Jesus' body - fringe claims

 If you want to claim that the body of Jesus were not raised, then it might be reasonable to ask that an alternative to resurrection be given. Various attempts have been given, even in the first century! Matthew seems to have added a detail about a posting of guards outside the tomb in order to increase the drama of the resurrection itself and anticipate the "classic" explanation of the time by 1st century doubters that the body had been stolen by disciples.

Bart Ehrman - whom I follow and respect, but we don't always agree - disagrees that this whole approach works on the grounds that custom practice of the Roman regime was to leave bodies on the crosses to rot as a message to everyone about the consequences of stepping out of line. 12 years after he adopted his position that this is probably what happened to Jesus too has not really generated any real scholarly movement to that view. There are several reasons why in my view.

Firstly, as already noted, the Matthew account itself alludes to an early existing rebuttal of the resurrection claim. Since I place Matthew as late (post-Marc, trinitarian formulation, theological reworking of events, and more, see the blog for more on my Mathean questioning), that need not be super early, but still definitely a first century rumour that disciples had stolen the body from the tomb. When opponents to a view trigger a defence like Matthew's, we should listen - both 1st century christians and skeptics believed in a tomb, in which Christ's body was laid.

Secondly, a common practice doesn't mean uniform treatment. The gospel accounts that Jesus died unusually quickly might make sense on the grounds of his horrendous pre-crucifixion whipping, and the requests. There are all sorts of unique events that happen in life today and historically that require unique and special treatment. 

Thirdly, and this is an extension to the second point, Bart himself has already pointed to another possibility, exactly on this grounds when debating the probability of a miracle verses just a very unusual event. That scenario he painted seemed more probable precisely because it involved Jesus' body having been removed and transported somewhere (I forget the story he whipped up). So there even seems to be some inconsistency in his approach - on the one hand arguing for normal practice and on the other arguing against miracles that something unique and unlikely happened, because unique and unlikely events actually happen all the time.

I am myself somewhat sceptical about a literal and physical resurrection, it is true. I would love it to be true, I know that belief in this symbolises hope and brings unity through the community of the Church, but I do certainly lack the conviction - so I don't feel I am biased in this critique of Ehrman's finge view. I just think that the circumstances really do not point to a rotting Jesus on the cross for several days. If you would like to know what I think could have happened please do let me know! It's also unique, maybe unlikely and I've not heard it elsewhere. But in my view, it is the most immaginable non-miraculous alternative that I have come across so far.

Thanks for reading.

Death "Vs" Life

So who wins? Is it life or death? 

Christianity would argue life - God triumphantly squashed death in his resurrection of Christ. It's a repeat of the life Vs death motif. 

Morbid atheists might say that death "wins" - it has the final say on our short lives in the chronological sense.

But is it one verses the other? First let's question the notion of death winning at all regardless of our faith position. You could score it very differently. If we accept that death is a natural course of events and that it might be a terrible sense of less that accompanies those that are still alive when a loved one passes, we can still look at that life and say that life won. If I die at 80, then every single day I didn't die, life "won". That's 365 x 80 to 1. Choose the time increment you wish. Life wins.

The morbid atheist might retort that why should you stop the clock there, the person remains dead for trillions of years beyond that, so death "wins". But death is not winning once a person has died, it signals the end of the "competition" for that individual from a phenomenological perspective.

Where death would truly win would be to step outside of a quantitative assessment and to look at how life is lived qualitatively. Christians talk of a future perfect Kingdom of life and love invading, infiltrating the present. Eschatology also has an extraordinary sort of suction power at its essence ushering in the future into the here and now. Conversely, living an empty dead life now also ushers in the death to come.

So it seems that life may win quantitatively and qualitatively - should we embrace it. 

Faith and faith communities, aimless thankfulness and alternative God hypotheses

 Maybe I could offer myself as a religious experiment. I've stepped away from church life now for about a year and have found my faith floundering not for the first time. My experience of family is being battered afresh a few years after I was essentially exiled from my family via a divorce with one of my children seriously unwell and in hospital for months now. I hang on to a form of prayer that basically rejects that God is:

- in any sense particularly male (ouch for the Father metaphor)

- one who acts "supernaturally" in our world in response to our prayers (another big ouch)

- particularly clear in the Bible or in the world about quite what God's "being faithful" actually means. 

What does it mean to say that he never abandons believers? Could it be something about humans exercising faith in a communally brokered religious environment, and chalking that up humbly to the great Other? The point I'm trying to get to I think is this: that you are not really "allowed" to not believe when part of a faith community where faith is the literal and absolute core of what joins the members together in the first place. It is enacted collectively and individually in worship, teaching, acts of service and imagining a better faith-filled world. But step out of that faith-community and the mind mechanics seem to function differently.

Part of me tries to reassure myself: I cannot let my whole spiritual part of my identity disintegrate simply because I find some atheist arguments more compelling - these proponents will unlikely ever extend that same sense of connectedness and concern with me than a religiously convicted soul. A deep spiritual life is indeed worth more than gold, much, much more. Maybe as much as family even, my holy grail that my independence seems to shun (that said, the two operate on entirely different playing fields, so I apologise for the allusion). I also have heard myself more than once utter that I would remain within the Christian tradition probably until I bid farewell to this Earth. I still think that is true - we need form. We can't write the book of life ourselves.

