so wanted, turn on Jesus. Their earlier celebration, then, betrays the very attitude that would lead to Jesus' demise. The celebration, the palms, all of it, is not really something to be celebrated, it is something to be mourned. For it is the revelation of the human inability to really 'get it' when it comes to God. We desire control, power, and the use of the world's own devices to mete out justice. God comes to suffer with His people, to empty Himself, and to make of Himself a servant, who refuses to engage in the devil's games, and overcomes only through love and humility.

Yet Christians do celebrate the day. We take up palm branches, which symbolize a military victory that never materialized and indeed if it had would've robbed Jesus of all of His real divine power. We smile and laugh WITH the people of Jerusalem, a people who never really 'got it'. Might this not indicate that we, too, don't really 'get it'? Whether or not it does, one thing is clear to me: the irony of the passage is preserved. For the irony today is that Christians cannot detect the irony. They adopt the triumphalism of the moment uncritically. I wonder what the day would look like if we truly understood the moment it celebrates?

Death & Life In Hebrew Religion

I know I have touched on this before in this blog, but I don't think I've reflected on it extensively. There are some theological insights that change everything, that totally open up scripture. Somebody gives you some background information and you never look at the text again. You Biblical education is forever measured in two parts: before this insight and after. And over, and over, you find countless passages that have whole new meanings and you can see them from totally different angles. These kinds of insights will often change the way you look at life as a whole. You learn to "put on" the perspective of the ancient Israelites, and it changes your worldview. Things look different, illuminated with a new truth you'd not been able to access before.

One such insight, discussed quite often, is realizing that water, especially the water of large seas and rivers, is identified as the manifestation of chaos in the world. Another is this: the Jewish religion developed in ideological opposition to the religions of Egypt, which were deeply focused on death, the worship of death gods, and the afterlife. 

Once I realized this, the whole Bible opened up. Judaism is a life-affirming and world-affirming religion. Much of the Law is centered around the idea of keeping symbols of life and symbols of death separate. This is why steak and milk cannot be eaten together. For milk is a symbol of life, meat of death. It is also why Rabbis cannot touch dead bodies. I know of no other religion where the spiritual leader cannot touch the body at a funeral.

This is also why Hebraism developed no concept of the afterlife until around 300 BC. Having spent so long in captivity working on tombs and the statues of dead men, they focused on the meaning of life in this world. The very escape from Egypt, was an escape from death into life.

Think about all the ways in which this insight enlightens different aspects of scripture:

God's name is I AM

God's name El-Shaddai as "the Nursing Lord"

His creative impulse

The focus on Abraham and his desire for descendants

The repeating pattern of barren couples suddenly having children

The crucifixion and resurrection

The personification of death in Paul's letters and in The Book of Revelation

It brings up so much. And looking at the world, it changes one's very existence. Finding God is about finding life, meaningful and enjoyed. Religion is about life-affirmation. Finding joy in just existing, in living and breathing, is what it is all about. Further, belief in the afterlife is not about escaping this life, but about living life with a deeper sense that what we do in this world matters, and matters ultimately. It is all about living life to the fullest, and in the full living, discovering a dimension of divinity, ie, finding God,

Shameless Plug

I will be selling books at the Gilruth Center off of Space Center in Webster, tomorrow, March 23rd from 9 AM- 2 PM. My wife will also be selling greeting cards and scrapbook layouts. Come and check it out.

The Danger of the Nearly True

One of the problems of mystical experience is the interplay between the otherness, intensity, noetic quality, and ineffability of the experience. The highest religious experiences I know are so awesome. They transform everything for you. Life seems so significant, like everything is more real, sharper. It is like you took a little visit to Heaven and brought back a piece with you. 

But mystical experiences in themselves are so strange. If you try to talk about them it all seems like babbling. You also know they are deeply personal. They are about intimacy between you and God. There are some things that you can talk to your spouse about that might seem silly or stupid or gross to other people, but with that person, it is beautiful and profound. Intimacy with God is like that. For me, it's the silliness of life, the way everything we do is so funny, but it is also the seriousness and sadness of suffering, the wonder of love, the oneness of all things, only really discovered by sharing our loneliness. It is comic books, and dungeons and dragons, and my favorite prayers....but it's all about Jesus. Christ is the Sun in the solar system of the mystical that is me.

