"The Kingdom of Heaven"

The Gospel of Matthew is fairly well known for its particularity of speaking of "the Kingdom of Heaven" as opposed to the more classic expression found elsewhere in the New Testament of the kingdom of God. A common reason given concerns the Jewish nature of Matthew and his purposes for ensuring there is a special respect reserved for the name of God implied by the writer. Have you heard that theory? Or do you simply think that these gospel accounts vary in ways similar to different people describing different perspectives, like blind-folded people describing an elephant by its various parts? Sorry, both of these views are unlikely in this case.

I have been studying now the characteristics of Yahweh, the name of the Israelite deity, for some time now. I have also had a special interest in the Gospel of Matthew. Something needs to be clarified in these explanations (I am focussing on the first one here) which really do not satisfy, in my view, the actual biblical data available to us. Here's why.

First, although Matthew doesn't use the expression Kingdom of God very much, he still does do so, five times in fact! Secondly, he uses the word "God" just as much as any other gospel writer. Compare Matthew's usage with that of Mark for example. Matthew uses the word
God 56 times, including the 5 occurrences I just mentioned of the Kingdom of God. Mark mentions the word god 52 times. So that is, for instance, less than the author who supposedly has drawn a ring of fire around the name of God. Thirdly, the issue of pronouncement of God's name is not about saying or not saying G-O-D (or T-H-E-O-S), but rather the name of Yahweh.

So why did Matthew substitute quite often the words kingdom of God with the Kingdom of Heaven? I believe an alternative explanation can be grounded in Ephesians 5:5 in the context of what we know of Matthew more generally. Let's read this remarkable passage now, then return to it after looking at some of that "first-gospel"-context:

Among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. For of this you can be sure: no immoral, impure or greedy person – such a person is an idolater – has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.

As we have seen before, "the Gospel of Matthew", or whatever it was originally known as, is most likely a late first century text that is deeply reverent and devoted to a hellenised Jewish proclamation, confirmation and clarification of the Good News concerning God's sent, annointed, crucified, resurrected and exalted Messiah-Son. The author is careful to clarify and develop a number of things, such as "the fulfilment" of the stories already circulating about Jesus as fulfilment of Jewish Scripture (sometimes to the extreme), the certainty that Jesus outlived John the Baptist, the truth contained in Mark and Luke's accounts, and most significantly for my own journey over the last three years, quite what being baptised meant over and above John's baptism (in the name of the trinity of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit), all of which is set in ordered teaching blocks more accessible to excommunicated Jewish-Christian groups with a desire to learn and share. That sentence was getting a bit long, but on this understanding, let us stress there is also the Matthean desire to not forget the Jewish homeland in which the Christ story took place. Just because Paul's (and others) efforts to retake the nations for God and Christ has had a very outward focus these last few decades, those Judean and Samaritan (=northern Israelite tribes) lands and inhabitants mustn't be forgotten in the missional endeavour.

This endeavour has always been, despite Paul's general reluctance on its usage, about the Kingdom of God. However, the authority of the one in charge of said kingdom is understood to have been entrusted in its entirety to the exalted Messiah, God's very own Son and Heir. Thus Paul describes the Kingdom as in joint ownership in the above passage. It's not like God has washed his hands of this great work of his - he nearly did this in Noah's day! - rather the Project is shared perfectly, and still extended further to the saints through their annointing and baptism in the Holy Spirit. But like everyone else writing and teaching (and thinking and praying and....) in the first century, no-one had yet devised this trinitarian action in terms of a "Triune God" - that was a later "clarification". Hence, for me, it is very plausible that "the Kingdom of Heaven" is a widening of the viewpoint about whose Kingdom this is - thus imputing still more divine status to Jesus via this incredible kingship appointment and sonship.

Matthew's contribution to the eventual development of the doctrine of the Triune God never ceases to amaze me and should be considered a huge stepping stone.

