Angels and Aliens
A Theological Dialogue Between James Snapp, Jr. and David Swindle
This Compilation Edited by
David Swindle
Final Version: 04/16/2009
Introduction
By David Swindle
04/16/2009
In October, inspired by an email exchange with my friend Marc Goodwin, a youth pastor who lives in Ohio, I wrote an essay titled "A Different Kind of Christianity" for my David Swindle's Notepad blog. Some of my friends commented on it and engaged me in discussion when the essay imported into Facebook and that was about it -- or so I thought. About three weeks later an intelligent, thoughtful retort appeared on my blog from a man I'd never met, James Snapp, Jr., the pastor of the Curtisville Christian Church. I was struck by the time that James had taken to challenge my argument and the friendly, truly Christian manner he'd gone about doing it. I responded and we've since begun a wonderful, constructive exchange of ideas.
So on this, the occasion of my third response to one of James's comments, I've decided to compile the discussion we've had so far so that it can be easily read and enjoyed by those who have not caught the entire dialogue. If there are any additional exchanges in the series then I'll certainly add them to those already compiled.
A Different Kind of Christianity
By David Swindle
October 26, 2008
Since I parted ways with orthodox Christianity in my teen
years my spiritual journey has been an exciting exploration. In examining
numerous philosophies and traditions the person of Jesus of Nazareth has always
remained in the background. I've never been able to shed my affection for him
nor have I really wanted to.
But my mind could not embrace him as I once did. I refused to have that "faith
of a child" any longer. The belief of eternal damnation for much of the world
was already a roadblock as I've
described. There was another roadblock between me and the faith I once
trumpeted: the Bible itself.
In the year following my initial break with evangelical Christianity in high
school I spent a year studying the Bible in depth in the Disciple 1 Bible Study.
We read through almost the entire Bible and by the end of it one thing seemed
very clear: the belief that the Bible is the perfect, divine, Word of God was
tremendously difficult to hold.
I have no problem embracing many of the spiritual truths of scripture. I have no
problem seeing it as the Word of God in the sense that it's an expression of an
intangible, mystical reality. I have no problem accepting that many events in
the Bible are based on real people and events. What I have a problem with is
reading the book of Genesis, or the gospels, as though they were newspaper
articles. If it's written in the Bible then that means it happened. I just
cannot embrace that idea.
And it's really not that difficult to demonstrate this through showing how the
gospels conflict in their details of the story of Jesus. One particularly
dramatic example is in the story of the discovery of Jesus' resurrection. I'll
quote the four different stories and then summarize them and their
disagreements. And for those that care about such things, the translation is the
NIV, though choosing the King James Version doesn't affect the basic facts.
Mark 16:1-8
1When the Sabbath was
over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that
they might go to anoint Jesus' body. 2Very early on the first day of the week,
just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb 3and they asked each
other, "Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?"
4But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had
been rolled away. 5As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a
white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.
6"Don't be alarmed," he said. "You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was
crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. 7But
go, tell his disciples and Peter, 'He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There
you will see him, just as he told you.' "
8Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said
nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.
Matthew 28:1-10
1After the Sabbath, at
dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to
look at the tomb.
2There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven
and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3His appearance was
like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. 4The guards were so afraid
of him that they shook and became like dead men.
5The angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking
for Jesus, who was crucified. 6He is not here; he has risen, just as he said.
Come and see the place where he lay. 7Then go quickly and tell his disciples:
'He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you
will see him.' Now I have told you."
8So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to
tell his disciples. 9Suddenly Jesus met them. "Greetings," he said. They came to
him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. 10Then Jesus said to them, "Do not be
afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me."
Luke 24:1-12
1On the first day of the
week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and
went to the tomb. 2They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3but when
they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. 4While they were
wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning
stood beside them. 5In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the
ground, but the men said to them, "Why do you look for the living among the
dead? 6He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was
still with you in Galilee: 7'The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of
sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.' " 8Then they
remembered his words.
9When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and
to all the others. 10It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James,
and the others with them who told this to the apostles. 11But they did not
believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense. 12Peter,
however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen
lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.
John 20:1-18
1Early on the first day
of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw
that the stone had been removed from the entrance. 2So she came running to Simon
Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, "They have taken
the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him!"
3So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. 4Both were running, but
the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5He bent over and
looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. 6Then Simon
Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of
linen lying there, 7as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus'
head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. 8Finally the
other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and
believed. 9(They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise
from the dead.)
10Then the disciples went back to their homes, 11but Mary stood outside the tomb
crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb 12and saw two angels in
white, seated where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and the other at the
foot.
13They asked her, "Woman, why are you crying?"
"They have taken my Lord away," she said, "and I don't know where they have put
him." 14At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not
realize that it was Jesus.
15"Woman," he said, "why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?"
Thinking he was the gardener, she said, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell
me where you have put him, and I will get him."
16Jesus said to her, "Mary."
She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, "Rabboni!" (which means
Teacher).
17Jesus said, "Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father.
Go instead to my brothers and tell them, 'I am returning to my Father and your
Father, to my God and your God.' "
18Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: "I have seen the Lord!"
And she told them that he had said these things to her.
OK, I'm now going to summarize what each of the gospel writers said happen at
this one specific event. Please let me know if you contest my summaries.
Mark:
Mary Magdalene, Mary the Mother of James, and Salome went to the tomb. When they
arrived the stone was rolled away. When they entered the tomb there was a young
man dressed in white (who we'll presume is an angel) who said that Jesus was
risen. They were terrified, left the tomb and told no one. (Historically that's
how Mark ends. In my research on this I read about how most early manuscripts do
not have Mark 16:9-20. Most scholars agree that was added later.)
Matthew:
Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to the tomb. There was an earthquake. The
angel rolled the stone away and sat on it. He also made the guards "appear like
dead men" (however we're going to interpret that.) He then tells the two of them
that Jesus is risen. They are afraid but happy and run to tell the disciples.
Before they can reach the disciples Jesus appears to them.
Luke:
The women (Mary Magdalene, Mary the Mother of James, Joanna, and "the others")
go to the tomb. The stone is already rolled away and they enter into an empty
tomb. All of a sudden two men with shining clothes (who we'll presume are
angels) appear and tell the women that Jesus has risen. The women then run and
tell the disciples.
John:
Mary Magdalene (just her, no other women) goes to the tomb. The stone is rolled
away and she goes to get the disciples. Simon Peter and "the other disciple"
come with her to the tomb to find Jesus body is not there. They leave. Mary
starts crying outside the tomb. Two angels then appear inside the tomb and ask
her why she's crying. She answers and then turns around and sees Jesus who talks
to her and tells her to go get the disciples.
The way I see it there are several subjects that the gospel writers clearly
disagree on:
1. The number of women who went to the tomb and saw the angel(s). In Mark it's
3, in Matthew it's 2, in Luke it's at least 5, and in John it's 1. The
identities of the women is another issue. They all seem to agree on Mary
Magdalene, though.
2. The number of angels. In Mark and Matthew it's 1. In Luke and John it's 2.
3. When the stone was rolled away. In Mark, Luke, and John the stone is rolled
away already when the women arrive. In Matthew it's rolled away by an angel when
they're there.
4. Do the women tell anyone what they've seen? In Mark they do not, in the other
three they do.
5. When the angels appear. In Mark the angel is there when they arrive. In
Matthew the angel appears and the supernatural stuff happens when they arrive.
In Luke they walk into the tomb and then the two angels appear once they're
inside. In John Mary goes and gets the disciples who come to the empty tomb,
leave, and then the angels appear.
6. Whether Jesus appears at the tomb to greet the women. In Matthew and John
Jesus does. He doesn't in Luke and Mark.
Trying to explain how these four stories fit together is a practice apologists
call harmonization. My friend Marc pointed me toward
this website as
an example of how this is done. It tends to involve explaining how gospel
authors chose to emphasize one thing over another. One gospel writer chose to
simply not mention women other than Mary Magdalene. There were two angels but
since only one spoke some gospel authors chose to only mention one being there.
Some gospel authors chose not to mention Jesus's first post-resurrection
appearance as happening immediately to the women right at the tomb.
I tend to have a hard time buying harmonization. It just does not make sense.
The gospel writers knew there were two angels but chose not to mention one of
them? They just chose to emphasize one angel? But why would some gospel authors
choose to de-emphasize Jesus's first appearance by not even mentioning it? I
can't seem to find logical answers within harmonization.
The logical answer that seems to emerge is in a further study of the endings of
the New Testament. Scholars generally agree that Mark was the first gospel
written, followed by Matthew and Luke, with John written much later. Read in
this order we see an unusual pattern emerge. The resurrection narrative gets
progressively more detailed and complex.
In Mark it just ends with the women leaving after they've encountered the angel
(unless we want to have some kind of discussion about the verses that scholars
agree were added later.) In Matthew there are 10 more verses after the material
I cited in which the guards go and tell the chief priests what had happened;
this is followed by four verses where the disciples go to see Jesus at a
mountain in Galilee. Luke has forty more verses after the portion I cited in
which is described Jesus on the road to Emmaus, Jesus appearing later to his
disciples, and then the ascension. John, the latest of the texts written, has
twelve more verses after the portion I cited and then has a whole additional
chapter of Jesus's post-resurrection adventures with the disciples.
OK, so what's the point of all this? What am I trying to demonstrate? Because my
point here is not to say that the resurrection is a hoax or Jesus didn't perform
miracles. I'm not arguing that Jesus isn't God Who Died For My Sins. I'm simply
saying this: it cannot be proven. The resurrection and Christ's miracles cannot
be sufficiently supported as historical facts.
That doesn't mean, though, that they didn't happen or that one cannot believe in
them. As former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is known for having said, "The
absence of evidence is not necessarily the evidence of absence."
Was Jesus God, did he die for my sins, and was he resurrected? In a literal,
supernatural sense, I'm open to the possibility and try not to be too
disrespectful toward my friends who are certain of it. I'm sorry, though, I just
can't find enough evidence to support it. The idea that just seems to make much
more sense is that the supernatural elements of the Jesus story were part of a
developing mythological tradition. And as with all ideas and opinions, I'm going
to follow where the evidence leads me. I've always been open toward returning to
traditional Christianity.
And the direction in which I've found myself led by the evidence is toward a
different kind of Christianity and a different kind of Faith. And I intend to
articulate them in future posts and welcome criticism and comments.
Faith Like A Child
By James Snapp, Jr.
November 18, 2008
David:
Jesus said that if you do not enter the kingdom of heaven like a little child,
you won’t enter it at all. The invitation to be a Christian has never been an
altogether scientific enterprise; if someone has told you otherwise then that
was their mistake.
I understand how the issue of the fate of those who have not heard about Jesus
can be a stumblingblock. The way I understand it – and I think this is in sync
with Scripture – is that God will judge everyone’s case according to the light
that each individual has received. So if Andy is raised in a Christian home and
his mother sang him to sleep to hymns, while Bob is raised in a Hindu home and
never hears about Jesus, Andy will not be judged as if he was raised Hindu, and
Bob will not be judged as if he was raised Christian. Each individual’s fate
will depend on whether or not he called on God for grace, using the approach
available to him. The New Testament reveals how God wants people to approach God
– knowing that God has dealt with the debt of their sins, through Jesus. But for
those without that knowledge, the New Testament provides grounds that they too
can be saved, like the man who simply cried out, “God be merciful to me, a
sinner.”
Btw, you’re correct that there are things in the NT (I’m going to save a lot of
time by just writing “NT” here when I refer to the New Testament) that are not
written in the same way that a modern-day news article might be written. The
authors of the Gospels do not seem to have been particularly interested in
presenting events in a strictly chronological order; some things they arranged
thematically; some things they summarized; some things they explained; some
things they repeated for emphasis. To me, an author can do all those things and
still be telling the truth; the problem may reside with the assumptions that a
modern-day reader brings to the text, expecting something which the author did
not intend to write, namely, a strictly precise and exhaustive historical
account, rather than an accurate portrayal of Jesus, his words, and his deeds,
based on the apostles’ memories about Jesus.
Now about that Resurrection-Discrepancies problem.
First let me make three adjustments to your statements, and then work through
the objections with those assumptions as working premises.
(a) I certainly do contest the claim that “most early manuscripts do not have
Mark 16:9-20.” No passage of Scripture has had as much misinformation spread
about it as Mark 16:9-20, and you are not alone in making this false claim. Many
scholars make similar claims, and a very similar claim has made its way into the
footnotes of some Bibles. But it is nevertheless false. The number of existing
Greek manuscripts that end Mark at 16:8 is exactly three: Vaticanus, which has a
prolonged blank space after 16:8, Sinaiticus, which does not have the pages made
by its primary copyist from Mark 14:54 to Luke 1:56, and medieval minuscule
#304, which is probably simply a copy which was rebound after a final page or
pages were lost due to incidental damage. Furthermore, while Vaticanus and
Sinaiticus were made in the 300’s, writers in the 100’s and 200’s cited and used
material from Mark 16:9-20, demonstrating that it was in their copies of Mark.
(b) A much more minor point: although most translations refer to the second Mary
mentioned by Mark as the “mother of James,” I think that the text should be
translated as “daughter of James;” in Greek it just says “Mary of James.”
(c) In Matthew, the bit about the angel and the earthquake in 28:2-4 is the
equivalent of a split-scene episode: i.e., as the women are making their way to
the tomb, the angel is descending, rolling away the stone, and the guards are
fainting away. All that has happened already when the women arrive.
Let’s proceed now to the questions at the foundations of the objections one by
one.
(1) How many women?
This difference does not seem problematic; at least five women go to the empty
tomb. Focusing on one member of the group, or on two members, creates a
difference but not a disagreement, unless one author wrote, “Only Mary,” or
“Only Salome,” which is not what they wrote. The accounts vary because they are
based on oral accounts, in which one testimony-giver described her experience,
without describing it exhaustively and without stating that her experience was
also experienced by someone else along with her.
(2) How many angels?
Two. It is not a contradiction to mention only the one who spoke.
(3) When was the stone rolled away?
Before the women arrived; Matthew 28:2-4 being, as I described earlier, the
equivalent of a split-screen episode.
(4) Do the women tell anyone what they have seen?
Yes. Mark did not intend for 16:8 to be the end of his account; the women’s
silence was temporary, but he probably intended to proceed to describe (as
Matthew does) a direct appearance to the women by Jesus.
(5) When do the angels appear?