GAH! See what I mean? It sounds like nonsense. But it makes perfect sense. It is the key to everything. Or at least the beginning of the road to what really matters. I really can't talk directly about it and make sense. I have to talk around it. I can't use language to say it, I can only start to show it. I have a good collection of books and media that can help me do that. Collectively than can help people see what Im getting at. 

But some of these texts, while they get close at some points, are dangerously off the mark on others. There is a very fine line when it comes to my encounter with the divine. The line cannot be drawn perfectly so one has to overshoot the mark to make the point. One has to be "wrong" in a certain way in order to be "right" in another way. But this wrongness, taken at face value, can lead one far astray. So I'm wary of sharing these particular ideas with people. I can't get right at the truth so I need lies to point to the truth. But believe the lies, you are in trouble.

This is probably why some religious types have such a hard time talking about sex. Sex, properly understood, is a profoundly powerful spiritual tool. But it is hard to properly understand it. And misunderstood it can become satanic, very easily. The vocabulary needed to fully express the truth about the sexual experience may not really be available. So getting to the beautiful core truth of it is all but impossible. Talking around that truth can lead people to terrible error.

So what to do? Keep silent about the fire burning inside lest it burn too brightly and destroy? Or let it loose and risk anarchy? I try to toe the line as best I can. Of course when working with youth I err way more on the side of safety. But my general inclination is to be straight with people. A truth held inside is all but useless. 

One Of Many Approaches To Jonah

Jonah is one of the most important books in the Old Testament. The Gospel writers interpreted Jesus life, in part, through the framework of the book. Jonah represents a shift away from particualrism, from the view that God's relationship with the Jews implied that He loved them alone, and that salvation was only about them. In place of this view, the writer of Jonah sees God's special relationship with His people as a stepping stone to saving the whole world, which He loves. It is not a huge surprise, then, that early Christians would latch onto the text. One early Christian position on salvation was probably that Jesus was bringing the salvation the Jews enjoyed to all of mankind. That is concomitant with the viewpoint of the writer of Jonah.

The writer of Jonah is lampooning a certain type of prophet, all too common during the Persian period, that was soft on Israel but hard on the rest of the world, and who saw salvation as being about and for the Jews alone. Jonah is the embodiment of the Jewish experience as the Jewish universalist understood it. He is literally dragged kicking and screaming into his duty as prophet to the Ninevites. He is disobedient and his actions are silly and stupid...he tries to run away from God.

On the ship to Tarshish, he sleeps while the ship is in deep trouble. Why? Because Jonah is confident in God's protection of him. The writer of mark recalled this incident when talking about Jesus' calming of the seas. Both Jesus and Jonah sleep because they are assured of God's favor and protection. But whereas Jesus was teaching a lesson in faith, Jonah is indifferent to the other sailors. This indifference is highlighted by the sailors' overt concern for him...they do everything they can to avoid throwing him overboard, even when God is doing all He can to get them to do just that.

For the writer, this is a commentary on the attitude of some Jews, who lacked a sense that they were to be bringing God's salvation to the world. Remember, the writer is also a Hebrew, so this is not a commentary on Judaism or Jews in general. This is an example of Jewish self-criticism and so we are talking about different flavors of the Jewish experience during Persian rule. But some Jews must have had this kind of blaise attitude about the rest of the world. For the writer, these Jews are Jonah, assured of their own salvation, while the rest of the world goes to hell.

Of course Jonah's confidence ends up being justified. God did protect and save him. Jonah's actions end up bringing the sailors to Yahweh, even when this was not his intention. The message is that God will use the Jewish nation to fulfill their destiny even if they are not too good about doing it themselves. God will drag His chosen kicking and screaming into the role He has for them. This may even be a different understanding of the exile, for the writer. The tossing in the sea could be seen as a symbol for the exile. On this view, then, God exiled the Jews because they were not bringing His message to the world. The diasporas were His way of ensuring this happened. Remember, this is not my own view, at all. I'm just conjecturing that this MIGHT be Jonah's view.

