Through a Glass Darkly

Much virtual ink is being spilled about a recently discovered Jewish stone monument dating from the first century A.D. that might refer to a messiah who will die and rise on the third day.  In the popular press, the claim is being made that this monument challenges the uniqueness of the Christian story concerning the death and resurrection of Jesus.  Here is a place where some evidentiary apologetics can be useful.

The truth seems to be much less dramatic:  the stone’s inscription is hard to decipher and probably doesn’t refer to a dying and rising messiah at all.  There is a good analysis here and an even more skeptical one here. 

Biblical Archeology Review published a transcription of the tablet back in January.  Some folks on the “biblical-studies” listserv pointed me to the following lines as the ones possibly referring to a messiah who dies and rises in three days (lines 19-21 and 80 — context for line 80 given here):
 
19. sanctity(?)\sanctify(?) Israel! In three days you shall know, that(?)\for(?) He said,
20. (namely,) yhwh the Lord of Hosts, the Lord of Israel: The evil broke (down)
21. before justice. Ask me and I will tell you what 22this bad 21plant is,
 
and
 
75. Three shepherds went out to?/of? Israel …[…].
76. If there is a priest, if there are sons of saints …[…]
77. Who am I(?), I (am?) Gabri’el the …(=angel?)… […]
78. You(?) will save them, …[…]…
79. from before You, the three si[gn]s(?), three …[….]
80. In three days …, I, Gabri’el …[?],
81. the Prince of Princes, …, narrow holes(?) …[…]…
82. to/for … […]… and the …

In recent days, one expert claims to have deciphered the missing lines in line 80, so that it reads as follows:  “In three days you shall live, I, Gabriel, command you.”  Well, I claim no expertise in this field at all, but as some of the experts I linked above observe, this reading of the obscured words apparently is highly contestable, and even then it isn’t clear in context that the reference is to the resurrection of the messiah on the third day (among other things, tying even this text to the messiah requires some supposition about what Old Testament passages the inscription is alluding to).  At the very least, there doesn’t seem to be any reason for a sensational claim that there was a well established tradition of a messiah who dies and is raised on the third day from which the early Christians borrowed.

Let’s assume for a moment, though, that this tablet does refer to a messiah who will be raised on the third day.  Would that necessarily detract from the Christian claim that Jesus really was that messiah?  I don’t see why that would necessarily be the case.  The Jewish community that wrote these apocalypses was highly devout.  If the “rising messiah” interpretation of this tablet is correct, could it be that at least in some sense the people in this community were able through studying the scriptures and by the spirit of God to gain an inkling of what the coming of the messiah actually would be like?  Would the Gospels only be borrowing from this tradition, or reflecting its fulfillment?  It seems to me that much more would be required to show that the early Christians appopriated a rising messiah tradition about Jesus while knowing that Jesus was not really raised.

There is, however, one place in which this tablet could weaken one argument about the resurrection:  NT Wright’s assertion in “The Resurrection of the Son of God” that the notion of an individual resurrection would have been foreign to the first Christians, such that they wouldn’t have invented what would have been viewed as a ludicrous story by the surrounding Jewish and pagan cultures.  But even here, it seems to me we’d have to be much more careful about defining the relevant cultures.  According to this article in Biblical Archeology Review, no one knows the provenance of this stone.  Did it reflect views that would have been known and held by a wide swathe of the culture in which Christianity was born, or the views of a counter-cultural minority such as the Essenes, or the views of an even smaller and more obscure sect?  Wright provides substantial evidence that the prevailing belief in first century Jewish and pagan culture rejected the possibility of an individual resurrection.  This could still be good evidence even if there were pockets of sub-cultures in which such a belief existed.

The splogs are getting sublimely absurd. A splog, or spam blog, is a fake blog filled with advertising links and/or links to malicious software. In order to create traffic, splogs link to the comments and trackbacks of legitimate blogs using web crawling algorithms. This site, which linked back to a post in which I talked about ontology and creation, is an accidental work of art, given these link titles (do not click on the splog’s links, BTW, unless you want a virus):

“Looking for ONTOLOGY?”
“Get ONTOLOGY here for free!!!”
“Best ONTOLOGY videos!”
“Shopping for ONTOLOGY?”

Hmmm….  What kind of world will I end up in if I follow one of those links?

Here’s a great site on the “Access to Knowledge” movement in Africa.

I’ve been working on a narrative statement of faith — something that would tell the story of the historical Christian faith, which could be used in a church setting in lieu of the usual bullet-point summaries evangelical churches often favor. I wouldn’t say this is necessarily what I think of as the core of the core of the core of the faith, but it expresses for me the contours of what I think it would be good to express as the basic story in which a local church becomes embodied. It probably is still too “propositional” and not “narrative” enough, and I don’t claim to be an authoritative source, but here is what I’ve come up with:

There are many different kinds of “Christians,” but we all share at least one very important thing in common: “Christians” seek to follow Christ. As Jesus taught us, we are learning together how to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. This kind of love is the grand summary of everything we want to be about at [insert name] Church.