One angel is seen as of the women’s arrival, in Matthew and Mark. In Luke, two
angels are seen after the women enter the tomb. If we had only Luke’s
description of events, we would conclude that two angels suddenly showed up,
Star Trek style, in the tomb. If Joseph of Arimathea’s new tomb had a narrow
entryway – a sort of vestibule open at one end – then one could validly say that
the tomb was entered when one stepped into the vestibule, or when one stepped
into the inner chamber. Try picturing the scene this way: the stone has been
rolled back from the door to one side, and two angels are present, one sitting
on each side of the inner chamber. They women approach; they see the stone; they
see the angels; they see that the place in the inner chamber where they expected
to see Jesus’ body is empty; suddenly the angels stand up. With at least five
women bunched together, it would be asking a lot to expect them all to see all
these things in the same order, and to report them in the same order each time
they told about their experience. But pictured this way, the differences between
the accounts in Matthew, Mark, and Luke do not seem problematic to me; they look
like characteristics derived from the Gospel-writers’ sources – differences
which originated in the women’s own accounts of their experiences, which the
Gospel-authors have preserved, unpolished. We may be left with some uncertainty
about whether all the women saw the angel first, or the stone, or whether some
saw the angel first, and so forth, but there’s a big difference between
acknowledging that sort of uncertainty about fine details, and a complete loss
of trust in the accounts.
As for Mary Magdalene’s experience recorded in John, it looks to me like John
wrote after reading the Gospel of Mark (or something a lot like the Gospel of
Mark), and wished to fill in some details that Peter had omitted. If one follows
the accounts closely, I think the text can be validly read to describe three
visits by one or more women to the tomb: first, Mary Magdalene arrives when it
is dark (in John 20:1) and sees that the stone is rolled away, and departs. She
tells Simon Peter and the other disciple. Second, as the day is dawning, a group
of women is met by angels. Third, Mary Magdalene stands outside the tomb, stoops
down and looks in, and sees angels, and soon afterwards sees Jesus, as described
in John 20:11-17.
Here’s how I think the accounts interlock: As of Friday evening, Mary Magdalene
and her friends had planned to go to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body on Sunday
morning. Mary Magdalene, wakened by an earthquake, goes to the tomb very early
and sees that the stone has been rolled away. She goes to her friends (including
Mary of James and Salome) and together they begin to go to the tomb. But on the
way, Mary Magdalene leaves the group to run to where Peter and the other
disciple are (as described in Jn. 20:2). She is not at the tomb during the
events described in Matthew 28:5-8 or Mark 16:4-8 or Luke 24:3-8. When, after
running to Peter and the other disciple, and then proceeding to the tomb, she
arrives at the tomb, her friends are not there; she is by herself; the other
women have arrived and gone and Peter and the other disciple have come and gone.
That’s the point at which John 20:11 picks up the narrative-thread.
This reconstruction of events is not an exact fit: Matthew, Mark, and Luke all
name Mary Magdalene as one of the women who went to the tomb, and neither
Matthew nor Mark nor Luke, taken one by one, suggest that Mary Magdalene’s
experience was different from that of the other women. Luke even names Mary
Magdalene as one of the women who affirmed what had happened at the tomb. The
failure of Matthew, Mark, and Luke to include that one simple harmonizing detail
– i.e., the detail that Mary Magdalene left the main group of women before the
group arrived at the tomb – indicates to me their sources did not include it. So
all of the following statements are true: Mary Magdalene saw the empty tomb;
Mary Magdalene and other women went as a group to see the tomb; the women saw
that the tomb was empty; the women met angels at the tomb; Mary Magdalene met
angels at the tomb; Mary met Jesus near the tomb. But also true are the details
that John supplies: Mary Magdalene visited the tomb when it was still dark; Mary
Magdalene went to tell Peter and the other disciples; when Mary Magdalene
arrived again at the tomb the other women were not with her.
(6) Does Jesus appear at the tomb to greet the women?
You wrote, “In Matthew and John Jesus does. He doesn't in Luke and Mark.” Not
exactly. In Matthew, Jesus meets the women at some point after they have
departed from the tomb to run and report to the disciples. He meets them and
tells them to go tell his brothers to go to Galilee. This seems to be after the
women have shared the angel’s message with the eleven disciples; the “brothers”
in Mt. 28:10 does not refer to spiritual brotherhood with the disciples but
refers to his family-members (who were in Jerusalem for the Passover, as was the
family custom). And in John, Jesus meets Mary Magdalene; nothing is said about a
meeting between Jesus and the other women.
Combining the accounts, the picture develops as follows: the main group of women
goes to the disciples and tell them about the empty tomb and the angels; then
Jesus meets them and tells them to also visit his brothers. So for a while, as
Luke reports, the disciples know only about what the women reported about the
angels and the empty tomb. That is why, in Luke 24:22-24, the two travelers on
the road to Emmaus state that the women saw a vision of angels but did not see
Jesus.
There’s one remaining obstacle to this explanation: Luke 24:8-10. “And they
remembered his words, and returned from the tomb and reported all these things
to the eleven and to all the rest. Now they were Mary Magdalene and Joanna and
Mary of James; also the other women with them were telling these things to the
apostles.” Taken at face value, these three verses say that Mary Magdalene was
among those who told the disciples about their visit to the tomb. But while that
is a natural understanding of the passage, I think there’s room for another
possibility, namely, that Luke (or one of Luke’s sources of information)
summarized some things, and in the course of his summarization he grouped Mary
Magdalene with the other women whose testimony included the affirmation that the
tomb was empty and that they had seen angels. It is not difficult to add the
details from John 20 into the scene described in Luke 24:8-10: first the women,
without Mary Magdalene, report to the disciples about the empty tomb and the
angels; the disciples do not believe them; then – after the departure of the two
disciples who traveled to Emmaus that day – Mary Magdalene shows up and reports
that she has seen Jesus and spoken with him. Having been absent from the tomb
during the others’ visit there, she defers to them regarding what they saw, but
affirms that she too found the empty tomb and had seen angels, so it seemed fair
to Luke, some 30 years later, to include her in the list of those who testified
about those things.
(7) Why would a Gospel-writer know about two angels but only mention one of
them?
In the first century, as today, a writer may have undetectable reasons for
sharing some details and omitting others. I can think of some reasons why a
writer who knew about two angels might mention only one – to simplify the
account, or to preserve only the parts of the account on which all his sources
agreed, for instance – but the thing to see is that a non-exhaustive statement
is not the same as an incorrect statement. (To illustrate: who won the recent
U.S. election? Barack Obama? Or Barack Obama and Joe Biden? Or Barack Obama and
Joe Biden and all the other winners? One writer with one focus will give one
answer, and another writer with a different focus will give a different answer.
Which one is correct? Which one is incorrect? Or can both answers be harmonized
if one appreciates the authors’ perspectives?)
(8) Why would some gospel authors choose to de-emphasize Jesus' first appearance
by not even mentioning it?
Let’s take the Gospel-authors one at a time:
John 20 does mention Jesus’ appearance to Mary Magdalene.
Mark 16:9 mentions Jesus’ appearance to Mary Magdalene.
Luke does not mention Jesus’ appearance to Mary Magdalene because he did not
know about it.
Matthew does not mention it but names Mary Magdalene and the other Mary as those
who saw the empty tomb, heard the angel’s proclamation there, and who later saw
Jesus before the disciples did.
(9) The resurrection and Christ's miracles cannot be sufficiently supported as
historical facts.
A strict application of the historical method will preclude miracles from the
start. The study of history is the study of mostly indemonstrable events. The
strict historian asks, “What is likely to have happened?” and adopts the premise
that anything is more likely than a miracle, and proceeds to invent all sorts of
possible alternatives to a miraculous resurrection of Jesus: the “swoon” theory,
the theory that the women went to the wrong grave, the theory of mass
hallucinations, etc. But the strict historian overlooks an important point:
anything is more likely than a miracle *unless God wants a miracle to happen.*
And how can a historian gauge what God wants or does not want? The questions of
God’s will and of God’s power to perform a miracle transcend the physical
sciences. So, certainly Jesus’ miracles and resurrection cannot be empirically
demonstrated, but neither can the Gospel-accounts be refuted as unhistorical
merely because it involves a remarkable act of God.
(10) The idea that just seems to make much more sense is that the supernatural
elements of the Jesus story were part of a developing mythological tradition.
The Gospel of Mark echoes the earliest strata of the stories about Jesus;
basically Mark is presenting an organized collection of Peter’s recollections
about Jesus – part of which, in chapters 13-16, overlap two other sources (the
“Little Apocalypse” in Mk. 13 and the Passion Narrative in ch. 14-16). And
supernatural elements are crammed into the Gospel of Mark like sardines in a
sardine-tin: Jesus heals the sick, casts out demons, instantaneously cures a
leper, orders a paralytic to get up and walk (and he does), forgives sins,
instantaneously heals a man’s withered hand, calls himself the Lord of the
Sabbath, commissions the disciples likewise to heal the sick and exorcise
demons, and tells a storm to be quiet and it immediately ceases. And that’s just
in the first four chapters.
A developing *tradition* is not the same as a developing *mythology.* Traditions
can get longer for good reasons: competing versions of stories may demand a
response in the form of more precise descriptions of events. The author can
think more and remember more. Details once considered unimportant can, in the
passage of time, seem more significant and merit more prominent mention. And as
the stories about Jesus spread to different areas, new questions arose for the
apostles to resolve by quoting Jesus – sometimes quoting statements which they
had had no reason to preserve till then. And so forth. By writing down their
Gospel-accounts, the authors aspired to produce definitive texts about Jesus
which would *prevent,* rather than embody, groundless expansions and
embellishments of the apostles’ recollections about Jesus.
(11) I'm going to follow where the evidence leads me.
That doesn’t sound very child-like; it sounds a little like a determination to
walk by sight and not by faith. But following the evidence is not a bad thing as
long as you remember that you yourself are in the equation, and so is God, and
he is always adding himself in. I think the only proof that God gives about the
truthfulness of the good news of Jesus’ death and resurrection is not a
harmonization of the texts, but a subjective experience of God’s presence in the
individual Christian. We are told by Scripture that we can be assured that we
shall be raised from the dead because Christ has been raised from the dead. But
we are also assured that Christ has been raised from the dead, by the experience
of having been raised ourselves to walk in the newness of life.
Yours in Christ,
James Snapp, Jr.
Considering a Harmonization
By David Swindle
November 30, 2008
I received a thoughtful response in the comments to my
recent essay
"A Different Christianity" from James E. Snapp
Jr., pastor of
Curtisville Christian Church in Elwood,
Indiana. His blog is
here. I thought I would respond to some of his
comments and invite him to further discussion of the issues raised. For this
response I'll address James directly.
"Jesus said that if you
do not enter the kingdom of heaven like a little child, you won’t enter it at
all. The invitation to be a Christian has never been an altogether scientific
enterprise; if someone has told you otherwise then that was their mistake."
I reject the concept of
"faith like a child." I reject a God that would give us minds to think and then
tell us that in order to be with Him and escape eternal torture we must turn
them off. A child does not question the Bible. He hears the stories and just
believes them. He does not have the capacity to question. James, If you contest
my definition of "faith like a child" then I'd be interested in hearing a
different interpretation of what it means to have "faith like a child."
"I understand how the issue of the fate of those
who have not heard about Jesus can be a stumblingblock."
The issue of what happens to those who never hear
of Jesus is not really a stumbling block for me. In today's world it's very
difficult not to hear of Jesus and to be presented with the opportunity to
accept him as Your Savior. The percentage of people whom the "isolated desert
island scenario" applies to is very minute. When I was a more devout,
"Bible-believing" Christian I always tended to just trust that God was a Just
God and would deal with them fairly.
What bothers me more is the situation I describe in my post
"The Beauty and Horror of Salvation." That
understanding of the nature of salvation and the radical demands of a true
Christian life is the greater stumbling block than what God's going to do with
someone who has never heard of Jesus. The greatest stumbling block of all,
though, is my disposition of skepticism toward all dogmas and factual claims.
"I certainly do contest the claim that “most early
manuscripts do not have Mark 16:9-20.”"
I'd appreciate any links or suggested reading supporting your claim that the
final verses in Mark were not added later but were written by the original
author. I'm certainly not married to the
idea that they were added later but there does seem to be sufficient scholarly
evidence to at the very least cast them into doubt. If not, then why would
Christians even put footnotes in their Bibles?
----
James, you present an intelligent harmonization scenario. I do, of course,
remain skeptical of the practice for many of the reasons mentioned in my
original essay. Harmonization strikes me as top-down processing, wherein one
begins with a conclusion (the Bible is divine and perfect) and then fits the
evidence to support that claim. I generally prefer bottom-up processing, where
we start with the pieces of evidence and then build up to support the overall
claim.
I'll address some of your strongest ideas.
"The accounts [of which women were at the tomb]
vary because they are based on oral accounts, in which one testimony-giver
described her experience, without describing it exhaustively and without stating
that her experience was also experienced by someone else along with her."
I understand the gospels were based on oral accounts. However, you need to
understand the kind of experience to which I compare the tale of the angels at
the tomb. A group of women going to a tomb and discovering angels and a
resurrected man is comparable to a group of people witnessing two
extraterrestrials and a UFO.
Now, if I'm to believe a fantastic event took place, the story is undercut when
the accounts of the same event "emphasize" different details, like who the
witnesses were. If one account of a UFO sighting has five people seeing two
aliens and another features two people seeing one alien, and a third features
one person seeing two aliens then chances are I'm going to doubt that a UFO was
actually seen. The explanation that people would choose not to say or would
forget who was there just doesn't cut the mustard, especially when the text is
supposed to have been "divinely inspired."
"(2) How many angels? Two. It is not a
contradiction to mention only the one who spoke."
Also this comment on this subject:
"(7) Why would a Gospel-writer know about two
angels but only mention one of them? In the first century, as today, a writer
may have undetectable reasons for sharing some details and omitting others. I
can think of some reasons why a writer who knew about two angels might mention
only one – to simplify the account, or to preserve only the parts of the account
on which all his sources agreed, for instance – but the thing to see is that a
non-exhaustive statement is not the same as an incorrect statement. (To
illustrate: who won the recent U.S. election? Barack Obama? Or Barack Obama and
Joe Biden? Or Barack Obama and Joe Biden and all the other winners? One writer
with one focus will give one answer, and another writer with a different focus
will give a different answer. Which one is correct? Which one is incorrect? Or
can both answers be harmonized if one appreciates the authors’ perspectives?)"