I'd like now to get to a fundamental paradox I have found about faith in God. Faith, a firm awareness of a divine, loving, guiding presence, is I am certain a very good thing. It helps my mental health, encourages empathy, acts of kindness, keeps me tracking more healthily on my heart issues (greed, pride, lust, and more). I never let go of Luther's alleged definition of faith. Faith is prayer. Just now, I asserted just as firmly, that I no longer sense that a personal God would intervene supernaturally in response to our prayers. Now, that is a very different thing to say than saying that prayers are pointless or do not participate in a hugely transformative movement in the world, binding millions of people in a fundamental mission of "good", even if a great deal of it is a rather self-centered version of that good. The paradox gains extra clarity when we shift from petitionary prayer to thanksgiving prayer. 

Studies are unequivocal on the relationship to gratitude and happiness. If our personal happiness or even our species' happiness is important to us, then gratitude seems to be locked into the deal. So from this standpoint, we need to be teaching ourselves and demonstrating our gratitude to others, completely without respect to any religious context. Thankful humans, but thanking who?

Sliding back into my faith slippers, I say thank you God, as I caught myself saying on a jog this evening, for putting this incredible person into my life, my partner T. She is a...."godsend"! I can't imagine any other human being quite able to handle my irksomeness. And as I allow that thanks to spread through my being - a somewhat larger and more spacious idea than my mind, and probably also including my body - my affective appreciation also grows. The instance of prayer is an articulation of recognition that I am indeed a fortunate person and that things could be much worse.

And yet it could very well be that there is no independently self-reflecting perfect being running the show. So regardless of their spiritual roots for people like me wanting to remain alive spiritually but very unsure of the real-world realities of a literal personal deity, considerable work seems needed to make practical sense within the community of myself and within my other relationships.

Maybe it's time to recognise a slightly different hypotheses of God, like Philip Goff's limited God. Let's have a look at his position soon, right here on Faith & Scripture.

Take care.

Breaking the endless circle of judgement

"Stop judging me!"

... the verdict is in, you judge other people too much. We all do. Even when we think the words or feel the trapped feeling the words "stop judging me", we are instantaneously swept along in a current of judgement, caught up in that movement. I literally judge the person for judging me. So how on earth do we step out of the floodwaters of judgement?

Jesus had some advice on this, maybe there's something in it we could use.

"If Christianity is true"

OK so have you ever heard this statement? 

1,280,000 hits. What could be meant by such a statement? What could be wrong with it? How could we redeem it?

On the first point - what does it mean - we encounter an observation that also hits on what is wrong with it: ambiguity. It can mean a variety of things, depending on its context. 

In apologetics debates, it seems to be used quite interchangeably with something roughly akin to "Jesus rose again after his death at the cross", sometimes vaguely intertwined with "oh, and miracles really happen" (or happened).

But that cut-paste is very poor indeed. No mention of a loving creator-God, a life centred on His goodness, of a future hope, of many, many things that are at the rather bulky heart of "Christianity", even if we approach the word in a fairly theological sense.

However, just as Kristen Kobes du Mez realised in writing  Jesus and John Wayne, theological definitions do not give satisfying explanations of what we observe. In particular, she notes the seemingly impossible mass vote for Donald Trump from evangelicals despite Trumps un-"christian" lifestyle and alternative understanding of truth. The only way to understand such cultural tendencies is to see these groupings (or labels) as fundamentally cultural rather than theological.

So how could we redeem it? Perhaps the vague gesturing is to something much more multicoloured, beautiful and cultural than cold historical events. 

Firstly, to consider these rather than other miraculous events (biblical or otherwise) as to be of such central significance is to pay respect to centuries of religious tradition on which the modern believer stands. That is deep, draws individuals into a rich history to which they belong. Secondly, the resurrection story speaks as a validation narrative of the goodness of God as still accessible in believers' difficult lives. Not just a vague goodness, but a concrete, enacted, realised, redeeming goodness. Thirdly, the Christianity is true motif can serve as a bridge between an exciting historical event and the Christian cultural life of a follower. It's actually the glue between the two.

...And They Crucified Him

 JOHN STOTT shrewdly points out a vast difference in detail between the detailed pre-crucifixion scenes and the description of the crucifixion itself. No evangelist really explained in any way what happened at this point, not even Mark who is perhaps the most explicit when it comes to Jesus' pain.

This discovery I feel could reinforce the view about other reliable eye witness testimony just before and after the crucifixion itself, like the discussion between Pontius Pilate and his wife.

Being small

Being small.

I have pondered the challenge of very small breakthroughs being the way of "the kingdom of God". I was reminded of a belief I held more strongly before, lying dormant perhaps during some terribly-low times, that all glory (and "crowns" etc) are to be returned to the Source. 

But WHAT a challenge for someone if their sense of self-confidence has hit all time lows? If they are shown gratitude or some small honour, can they give up that scrap when they are dying of self-esteem starvation? Maybe that is the point, Jesus doesn’t want us to think in terms of scraps of food. Or keep us in a posture of a beggar: please appreciate the thing I did and make me feel special for a few seconds!

From the perspective of how our sense of self-confidence and our security within relationships, giving back the scrap of honour to God and others might actually constitute a more satisfying and enduring internal meal. It really might be worth, then, not taking full credit! 

Mark 4:30 is the famous mustard seed metaphorical story, it speaks to me in fresh ways about being small and a deeper, more fulfilling and longer-term sense of being visible and useful. It takes a lot of time. I'm not there yet. Each time I try to jump at the getting-recognised thing it just has me whooshing back to the start-line, like a giant game of snakes and ladders!

Give credit, my soul, and be well.

Image: https://stevesbiblemeditations.com/2013/12/12/casting-crowns-revelation-49-11/