John’s third impacting figure: Dr Dale Tuggy

Fatscript Episode 7 show notes, John’s third impacting figure: Dr Dale Tuggy

• ·        Onscript: http://onscript.study/

·        (Pennington interview http://onscript.study/podcast/jonathan-pennington-the-sermon-on-the-mount-and-human-flourishing/)

• ·        My book chapter is out! Check it out here: https://www.academia.edu/34726445/Trinitarian_Interpretation_Mutated_Faith_and_the_Triune_Hub_Re-examining_the_Foundations_Chapter_1_
• ·        Mark Gooadcre video on John’s relationship to the synoptics: http://www.christianorigins.div.ed.ac.uk/2017/10/23/johnandthesynoptics/
• ·        My first public interaction with Dr Dale Tuggy on his listeners’ questions show: http://trinities.org/blog/podcast-90-listener-questions-1/
• ·        My main interactions with Dale

1.      Dale’s post: http://trinities.org/blog/dialogue-with-john-on-thinking-about-the-trinity/

2.      John’s response: http://faithandscripture.blogspot.fr/2017/07/responding-to-dale-tuggy-on-trinitarian.html

• ·        Please give us a rating! https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-fatscript-podcast/id1217930034?mt=2&ign-mpt=uo%3D4

It all started with **B A P T I S M** (4): The Star Points To Another Who Points To Another

IF ANY FIRST-century historical individual could be credited with the largest pressure on the primitive Jewish Christians to adopt a form of trinitarian thinking, it would be the wilderness apocalyptic preacher known as "John the Baptist". It sounds kind of whacky, but it's true! Let's take a moment to recap our Journey thus far, in this the last of four instalments into John the Baptist, and why I reach this conclusion.

In Part 1, I just wanted to get straight to the point and offered 9 bullets that reconstruct how John's ministry was necessarily contrasted with Jesus' baptism with the Holy Spirit, and concluded: This trinitarian saying [trinitarian baptismal formula] was said over converts by Jewish Christians in the latter half of the first century as a part of their baptism rites, and the confusion was at last resolved. This mutation of Judaism had astarted to vocalise, ritualise and (although they did not know it) immortalise its "Triune Hub".

In Part 2, I wanted to demonstrate how significant John the Baptist was from a non-Christian source, the Jewish historian Josephus. Here John receives as much attention from Josephus as Jesus. He is understood to have had massive influence such that even that God himself would overturn Herod's army in vengeance against the execution of his beloved prophet, John.

In Part 3, I took on the problem of the date of John's death, which is problematic if you cross the gospels' chronology with that of Josephus, but also a good angle from which to look at how the portrayal may have developed over the later stages of the first century. Here I present, gospel author by gospel author, the portrayal of John the Baptist, noting first in Mark the basic events and assumed death of John and Luke's expanded version which includes John's own birth narrative alongside Jesus'. Then we saw that Matthew almost seems to take on the challenge against the Josephus chronology, integrating narrative that explicitly informs Jesus of John's tragic demise. Finally, we saw in John's gospel that the author simply allows Jesus to "steal the show", allowing John to slip from view once he has served his purpose to point to the light.

What I failed to note in looking at Matthew (and regular readers will know I have a special relationship with Matthew!), is the relevance of the date of Antiquities, where Josephus describes John's ministry and death. It was written no later than 94 AD, but possibly earlier. Given all the other late indicators I am seeing for Matthew, I would suggest that this over-emphasis on Jesus' interaction with John's death is a firm contribution to a composition date of Matthew around the 90s close to John. It obviously contributes to the strong consensus that composition by the disciple Matthew is very unlikely.

Another thing we didn't do was look at the passages in Acts that refer to him. We'll not lose too much time on them individually now, as there are actually 9 of them, but they really do consistently echo what we have been saying all along: the contrast between the two main first-century Jewish figures, and that John points to Jesus. For that to mean something big so much decades later, can only mean that John's ministry continued to make a huge splash in Judea and beyond for decades.

Thus, regardless of when John really died, John's memory is dedicated to being that of a star player that nonetheless pointed to the hero and saviour of all, Jesus Christ, the inaugurator of the new Eschatological Age of the Spirit! It is with these ideas in mind that I called this last part: The Star Points To Another Who Points To Another.

Thank you for following the journey, blessings.

For reference, those 9 bullets again, followed by all New Testament references to John.