This explanation takes the biggest leap of faith required of the harmonization
in these four groups of verses. I simply cannot buy the idea that if two angels
appeared and only one spoke that some gospel writers would choose to only
mention the one that spoke. There's no logical reason to only mention half of
the supernatural event. Again returning to the alien scenario, if two
descriptions of a UFO sighting mention that there were two aliens and others
mention only one alien, the factuality of the event is undercut. If people saw
two aliens, they're going to say they saw two aliens. If someone is writing
about the event they're not going to know that there were two aliens but
only mention one because only one spoke.
"(6) Does Jesus appear at the tomb to greet the
women? You wrote, “In Matthew and John Jesus does. He doesn't in Luke and Mark.”
Not exactly. In Matthew, Jesus meets the women at some point after they have
departed from the tomb to run and report to the disciples. He meets them and
tells them to go tell his brothers to go to Galilee. This seems to be after the
women have shared the angel’s message with the eleven disciples; the “brothers”
in Mt. 28:10 does not refer to spiritual brotherhood with the disciples but
refers to his family-members (who were in Jerusalem for the Passover, as was the
family custom). And in John, Jesus meets Mary Magdalene; nothing is said about a
meeting between Jesus and the other women. Combining the accounts, the picture
develops as follows: the main group of women goes to the disciples and tell them
about the empty tomb and the angels; then Jesus meets them and tells them to
also visit his brothers. So for a while, as Luke reports, the disciples know
only about what the women reported about the angels and the empty tomb. That is
why, in Luke 24:22-24, the two travelers on the road to Emmaus state that the
women saw a vision of angels but did not see Jesus."
Your combination of the accounts conflicts with what happens in John. In John
the angels appear after Mary Magdalene (and the unmentioned other women) have
retrieved the disciples who come to the tomb to investigate. They find nothing
and leave. It's after that the angels appear, correct?
"There’s one remaining obstacle to this
explanation: Luke 24:8-10. “And they remembered his words, and returned from the
tomb and reported all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. Now they
were Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary of James; also the other women with them
were telling these things to the apostles.” Taken at face value, these three
verses say that Mary Magdalene was among those who told the disciples about
their visit to the tomb. But while that is a natural understanding of the
passage, I think there’s room for another possibility, namely, that Luke (or one
of Luke’s sources of information) summarized some things, and in the course of
his summarization he grouped Mary Magdalene with the other women whose testimony
included the affirmation that the tomb was empty and that they had seen angels.
It is not difficult to add the details from John 20 into the scene described in
Luke 24:8-10: first the women, without Mary Magdalene, report to the disciples
about the empty tomb and the angels; the disciples do not believe them; then –
after the departure of the two disciples who traveled to Emmaus that day – Mary
Magdalene shows up and reports that she has seen Jesus and spoken with him.
Having been absent from the tomb during the others’ visit there, she defers to
them regarding what they saw, but affirms that she too found the empty tomb and
had seen angels, so it seemed fair to Luke, some 30 years later, to include her
in the list of those who testified about those things."
OK, James, I'm confused. So you're saying that Mary Magdalene was not part of
the original group, that she went to the tomb separately, that there were two
angel sightings at the tomb? You're saying that the gospel accounts of one visit
in which Mary Magdalene was with other women are in error? Could you elucidate
on this a bit?
I'm also intrigued by your language: "I
think there’s room for another possibility." Is that an admission that the Bible
is open to many interpretations and that we cannot know for certain what the
text means?
"(8) Why would some gospel authors choose to
de-emphasize Jesus' first appearance by not even mentioning it? Let’s take the
Gospel-authors one at a time: John 20 does mention Jesus’ appearance to Mary
Magdalene. Mark 16:9 mentions Jesus’ appearance to Mary Magdalene. Luke does not
mention Jesus’ appearance to Mary Magdalene because he did not know about it.
Matthew does not mention it but names Mary Magdalene and the other Mary as those
who saw the empty tomb, heard the angel’s proclamation there, and who later saw
Jesus before the disciples did."
I make a point of this because I think it's a pretty big deal. Jesus's
resurrection should be a really important event if it really happened. Thus, the
revelation of the fact of the resurrection in the form of Jesus's first
appearance should be a pretty major event that has some degree of biblical
consensus. Luke doesn't know about this major event? Matthew just chooses not to
mention it? The question is "why?" How could the major event of Jesus's first
post-resurrection appearance be either unknown or felt so important as to not be
mentioned?
I think harmonization is possible in the sense that scenarios can be devised in
which the accounts fit together -- some more easily than others. The problem
comes in when you start asking "why?" Why would a gospel writer choose to
de-emphasize major events or major details? It's hard to come up with logical
answers apart from the one traditional Christians refuse: that the gospels are
not to be taken in the same literal fashion as one would consider a newspaper
article.
Now, moving on to some points beyond Harmonization:
"(9) The resurrection and Christ's miracles cannot
be sufficiently supported as historical facts. A strict application of the
historical method will preclude miracles from the start. The study of history is
the study of mostly indemonstrable events. The strict historian asks, “What is
likely to have happened?” and adopts the premise that anything is more likely
than a miracle, and proceeds to invent all sorts of possible alternatives to a
miraculous resurrection of Jesus: the “swoon” theory, the theory that the women
went to the wrong grave, the theory of mass hallucinations, etc. But the strict
historian overlooks an important point: anything is more likely than a miracle
*unless God wants a miracle to happen.* And how can a historian gauge what God
wants or does not want? The questions of God’s will and of God’s power to
perform a miracle transcend the physical sciences. So, certainly Jesus’ miracles
and resurrection cannot be empirically demonstrated, but neither can the
Gospel-accounts be refuted as unhistorical merely because it involves a
remarkable act of God."
I haven't made the argument that the gospel accounts can be refuted simply
because they contain miracles. Jesus may have performed miracles and risen from
the dead. It could have happened. We just don't have sufficient evidence to
prove it. It's a leap of faith and should be acknowledged as such.
"By writing down their Gospel-accounts, the authors
aspired to produce definitive texts about Jesus which would *prevent,* rather
than embody, groundless expansions and embellishments of the apostles’
recollections about Jesus."
The authors aspired to produce "definitive texts"? But as you and I have both
demonstrated, none of the gospels are definitive. They each choose to leave
things out that are pretty important. The point that I'm demonstrating is the
rather strange coincidence that as the gospels were written, the story of the
resurrection got longer and more detailed. That's how mythologies develop. A
story starts out small and gets embellished as time progresses. That scenario
seems more likely than the "history" of what happened being developed further.
It's also my understanding that each gospel author had somewhat different
intentions about what they wanted to emphasize and depict. None had the intent
of some kind of "definitive text." They all had somewhat different versions of
Jesus and these four gospels were the ones that the church leaders liked the
most.
"(11) I'm going to follow where the evidence leads me. That doesn’t sound very
child-like; it sounds a little like a determination to walk by sight and not by
faith. But following the evidence is not a bad thing as long as you remember
that you yourself are in the equation, and so is God, and he is always adding
himself in. I think the only proof that God gives about the truthfulness of the
good news of Jesus’ death and resurrection is not a harmonization of the texts,
but a subjective experience of God’s presence in the individual Christian. We
are told by Scripture that we can be assured that we shall be raised from the
dead because Christ has been raised from the dead. But we are also assured that
Christ has been raised from the dead, by the experience of having been raised
ourselves to walk in the newness of life."
So James, you argue that one should become a Christian because of a spiritual
experience? One becomes a Christian because they have the presence of God reach
within them and change their soul? Absent hard evidence to support the
resurrection of Christ, one knows it is true because of spiritual experience?
That is how most people become Christians. That's how I became a Christian in
junior high. The inherent problem is twofold. First, people are unable to
differentiate between spiritual experiences and emotional experiences. Second,
preachers and churches throughout the ages have been adept at producing the
latter and then persuading the converted that they experienced the former.
Looking back on my time within Christianity I question many of the "spiritual
experiences" had by myself and my fellow Christians. Instead I tend to see the
way in which intense emotional experiences were produced and then deemed
spiritual experiences. It's simple. Just create a setting with candles and soft
music, present the sacrifice of Christ and the horrors of the crucifixion, tie
it to people's guilt for their sins, and then people are able to accept the
whole package of born again Christianity. A particularly strong example of this
is in the film "The Passion of the Christ," much celebrated by the Christian
community as something that allows for a powerful spiritual experience when in
actuality the response generated is emotional.
In many ways the religious journey can be considered in a similar fashion to
that of a film. When I'm watching a good film I tend to "suspend disbelief." If
I'm enjoying myself I'll ignore or accept plot holes, logical inconsistencies,
and unrealistic events. I might not even realize they're there. It's only for
bad movies that we we're distracted to the point that we notice certain
problems. The born again experience is similar. Because of the intensity of the
emotional experience Christians will accept claims they otherwise would not.
Christians apply the same intense skepticism I do toward other religions and
scientific theories they dislike. Yet they suspend that disbelief toward their
own religion because of the emotional experience they've had which has been sold
to them as a spiritual experience.
I'm skeptical of spiritual experiences as evidence for the truth in one religion
because they're claimed by all religions. It's possible to have Muslim spiritual
experiences, occult spiritual experiences, Hindu spiritual experiences. It's
even possible to induce spiritual experiences through psychedelic drugs and
forms of meditation. Connecting with the spiritual realm is not difficult;
mystics all around the world have written about it for centuries in their own
religious traditions. There probably is some great mystical, spiritual thing
going on but I don't think one religious tradition is able to completely explain
it.
I appreciate your comment James and welcome further dialogue. It appears you
certainly have a knowledge of the Bible and I appreciate your reasoned advocacy
for traditional Christianity.
Elaborating on a Harmonization
By James Snapp, Jr.
December 8, 2008
David:
This is a reply to “Considering a Harmonization.” I’ll cover three points before
I get to the part about the Gospels.
First, about having faith like a child: having a child-like faith does not mean
checking your brain at the door of the church, or never questioning the Bible.
Christians should love God with all their heard, soul, mind, and strength – and
that third part involves the engagement of the intellect, not its demotion. When
Jesus told His disciples (in Mark 10:15) that if you don’t receive the kingdom
of God like a little child, you won’t enter it at all, I don’t think He intended
for them to conclude that it is a bad thing to apply one’s mind to spiritual
subjects. Instead, He was appealing to them to recognize that there will always
be things that they will not understand, and the need for faith is not going to
go away. The person with a child-like faith certainly wonders and questions, but
he does not make his love for his father, or his trust of his father, depend on
his own ability to receive and comprehend the answer.
Second, about the “beauty and horror of salvation.” It is easy to find people in
today’s world who have not heard about Jesus and His death and resurrection. The
book “Operation World,” a sort of encyclopedia of mission fields, provides ample
proof of that. As I mentioned earlier, the Bible says that God will judge each
soul fairly, so I don’t think that those who never hear the gospel will be
punished for the church’s failure to share the gospel with them. But just about
everyone -– confidently entrusting the exceptions to God’s grace -– hears
something: even if they do not explicitly hear about Jesus, they can perceive
that God exists, and that their sins and sinfulness alienate them from God, and
that nothing they can do can assure them of forgiveness and restoration. With
those perceptions, they can acknowledge the need for grace, and ask God to have
mercy on them, and all the while the church is not in the equation.
Those who never make those perceptions or never live according to them -– with
or without the church’s involvement –- will be forever separated from God, in
hell, possessing natures incapable of being God-centered or wanting to be so. A
basic part of the church’s mission, as you know, is to persuade people to avoid
that, by receiving a new nature from God. But I don’t think the situation is
quite like you pictured it; I don’t think hell is primarily a place where
sinners are punished. One of the terms that Jesus used for hell was “Gehenna” –
the city dump of Jerusalem. I think hell is, in some respects, a dumping-ground
of wrecked and unsalvageable souls -- more of a consequence than a punishment.
When a car is wrecked beyond repair, the owner is not punishing the car by
sending it to the dump; he is just acting on his assessment of the severity of
the wreck. Similarly, when people sin, they wreck their lives, and part of the
church’s job is to introduce them to God the Mechanic/Repairman of the Soul, so
to speak. A lot more cars are going to go to the dump than are going to be
repaired. But if that is what the drivers deliberately chose, refusing to drive
safely and refusing to go to the repairman, why despair about that? You can’t
drive their cars for them. Why be enraged at the Car-maker, or the Repairman, or
the Gas-station Attendant (via this rough analogy, the Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit), because they allowed people to drive recklessly and to avoid repairing
their cars? I harbor some rage about the situation, too, but it’s not directed
at God; it’s at all the influences that persuade people to drive recklessly and
to avoid taking their cars to the repairman.
(One could object that we should resent God for allowing people to drive so
badly, but would the objectors really prefer the alternative: that we just ride
along like pets? Perhaps someone somewhere might say, “Yes; it would have been
better if we were all just animals without the potential to be aware of God,”
but it’s a pretty deep subject, and I’m willing to trust God’s judgment on this
point.)
Third, about Mark 16:9-20: for material in favor of the authenticity of this
passage, see the pages I have prepared at www.curtisvillechristian.org/MarkOne.html
. The basic question about these 12 verses is not whether or not they are an
addition, but when they were added: before the Gospel of Mark was released for
church-use, or at some later point? After looking into the question very
closely, I think they were added before the Gospel of Mark’s initial
dissemination. The Bible-footnotes about this passage exist because the two
oldest Greek manuscripts of Mark end at 16:8, and because a prominent church
leader (Eusebius of Caesarea) stated in one of his writings, c. 325, that almost
all the accurate copies end at verse 8. But there is much more to consider,
which is why I prepared the online materials about the subject. (Even among
Christian commentators, there is a lot of misinformation being spread about Mark
16:9-20, and I’ve taken it upon myself to try to prevent that misinformation
from gaining momentum. That is why I periodically search blogs for “Mark
16:9-20,” and one such search led me to your blog.)
Now about the harmonization of the four Gospels’ accounts of Easter.
The harmonization does not represent an endorsement of what you described as
top-down processing, in which one starts with the premise that the Bible is
inerrant and goes from there. The initial question is simply whether or not the
accounts can be harmonized; even if the answer is, “Yes, they are historically
consistent,” that would not mean that the Bible must be divinely inspired.
I know you said that you understand that the gospels were based on oral
accounts, but I’m not sure you grasp the extent to which that factor clears up
your questions (since you re-presented them), so I’m going to go into detail
about that, hopefully in a not-drudgery sort of way. Let me answer one of your
questions first, though:
You wrote, “Your combination of the accounts
conflicts with what happens in John. In John the angels appear after Mary
Magdalene (and the unmentioned other women) have retrieved the disciples who
come to the tomb to investigate. They find nothing and leave. It's after that
the angels appear, correct?”