So Jonah, through his disobedience, brought the sailors to obedience. And as we all know God finally did convince him to go to Nineveh. Notice the difference between the Ninevite situation and Jonah's. They must repent to receive salvation. Jonah is saved before he repents. The writer does not deny a special place for the Jews. Jonah is saved no matter what, even in disobedience, God's mercy is assured. But it expands the parameters of God's love. God's final monologue runs along these lines: "I made them Jonah, just like I made the Jews. And yes, they are silly and stupid, but I love them anyways." But Jonah, too, is silly and stupid, in his running from God. God's message through the entire book seems to be something like "you are all so silly and stupid, and sinful, and yet I love you all anyways. If I'm willing to save the silly, stupid, sinful Jews, I am willing to save everyone. For everyone is like that."

Jesus may be God's Jonahite plan coming to fruition. Think about God's message here in Jonah in relation to the story of the Prodigal Son. The sons can be looked at as Jonah and Nineveh, or rather the Jews and the Gentiles as the faithful and the prodigal sons respectively. Lots of grist for the mill here.

One-Post Wednesday: Information On Joel

I'm having trouble uploading my video to youtube this week, so here's the introduction to my Joel Bible Study:

The Book of Joel takes place during the period when Ruth was actually written down, when Judah was a province of the Persian Empire. Joel, like Ruth’s author, is concerned with events that are taking place when he is writing. He is addressing contemporary Jewish issues. But whereas Ruth is recounting a story from the past, Joel is including in his musings a look towards the future.

Joel is one of the so-called classical prophets, the group of religious leaders who has a book written in his name and who deals with the relationship between Israel and the larger Empires that surround her, reflecting upon the significance of that relationship in light of faith in Yahweh. The classical prophets wrote an enormous amount of the Old Testament, and they had good reason to.

Early on, Israel had a strong sense of itself as the center of the world. Yahweh was believed to be the One True God or at least the mightiest god in all of existence, far eclipsing the gods and religion of the other peoples of the Near East. For a long time, it was easy to think this way, as the march of the Israelites went on and on, creating an ever-expanding mini-empire that stretched from the Jordan to the Mediterranean. But as Assyria, Babylon and Persia grew into worldwide empires, it soon became clear that Israel was a relatively small player in a much bigger world.

How could this be? How could Yahweh allow these nations to not only surround but indeed threaten, and eventually exile the people He had adopted as His own? Many Jews simply succumbed to the rising tide of power, and began to see the gods of these other peoples as superior to their own. Many others asserted that this situation was temporary, and that Yahweh would soon usher in an Israelite Empire, that would supplant these others, or at least would ensure that Israel would never fall completely under their power.

There was, however, one group of thinkers who gave an alternative explanation. In their view, Yahweh was indeed the One True God, but His scope of concern was much larger than what the Hebrews had always thought it was. He was as much over the destiny of Babylon as over the destiny of Judea. God had a special concern for the Jews, and the destiny of these other nations all turned on that special concern whether they realized it or not, but God’s hand was behind the life of all peoples. The Classical Prophets taught that the Hebrews had turned against God by worshipping other gods alongside Him. To punish them, God had raised up these mighty nations, who would take the Israelite Nations into exile to punish them and shape them into the people He wanted them to be. Eventually, God would indeed usher in the worldwide empire that some Israelites sought, with Israel and Judah at the center, but not until His righteous punishment had been meted out.

The attitude of these prophets towards the Empires whose destiny everyone was so interested in, varied. Some saw them as evil forces allowed free only to mete out God’s vengeance, who would be destroyedonce their job was finished. Others saw them as having a special place in God’s plan for the world, and worthy of some kind of salvation in their own right. What’s amazing is that this prophetic tradition began before these mighty empires even became real threats to the Israelite people. This tradition of thinkers led to some of the most beautiful religious writings ever produced, and in addition, their general estimation of the thrust of history turned out to be correct. Their legacy is mind-boggling. Most people who were captured as the Israelites were simply became absorbed into the religion of their captors. And indeed, this is exactly what happened with the Northern Kingdom of Israel, and the Ten Tribes found there. They simply disappeared.

But in Judah, where the prophetic voice had been stronger, something powerful took root. When they were exiled to Babylon, many were able to maintain their faith even in a very hostile situation. This was no doubt due in large part to the fact that the prophets had provided them with a believable narrative that helped them make sense of their faith in spite of the challenges to it. Truth ha s a way of enduring.