But the story starts much farther back. When we speak of “God” we speak, in many ways, of a mystery: the “triune” God, or “trinity,” of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three persons in one God. God always was, and he never needed anything. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit danced together and could have gone on dancing without us.

But in his goodness and love, God made room for – created – the heavens and the earth. Everything that exists is the result of God’s choice to create. Things continue to exist because God in his love desires it to be so.

Human beings are a very special part of God’s creation. He made each one of us to live in loving relationship with Himself, each other, and the created world. Yet from the very beginning, human beings have rebelled against God. Each of us continually turns away from the good things God has planned for us. We each try to go our own way, even though our ways lead to brokenness, injustice, and the separation of death. We all sin.

But God pursues us. In the person of the Son, Jesus, God became a person like us. He experienced hunger and pain, loneliness and temptation, separation and loss . . . yet, unlike us, he did so without rebelling against God. In fact, we proclaim a mystery: that Jesus became fully man and yet remained fully God.

As the God-man, Jesus died a terrible death on a Roman cross. His death is a paradox because, unlike any other death in history, Jesus’ death was a victory. In his death, Jesus took on himself all of the consequences of our sin. All of the hurt we have caused, and all of the hurt we deserve, he willingly suffered.

Jesus’ death was a victory because he did not remain in the grave. We shout, along with all the generations of Christians who have lived during the two thousand years from the time of Christ until today: “He is risen!”

Christ left the Earth but lives today and reigns with God the Father. Christians wait eagerly for the time when, as he promised, Christ will return to Earth to “make all things new,” to wipe every tear from our eyes, to complete the victory he won on the cross over sin and all the brokenness it causes. We live now in a time-in-between – a time of hoping, waiting, working, expecting, rejoicing-in-part, seeing-in-part, and sometimes suffering – while we wait for the time of restoration and peace Jesus called the “Kingdom of God.”

We are not alone in this twilight time. God the Holy Spirit dwells in each person who trusts in Christ, to empower, comfort, guide and correct. The community of all Christians through the ages forms a family called the Church. We meet together in local representations of this global community, in churches like [insert name] Church and in countless other varieties, to worship God, to support each other, and to learn how to love more like Jesus.

In addition to the community of His people and the presence of the Holy Spirit, God gave us his written word, the Bible, to teach and direct us. The Bible is the ultimate norm for Christian faith and practice. It is the standard for all our thinking and teaching about who God is, how He expects us to relate to each other, and how He expects us to love and worship Him.

When we meet together as the local Church, we practice certain customs that Christians have always found vital to the life of faith. These include singing songs of worship and praise to God, offering back to God a portion of the wealth with which He has blessed us, and receiving the proclamation of the word of God from the Bible. These also include special symbols or “sacraments” given by Christ to the Church, in particular baptism and the Lord’s Supper. In baptism, those who have trusted Christ publicly confess their faith and demonstrate how they have been brought up from the dark waters of sin into the fresh air of the new life of faith. In the Lord’s Supper, the bread and wine remind us of the body of Jesus, broken on the cross, and of his blood, spilled for our sins.

As we meet together, God the Holy Spirit acts in and through us to change us and to change the world. In this way, we “already” experience the Kingdom of God, even as we know the “not yet” completion of the Kingdom awaits Christ’s return. We do this soberly, knowing that the powers of selfishness and evil actively oppose it, and that God will honor the choices of those who reject the free gift of forgiveness and grace He extends through the cross of Christ. Yet we also do this eagerly and joyfully, knowing that it is the very work of God in bringing peace to the world.

Another nice site by a Calvin guy:  philosopher Kevin Corcoran’s Holy Skin and Bone.

Something else to subscribe to.

Wonders for Oyarsa recommended to me David Bentley Hart’s wonderful little book The Doors of the Sea:  Where Was God in the Tsunami.  Hart is an Eastern Orthodoxy tehologian with a Radical Orthodoxy sensibility.  Unlike much turgid theological prose, his writing is lucid and gracious, sprinkled with just-right literary references.  The terrible Indonesian tsunamis of 2004 prompted Hart’s reflection on theodicy.  Much of his reflection in The Doors of the Sea plays off of Dostoyevksy’s The Brothers Karamazov, particularly The Grand Inquisitor’s devastating speech. 

I loved this book, because it reminded me that things really are “not right” in this world.  Having been immersed in the study of how Christian faith relates to the natural sciences, it’s easy to forget that the creation is “fallen.”  There is no trace of a “fall” in the record of natural history.  We can’t attribute the behavior of carnivorous animals, or the geological processes that inevitable give rise to earthquakes and tsunamis, to Adam’s sin — these things existed on earth for billions of years before man appeared.