The reconstruction may be easier to follow if we tag along with some of the
characters involved. Let’s tag along with Mary Magdalene: early in the morning,
she joins some other women on the way to Jesus’ tomb. They arrive at the tomb
and see that the stone has been rolled away. Mary Magdalene leaves and goes to
report this immediately to Peter and the other disciple. (Meanwhile the other
women remain at the tomb, and it is they who see and hear the angel in Matthew
28:5-8, and who see Jesus in Matt. 28:9-10). Peter and the other disciple arrive
at the tomb, and find it empty – no angels manifest themselves to Peter and the
other disciple - and depart. Mary Magdalene, having returned to the tomb,
remains behind, looks into the tomb, sees two angels, and soon after that, she
meets Jesus. She then reports this to the disciples.
Now let’s tag along with one of the other women: early in the morning, she joins
some other women and Mary Magdalene, on the way to Jesus’ tomb. They arrive at
the tomb and see that the stone has been rolled away. Mary Magdalene leaves; the
others stay and encounter the angel in Matthew 28:5-8. Then they and tell some
disciples about the empty tomb, and about the angel’s message. But the disciples
are not all in the same place in Jerusalem. As the women are on their way to
tell other disciples about the empty tomb, Jesus appears to them and tells them
to report to His brothers.
Now let’s tag along with Cleopas: he’s just sitting down to breakfast at the
home of the family of his friend John, with some of the other disciples, when an
excited group of women arrives, saying that they visited Jesus’ tomb, that it
was empty, and that they saw and heard angels there, saying that Jesus has
risen. Cleopas dismisses their tale; Peter, though, goes to the tomb, and
returns, reporting that it was indeed empty but that he did not see Jesus.
Cleopas then begins his journey to Emmaus, with another disciple. Jesus joins
them on the road, and the events of Luke 24:13-33 transpire. Cleopas and his
companion run back to Jerusalem to report about their experience; initially the
others are doubtful, inasmuch as Simon has also reported that Jesus appeared to
him. Then Jesus appears resolves their questions by appearing on the scene (in
Luke 24:36).
I hope that brings things into a sharper focus. You asked,
“So you're saying that Mary Magdalene was not part of the
original group, that she went to the tomb separately, that there were two angel
sightings at the tomb?” I’m saying that Mary
Magdalene was part of the original group but left when she saw the stone out of
place. And you wrote, “You're saying that the gospel accounts of one visit in
which Mary Magdalene was with other women are in error? Could you elucidate on
this a bit?” I thought I already did so, but here is the basic idea again: when
Luke, in Lk. 24:10, names Mary Magdalene among the women who told these things
(about the empty tomb and the angels) to the disciples, he is simply listing his
sources, without intending to assign a particular part of the story to a
particular source. Mary Magdalene’s name is in the list because she was known to
Luke as one of the women who saw the empty tomb and who told the disciples about
it. And you wrote, “I'm also intrigued by your language: "I think there’s room
for another possibility." Is that an admission that the Bible is open to many
interpretations and that we cannot know for certain what the text means?” No; it
should be clear from the context of that language that I was referring
specifically to Luke 24:10, without reference to how perspicuous the Bible is in
general, or how certainly we can know what any text means. Luke was just listing
his sources.
And when we read the Gospels, we should read with an appreciation of their
sources. I’m going to take a minute or two now to present some basic assumptions
about the Gospels and their sources. The Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and
Luke) are all based on materials composed by Mark which embodied the apostolic
reports about Jesus’ ministry, especially the accounts provided by Peter. Each
of these sources may be considered a different form of Proto-Mark, since they
each can be considered a draft of the Gospel of Mark. Each form of Proto-Mark
incorporated another source, the Passion Narrative, which focused on events in
Holy Week, especially the crucifixion. Matthew made a collection of the sayings
of Jesus, organized into five parts, in Aramaic. This Sayings-Source was
translated into Greek.
The Gospel of Matthew was written c. A.D. 70, in Antioch, in Greek, for
ethnically Jewish Christian readers. Its author may have been Matthew himself,
but it is equally possible that a disciple of Matthew wrote it, by combining
Matthew’s Aramaic Sayings-source (translating it into Greek on the spot), a
nearly finalized form of Proto-Mark, and the Passion-Narrative.
The Gospel of Mark was written c. A.D. 68, in Rome, in Greek, for Roman
Christians, by John Mark, who served as the secretary of Peter. It is based
primarily on Peter’s remembrances of Jesus (and the Passion Narrative), which
Mark constantly wrote down and collected; Mark made and distributed copies of
his collection of Peter’s remembrances on request (and thus they made their way
to Antioch and to Luke); after Peter was martyred, Mark began to write a
definitive form of his collection of Petrine memories, which is what we know as
the Gospel of Mark. (I have a pet theory that Mark was almost finished with the
Gospel of Mark when he had to suddenly leave due to intense persecution, leaving
behind his almost-finished Gospel, which his colleagues at Rome finished by
adding 16:9-20 (which was previously another freestanding work by Mark, intended
for liturgical or catechetical use) before they began to distribute copies of
it. But these assumptions work with or without this detail.)
The Gospel of Luke was written c. A.D. 63, in Rome, by Luke, the companion of
Paul, in Greek, for an interested Roman. Luke’s sources included an early draft
of Proto-Mark, some materials also used by the author of the Gospel of Matthew,
a Greek translation of Matthew’s Sayings-Source, and materials which Luke
compiled independently after consulting various eyewitnesses (several of whom he
mentions by name in the Gospel of Luke). Luke’s Gospel-account was intended to
be the first of two works (the Acts of the Apostles being the second) describing
the roots of Christianity.
The Gospel of John was written c. A.D. 90 (95?), in Ephesus, in Greek, by a
colleague of John the son of Zebedee, using a collection of materials prepared
by John. John himself did not write the Gospel, but he composed its components,
with an awareness of the contents of the Gospel of Mark, to share details which
Peter/Mark had omitted, and to explicitly divulge the spiritual significance of
Jesus’ ministry.
With those assumptions in place, let’s return to the resurrection-accounts. Up
to now, we’ve been asking whether or not the accounts are historically
consistent. Now, our question is, “Why aren’t the accounts more uniform?” With
the background about the source-materials of the Gospels in place, the answers
to some of your questions readily present themselves: for instance, Luke lists
five women instead of two because he is thus crediting his sources; he has a
special reason to be more thorough. Instead of wading through every objection to
the lack of uniformity that is resolved by consideration of the effects of
source-materials, I’ll get to the one that you said takes the biggest leap of
faith:
DS: “I simply cannot buy the idea that if two
angels appeared and only one spoke that some gospel writers would choose to only
mention the one that spoke. There's no logical reason to only mention half of
the supernatural event.”
Let me add something to that: “There’s no logical reason, /as far as I can
tell,/ to only mention half of the supernatural event.” You seem to be placing
an awful lot of confidence in your/our ability to discern all possible logical
motivations that authors writing over 1,900 years ago had (or did not have) to
mention or omit details like the number of angels at the tomb.
I can think of a good reason why Matthew mentioned only one angel: he understood
one of the angels to be the angel of the Lord. Matthew refers to the angel this
way, and takes it for granted that his readers will perceive that this was a
top-ranking angel, whose words should be trusted and heeded. Adding the detail,
“And there was another angel with him” seemed like an extraneous distraction.
(Another possible reason is that Matthew mentioned the angel of the Lord near
the beginning of the book, and so he may have wanted to give the book a touch of
balance by mentioning the angel of the Lord again, here near the end.)
Meanwhile, Luke mentioned two angels simply because he had been told by the
people he had consulted (during the two years that Paul was imprisoned at
Caesarea) that the women had seen two angels. Also, Luke was told that two
angels appeared after Jesus’ ascension; he mentions two angels in Lk. 24 because
he wants to preserve some continuity in his narrative, from Luke 24 to Acts 1;
Matthew did not have that motivation.
DS: “If people saw two aliens, they're going to say
they saw two aliens. If someone is writing about the event they're not going to
know that there were two aliens but only mention one because only one spoke.”
A more fitting comparison: if Matilda and Margaret and their friends saw two
aliens, and the aliens gave them an important message, and then Matilda and
Margaret and their friends told Reporters Matt and Larry about the encounter,
and Matt perceived that one of the aliens was the Prime Minister of the Epsilon
Eridani System, then surely, 30 or 40 years later, when Matt and Larry write
down accounts of what Matilda and Margaret saw and heard, and when Matt and
Larry wish to convey the importance of the aliens’ message, Matt would not
mention only that the women encountered the Prime Minister of the Epsilon
Eridani System. Matt would have to explicitly agree with Larry that the women
saw two aliens; otherwise the accounts display so much non-uniformity that they
are both drawn into question! Fair or not fair?
DS: “Jesus' resurrection should be a really
important event if it really happened. Thus, the revelation of the fact of the
resurrection in the form of Jesus' first appearance should be a pretty major
event that has some degree of biblical consensus. Luke doesn't know about this
major event? Matthew just chooses not to mention it? The question is "why?"
Yes, Jesus’ resurrection is a very important event. The writers of the Gospels
wanted people to believe that it happened. If you were in their sandals, trying
to convince someone that it occurred, what do you think would be the better way
to persuade someone that you’ve seen a man, alive, who had been killed: (a) tell
people that your friend Mary told you that she saw him, or (b) tell people that
you, and about a dozen of your friends, saw him?
Why not say both things? Well, the Gospel of John does mention them both; the
Gospel of Mark does mention an appearance to Mary Magdalene and an appearance to
the eleven disciples; the Gospel of Matthew does tell us that Jesus appeared to
the women, and later to the eleven disciples in Galilee. So your next question
seems to apply best to the Gospel of Luke.
DS: “How could the major event of Jesus' first
post-resurrection appearance be either unknown or felt so important as to not be
mentioned?”
(I figure that you meant “unimportant.”) Well let’s think about that for a
minute: Luke wants to make a case that Jesus rose from the dead, and that His
disciples’ testimony to that effect can be trusted. So which encounter would
Luke naturally focus upon: one that involved a woman known to have once been
demon-possessed, or one that involved a man who was (as of A.D. 62) a
distinguished leader of the church at Jerusalem (namely Cleopas)? One that
involved a person alone, without anyone who could verify her story, or one that
involved almost all the disciples? One in which Jesus said, “Touch me not” –- a
phrase capable of suggesting all sort of questions about whether His body was
physical or not – or one in which He eats food in front of people?
DS: “The problem comes in when you start asking
"why?" Why would a gospel writer choose to de-emphasize major events or major
details?”
The reason why Luke did not pass along Mary Magdalene’s account of her encounter
with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane seems obvious to me: he did not consider
it to be as apologetically valuable as the other reports of
resurrection-appearances because it was comparatively less verifiable: if ten or
eleven people tell you that they all saw An Amazing Thing on the same occasion,
their testimony tends to be more persuasive than if one person tells you that he
or she saw An Amazing Thing in solitude.
DS: “It's hard to come up with logical answers
apart from the one traditional Christians refuse: that the gospels are not to be
taken in the same literal fashion as one would consider a newspaper article.”
I entirely agree that the Gospels are not to be taken in the same literal
fashion as one would consider a newspaper article. But I don’t think it’s all
that difficult to come up with logical answers about why the Gospel-writers
wrote as they did. And even if it were, that may say more about the limits of
our knowledge of the authors’ settings, sources, and purposes, than it does
about how logically the authors worked.
This would be a good stopping-point, but since you mentioned some other things
in the “Beyond Harmonization” part of your reply to my initial reply, I think
I’ll go ahead and address them too.
DS: “Jesus may have performed miracles and risen
from the dead. It could have happened. We just don't have sufficient evidence to
prove it. It's a leap of faith and should be acknowledged as such.”
As far as empirical, non-subjective evidence is concerned, I agree.
By writing down their Gospel-accounts, the authors aspired to produce definitive
texts about Jesus which would *prevent,* rather than embody, groundless
expansions and embellishments of the apostles’ recollections about Jesus.
DS: “The authors aspired to produce "definitive
texts"? But as you and I have both demonstrated, none of the gospels are
definitive. They each choose to leave things out that are pretty important.”
Each Gospel was intended to be definitive for each of the communities for which
the authors wrote; the idea being that whatever else anyone claimed about Jesus
could not be accepted as genuine if it opposed the contents of the
Gospel-account. Luke explains this in the opening verses of the Gospel of Luke.
DS: “The point that I'm demonstrating is the rather
strange coincidence that as the gospels were written, the story of the
resurrection got longer and more detailed.”
That doesn’t seem like a particularly weighty point, for several reasons. First,
just because one person tells the story with more detail does not mean that the
longer story is less true than the shorter one. Second, Mark’s account of the
resurrection is shorter than the others because he was permanently interrupted
in the course of writing; 16:7 indicates that he had planned to include an
account of a meeting between Jesus and the disciples, especially Peter. Third,
by a simple count of verses, Luke’s account of Easter consists of 49 verses and
John’s account of Easter consists of 23 verses; the earlier account (Luke’s)
turns out to be lengthier. Comparing Luke 24 as a whole to John 20 and 21 as a
whole, John’s account is only three verses longer than Luke’s. This is not the
result of narrative-embroidery; it’s because John includes an entire chapter
about an appearance in Galilee which Luke, keeping the focus on Jerusalem, does
not mention. Fourth, consider the account of post-resurrection appearances in
First Corinthians 15. Compared to the accounts in the Gospels, the list in First
Corinthians is sensational: Jesus doesn’t just appear to a few women and to the
apostles; He appears to more than 500 people at once, and to His brother James,
who had not previously been a believer. This would seem to be more impressive
than any of the Gospels’ accounts of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances. Yet
the account in First Corinthians is the earliest of them all.
DS: “It's also my understanding that each gospel
author had somewhat different intentions about what they wanted to emphasize and
depict.”
Yes; this was certainly the case.
DS: “They all had somewhat different versions of
Jesus and these four gospels were the ones that the church leaders liked the
most.”
Or one could consider them like four different artists composing four portraits
from four angles. The reason why the church leaders liked these four is because
these are the only four that were composed by either apostles or the close
associates of apostles. By the middle of the second century, church leaders had
to be on guard against pseudepigrapha, so when it came to Gospel-accounts, only
the oldest and best-known literary stratum was considered safe to regard as
authoritative.