Most of the Classical Prophets’ message was one of judgment and justice. It was a message that whatever suffering one was enduring, was deserved punishment, and the right attitude towards hard situations was to accept it willingly as just, and to use hard times to deepen one’s faith in God. If one did this, one could be assured that hope endured, and that deliverance was inevitable. The general attitude of the prophets was that every situation should push one to deeper faith in Yahweh alone as God and Judge of the world. Any hint of idolatry or of robbing Yahweh of His rightful place as center of all that is was grounds for the most terrible of punishment, and all suffering was a sign that Yahweh had been betrayed.

Joel is a member of this long-standing intellectual tradition. He is writing during a time of relative peace in Israel’s history. Judah was all that was left of the nation David built after the Northern Kingdom called Israel or Ephraim was taken and destroyed by the Assyrians. Judah had been taken captive by the Babylonians and held in captivity for 50 years or so. But the fortunes of the Jews changed quickly, as Persia rose up as a mightier nation than Babylon. Persia’s policy towards captured people was different from Assyria’s or Babylon’s. They let captive people remain on their own land, and simply required tribute or loyalty through provincial governorship. So, the Israelites got to go home to Judah. This was experienced in Isaiah (41-55) as a fulfillment of the promises made to Jeremiah and others, a promise to restore Israel to her former glory. It was thought that once this restoration was complete, God would upend all the empires of the world and establish His Kingdom, with Israel as her center.

But as time went on, it became clear that this was not soon to happen. Israel was successful and peaceful in the Persian Empire, but like all captive peoples its actual situation remained precarious as the Book of Esther makes clear, and there seemed to be little or no chance of Israel supplanted Persia as the great.

power of the world.

Still, life was pretty good in Persia. Israel as a Persian vassal state got relative autonomy, and complete freedom to worship as they saw fit. Life under Persian rule was a sight better than it was under Babylon, and much better than it would later be under Greece and Rome. Many people started to wonder if this is what God had in mind all along, if this was not ‘more or less’ the Kingdom of God. Life was relatively peaceful and secure, and the worship of Yahweh took place without real opposition from the ruling government.

During this time, a plague of locusts hit a large swath of Judah. It was the worst such plague that anyone could remember, and it caused a great fright among the people. They were confused, and afraid, and in that context the prophet Joel rose to prominence. Joel’s message throughout the book is that the locusts are a supernatural army, sent by God to remind the Israelite people that the Kingdom of God has not yet come. Joel reminds the people of the words of Amos, a prophet in the Northern Kingdom who spoke and wrote 300 years earlier. Amos mocked people who looked forward to the “Day of the Lord”, and proclaimed that this day would be a day of judgment, and terror, and plagues. This is roughly Joel’s message as well.

Joel was disgusted by the complacency of the Jewish people. He was hurt by the idea that the Kingdom of God could be instituted by some human political power like Persia. No, the peace enjoyed by the Israelites was not the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God would be accompanied by signs much like the locusts, and would completely transform the world. The very fact that the natural order could turn against the Israelites was taken by Joel as a sign that God’s Kingdom had not yet come. And like the prophets of old, Joel’s book is a call to repentance. People must stop looking at themselves as some special recipients of God’s favor. God remains a God of judgment, and justice, who will allow no competitors whether religious or political. The complacency under Persia is a form of idolatry, to Joel, and God through him means to end it.

And so we enter the Book of Joel, a message of judgment and repentance, but also of hope and transformation. For the terrible day Joel sees coming is but a stepping stone in his mind to the Kingdom of God as it is meant to be: a new world ruled by God alone. 

An Example of What is Wrong With Christianity Today

A big problem I have with modern Christianity is the way intellectual progress in theology is kept locked up in an ivory tower, while the masses are essentially given the same ideas they've always been given recycled. Oh there are exceptions. There is the odd priest here and there that will talk about panentheism or bring up an idea from Clark Pinnock or Reinhold Neibuhr, but for the most part, much of what theologians are doing in seminaries and universities is all but sealed off from the believing public.