• John's impact was really very big indeed and his renown mid-first-century may have been comparable with Jesus', see for example Apollos' of Alexandria's familiarity with his ministry in Acts chapter 18 and Paul's encounter with 12 disciples in Ephesus in the following chapter.
• A clear historical relationship connects these major first-century Jewish players of John and Jesus; some credible scholars, have Jesus first being John's disciple before starting his own movement.
• We have no texts of any followers of John.
• For Jesus followers, Jesus has to be bigger and better than John. If John was great, and Jesus much greater than him. This could only have contributed to his final exalted status.
• Contrary to popular Christian apologetics, killing a leader does not necessarily kill off the sect he started unless he is resurrected. John is solid proof of that. 
• John and Jesus are firmly differentiated on the following grounds:
• the Christ was more successfully understood to have really been raised back to life, unlike the rumours that surrounded a resurrection for John, 
• John's humility seems genuine and may indeed have heralded the coming Messiah, turning down offers of honour, recognition and prestige (which ironically had the opposite effect), while Jesus combined humility and the messiahship,
• Jesus baptised with the Holy Spirit; John baptised with water.
• Since both martyrs were hugely influential baptisers and their ministries overlapped, their baptisms (and order of death) were at times confused.
• Someone, somewhere, decided: enough is enough and came up with the threefold baptismal formula to clear it up once and for all. This may have been the author of Matthew's gospel, (whom I strongly believe wrote later than Luke and Acts, which bear witness to the confusion), or it may have been the author of the part of the Didache that also contains the baptism formula. Since both those sources are Jewish, that someone was almost certainly a strongly Jewish Christian (leader). 
• Conclusion: This trinitarian saying was said over converts by Jewish Christians in the latter half of the first century as a part of their baptism rites, and the confusion was at last resolved. This mutation of Judaism had started to vocalise, ritualise and (although they did not know it) immortalise its "Triune Hub".

New Testament References

Block, technical issues, faith kick [+ mise à jour]

[MISE A JOUR 26/06/17 - Un commentaire important en français en bas de cet article ajouté, suite à une question d'un lecteur français]

Hi. Apologies for the slow-down on the journey into Hurtado first century Christian binitarian worship territory. I felt like I was on a real charge doing a post every day or every other day, then a few things happened.

Like anyone, I sometimes experience "block": just that inability to engage my mind with the same clarity I enjoy at other times. I am also going through a period in my life when my mind actually totally saturates as well, which increases this effect when it occurs. This effect was either caused or worsened by learning that although SPCK found my book proposal interesting (it definitely sounded from their personalised response that it had been discussed between several members of their editorial staff), they weren't going to be able to pursue it further. So that was a downer.

Then, I had this really weird technical issue with Kindle notes. I don't know if you have tried it, but kindle notes and highlights are a great way of interacting with a book. Kindle have recently decided to revamp their online interface and call this new area simply "notebook", with a nice thumbnail of the cover of each book to hit to see your highlights and notes. For some devilish reason, all my Hurtado notes and highlights on which I was relying for this first century blog cruise we're on are present on their old system and totally absent on the new one. With my wife we probably have a couple of hundred of books on Kindle, and Hurtado's Lord Jesus Christ is the only book that this glitch is affecting. And to make matters worse, the old site where all the content is intact will die on July 3rd. Oh, and I'm getting nowhere with Amazon.

Urggh. This all leads to feeling a bit down about it to be honest, and in a world and market which frankly is just not as interested in trinitarian theology as I have been, I'm beginning to wonder if it's worth carrying on.

Sorry for such a depressing post - I'll also share one more thing about faith. From time to time I read or hear something that makes me really question my faith. I'm delighted about that because it means I am engaging with the criticisms out there and have usually bounced back. My research into first century expressions of proto-trinitarianism led me at various points to the Gospel according to Matthew, which time and again seemed late to me, by which I mean late first century. This actually is another small series of blog posts I need to write, and very important with respect to Matthew's relationship to baptism and John the Baptist in particular. Suffice it to say that there are others that share this view, and that Matthew had access to Luke (it's sometimes called the Matthean posteriority hypothesis, MPH) - one of these proponents made some analyses on this basis about the synoptic burial narratives that stung me. So that hasn't helped either.

Looking forward to a more upbeat post soon, and especially a solution to resume the Hurtado cruise.