DS: “So James, you argue that one should become a
Christian because of a spiritual experience? One becomes a Christian because
they have the presence of God reach within them and change their soul? Absent
hard evidence to support the resurrection of Christ, one knows it is true
because of spiritual experience?”
I can thing of worse ways to become a Christian that one in which an individual
sincerely says to himself, “I know from experience that God is calling me to be
reconciled to Him through Christ, so that I can serve His kingdom.” That
experience can validly include one’s emotions: should we really expect a soul to
be rescued from hell, to have its moral debts wiped away, and to have its
self-image from primate-with-large-brain-case to child-of-Almighty-God, without
being joyful and thrilled? If you’re asking if one should become a Christian
merely because of an emotional rush, the answer is no. But neither should we
pretend to be spiritual Vulcans.
Several times in the New Testament, the relationship of Christ and the Christian
church is compared to the relationship between a groom and bride. The invitation
to become a Christian is, in a way, an invitation to marry one’s soul to God.
When someone says yes to that proposal, one should not do so casually or
flippantly, or on impulse. But neither should one do so exclusively because it
makes good business sense. Love and trust are key factors to consider. If person
wants to have a relationship with God of mutual love, and if a person trusts
God’s word, even when it cannot be empirically proved, and is seriously resolved
to love God and to receive the responsibilities incumbent upon a member of the
church – then that person is well on the way to be ready to become a Christian.
In closing, in case I haven’t been clear, let me say plainly that the
trust-factor involved is not a trust in the validity of an emotional experience.
It’s a belief that the Word of God, as revealed in the New Testament, is true
and that what it says about salvation applies to oneself. If God gives a
Christian some wonderful subjective experience that he interprets to mean that
the gospel is true, that’s fine, but (apart from some exceptional circumstances,
particular where the written Word of God is unavailable) such subjective proofs
are given to confirm faith rather than initiate it.
Yours in Christ,
James Snapp, Jr.
A Junkyard of the Souls
By David Swindle
December 28, 2008
But I don’t think the situation is quite like you pictured it; I don’t think hell is primarily a place where sinners are punished. One of the terms that Jesus used for hell was “Gehenna” – the city dump of Jerusalem. I think hell is, in some respects, a dumping-ground of wrecked and unsalvageable souls -- more of a consequence than a punishment. When a car is wrecked beyond repair, the owner is not punishing the car by sending it to the dump; he is just acting on his assessment of the severity of the wreck. Similarly, when people sin, they wreck their lives, and part of the church’s job is to introduce them to God the Mechanic/Repairman of the Soul, so to speak. A lot more cars are going to go to the dump than are going to be repaired. But if that is what the drivers deliberately chose, refusing to drive safely and refusing to go to the repairman, why despair about that? You can’t drive their cars for them. Why be enraged at the Car-maker, or the Repairman, or the Gas-station Attendant (via this rough analogy, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), because they allowed people to drive recklessly and to avoid repairing their cars? I harbor some rage about the situation, too, but it’s not directed at God; it’s at all the influences that persuade people to drive recklessly and to avoid taking their cars to the repairman.
James, I think you and I both have an affinity for metaphor when writing about
spiritual matters. You conception of hell as something of a "junkyard of the
souls" in which broken souls reside is compelling. You suggest that hell isn't
really a punishment, it's just a place to isolate souls that have destroyed
themselves. It certainly clashes with the usual description of hell as a place
of punishment and suffering. How do you reconcile your vision of hell with the
description offered in the following verses?
If we look at Luke 16:19-26 we see hell described as a place of torment in which
the rich man suffers unquenchable thirst:
“There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores. The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried, and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. And he called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.’ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.’
Or we see in 2 Thessalonians 1:9 that the apostle Paul describes hell as a
punishment:
They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might
Further if we consider the Revelation (specifically 20:9-15) we see the traditional view of a lake of fire:
And they marched up over the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of
the saints and the beloved city, but fire came down from heaven and consumed
them, and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and
sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented
day and night forever and ever.
Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
If we are to take a
traditional, literalist approach to the Bible then it seems difficult to avoid
the reality of hell as a place of fire, suffering, and punishment -- basically
the vision that the Church and traditional Christians have articulated for
centuries. God has created a horrible place for people to go who commit one
specific sin: the inability to believe in him and accept his sacrifice. God is
able to forgive all sins save for this single one.
To answer your questions... "But if that is what the drivers deliberately chose,
refusing to drive safely and refusing to go to the repairman, why despair about
that?" No one deliberately chooses hell. No one decides, "I'm going to spend
eternity in hell." Instead, people who are confronted with the gospel and choose
to decline its literal interpretation are more likely simply applying the same
skepticism toward your religion to which you apply to all others.
Yes, your version of God is kind enough to offer humanity a choice. But the
choice is more accurately described as that of the tyrant king who tells his
subject that she can either marry him or spend the rest of her life in the
dungeon. But even that is a better situation than the one we have. We don't even
know that the king exists and that the choice is real. We only have people
acting on behalf of a king we don't know exists who insist that we must accept
his wedding invitation or spend eternity in the dungeon.
Let me make my spiritual position clear. It's not my view that hell exists and
that it's a place of flames and punishment. I'm merely pointing out that if one
is to take a traditional, literalist approach to scripture then such a vision of
hell is unavoidable. I certainly don't know what, if anything, happens after we
die. However, I do have a guess. One thing that individuals can agree on is that
when we die we become one with the universe again. We are no longer independent
beings and our consciousness ceases to be its own. We return to the dust from
whence we originated.
We can guess at what this experience approximates to because throughout our
lives we experience a oneness with existence frequently in many different forms.
When we are asleep we are one with existence. When we are intoxicated either
through alcohol or other drugs we are one with existence. When we meditate we
are one with existence. When we have an orgasm we are one with existence. When
we lose ourselves in art -- whether it be film, painting, music, literature,
even video games -- we are one with existence. Even when we expend ourselves
physically and fall into the so-called "runner's high" we are one with
existence. Any number of activities can result in our consciousness unifying
with the universe. This is always a pleasant experience, a state of being for
which most people live. "Heaven" is an accurate term to describe it.
And so, working within the Christian tradition of spiritual metaphor, I suppose
I could be described as a universalist. In my view everyone goes to heaven in
that all individual consciousnesses upon death return to the collective
consciousness. We all become one with the universe, one with God. I tend to find
this position summed up in Christian terms in
this excerpt from
William Barclay. I'm also a big fan of Philip Gulley and James Mulholland's book
If Grace Is True: Why God Will Save Every Person. Further, I tend to see the
parable of the lost sheep as evidence for a gospel of universalism.
Challenging Universalism
By James Snapp, Jr.
February 14, 2009
Dear David:
This reply is much-delayed, and it would probably have been even more so, but
last week, I was driving along, and happened to tune the car radio to WIBC, and
your name came up in an on-air discussion! A perfectly naturally explicable
event, no doubt; nevertheless I took it as a sign that it might be a good idea
to give this task my full attention. So here it is.
First let me clarify some things about what I said before about hell. The idea
of hell as a dumping-ground for lost souls does not collide with the idea that
hell is also an extremely unpleasant place. The Biblical descriptions of hell as
a fiery lake are metaphorical, but I believe they are accurate metaphors. I
don't expect the unquenchable fires of hell to be exactly like the quenchable
fires on earth, any more than I think that the pearly gates will be exactly like
earthly pearls. But I expect hell to be so terrible, compared to heaven, that
those in heaven will consider the inhabitants of hell to be as bad off as if
they were perpetually aflame. When it comes to the question of how terrible, how
hellish, is hell, there's an unopened door to consider: when hell is described
in the New Testament, it is never described by its inhabitants. We get our
picture of hell from people on its outside: from Jesus, from Peter, from John,
and so forth. The question of how people in hell will interpret their experience
there is not fully answered in the New Testament, as far as I can tell.
More about that soon. But first: you might already be wondering, what about the
story of the rich man and Lazarus (in Luke 16:19-31)? Let me address that, and
state some premises about the afterlife along the way. Technically, nothing in
Luke 16:19-31 describes heaven or hell. The scenes of the afterlife there do not
involve heaven or hell; they depict Hades and Paradise, which are not quite the
same thing as heaven and hell. Hades and Paradise are more like two
waiting-rooms: one waiting-room for heaven, and one waiting-room for hell. A lot
of people have the impression that when you die, you instantly go to either
heaven (the “New Jerusalem” in Revelation 21) or to hell (the lake of fire), but
that is a mistake which cannot be sustained after a careful investigation of
what the New Testament has to say on the subject.
When a human soul departs from the body, its essential character is locked-in:
it is either self-centered, or else, having been regenerated, it is
God-centered. The self-centered souls go to Hades, where they await judgment,
like guilty criminals in an unpleasant jail, waiting to be put on trial before
an omniscient Judge. Hades is a very unpleasant place, but it is something of a
vestibule; it is not the lake of fire. (If we were to slow things down and walk
through the New Testament looking for the passages which bear out this
interpretation, I'd start with Revelation 20:14, where Hades is cast into the
lake of fire; clearly John is not picturing the lake of fire being cast into
itself.) Meanwhile, regenerated souls (like the soul of the repentant thief in
Luke 23:39-43) go to Paradise, which is a very blissful place, but it is not the
New Jerusalem. The lake of fire (which is usually what comes to people’s mind
when they imagine hell) and the New Jerusalem (which is usually what people
envision when they imagine heaven) do not enter the picture until after the
Final Judgment.
So regarding Luke 16, we should bear in mind that, (a) while this story
qualifies as a parable, it is still intended to be realistic, and (b) in its
depictions of the afterlife, it describes scenes prior to, rather than
subsequent to, the Final Judgment. This is obvious in light of the rich man's
reference to his yet-living brothers in Luke 16:27.
You mentioned a couple of other passages: Second Thessalonians 1:9 was one.
Clearly this verse teaches that hell is a place of punishment. I agree, but here
is how I would frame the situation: hell is the consequence of sinfulness, and
inasmuch as the soul's sinfulness came about via acts of sin, hell can be
considered punishment for those acts (because without those acts of sin, there
would be no sinfulness). But it is not as if a finite number of sins merits an
infinite punishment. Instead, a soul has molded itself, with the chisels of a
finite number of sins, into a sinful and unrepentant form, which after death
will not change or repent. The inhabitants of hell will be infinitely sinful,
forever, and that is why they are separated, forever, from God.
Now about the unforgivable sin: you wrote, "God has
created a horrible place for people to go who commit one specific sin: the
inability to believe in him and accept his sacrifice. God is able to forgive all
sins save for this single one." The famous
“unforgivable sin” in the Bible is something else, according to Mark 3:28-29.
It’s blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Mark didn’t call time-out in his
narrative to devote a paragraph to explaining what “blasphemy against the Holy
Spirit” is supposed to mean, but he provides a sketchy note: Jesus mentioned
this sin because some of the scribes from Jerusalem were saying that He had an
unclean spirit. The idea is that these particular scribes knew that Jesus was
right in His teachings, and that His miracles confirmed the truth (see
Nicodemus’ statement in John 3:2), and demonstrated Jesus’ authority from God.
But they were so determined to promote their traditions that they declared
nevertheless that Jesus’ miracles were actually being done by an unclean spirit.
Jesus perceived that this was a symptom of a spiritual hard-heartedness so
severe that those individuals would never acknowledge their mistake, and never
repent. Thus they would never be forgiven. In these times, when miracles of the
sort performed by Jesus and His apostles are rare, and difficult, if not
impossible to verify, it may be impossible to blaspheme the Holy Spirit in the
way that the scribes did, because no one is observing the manifest miracles
which they saw. But it is still possible to never be forgiven, by never
repenting.
All sins bear the fruit of a sinful nature, and sinfulness is what forever
separates a soul from God, unless it is remedied. That remedy is the conversion
of the soul, and the two key ingredients of the conversion of the soul, on the
part of the convert, consist of faith and repentance. When you wrote that
“God is able to forgive all sins save for this single one”
– “the inability to believe in him and accept his sacrifice”
– you’re partly right: barring three important qualifications, and addressing
the question of what God has said He will or won’t do, rather than the question
of what He is theoretically able to do, God will not forgive unbelieving and
unrepentant souls.
You may be asking, “What are those important qualifications?” I don’t hesitate
to explain them: although initially someone might anticipate these
qualifications with the thought that they are about to find a theological
loophole for themselves, the way I see it, if you know about them, they won’t
apply to you. So, arranging things systematically, here are the main three
qualifications:
Qualification #1: God only punishes unbelief in Him on the part of people who
were capable of belief in Him. Not everyone is equally able to consciously
assent to the existence of a great and good God. Some individuals may never be
intellectually capable of such a thing, dying in infancy. They're safe. Others,
after some trauma, may have their minds involuntarily preoccupied. In such an
involuntarily preoccupied state of mind (though not necessarily before or after
it), they're safe. (Biblical basis: Romans 5:13b and James 4:17.)
Qualification #2: God only punishes unbelief in Jesus Christ on the part of
people who were capable of belief in Jesus Christ. A lot of people are totally
uninformed about Jesus. Others are so under-informed, or misinformed, that they
never are equipped to make an authentic decision to surrender their lives to
Jesus. God will not hold them accountable for the church's failure to reach
them. (Biblical basis: Matthew 25:14-30 and Luke 12:47-48.)
Qualification #3: People meeting the description in Qualification #3 will be
held accountable to the "moral law" standard: whatever they perceive as their
moral authority will be the basis by which their sins will be counted against
them. An acknowledgement of their state as sinners, indebted to God, and an
appeal to God to mercifully forgive their sins (as an act of kindness, not as
the result of a bribe from the individual), are sufficient expressions of faith
and repentance, inasmuch as they are unable to do more. (Biblical basis: Luke
18:9-14, Romans 2:11-16.)
With those qualifications in place, let's consider the statement, "No
one deliberately chooses hell. No one decides, "I'm going to spend eternity in
hell."" That's pretty much true on the surface.
Nobody with an appreciation of the Bible's descriptions of heaven and hells says
to himself, "Hmm, eternal happiness with God or eternal torment with the devil.
Let me think." But lots of people decide, "I am going to commit this act which I
know is forbidden by God (or, if not by God in the Bible, then by whatever I
acknowledge as my highest moral authority), and persist in it, without regret,
without repentance." Those individuals are choosing to develop and nurture a
sinful nature – an unheavenly nature. The sort of nature which would want to
escape the glorious presence of God rather than celebrate it. The sort of nature
that ultimately views God as a rival. Souls which enter the afterlife with that
kind of nature will choose hell over heaven, because they will prefer self-rule:
from their perspective, as Satan says in Paradise Lost, "Better to reign in hell
than serve in heaven;" such is the thought of all of hell's inhabitants, however
burdensome their kingdom of self may be.