The truth is that a lot of theologians have come up with some really good ideas that solve many of the age-old problems of Christian thought. A great way to encounter these ideas is from this website: http://meaningoflife.tv

It is amazing, a series of thinkers from across the religious board, but most of them believers in God, talk about some of the new ideas that people have come up with to give us a more accurate picture of God. Great thinkers are using some of the processes that have made philosophy and science so progressive,a nd applying them to theology. The results are astounding, and can really make for a deeper spiritual life and bring people closer to God & Christ. But because the ideas are complex, and can easily be misinterpreted or misused, the Church community has tended to keep them bottled up in universities and seminaries. They don't trust the general religious populace to be intelligent enough or subtle enough to really imbibe the ideas. This royally ticks me off.

In my own ministry, I'm pretty up front about all I have learned from scholarly theology. The results have been overwhelmingly positive. Many youth have come up to me years later and said that they were able to remain Christian through college in part because of the new perspectives on Christianity that they learned from me. I think that be all-out with the progress made among Christian intellectuals is the only way to really reach the younger generations for Christ. People rise or fall to your level of expectations. I think that the "oh that's a good idea but don't tell everyone about it because they can't handle it" attitude betrays low expectations on the part of religious leaders. And a weak, and low Christian community is what we get.

A great example of this is Rene Girard. Never heard of him? I'm not surprised. The name is all but unknown among most Christians. But I have met thinkers, scholars, and priests who consider him the most important Christian thinker of the 20th century. That is not the prevailing view (most would give this prize to Karl Barth), but what is true is that every well-rounded Christian should be familiar with his ideas. No, scratch that, EVERY Christian should be familiar with his ideas.

So off and on I am going to do some Girardian theology. I'll take a text and show you how Rene Girard might look at it. Girard's theology is deeply Biblical. It is an analysis of the entire biblical tradition. Girard kind of uses the Bible to interpret history as a whole. Girard believes that most polytheistic religions were based on a pattern of scapegoating that dominates human culture. Social groups of all sizes and stripes experience internal conflict, for various reasons. Hard times hit everywhere, and when they hit a community it often starts to break apart. So social groups will find some individual or set of individuals within them that they can collective blame for their problems. The group will violently attack those individuals, often killing them. These scapegoats are ultimately sacrifices, destroyed to help end the dangers and internal strife that afflict the community.

The act of sacrificing the scapegoat has real spiritual power (for Girard, a satanic power). Once the scapegoat is killed or otherwise harmed, the social tension ends and so it looks to the community that the sacrifice was the right thing to do. At first, the scapegoat is hated as a demonic force that had caused the problems the community faced. Over time, Girard thought that this demonic evil was transmuted in the mind of the community to a heroic good. Cultural memory sometimes only holds on to the truth that the death of the scapegoat saved the community. So the scapegoat is raised to the level of savior, and made divine in the minds of people. They will become the very force that later scapegoats are sacrificed to. They are treated as gods, but for Girard they play the role of the devil. They command the death of individuals and groups to maintain social cohesion.

Rene Girard thought that the entire Bible was God slowly making this pattern of scapegoating apparent for all to see. God reveals Himself as an enemy of scapegoating, and of scapegoating itself as demonic. For Girard, the devil is a disease, a cultural disease that results from tensions building up over envious desires. I want what you have, I mimic your desires. Since I can't have what you have, I have hate within me. This hate builds up, until by its own power or by the power of outside crises, this hate bubbles over into internal strife, strife which threatens the community. The only way to relieve the tension is for the community to engage in collective violence against some designated 'cause of all our problems'. This cultural pattern, this disease is satan. The Bible is God entering into human history, to make this pattern plain for all to see, to make the disease known, and to raise us up, to divinize us, to enhance our spiritual stature so we can move past all of this. God wants to inoculate us against the disease of the devil, of collective scapegoating violence.

Girard sees in all of this a new way to look at the atonement, and indeed the entire Bible is looked at through this lens. I will, piece by piece, take some of the passages that matter to Girard and show how a Girardian framework changes the way we look at the Bible. I am not arguing that a Girardian framework should be accepted uncritically (I am not, strictly speaking, a Girardian), but this alternative way of looking at the Bible is one that can enhance one's grasp of the overall.

