Question About the Talpiot Controversy

I started following the Talpiot tomb(s) controversy a few days ago.  I know, I’m late!  Sometimes, the biblioblogging controversies interest me.  Sometimes, they don’t.  And, sometimes, something is thrown in my face enough times that I just have to see what all the raucous is about.  The last is what happened to me in terms of the Talpiot tomb(s) controversy.

I’ll give you a little summary of the controversy, and then I’ll ask a question.  At Talpiot in Jerusalem, there is what James Tabor and Simcha Jacobivici believe is the family tomb of Jesus, for it contains a tomb of Jesus, the son of Joseph as well as a tomb of Maria.  There is also a son of Jesus among those tombs, and so there is a belief that Jesus had a son.  Detractors argue, however, that these names were so common in those days that we cannot say that this was Jesus of Nazareth’s tomb.

Elsewhere in Talpiot, there is an ossuary.  An ossuary is a chest for human bones.  On the ossuary in question, there is something, but there is debate about what that something is.  (Click here to see some images.)  Tabor says that it’s a fish spitting out a human being, and that we see on this ossuary an allusion to the story of Jonah, which Jesus likened to his own resurrection in Matthew 12:40.  For Tabor, this ossuary is talking about the resurrection of Jesus.  Others contend that it’s an image of something else, however—-a vase with handles, or a nephesh (which means “soul” in Hebrew, but I’m not sure what it means in terms of this ossuary).  Different sides have looked at other ossuaries and the decorations on them (i.e., vases) in making their arguments about this particular ossuary.  Personally, when I look at the ossuary, those “handles” look to me like they could easily be fins, but I’m far from being an expert on this topic, and I have only superficially looked at this debate.

But, if Jesus is in a tomb, does that mean he was not risen from the dead?  How could the early Christians believe in and proclaim Jesus’ resurrection, when their opponents could easily point out where Jesus’ tomb was?  These are not the questions I promised near the beginning of this post, for Tabor already addresses them.  For Tabor, there was an early Christian belief that Jesus’ resurrection was spiritual rather than physical (I Corinthians 15).  Consequently, Jesus’ bones could be in a tomb, and yet early Christians could proclaim that Jesus was risen, for their conception of Jesus’ resurrection was not physical.

Now for my question, which may be elementary, but I have not yet found anything that answers it: Where does Tabor believe that Jesus was buried?  Was it in the family tomb, or in the ossuary?  In news stories that I have read, Tabor says that Jesus was buried in the family tomb, and yet that Jesus’ resurrection was celebrated not far from that.  But an ossuary contains bones, right?

(UPDATE: I think I found my answer on wikipedia.  See here.  It says: “A body is first buried in a temporary grave, then after some years the skeletal remains are removed and placed in an ossuary…During the time of the Second Temple, Jewish burial customs included primary burials in burial caves, followed by secondary burials in ossuaries placed in smaller niches of the burial caves.”)

If you’d like to go deeper and read more about this controversy, James McGrath has some posts with links (see here, here, and here).  At many of these links, you can read Tabor interacting with his detractors.

The Resurrection of Jesus, Apologetics, and Wanting to Believe

In the comments section of Rachel Held Evans’ post, So how was your Easter…really? , hjk states the following:

“Rather disappointed in the whole sermon being devoted to proving the resurrection, rather than proclaiming and explaining what the resurrection means for the world, the church, and individuals in their respective vocations. Why not proclaim the resurrection in such a way that makes people WANT to believe in it, even if they [do] not presently – rather than scientific and historical arguments.”

I’d like to ramble on about this insightful comment.

1.  hjk’s comment reminds me of what George MacDonald said in some of his books: that God is one whom people would actually want to worship, if they knew him.  After all, who among us does not want to be loved unconditionally?  Who among us is not attracted to the concept of love?  MacDonald was probably implying that a reason that so many people do not want to worship God is that they do not truly know God, for they have been presented with a picture of a God who is far from loving and kind, a picture that is inaccurate. 

I can envision many conservative Christians recoiling from what MacDonald is saying.  After all, the New Testament (particularly Paul) presents human beings as alienated from God, for they love neither God nor his standards for human conduct.  They desire to do their own thing.  How many people would prefer a God who did not have that “no sex outside of marriage” rule?