"From their perspective." Who knows what lurks within those words. (This is
where I return to the question of how people in hell will interpret their
experience there.) The Bible offers several descriptions of heaven, but it also
says (in First Corinthians 2:9), "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have
entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who
love Him." Similarly, although the Bible provides several descriptions of hell,
there are some things about hell that we are not told, and about which we are
free to speculate. One thing I wonder about is how hell's inhabitants view
themselves and their circumstances. Perhaps hell's inhabitants relish their
pain, the way a veteran might take pride in his war-wounds. Or, having become
like demons, with nothing but pain to experience, souls in hell might develop a
diabolical appetite for it. If their tastes become sufficiently warped, so that
they prefer impurity over purity, and pain over serenity, then hell might be,
from their perspective, a desirable place, and the painless presence of God may
be entirely unattractive. Another possibility is that the tortures of hell will
drive the lost souls into a perpetual stupor, so that although their lost state
and circumstances will last forever, they will become essentially frozen and
insensate. (Maybe Dante was expressing a suspicion of this when he depicted the
lowest circle of hell as an icy place.)
But that is speculation, and it should be framed as speculation. I don’t think
it's a good idea to be dogmatic about the temperature of hell. Historically, the
Christian church has allowed for a fairly wide spectrum of views of hell to be
advocated under the umbrella of orthodoxy. Even universalism has been tolerated,
as long as the idea is framed as a speculation, with the premise in play that
although the idea of universalism does not align with Scripture, there is a
possibility that after the return of Christ, some new revelation will be given
which will provide a whole new lens through which what are currently candid
teachings about the permanence of hell may be understood as something else. (In
about the same way, several regulations in the Law of Moses, though described as
"everlasting" statutes, are considered inapplicable in the new covenant ushered
in by Christ.)
There is nothing wrong with acknowledging that God has not necessarily told us
the last word about what will happen after the Final Judgment. But there is
something wrong with using the possibility of further revelation in a future
covenant as an eraser to attempt to erase the words that God has already given.
And this is where I think Philip Gulley and James Mulholland have made a huge
mistake. (I'm transitioning to a consideration of the claims in _If Grace Is
True_ now. I’ll call the authors "Gulley," for no reason but to spare myself
some typing.)
If Gulley were only saying, "I do not understand how my subjective experiences
about the mercifulness of God can be harmonized with the Bible's candid
statements that God will send lost souls into the painful fires of hell,
forever," that would be one thing. And it would be one of many cases where we
are invited to trust God on the basis of faith, not on the basis of a full
understanding of His character and how He works. Instead, even though Gulley
employs Scripture many times – often lifting verses out of context and twisting
them to present them to the reader as if they mean something that they do not
actually mean – he ends up frankly admitting that he considers himself free to
"weigh the Scriptures."
It is not a bad idea to acknowledge that some parts of Scripture are more
relevant than others. I think everyone would agree that it is more important to
know the commandment, "Love one another" than to know who was the father of
Muppim and Huppim. But when Gulley "weighs the Scriptures," he is doing
something else: he approves and embraces the parts of the Bible that he likes,
and rejects the parts that he doesn't like. Pages 54-55 convey his approach
pretty well: "I believe Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; Moses, David, and Solomon;
Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel didn't fully comprehend the character of God."
Instead, "I believe in the God of Jesus, the God he called Father."
Some readers of _If Grace Is True_ might thing this is a very comforting
approach: let's dispense with the vengeful Bronze Age theology and focus on
kind, gentle Jesus. The thing is, when it comes to the subject of hell, Jesus
spoke much more forcefully than any Old Testament writers. A few samples from
the Gospel of Matthew:
"Narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are
few who find it." (Matthew 7:14) That does not sound like universalism.
"The sons of the kingdom will be cast out into outer darkness. There will be
weeping and gnashing of teeth." (Matthew 8:12. See also Matthew 13:30 and
13:41-42 and 22:13 and 24:48-51.) On page 204, Gulley presents Matthew 8:11 as
if it supports universalism. The picture is quite different with 8:12 as well.
"Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear
him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." (Matthew 10:28) What is
the danger if hell is only purgatory and everyone ends up perfected rather than
destroyed?
"Whoever denies Me before men, him I will also deny before My Father who is in
heaven." (Matthew 10:33) It doesn't look like Jesus' theology makes room for the
possibility of repentance after death. People's decisions in this life really
matter.
"Then He will also say to those on the left hand, 'Depart from Me, you cursed,
into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.'" (Matthew
25:41)
"And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into
eternal life." (Matthew 25:46)
And similar passages exist in the other Gospels, and the rest of the New
Testament is peppered with expressions of similar sentiments. I only decline to
present them all, in all their contexts, in the interest of brevity. Gulley is
not just rejecting parts of the Old Testament; he is also treating the writings
of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter, and Jude like a buffet. When
something in the book of Revelation appeals to him, "It is the voice of God,"
but when the book of Revelation mentions divine retribution, "This passage
distresses me." I got the impression that Gulley thinks he knows Jesus better
than Jesus' apostles did – and better than Jesus did. Which may sound silly, but
it seems like a clear-cut conclusion after reading Jesus' own statement in Mark
10:45 that He came to give His life as a ransom for many, and then reading
Gulley's complete denial of the idea that Christ's death paid the debt of our
sins.
One more thing about the book before I get back to addressing your comments. In
Appendix II, Gulley presented some quotations, including some from writers in
the early church. I suspect that a close examination of the context of some of
those statements would show that the authors were musing about how Christian
souls are prepared for heaven – that is, they were commenting on something like
what developed into the concept of Purgatory, where, in Roman Catholic theology,
Christian souls are placed in a purifying crucible, so to speak, to purge them
of the effects of sin upon their character. Another thing to consider is that
some writers in the early church answered speculative questions with speculative
answers, and accompanied their remarks with cautionary notes that they were
offering speculations, not dogmatic pronouncements. (Origen, for instance, was
indeed far from orthodox, but he framed some of his more unorthodox statements
as opinions.)
I selected the quotation from Jerome for close examination. A consultation of
Jerome's works revealed that this quotation is from the "Apology of Rufinus,"
chapter 41, in which Rufinus (who at the time of writing was Jerome's worst
ex-friend) deflects accusations which Jerome had made against him, and issues
some counter-accusations, one of which is that Jerome had once endorsed the idea
of universalism. But although Rufinus does his best to besmirch Jerome, it is
clear that this quotation of Jerome which Rufinus presents is about the church,
and thus when Jerome states that "all are to be restored," he means, as he says
more plainly in the same sentence, "we all," meaning all we Christians.
Furthermore, the sentence has been trimmed: Gulley's readers read a sentence
that begins, "In the end and consummation of the Universe," but in real life,
the sentence begins, "But certainly it is possible that there is a deeper
meaning, namely, that in the consummation . . . ." Here is the whole paragraph,
to which I have added the Scripture-references that Jerome used:
"The question arises how there can be one hope of our calling [Ephesians 4:4],
when in the Father's house there are many mansions [John 14:2]: to which we
reply that the kingdom of heaven is the one hope of our calling, as being the
one house of our Father's but that in one house there are many mansions or
rooms. For there is one glory of the sun, another of the moon, another of the
stars [First Corinthians 15:41]. But certainly it is possible that there is a
deeper meaning, namely, that in the consummation of the world, all things are to
be restored to their primitive condition, and that then we shall all be made one
body [Ephesians 4:4], and formed anew into the perfect man [Ephesians 4:13], and
that thus the Savior's Prayer will be fulfilled in us, 'Father, grant that, as
thou and I are one, so they also may be one in us'" [John 17:21].
So two things should be clear: first, in this particular statement, Jerome was
offering a speculation. Second, Jerome was speculating that while it is possible
that heaven will contain different levels, it is possible that all individuals
who believe in Jesus will be equally perfect. To further augment the case,
notice that John 14:20-21 refers to those who believe in Jesus through the
message of His disciples.
(I don't blame Gulley for this; this misrepresentation and probably others – I
don't have time to research every quotation – stems from the 1885 book that
Gulley mentions on p. 212.)
Turning again to your comments: I don't grant that God's offer to us is
comparable to the offer of a tyrant-king who sends a diplomat to tell his
subject that she can either marry the unseen tyrant-king or spend the rest of
her life in the dungeon. (And, even if it were so, how would that be preferable
to a universalist tyrant-king, who tells his subject that she can either marry
him or marry him?) It's more like the offer of a physician who sends an
assistant, with an extremely valuable medicine, to tell sick and dying patients
that they are sick and dying, and that they can either take the medicine from
the unseen doctor, or continue to sicken and eventually die, with no hope of
recovery after death. The medicine is not available as a purchase; it is
available as a gift. And the patients possess no objective proof that the
medicine will work, other than the testimony and healthiness of the doctor's
assistant.
In this analogy, the doctor will not force the patients to take the medicine.
Many patients will refuse to take the medicine, even though the alternative is
sickness and death. Some of them refuse because they don't believe the diagnosis
that they are sick. Some of them insist on trying to cure themselves. And some
refuse because they know that the experience of being healed will be likely to
make them grateful to the doctor, and acknowledge his authority when it comes to
questions of health, and seek to follow more of his instructions – and they
realize that those instructions will oppose their favorite unhealthy habits.
Universalism would alter this analogy: the doctor does not really allow any
patients to reject his offer. Whenever a patient dies, the doctor resurrects the
patient, and gives him another chance, and if the patient refuses and dies
again, the doctor resurrects him again, and so on, until the patient's
resistance wears out and he takes the medicine. Not only does that depict God as
coercive; it presents the will of the individual as essentially irrelevant.
Meanwhile, the New Testament consistently conveys the idea that we can accept or
reject God’s offer until we die, but after that, those who have rejected God
will not get another chance. God is not coercive, and our decisions matter.
It wouldn't bother me much if Gulley merely suggested that God might surprise
everyone by turning hell into one big soul-purifying crucible, from which all of
its inhabitants – Satan, Judas, Hitler, etc. – will eventually emerge, perfected
and pure. But when Gulley treats his experiences as if they outrank the New
Testament and the apostles' experiences of Jesus, and when on account of his
experiences he makes the claim that universalism is the doctrine that the church
should be teaching, he ends up denying some tenets of Christianity. He denies
that Jesus died on the cross to pay the debt of the sins of humankind, because
to Gulley, God would have eventually forgiven everyone, with or without Jesus'
crucifixion, like a banker who cheerfully overlooks debts, whether the bank's
books are balanced or not. He robs both preacher and preached-to of a sense of
urgency, because to Gulley, there will be an infinite number of opportunities in
the afterlife to surrender to God; so who is going to surrender to God now, when
things are bound to be so much more clear-cut in the afterlife, after some
self-centered fun here? Gulley has a lot to say about how the essence of
salvation consists of abandoning self-centeredness (and some of his points about
that are entirely valid), but he undermines his own message by removing all
sense of urgency and responsibility: do you choose to live a God-centered life,
sacrificially following Christ's example and serving others? You'll end up in
heaven. Do you choose to live a self-centered life, plunging non-stop into
hedonistic debauchery? You'll end up in heaven too.
Gulley seems to have realized that problem, and faced it on pages 195-196, but I
must confess that his answer is not entirely coherent to me. He seems to say
that universalism will cheer people up and reduce the amount of evil in the
world. But he does not say how universalism is going to do that, or how the
message, "You will go to heaven no matter what you believe, and no matter what
you do," is going to inspire people to surrender to God today, or to deny
themselves and take up the cross and follow Jesus today. There might be no
better way to encourage people to continue to perpetrate the evil and misery
that Gulley wants to conquer than to preach universalism. Instead of challenging
people to personal spiritual transformation, it invites apathy.
Okay; enough about Gulley's book. (If you have questions about anything in the
book that I haven't addressed, feel free to bring them up.) I'll wrap up by
addressing the view that you described toward the end of your post. Whereas
Gulley proposed that everyone goes to heaven (which he seems to picture as the
"heaven" described in the New Testament, with God's throne and angels and so
forth), you said that what might happen, instead, is that we "return to the
collective consciousness." I have no way to prove what really happens to a
person after death, obviously -- other than by consulting the Bible, but then
we’d have to explore the question of how to prove the veracity of the Bible, and
this letter is already lengthy -- but I can think of two theoretical advantages
of believing in the Biblical concept of a Final Judgment instead of a return to
the collective consciousness.
First, belief in the continuation of individual souls and a Final Judgment
encourages good behavior – "good" being defined as God defines it. But without
the expectation of a Final Judgment, people may define moral goodness according
to their own tastes and desires. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, a fuzzball God who
reassures the believer that his life has a purpose, but who never holds him
morally accountable, is one of the most convenient ideas ever imagined.
Second, belief in the continuation of individual souls and a Final Judgment
affirms individual responsibility. That belief implies that the differences
between worshipping God or worshipping oneself, between loving or hating,
between hope and despair, and so forth, are consequential. But in a
universalistic model of the afterlife – whether all souls go to heaven, or to
the collective consciousness – the individual will experience no consequences of
these choices at all. Resistance is futile; the soul will be assimilated. I do
not believe that God is so tyrannical. I believe that our decisions to accept or
reject God's grace in this life matter, and that the New Testament oozes with
that premise.
Yours in Christ,
James Snapp, Jr.
The God Metaphor
By David Swindle
March 5, 2009
She is my heroin. I am hopelessly
addicted to being with her. When she leaves me I miss her terribly.
She is my car. Together with her I can go much further and faster in life than I
could without her.
She is my book. I can read her over and over again, continually making new
discoveries and interpretations of her personality and character. I can study
her forever.
------
These three metaphors each describe romantic love. Each is useful to a certain
degree and can be elaborated on and further developed. The concept of "romantic
love" is an abstraction. We all know what it is, but we need metaphors and
images to describe it. We also all need multiple metaphors to describe it
because it's a force that transcends human understanding. It's dangerous to have
only one metaphor for romantic love, that is embraced dogmatically. One metaphor
is not enough. To consider only one aspect of love by way of one metaphor is to
miss other vital aspects of the idea. For one to really begin to understand love
one must utilize multiple metaphors about it, metaphors that conflict in their
description of it.