Let's take the eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Girard points out that the snake plays the role of demonic contagion. He prods Eve by making Eve jealous, by creating a fundamental conflict of desires between man and God. The effect of eating the apple is apparent, to Girard, in verses 12-13. Adam blames Eve, Eve blames the snake. We see, then, the very beginnings of the scapegoating pattern. For Girard, the problem with Adam and Eve 'knowing good from bad' is them knowing what 'they should want'. It is a matter of Adam and Eve being knowing what is good and bad FOR THEM. Good and bad should not be taken as moral 'good and bad', but as good and bad in an aesthetic sense. They know wanting from not-wanting.

But God will not have any of their scapegoating. His blame is placed on everyone. Everyone is punished equally. This is the most important point, for Girard. The entire chapter reveals the scapegoating practice as a falsehood. The lies of the devil are made clear: Adam and Eve do face mortality for having eaten the apple. And God's position on the matter is equally clear: all are guilty, for all gave into desire and jealousy.

This is the first of the Girardian re-analysis of the Bible. I would suggest that you not judge the merits yet until you see how the rest of his analysis plays out. When you step back and see the entire Girardian project, it is impressive. My main point here, though, is this: it is time ideas like this one became better-known.

Another Great Mav Phil Post

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2013/03/thomas-nagel-heretic-.html

My Grand Apologetics Project Part 7

See these previous posts:

http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2012/12/my-grand-apologetics-project-part-1.html?m=1

http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2012/12/my-grand-apologetics-project-part-2.html?m=1

http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2012/12/my-grand-apologetics-project-part-2-cont.html?m=1

http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2012/12/my-grand-apologetics-project-part-3-a.html

http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2013/01/my-grand-apologetics-project-part-3b.html?m=1

http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2013/01/my-grand-apologetics-project-3c-f.html

http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2013/01/my-grand-apologetics-project-part-4.html

http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2013/01/my-grand-apologetics-project-part-5.html

http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2013/02/my-grand-apologetics-project-part-6.html

http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2013/02/my-grand-apologetics-program-part-6c.html

Part 7- The Mystical

So far I have tried to deal with the human experience in the widest possible way. I have relied on insights, intuitions, and experiences that I think almost everyone can relate to. But here I will deal with experiences that are not as universal. They are, in my view, less trustworthy, because they are by their very nature vague and influenced by the particular culture and lifeworld of the one who has them. Yet, I do not think they are without value. For the person upon whom they are visited, they can matter very much.

Mystical experiences rarely begin the religious quest for people. They are a later stage of a much longer journey, they are not the first steps. Additionally, they rarely can be used to draw people into the religious life. I cannot argue that God to a person, exists by pointing to experiences that person has never had. Religious apologetics in my view works like this: I invite you to open yourself up to a particular way of thinking, I share insights. These insights cause you to reflect upon certain experiences, and bring up certain types of feelings. Then I stop and say "now there, stop, feel that? What does that feeling MEAN?" But with mystical experiences, I can't exactly get you there by talking you into feeling something. It takes more work to 'get there'.

At this point in our journey, however, one has weighed options, and has continued down the path past the basic experiences and to a particular vision of what those experiences might mean. Models have been built. In science, a model's effectiveness is measured by how well it helps one navigate life, and not just 'life in general' but the particular field of study that one is engaged in. These are what William Alston calls 'doxastic practices', which means simply 'processes that help one learn'. All doxastic practices are plagued by some kind of circularity. Science is as subject to this as any other 'practice'. So we accept a theory in part because it opens up new questions, and because it helps us move further along the path of that particular scientific endeavor. We accept a scientific theory because it helps us "do science" more effectively. A theory of gravitation that makes it easier to open up new fields in stellar research is considered more reliable than a theory that doesn't open up these avenues. That is just part of what truth is, in science.

Once we have organized our experiences and created a picture of the world concomitant with both our religious and sensory experiences, we test that picture by giving ourselves over to it. In this way, science and religion diverse. In science you test a theory by doing your all to falsify it, to see if some piece of evidence 'breaks' it. In religion, a model is tested by structuring one's life around it, by taking a risk on it. This is unavoidable, as part of what brought us to this model-building was the experience of life as, at its best, being an adventure of risk. The model becomes a map. That doesn't mean that the model is incorrigible. People's religious beliefs change. My have many, many, many times. They change because other ways of life are tested out and found to be superior. In religion, I think, a model is never really 'dead' it is just 'less alive'. We find superior ways of life that accomplish the goal of religion in a better way.