Hillsongs Creed song - subtle difference between English and French accidentally reflecting an ancient move

It's been a while since I posted about a worship song - but as a former worship leader and a thinker on the prominent role that worship has on shaping our theology, it is still very dear to my heart.

This morning at church I was introduced to a powerful 2014 Hillsongs song of "Oui je crois (le Crédo)", which quite powerfully resonated for me as someone passionate about the Trinity. Here is the official French video of that song along with the French words. In a minute we will, of course, have a look at the original version in English and reflect again how the Triune Hub model can marshal reconciliation with older Christianity.

Notre Père Éternel, 
Toi qui a tout créé, 
Dieu Tout-Puissant. 
C'est par ton Saint-Esprit, 
Que Jésus fut conçu, 
Christ Notre Sauveur.

Oui je crois en Dieu notre Père,
Oui je crois en Christ son Fils,
Oui je crois en ton Saint-Esprit,
O Trinité divine.
Oui je crois à la résurrection,
Que nous vivrons à jamais, 
Car oui je crois,dans le Nom de Jésus.

Notre Juge et Défenseur,
Tu souffris à la croix,
Le pardon est en Toi.
Descendu jusqu'aux ténèbres,
Tu es ressuscité, 
A jamais élevé.

Oui je crois en Lui 
Oui je crois qu'il est Vivant
Oui je crois, que Jésus est Seigneur.(x2)

Oui je crois à la vie éternelle,
Je crois que d'une vierge il est né,
Je crois à la communion des saints,
Et en ta sainte Eglise. 
Oui je crois à la résurrection,
Quand Jésus reviendra,
Car oui je crois dans le Nom de Jésus.

A quick word about the visuals first. I really like the French video - I like its urban setting, which speaks of relevance to a 21st-century audience. That is important. By attempting a song of ancient Christian truth it is necessary to bind it through to the present, and the visuals play an important role in assisting this.

The French is led by a male singer without choral backing - I'm not so fussed about this point. Part of me likes the impacting clarity of a single voice, while another part appreciates the classic Hillsongs sound which includes the choral backing, even if it gets a bit "samy" to my ears.

Here now then is the English video and lyrics:

Our Father everlasting
The all creating One
God Almighty

Through Your Holy Spirit
Conceiving Christ the Son
Jesus our Savior

I believe in God our Father
I believe in Christ the Son
I believe in the Holy Spirit
Our God is three in one
I believe in the resurrection
That we will rise again
For I believe in the Name of Jesus

Our Judge and our Defender
Suffered and crucified
Forgiveness is in You

Descended into darkness
You rose in glorious life
Forever seated high

I believe in You
I believe You rose again
I believe that Jesus Christ is Lord

I believe in life eternal
I believe in the virgin birth
I believe in the saints' communion
And in Your holy Church
I believe in the resurrection
When Jesus comes again
For I believe in the Name of Jesus

Whereas before I felt quite critical of any song that for me "missed the mark" with respect to the Trinity - especially if I felt the song encouraged Father-Son blurring - I feel more these days a sense that this is a tough challenge to take on as a songwriter. I think one of my main issues is that songs that people label as "Trinitarian" aren't really trinitarian. What people mean by this most-holy of labels is that there is a line in the song that speaks some form of Trinitarian truth that sounds deep and historical to them, often without any deeper trinitarian structure to the song. My feeling is that this song is a bit like this. It's a lot better than Chris Tomlin's song I looked at in November 2015 here, but it too runs the risk of associating the Trinity with Christ, although more through its general direction than the blatant wording of Tomlin. To the song's defense, the song itself does not claim to be a song about the Trinity - it's aim is to reflect ancient (probably a mixture of second to fourth century) creeds in a contemporary style. A creed, of course, attempts the impossible, by summarising the entirety of the faith in a few short phrases, and it is true that the creeds focussed a lot on Christ, and at some points had very little to say about the Holy Spirit (see the Council of Nicaea in 325, for instance).