I bring up the subject of metaphor and the fairly neutral example of romantic
love in reaction to James Snapp, Jr.'s
recent response in our ongoing dialogue on theology. In elaborating on his
description of hell, which I challenged in my essay
A
Junkyard of the Souls as sounding apart from the Christian tradition, James
makes an admission he had to expect me to jump on:
The Biblical descriptions of hell as a
fiery lake are metaphorical, but I believe they are accurate metaphors. I don't
expect the unquenchable fires of hell to be exactly like the quenchable fires on
earth, any more than I think that the pearly gates will be exactly like earthly
pearls.
James admits that passages in the Bible are not to be
taken literally but metaphorically. Just because it's written that hell is a
fire it doesn't mean that when an unbeliever dies they will quite literally be
dropped into an ocean of sulfur. The metaphor is necessary to describe an
intangible spiritual idea and for one to take it too literally is to err.
The challenge for those interested in Christianity, the Bible, and spirituality
is this question: when does history and fact end and metaphor begin? Which
stories in the Bible are to be taken as literal events and which are to be seen
as metaphor-laden myths? Just how literally are we to take the Bible?
Many Christians don't like to deal with metaphors at all. In their reading of
the Bible everything is as written. The Book of Genesis is not a collection of
metaphors about the creation of the world, it's a history book of the creation
of the world. The planet is something like 6000 years old, the earth was created
in six days, and there used to be a talking snake. When the Bible said that God
spoke there actually was a booming voice coming out of the sky, talking to an
ancient Hebrew patriarch. The Exodus narrative is to be taken literally. Cecil
B. DeMille's "The
Ten Commandments" is pretty much how it happened. The
law books of the Old Testament were actually the laws handed down to the ancient
Hebrews by God. There really was a Job who was tested by God and there really
was a Jonah who spent three days in the belly of a big fish. Jesus was actually
the son of a deity and was born of a virgin. Every miracle attributed to him in
the New Testament he actually performed and he did die on the cross and rise
again three days later. And finally, the Book of Revelation is to be understood
as a blueprint of how the world will end. The
Left Behind
series is a pretty accurate description of what's
going to happen. This approach lines up with M. Scott Peck's description of the
second stage of spiritual growth.
Another way of looking at the Bible is to just dismiss it all as an ancient
worldview and a collection of backwards myths. The Genesis account of the world
is anachronistic since we have scientific knowledge about evolution, the age of
the Earth, and the creation of the universe. Jesus was just a man, if he even
existed at all. The Bible is to be more or less ignored. This approach lines up
with how Peck describes the
third stage of spiritual growth.
These two approaches tend to butt heads an awful lot. In the summer of 2007 I
wrote
a three-part story series for WTHR about this conflict
which had recently been reignited with the popularity of such popular "New
Atheist" books as
The God Delusion,
The End of Faith, and
god Is Not Great. For
the first story I visited the Indianapolis branch of
the Center for Inquiry and interviewed Reba Boyd Wooden and David Hunter, two
secular humanists. I felt at home there as they presented their ideas
challenging a literalist reading of the Bible and supporting an embrace of the
scientific perspective.
For
the second story I visited a church in West Field,
Indiana and interviewed its pastor and one of its members. And I also felt very
much at home there during their church service. In Pastor Kirk Welch and Dr.
Gerald Mick, the two men I interviewed, I saw something that perhaps the New
Atheist authors had missed: kind, loving people who seemed to live as though
their essence was infused with the spirit of Christ. This was a phenomenon I'd
seen many times before in my many Christian friends. (Yes, those of you reading
this, you know who you are and should realize darn well I'm talking about you in
particular!)
For
the third story I interviewed three friends who didn't
fit into either the atheist or believer camp. First was George Wolfe, an
inter-faith minister who I would grow much closer to in the coming years. Second
was my friend Laurie Hansen, who embraced occult, conspiracy, and mystical
ideas. And third was my then-roommate Luke Harris, who had once been a devout
Christian as I had, but whose faith was gradually shattered as his intellect
could no longer embrace a literal interpretation of the Bible. He'd come to
define himself as a deist, a spiritual disposition most well-known for being the
god of choice for the founding fathers.
The spirituality that I've come to develop since writing the story series finds
a middle ground between atheism and fundamentalism. Atheists are right to
challenge a literalist reading of the Bible that demands one throw much of
modern science out the window. Yet they're wrong in completely dismissing God
and often ridiculing people of faith. "Bible-Believing" Christians are right to
pursue spirituality, imitate Christ, and seek a relationship with God. Yet I'd
challenge their often dogmatic readings of the Bible. Instead of trying to
explain and prove every idea of the Bible they should come to understand the
role of faith better. I have no problem with a Christian who says, "I know I
can't prove some of the claims of the Bible but I'm content with just suspending
my disbelief and going on faith. I might not understand how or why something
happened, but I'm willing to accept that God's mysterious and I'm not going to
be able to have every answer." This shows one is comfortable with mystery --
many people in both the believer and atheist camps are not. When one reaches the
point of truly understanding Christianity in this context -- accepting the
unknowable -- it's not long before one can arrive at learning to embrace the
mystery of an undefinable God who can only be understood in conflicting
metaphors. This final spiritual perspective, the one I advocate, roughly lines
up with how Peck describes
the fourth stage of spiritual growth.
So on the subject of heaven and hell, I think they do in fact exist -- as
profoundly useful and accurate spiritual metaphors for where a soul can send
itself.
You go to "hell" because you embrace "sin" -- yourself and your own desires --
instead of embracing "God" -- everyone else. When you live a life for yourself
you gradually fall into a spiritual hell. This isn't a metaphysical place you go
when you die, so much as a state of being. Live for yourself and you'll become
so miserable that you might as well be roasting in some underground cavern
filled with demons.
I utilized the metaphor of heaven and hell in
my recent WTHR film review of the infernal romantic
comedy "He's Just Not That Into You." I applied it to the subject which I
started out talking about in this essay, romantic love. Here's how I concluded
my review:
Most of the characters are stuck in a popular description of hell. They're all sitting around a big table with forks and spoons that are six feet long. And they're finding it impossible to feed themselves with such unorthodox silverware. So they begin to starve in their loneliness. In heaven everyone is seated around the same table with the same unwieldy forks. But it's the greatest meal ever because they discover their long spoons are perfect for feeding one another across the table.
You're ready to get married when you're done feeding yourself. And most problems in relationships seem to come when one person isn't feeding the other and is instead attending to their own needs. My fiancee April and I tend to primarily have problems when one of us is being selfish (usually me.) It's a continual struggle to try and feed the other person and trust them to feed you instead of just resorting to your old ways of feeding yourself.
You get married when you decide that you're going to start feeding your talents and energies into something other than yourself, when you're ready to actually create something new: a family. That's what the characters in the film don't understand and why they're so unhappy. And because the film doesn't get that it's about as engaging, intellectually challenging, and life-affirming as a slasher flick.
This approach of seeing the stories and concepts of the Bible as metaphorical
descriptions of intangible experiences can be seen in
Douglas Rushkoff's
Testament comic series, another interesting
take on spiritual matters I'd recommend. Over the course of the series' 22
issues which are collected in 4 trade paperbacks the stories of the Old
Testament are juxtaposed with that of a dystopian future. Also thrown into the
mix are ancient gods at war with one another who seek to influence the
characters in both storylines. A more intellectual exploration of similar themes
can be found in Rushkoff's book
Nothing Sacred: The Truth About Judaism.
So, this approach to spiritual matters defined, we can move from hell to
universalism.
James, if the Judeo-Christian metaphor of God is embraced in a literal fashion
and the universe he has created runs on universalism then you're quite right
that it would be accurate to describe such a being as a tyrant. He's the
incestuous king that forces all of his children to marry him whether they love
him or not. If one's conception of "god" is as an omnipotent man in the sky then
universalism should be condemned. God doesn't love you if he forces you to be
with him whether you want to or not.
But God isn't a man up in the clouds with a long white beard. God isn't a being.
That's just one of the metaphors we've come to describe God. And many people
have grown fixated on it, like someone who thinks of romantic love only as a
heroin.
You're right that Gully and Mulholland do indeed weigh scriptures and downplay
stuff they don't like. But their doing so isn't much different than you weighing
the scriptures that describe hell as a fire to come to the conclusion that such
verses aren't to be taken literally but metaphorically. They -- and I -- are
just reading the metaphor more broadly than you. They are weighing the
scriptures to come up with a different version of God than you are. You are
weighing certain scriptures more heavily than they are.
Because the reality is that everyone who reads the Bible does this. It's
impossible to take everything at the same level. Most people aren't going to
read Leviticus 20:9 ("For anyone who curses his father or his mother shall
surely be put to death; he has cursed his father or his mother; his blood is
upon him.") in the same light as Matthew 5:38-39 ("You have heard that it was
said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' 39 But I tell you, Do not resist an
evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other
also.") My friend Paul Cooper recently wrote
a nice essay on this latter verse, by the way. People
are going to "weigh" scriptures at different levels and come up with great
excuses for why we're not supposed to take certain ones literally. After all,
most Christians today would accept that we shouldn't literally
rip our eyes out if they cause us to sin. We should
metaphorically rip our eye out. If you can't handle having a computer or
television in your house maybe you should cancel your cable or internet service.
The Bible provides
so many ingredients in creating one's heavenly meal
that no one can eat the exact same divine dinner.
And so I'll conclude with addressing the two reasons you give at the end of your
comment for why we should embrace the traditional Christian model of Heaven and
Hell:
First, belief in the continuation of
individual souls and a Final Judgment encourages good behavior – "good" being
defined as God defines it. But without the expectation of a Final Judgment,
people may define moral goodness according to their own tastes and desires. To
paraphrase C.S. Lewis, a fuzzball God who reassures the believer that his life
has a purpose, but who never holds him morally accountable, is one of the most
convenient ideas ever imagined.
Second, belief in the continuation of individual souls and a Final Judgment
affirms individual responsibility. That belief implies that the differences
between worshipping God or worshipping oneself, between loving or hating,
between hope and despair, and so forth, are consequential. But in a
universalistic model of the afterlife – whether all souls go to heaven, or to
the collective consciousness – the individual will experience no consequences of
these choices at all. Resistance is futile; the soul will be assimilated. I do
not believe that God is so tyrannical. I believe that our decisions to accept or
reject God's grace in this life matter, and that the New Testament oozes with
that premise.
I'm going to challenge you especially on the first point.
The promise of heaven does not encourage good behavior or moral goodness. One
needn't exhibit either in order to go to heaven, one need only pray the prayer
accepting Christ as your Lord and Savior. So how heaven motivates one to be good
is beyond me. Maybe if the non-Biblical idea that "good people go to heaven" is
promoted then it might but I can't see Christians wanting to promote something
they believe to be untrue.
On the second point, the model that the traditional Christian version of God has
set up is not about rewarding personal responsibility. As reiterated from my
first point, Heaven is not a a reward for those who are responsible.
There's also an unpleasant piece of nihilism one has to deal with in
universalism which James all but identifies. In the spirituality I articulate --
the idea that upon death we will return to a collective consciousness -- we do
not "pay" for our crimes. And the reason for this is simple: when we die we
cease to exist as individuals. When we die we go to "heaven." And what is
"heaven"? It's oneness with the universe and oneness with God. We no longer
exist as individuals, but only as one with the divine. This is an idea that
we're incapable of comprehending. Our minds cannot get the idea of not existing
as we know today. (Go ahead and try, doing so is one way to all but slip into
meditation.) So we have to develop metaphors like heaven and hell, hades and
paradise, reincarnation, or the visions of other mystical traditions to try and
explain it.
I am a Christian. I have accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. But
that doesn't mean the same thing as when I was an evangelical, "Bible-believing"
Christian
ten years ago. It doesn't mean I have a Golden Ticket
to a mythical Heaven. What it means is that I look to Christ as the perfect
example of how we are to live. I look to his crucifixion as a metaphor for
giving up oneself completely for others. This is the path to a spiritual heaven
-- the sacrifice of the self in service to others and to the world. This is how
you achieve happiness and spiritual fulfillment. Through embracing Christ in
this fashion, you and he save yourself from your sin and the hell of a life of
misery, a life of sin.
The Christianity I lay before others is one option of many in the Divine
Supermarket. And I'm not saying that everyone has to or should embrace my
perspective on these issues. I'm simply laying it out here for others who were
once where I was, for those who cannot accept the dogmas and spiritual
brutalities of literalist Christianity but who have come to realize that there
is something out there we might call "God." There is a middle ground between
atheism and fundamentalism and I invite those interested to pursue it with me.
Over the Rainbow
By James Snapp, Jr.
March 27, 2009
Dear David:
Let’s revisit the metaphors you used at the beginning of your most recent post:
“She is my heroin.” “She is my car.” “She is my book.”
If you did not proceed to unfold those metaphors, they could be taken to mean
almost anything. If you told an illiterate person -- whose wife was killed by a
car that had been driven by a man high on heroin -- that you knew someone who
was, metaphorically, heroin, a car, and a book, he might conclude that the
person is as destructive as heroin, as dangerous as a car, and as
incomprehensible as a book.
He would be making an interpretive mistake: establishing meaning without also
establishing intent. And that is a mistake which I hope I can persuade you to
avoid making when it comes to interpreting the New Testament. As I wrote
earlier, the imagery of the New Testament’s descriptions of heaven and hell
employ figurative language. One could go further: the New Testament is permeated
with parables, metaphors, and non-literal language: Jesus is the Lamb of God;
Jesus is the vine and Christians are the branches; Jesus is the groom and the
church is His bride; etc. But non-literal imagery is not a blank slate to which
interpreters can assign whatever meaning they like, or loopholes for one's own
ideas about what one wishes the person had said.
You wrote: “The challenge for those interested in
Christianity, the Bible, and spirituality is this question: when does history
and fact end and metaphor begin? Which stories in the Bible are to be taken as
literal events and which are to be seen as metaphor-laden myths? Just how
literally are we to take the Bible?”
Asking “How literal is the Bible?” is like asking, “How red is a rainbow?”.
Instead of committing the error of saying that rainbows are not red at all, or
the opposite error of saying that rainbows are 100% red, a better approach is to
notice the differences in the wavelengths and conclude that the red part is red
and the other parts are not red. Likewise when it comes to the Bible, I think
you will agree that a statement such as, "After two years, Porcius Festus
succeeded Felix" is historically grounded, while a statement such as, "You are
the salt of the earth" was not intended to be understood to mean that we are
literally NaCl.