Yet, we intuitively know that the apparently meaningless deaths of hundreds of thousands of people when the giant waves hit Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand is not “natural” or “right.”  And, we know from scripture that “death” is an “enemy.”  Developing a theology that accounts for God’s goodness, human sin, the long, deep record of natural history, and the “enemy” of death, is one of the great challenges every thinking Christian has to face. 

Hart insists that Christian theology not fall into the trap of thinking that nature is all there is — that death must inevitably be part of human history.  But he also insists that we must not give in to a literalistic fundamentalism that ignores or distorts billions of years of natural history.  How does he pull this together?  In typical Eastern fashion, he really doesn’t.  He allows this paradox and mystery to simmer a bit, and invites us to contemplate a God who is not bound by the ontology of the present creation.  An ontological “is” is not an ontological “must” for God.

I appreciated this approach.  God knows, literally, that recovering fundamentalists like myself need to learn how to rejoice in mystery.  But I confess that, categorizer that I am, I wasn’t fully satisfied.  So I asked Prof. Hart how he draws these things together, and he referred me to the Patristic Father Origen.

Well, now I need to read more Origen than I have.  Here’s what I understand of Origen’s conception of the fall, however:  for Origen, the fall happened in the wills of pre-existing souls, outside of “natural” time.  Embodied in “natural” time, these souls recapitulate their original fall.  This underlying theology is why, in the book, Hart makes some effort to distance himself from gnosticism.  The Greek and gnostic themes seem evident in this notion of a pristine disembodiment that goes bad and becomes embodied, with the hope of redemption from embodiment in the eschaton. 

I’m pretty sure I don’t know enough about Eastern Orthodox thought or about Origen to be getting this exactly right.  I’d love to hear from any readers about nuances I’m missing.  At the end of the day, this seems like far too elaborate and speculative an ontology for me.  But, I think there’s something very true about the fall as in some respect an event “outside” of normal time — like, in a way, the incarnation.

I get the Family Research Council’s email updates, mostly to see what the Religious Right is thinking about.  Today’s email, offensively, was titled “Here Come the Grooms.”  Among other breathless turns of fearmongering phrase, it tells us “When the clock chimes 5:01 p.m. (PST), the California ruling that threatens to undo thousands of years of natural marriage will officially take effect, triggering five months of social chaos that could wreak havoc on every state in America.”

And they wonder why reasonably educated Christians who live in the real world are increasingly unwilling to put up with the marriage our faith to right wing politics?  Does anybody really believe that at 5:01 p.m. PST “thousands of years of natural marriage” will be undone?  So, suddenly, all of the marriages recorded in my family geneology book going back to the 1600’s are going to disappear?  Everything I know from my family and church about loving my wife and children will vanish from my brain? 

And does anyone really think there will be “five months of social chaos” starting at 5:01 PST?  Gas prices will shoot up to $10 per gallon, the markets will collapse, Wall Street bankers will line up for food stamps, loving moms and wives will march in the streets against their husbands and children…  not.  Well, the $10 gas might get here, but not because of this court case.

Whatever happend to the Church against which even the gates of hell won’t prevail?  If we can’t “win” in American courts or legislatures, suddenly God’s creational ordinances relating to families will be repealed? 

As Christians, we have ideals for human relationships, including the very special relationship of marriage.  We very often don’t live up to our own ideals even within the Church, even within “natural” marriage.  I’d daresay that pornography, workaholism, overconsumption, and just plain selfishness are far greater threats to our Christian ideals of marriage both within and without the Church right now than whether or not secular laws purport to give the status of “marriage” to gay couples.  But even if our ideal includes a social order that gives a privileged legal space to life-long commitments between one man and one woman, it’s long past time that we realize we don’t live in a nation-state that endorses our ideals.  America is not, never has been, and never will be a “Christian” nation — get over it.

Should we then not advocate for what we believe are civil laws that reflect our ideals?  No, we should not cease to advocate for what we believe is right and best.  But our expectations have to be realistic, our tone and tactics have to be Christ-like, and our hope ultimately has to be patiently eschatological.  Maybe this is a time when we are being called to live faithfully and counterculturally in Babylonian exile as the Church and not as the State.   What if all the Christian families in America really practiced what we profess about mutual respect, love and perseverence within marriage?  Nothing would then ”undo” marriage.  And what if we all decided that our attitudes towards our gay neighbors must above all else be to love them as we love ourselves?  Maybe then we’d start to become instruments of grace in places where the gospel often doesn’t get a hearing.  (And no, “love” doesn’t mean “I’m ok, you’re ok.”  One thing it means, I think, is “I’m a mess, you’re a mess — and here is Jesus, who loves to forgive and work on messes.”)

This Interventions series looks promising.

This is an awesome new image from the Hubble Space Telescope of galaxies in the “Coma Cluster”:

You’re looking 300 million light years distant, with each individual galaxy containing billions of stars.