But like science, the goal of a religious model, of a religion, is to open up new avenues of thought, and to expand one's understanding of the reality that is behind the model. Religion is how we reach out and touch God. When one gives one's self over to a religion in this way, one should receive the benefit of expanded and heightened religious experience. Things happen that increase one's confidence that the way of life one is living corresponds to the truth. This increase in experience must also help one navigate life in general. Science's trustworthiness is buoyed by technology, by an increased ability to navigate life in general. Religion, too, should have a positive outcome in life in general. It must lead to increased well-being (which is not the same as mere 'happiness') and moral worth.

"Mystical experience" as I use the term here, is a catch-all for any experience of a direct encounter with the reality that is taken to be behind the model one has given oneself over to, as the result of more general religious experiences. This encounter is experienced as direct, but reflection upon it shows it to be in some way 'filtered' through the way of life itself. The model is the medium of the encounter. A reflective person realizes that a mediated encounter is never exactly direct. A phone distorts the voice of the person being spoken to. And indeed, in the classic examination of mystical experience in the work of psychologist and philosopher William James, "The Varieties of Religious Experience" , one of the notes of mystical experience is supposed to be its 'transience'. It is something one cannot hold onto very long. But one also feels like something has been learned. One gains knowledge. James calls this the 'noetic' quality of religious experience.

Of course any seemingly direct encounter with the divine will look suspect to the person who lacks these kinds of experiences. One may be quick to attribute them to simple psychology. But it is different for the experiencer. Let's take a simple example: a religious dream. A person who has made a commitment to Christianity may have a dream in which Jesus Christ visits them and gives them some kind of mission. The dream may be particularly vivid, but no dream is retained with 100% clarity. There is a transience to the whole thing. But one may remember clearly the mission given by Jesus. This is a noetic quality. One could, I suppose, just ignore a moment like this. They could say 'well it is just a dream' and go on with their lives. But what if they cannot get it out of their heads? What if it sticks with them, and gnaws at them, until that is all they can think about? The sense that one should take a risk on the experience can itself be overwhelming. That a risk is what one SHOULD take, may be itself a certainty even. If a person then follows this call, and does as they are asked in the dream, it leads to great results in the world or in the soul of the person, then it seems to me that a person is justified in taking this as confirmation of the veridical nature of the dream.

Now no thinking person can have any confidence that Jesus 'literally' came down and 'literally' visited them. They may believe that, and that is fine, but it can't be a belief held with certainty. For one knows that the content of the dream is very likely influenced by the model one has taken on. But the truth of the message can be real even if the content of the dream does not have a one-to-one correlation with reality. One may be changed by a dream like this, forever, irrevocably. A change in one's outlook is not something one has complete control over. If this moment changes you, it changes you. I see no reason why one can't consider such a shift in attitude justified in the epistemic sense. You have learned something about God, and about yourself. That is the true power of the mystical experience: it enhances the form of life, the model, one has given oneself over to. And if that 'giving over' leads to a greater navigation of life in general, then increased trust in said model seems reasonable.

A great argument to this effect is the Dostoevsky's short story "The Dream of The Ridiculous Man". In it a non-believing secularist has an elaborate dream, where they encounter a world without original sin. Their own sin infects the world, to the point where they beg for their own death to end the madness. The man wakes up completely changed, having given himself over to a Christian vision of the world. He gladly calls himself ridiculous, realizing that a dream proves nothing. But the message is clear: let it happen to you.

I think this attitude is prudent when it comes to experience like this: be skeptical of the content of the experience, but always mindful of the message. There is something to be learned, but beware of what William James calls 'over-belief'. The epistemic value is not in the content of the experience ("I saw Jesus in my dream so Jesus really is God") but in the fact that one has had it ("my religious way of life has led me to incredible experiences that expand my understanding of myself, my world, my place in that world, and my God.") And we must always be mindful of the fact that what has changed us has not necessarily changed others. My encounter with God cannot be used to try to convince others that what I believe is true. I speak about it to inspire and because I feel the need to share. I can never bring someone to belief beyond the realm of SHARED experience.