Narratives about historical events should be treated as narratives about
historical events. Poetry should be treated like poetry. All genres, all
expressions, and even particular words have their own proper doorways, so to
speak; good interpreters carefully search for the doorway that the Holy Spirit
intended for them to enter by, while misinterpreters smash down the walls with
clubs of preconceptions and oversimplifications.
You mentioned some traditional interpretations. I agree with some of them but I
disagree with others. Let me diverge to give you some idea of how I approach the
texts involved. I view the “days” of Genesis 1 as cycles of the manifestation of
the light of God’s creative presence. In the Psalms, Moses says (in Psalm 90)
that a thousand years is like a day, or like part of a night, and a man’s whole
lifetime is compared to a day. When I also consider that the sun is not
mentioned until the fourth day, I reach the conclusion that while the days of
creation establish a calendar-pattern (the seven-day week), the text does not
demand that the duration of these manifestations of God’s presence must be the
same as the duration of solar cycles. When I combine that conclusion with the
scientific evidence for the great age of the earth, and of the universe, I am
led to the additional conclusion that the creations-days of Genesis 1 occurred
over the course of millions of years. By similarly considering what the words of
Scripture are capable of meaning – instead of simply accepting what previous
interpreters have assumed that they mean – and combining this with scientific
evidence, I conclude that Noah’s flood targeted a particular population, not the
entire planet.
Regarding Job, Jonah, the Bible’s statement that Jesus was conceived in the womb
of the virgin Mary, and the Bible’s descriptions of Jesus’ miracles: I regard
these as historical records of supernatural acts. One could raise questions
about whether all the people described as demon-possessed in the Gospels were
literally possessed by demons, or about whether there were exactly 50 and 100
people in each group at the feeding of the 5,000 – but setting aside that sort
of thing, there is not a lot of room for metaphor in the accounts of Jesus’
miracles. The accounts of His miracles are didactic history, but they are
nevertheless presented as history. There are places in the Gospels where points
are made via non-historical stories, namely parables. But the difference between
Mark’s presentation of the Parable of the Sower at the beginning of the fourth
chapter of Mark, and Mark’s presentation of the miracle at the end of the fourth
chapter of Mark, is as plain as day, and it would require a colossal
determination to miss the author’s intent to conclude that Mark did not want his
readers to understand the parable as an illustrative story, and to understand
the account of the stilling of the storm as a historical event which
demonstrated Jesus’ authority.
You mentioned that atheists are right to challenge literalist readings of the
Bible that demand that one throw much of modern science out the window. I think
you’re partly right: as scientists discover more about the physical world, more
is revealed about the character of God, the way the character of an artist is
revealed, and his messages to the viewers are revealed, as we proceed through a
gallery of his works. It would be unreasonable to gather our perceptions of an
artist’s character and message only according to what was in his art-gallery in
the past, ignoring what He has put on display in the present. And sometimes,
what we see in one newly-revealed picture gives us a fresh insight into the
meaning of a feature in an older picture. That is what it is like when a
scientific discovery opens the door to a new interpretation of a passage of
Scripture. For example, after Galileo’s discovery that the earth revolves around
the sun, Biblical interpreters drew that discovery into their interpretive
equations and initiated a re-interpretation of the various passages in the Bible
that describe the earth and sun. Sentences of Scripture which had previously
been interpreted literally were reinterpreted non-literally, or as
perspective-based language (like when a person today says that the sun is going
down).
It does not follow, though, that scientific discoveries allow us to interpret
accounts of miracles as if they are not accounts of miracles. Now, some events
recorded in the Bible are amazing and impressive but are not necessarily
miraculous; for example, on some occasions when Jesus perceived what people were
thinking, He might have been using some supernatural thought-perceiving ability,
but it is equally possible that He deduced their thoughts from their
comportment. Other events, though, are clearly intended by the author to be
understood as miracles. Scientific discoveries do not demand that we must view
them as something else.
There is a big basic difference between the idea that scientific discoveries can
impact Biblical interpretation, and the idea that the scientific method should
have a determinative role in Biblical interpretation. Or to put it a different
way, scientists who insist that miracles have never happened, are not happening,
and will not happen, are not speaking as scientists but as theologians. They are
making a call about God’s existence, or God’s desire to perform a particular
miracle, or both. Christianity is founded on a miraculous event and thus it is
intrinsically opposed to any philosophy that denies the possibility of miracles.
But Christianity is not intrinsically opposed to scientific inquiry; rather,
Christians should promote scientific study as a means to utilize and appreciate
the natural world for the good of our fellow-man and for the glory of its
Creator.
Back to metaphors. Like the Christian you picture, I acknowledge that I cannot
prove some of the claims of the Bible, but I am willing to accept those
unverifiable things on faith. This should not be an unusual thing. The New
Testament repeatedly emphasizes that faith is a crucial ingredient in Christian
spirituality: “Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed.” “We
walk by faith, and not by sight.” “Without faith it is impossible to please
Him.” The teaching that God calls us to believe His message without empirical
proof (other than our own personal experiences) is among Christianity’s
theological ABC’s and 123’s. It is not a secret revealed only in some advanced
stage.
You proposed that when one thus is willing to accept the unknowable, it’s not
long before one learns to embrace the mystery of a God who can only be
understood in conflicting metaphors. I partly agree. Conflicting metaphors are
all over Scripture: Christ is described as the Lamb of God *and* the Good
Shepherd *and* the Lion of Judah. Christians are the salt of the earth *and* we
are told to have salt in ourselves. But the flexibility of metaphorical language
does not mean that the object being metaphorically described is flexible; it
just means that the object can be seen from a number of different and opposite
angles. From those different and opposite angles, the object can be differently
described. This does not change the object itself.
So when we find metaphors describing hell as a lake of fire, or as the outer
darkness, or as a bottomless pit, or as the dumping-ground “Gehenna,” the
different metaphors do not imply that hell is not a place where unregenerated
souls are sent after the Final Judgment. While it is true that self-absorption
can so severely separate a person from God and His blessings that the person
enters a state which may be metaphorically called hell on earth, that is not
what Jesus is talking about in the Gospels when He describes hell; no one in the
crowd listening to Him would have thought that was what He meant. Likewise some
earthly situations may validly be described metaphorically as heaven on earth,
but, again, that is obviously not what Jesus is talking about in the Gospels
when He describes heaven. Jesus did not deny that our moral decisions have an
effect, here and now, on our moral character. But He also plainly taught that a
Day of Judgment is coming, and that our moral decisions have consequences beyond
our earthly lives. The observation that He used figurative language as He taught
this does not mean that He taught something else, such as universalism.
You wrote, “If one's conception of "god" is as an omnipotent man in the sky then
universalism should be condemned. God doesn't love you if he forces you to be
with him whether you want to or not. But God isn't a man up in the clouds with a
long white beard. God isn't a being. That's just one of the metaphors we've come
to describe God.”
Let’s consider those statements carefully and examine the flow of the argument:
first something should be cleared up about the picture of God as a being on a
throne. That is based directly on God’s own self-revelation (in Revelation 4:2,
Isaiah 6:1, etc.); we are dealing not with a literary metaphor but with God’s
own self-revelation given in visions.
Second, the force of the statement that God doesn’t love you if He forces you to
be with him is valid regardless of whether one is picturing God as He revealed
Himself in visions or as He described Himself as invisibly filling heaven and
earth. Third, it is a gigantic leap from affirming that there is more to God
than the form He takes in visions, to the notion that God is not a being! Where
did the idea that God is not a being come from?! It didn’t come from any premise
of the argument. I hope that what you meant is simply that God’s essence is not
limited to the enthroned being that is revealed in visions for the benefit of
their recipients. To deny that God is a being, period, would be a pantheistic
denial of what Jesus taught about God. Jesus taught us to pray, “Our Father,”
not “Our Source.”
While no two people understand every verse in the Bible in exactly the same way,
there are limits to what texts can be validly interpreted to mean. Gully and
Mulholland went way beyond those limits; they open affirm in their book that
when they encounter quite a number of New Testament passages, they do not
interpret them; they reject them. They are not “just reading the metaphor more
broadly than you.” Saying that Moses, Isaiah, and John were wrong (which is what
they have said) is intrinsically different from saying that non-literal
expressions should be understood as non-literal expressions (which is what I was
saying).
You raised a question about how people interpret Scripture metaphorically, using
Matthew 6:29-30 as an example. You correctly perceive that this passage is
intended to be applied non-literally: “We should
metaphorically rip our eye out. If you can’t handle having a computer or
television in your house maybe you should cancel your cable or internet
service.” Exactly. Then you say that the Bible
provides so many ingredients in creating one’s heavenly meal that no one can eat
exactly the same divine dinner. But as far as this verse is concerned, we *are*
eating the same dinner: we all acknowledge that this verse should be applied
non-literally; its figurative language is not a magic hat from which
interpreters can produce many new meanings. No two people have exactly the same
experience of *anything,* but well-informed and thoughtful individuals who
approach the New Testament reverently, relying on the Holy Spirit for
illumination, will tend to reach similar conclusions about what its non-literal
expressions mean, and about what they are incapable of meaning.
In the case of Matthew 6:29-30, thoughtfulness may expand the passage’s meaning
(I think there is a subtle lesson there about the need for spiritual
regeneration; our eyes and hands are not the causes of sin; Jesus is prodding us
to realize that the problem is deeper), but thoughtfulness also limits the
passage’s meaning. “It is more profitable for you that one of your members
perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell” cannot be validly
interpreted to mean, “Do whatever you want to do, because there is no hell,” for
instance.
Now about my two reasons about why we should embrace the traditional Christian
model of heaven and hell.
You wrote, “The promise of heaven does not
encourage good behavior or moral goodness. One needn’t exhibit either in order
to go to heaven, one need only pray the prayer accepting Christ as your Lord and
Savior. So how heaven motivates one to be good is beyond me.”
Heaven is promised to one group of people: those who are spiritually
regenerated. There is more to being spiritually regenerated, or “born again,”
than a shallow recitation of the “Sinner’s Prayer” – an invention which the
apostles never used in their evangelism. Spiritual rebirth involves the
reception of the Holy Spirit and a new nature, expressed by the pursuit of moral
excellence, the sharing of the love of Christ, and a desire to please God. If
those with the new God-centered nature and those with the old self-centered
nature alike enter heaven, and it makes no difference which nature you possess –
or which nature you express – then the impetus for the pursuit of moral
excellence is removed.
And you wrote, “The model that the traditional
Christian version of God has set up is not about rewarding personal
responsibility. As reiterated from my first point, Heaven is not a reward for
those who are responsible.”
Among the last things Jesus says in the New Testament (in Revelation 22:12) is,
“I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give to every one according
to his work.” The same sentiment is expressed in the Gospels: “The Son of Man
will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward
each according to his works” (Matthew 16:27). Two things should be noticed here:
first, the judgment scene that Jesus predicted is certainly not a
dissolve-into-the-collective-consciousness scenario. Second, these passages show
that moral behavior is not rendered superfluous by God’s grace. Our works
indicate our spiritual state. It is as if our souls are fruit-trees: we do not
purchase heaven with our fruits, but the presence or absence of the fruit of the
Spirit reveals whether we are living or dead, that is, whether we have been born
again or not.
About the idea that when we die we cease to exist as individuals: that is not a
Christian teaching, and I am at a loss to explain how you make such a proposal.
Jesus’ teachings collide with the idea that we cease to exist as individuals
when we die. Consider what He said about the judgment of the sheep and goats in
Matthew 25:31-46. He used some non-literal language there: the sheep are not
literally sheep; the goats are not literally goats. The metaphors, though, do
not obscure the truths being expressed, and they do not make the parable capable
of meaning anything other than what it obviously means: among other things, it
means that our souls will be held accountable. And that precludes the idea that
they will become one with the non-accountable universe.
You’ve said that to you, being a Christian means that you look to Christ as the
perfect example of how we are to live. That is indeed part of what Christianity
is all about, but I propose that being a Christian means more than that: Jesus
is not just our example; He is also our prophet, our priest, and our king – or
to put it another way, Jesus is the Christ. Let me try to concisely describe the
implications of the belief that Jesus is the Christ:
Belief that Jesus is our anointed prophet means that we believe His teachings
and his prophecies. He is the prophet foretold by Moses in Deuteronomy 18:15-19.
Granting that some of His prophecies are framed in non-literal language, they
still foretell specific future events, which no one can validly redefine so
entirely as to turn prophecies of judgment into non-judgment.
Belief that Jesus is our anointed priest means that we believe that He has
interceded with the Father on our behalf. Granting that His crucifixion is the
supreme example of self-denial, that is not all it is, and none of Jesus’
disciples saw it as nothing more than that. It was a redemptive act – as Peter
wrote in First Peter 1:18-19 – through which our moral debts were paid.
Belief that Jesus is our anointed king means that we consider His teachings
authoritative, and we aspire to live as members of His kingdom, keeping His
sacraments and submitting to His commands. As Jesus said in Luke 6:46, “Why do
you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do the things which I say?”
Highly detailed descriptions of heaven and hell are not implied by the belief
that Jesus is the Christ, but to the extent that Jesus (and the disciples, whom
He promised would be guided to teach the truth) taught that heaven and hell are
the eternal destinies of souls, and not merely states of mind, Christians are
obligated to agree with Christ. There is no way to start with Christ’s
description of hell as “the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his
angels,” and end up with a picture of hell that is merely a state of mind
experienced only in this life.
Finally, about the idea that there is a middle ground between atheism and
fundamentalism: if by “fundamentalism” one has in mind a rigid approach to
Biblical interpretation which favors traditional interpretations even when they
fly in the face of scientific evidence, I agree. But many points of
interpretation – such as the ones I mentioned earlier: the length of the
creation-days, the extent of Noah’s flood, and the date of the exodus – can be
questioned without denying anything that is implicit in the affirmation that
Jesus is the Christ. I am confident that no scientific discovery will ever be
made that would require such a denial. The appealing aspect of the atheistic
critique of fundamentalists’ approaches to Scripture, to me, is not atheism;
it’s the atheists’ common sense and their openness to truths which have been
discovered through scientific inquiry. I can’t recommend that you seek a
synthesis of atheism and fundamentalism, so as to end up believing in half a
God. But I encourage you to continue to explore how the truths revealed through
a study of God’s works affect our understanding of God’s Word – always balanced
with the awareness that God’s Word affects our understanding of His works and
their significance, including our own lives and their significance.
Yours in Christ,
James Snapp, Jr.
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