OK time to point out an important difference introduced by the French translator, whom I am certain had no intention of introducing the nuance I am going to bring out here. In English, we have a direct affirmation of the Triune God: Our God is three in one. No attempt is made to clarify here of course - as I said these are short, ultradense statements that were carefully defined and rigourously debated for centuries. The way it was worked out was to build an understanding of God around the stuff he was made (although he was never made, of course). Once God had stuff, and the first introducer of the Latin word trinitas, Tertullian, was most clear on that point, it became easier to have three in one. The stuff was called "godhead" and was shared between the Father, Son and Spirit in perfectly equal measure and then at some point - probably in the early 400s, I'm still trying to find out quite when - it lost the necessity of "head", thus returning the stuff to the one called "God".

Unfortunately, although this reflects a very old form of Christianity dating back 1600 years - it does not reflect how the earliest Christians understood their Trinity. Thus it is most interesting (to me at least, as a franco-English worshipper!) to see that the French translators have unwittingly bridged that historical evolution (or "mutation") undergone by the early church. The French version states:
Oui je crois en Dieu notre Père,
Oui je crois en Christ son Fils,
Oui je crois en ton Saint-Esprit,
O Trinité divine.

Note only the Father is called God (Dieu), although all three persons of Father, Son and Holy Spirit receive perfectly equal prominence. Finally, note also that these three are not called "Our God three in one", but simply "O Trinité divine" (Oh divine Trinity!)

This subtle difference is a perfect example to my mind of how we can see the hermeneutical circle functioning in the earliest centuries of the church. Every generation of the Christian faith has to establish what the texts mean to their day and age through the lenses provided them by their forefathers. The task comprises meaningful application but also meaningful safeguarding.

What we are trying to put out there on this blog via the Triune Hub model is that the Triune God, although absent strictly speaking from Christian Scripture is an interpretative move that was both meaningful and necessary according to the Greek philosophical frameworks undergirding the Hellenised church's thought process. This church knew that there had already been very early distillation of the Christian faith around a radically-reshaped core, of Father, Son and Holy Spirit (see Didache, Matthew 28, 2 Corinthians 13, etc.). Prior to that radical reshaping, the strictly monotheistic Jews reserved this core for only One: Yahweh. Yahweh alone. The parts of Isaiah that are generally agreed to have been written from a context of Babylonian exile are if anything more monotheistic than previous Israelite writings, and Hurtado claims that this tendency to monotheism just got stricter and stricter as Judaism progressed through to the Roman era in which Christianity was born out of its Jewish beginnings. To cut a long story short, this "successful" mutation of the core of Jewish faith won out over other early forms of Christianity (deemed heretical) and required naming. However, in the image of the New Testament writers, "God", that is the "ho theos" of the New Testament and the Greek Septuagint, was one of the three, synonymous with "the Father" (or even "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ", e.g. Romans 15:6). But centrality is accorded to all three, and it is in interaction with Father, Son and Spirit that the church's faith, vocation and hope crystallised and was put into practice. In the fourth century, perhaps with a few exceptions, the battleground had moved away from those early threats which blatantly denied such threefold centricity (e.g. gnosticism, docetism, ...) to a more subtle threat: creating a hierarchy between the blessed Three.

And that is what some Christian history books downplay. Written from a perspective of victorious orthodox belief it can be considered that the fourth-century threat that wanted to keep Jesus' statement of the Father is greater than I a literal one, was totally committed to upholding and preserving the Trinity! The problem with that interpretation of a hierarchy meant by implication (this is the premise of the Triune Hub model) that One member, namely the Father, would be more central thus upsetting the careful balance maintained since the beginning. That couldn't and wouldn't do.

So, back to the Hillsongs song (can anyone else out there be making these kind of connections?!), I believe we have encapsulated here as we move (back) from French to English a nice summary of how the church worked out and safeguarded its understanding of its all-new threefold core, a.k.a. "The Trinity".

Quirinius, Governor of Syria - Luke 2 - and difficult alignment with Matthew

In Luke 2, I recently discovered a slight problem. I would prefer these kinds of issues were not present in the Bible I love, please let me assure you! But pretending they are not there when we have the wisdom and maturity needed - especially if we want to be ready for other's questions - is not wise.

So what is the problem?

Luke says this at the opening of Chapter 2:
In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 

There is nothing symbolic here, this is just Luke providing us historical information to help frame what is to come in the account of Jesus (and possibly increase the historical soundness of that account too). So what does Luke say about King Herod? A heck of a lot less than Matthew. King Herod gets a single mention in Chapter 1:5.

(1:5) Herod + "After this" (v24, presumably not too long after?) + five months seclusion for Elizabeth + 3 months of Mary staying with Elizabeth. Then, after John's birth and naming, v80 states:

And the child grew and became strong in spirit; and he lived in the wilderness until he appeared publicly to Israel.

Chapter 2 begins as already mentioned above (In those days...). Since 1:80 seems to take us right up to John's public ministry, it seems safer to consider the "In those days" to go back, although how far back? The issue we have is Herod the Great's reign ended a decade earlier than Quirinius (full name is Publius Sulpicius Quirinius), who was actually taking over from Herod Archelaus, Herod the Great's (kind of) successor.

Apparently, most scholars have chosen to go with Luke getting his dates mixed up, making a small mistake here. Looking just at Luke, I wondered why this was the only option. Luke is writing I guess sixty years later and consulting various sources is doing the best he can to situate the significant chronology of events. Why could it not be that "In those days" referred to a decade or so after John's birth, during his childhood, John being an older cousin by ten years would work fine, right? That would also allow Herod (the Great) to be firmly out of the picture (i.e. "dead", Matthew 2:19).

Unfortunately for this little idea of mine, that does not go down too well for scholars trying to reconcile the Luke account with the Matthew account, which has Herod everywhere, right up to Jesus being at least one (assuming the 2-year old genocide ruling included a safety margin for big babies), probably older (plus the time waiting in Egypt for Herod to die). And according to Luke, Quirinius was already appointed governor of Syria by Augustus. That is the time-marker for the census preceding Jesus' birth.

So Matthew combined with Luke gives Herod as local ruler and Quirinius as governor of Syria as contemporaries.

So, if apologetics is your forté, I would be very interested to know what a good response is to this apparent discrepancy. Thanks!

UPDATE: Some technical responses can be found here, although they are more focussed on Luke than Matthew-Luke consistency.

Little chicks!

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.

This passage is found in Matthew 23:37. It has been a verse that I have always held dear, for it is incredible really to see Jesus so compassionate and loving in the midst of pronouncing judgement. Also, it is a verse I have always taken to mean, in the context of some Old Testament references, and even since I tried to put down my "Nicene goggles", as a good passage in support the eternal Lord Jesus, eternal not just forward in time, but back as well - what Tuggy refers to as the "pre-human Jesus" (I don't like this title I must confess).

So for me - along with a bunch of other passages, this passage I have always maintained as a suggestive passage of something like Nicea.

H O W E V E R, today I am reconsidering that position on this passage, because of some light shed from commentaries which provide a more obvious alternative suggestion that I never considered before. This is R.T. France, The Gospel of Matthew from The New International Commentary of the New Testament, a well respected and recent scholarly series, taken from page 883:

"The same charge of killing the prophets which Jesus has directed to the scribes and Pharisees in vv. 29-32 (and by implication to the chief priests and elders in 21:34-36) is now applied to the city as a whole; the specific mention of stoning (cf. 21:35) reflects what happened to the Zechariah of v.35, according to 2 Chr 24:21 (and to Jeremiah according to later legend, Liv. Pro. 2:1). But it will soon be the fate of Stephen as well, also in Jerusalem (Acts 7:58-59), and since Jesus has just spoken in v. 34 of how his own emissaries will soon be treated, there may be a future as well as a past dimension to this charge.

Jesus' words suggest a more frequent and extended appeal to Jerusalem than has been recorded just in chs. 21-22; this is one of the hints which occur int he Synoptic Gospels that the writers were aware of Jesus' previous visits to Jerusalem (as the Fourth Gospel records them) even though they have chosen to record only the one climactic arrival. His appeal to them as Messiah should have been unifying and protective, like the instinctive action of a mother bird, but it has instead been counterproductive, and will result not in safety but in destruction. The blame is placed firmly on their choice, like the Jerusalem of Isaiah's day who refused God's offer of security through trusting  him (Isa 30:15-16).

The almost wistful note of this lament over Jerusalem provides an important counterbalance to the sharpness of the preceding polemic. As Jesus contemplates what lies ahead of the people he came to save, it gives him no pleasure. He had "wanted" to gather them, not condemn them."