But, if we truly knew God, would we become so drawn to him that we would not want to violate his standards?  Or would God conditioning his favor on our conduct be a turn-off at the outset, since such a God would not be unconditionally loving?

What I like about MacDonald is that he presents God as unconditionally loving, and yet as one who disciplines sin and purifies us—-even if that discipline and purification must occur after death.

2.  Last Easter, my pastor recommended that we read an apologetic pamphlet that attempted to defend the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection.  The pastor also told us why we should want to believe in the resurrection of Jesus—-because it is an example of God’s power bringing a new beginning and new life, which God wants to do for us today.  But the pastor sought to give us material defending the historicity of the event.

This year, the pastor did not recommend that pamphlet.  Rather, in his sermon, he said that the empty tomb baffled the disciples, and that they only rejoiced when they experienced the risen Christ.  This was interesting, because so many Christian apologetic spiels argue that the empty tomb is the proof that Jesus rose from the dead.  But the empty tomb did not do a whole lot for the faith of the disciples.  Rather, their experience of Jesus was what brought them the conviction that Jesus was alive.

3.  What is my stance towards Christian apologetic defenses of Jesus’ resurrection?  One argument that apologists have made is that the disciples would not have died for a lie—-for something that they made up.  N.T. Wright has similarly argued that Messianic movements back then died after the death of their founder, but that Christianity was unique because it went on after Jesus’ crucifixion.  For Wright, that’s because Jesus rose from the dead.

Someone was using the “disciples would not have died for a lie” argument, and I asked him for proof that the disciples were indeed martyred for their Christian beliefs.  He referred to Josephus’ account of James the brother of Jesus being put to death.  James was not one of the Twelve, but I think that by itself does not disqualify this guy’s argument because James was still an eyewitness to Jesus who was put to death, in part because of his religious beliefs.

I do not think that the disciples would have died for a lie.  In my opinion, they truly believed that Jesus was alive.  Does that prove that Jesus rose from the dead?  I think that Jesus’ resurrection is one way to account for their belief that Jesus was alive, and for their continued belief in Jesus.  Others have offered other explanations: hallucination, for example.

Those who think that the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ resurrection reflect eyewitness testimony to the empty tomb and Jesus’ appearances—-such as Richard Bauckham—-may conclude that we have good reason to hold that Jesus rose from the dead.  Those who regard the characters in those stories merely as characters rather than as named eyewitnesses, and who believe that the stories of the empty tomb are late and reflect development (i.e., Matthew puts guards at the empty tomb, whereas guards are not in Mark’s story), will argue that these stories are not evidence that Jesus rose.  And then there are those who contend that there was an empty tomb, but they do not think that proves Jesus’ resurrection.  The body could have been moved, as Mary Magdalene thought!  See the late Ken Pulliam’s posts on this topic.

4.  Why should I want for Jesus to have risen from the dead?  If that event proves that Christianity is true and that all non-Christians are going to hell, then I’d have problems accepting it.  But if it’s about a new beginning or the renewal of an imperfect world, then that is attractive to me.  I think that one agenda of apologists is to show that there is good reason to believe in renewal, for Jesus historically rose from the dead.  Otherwise, what evidence is there that renewal will come?  Often, it’s hard for people to look at the world around them and to think that anything will get better!

“So How Was Your Easter…Really?” My Responses

In this post, I’ll be using as a lauch-pad Rachel Held Evans’ recent post, So how was your Easter…really?   I’ll quote Rachel’s post, then I’ll discuss how her thoughts resonate or don’t resonate with my own experience of Easter this year.

“I had my moments of faith: at the little Catholic church down the road on Good Friday, pressing my forehead into the wooden cross at the front of the sanctuary and silently praying, ‘God, I don’t understand this, but I believe, and I am thankful.’”

I went to a Catholic service with my Mom and her husband on Saturday night.  Were there elements of the service that I could believe or identify with spiritually?  Well, one piece of the liturgy talked about restoring fallen people to innocence.  I do not know if the story of the Fall in Genesis 3 is historical—-certainly many scientists and historians do not think so!  But I cannot escape the fact that the world is imperfect, and that includes me.  We have all done things that we shouldn’t, and we crave wholeness, or innocence. 

I felt a little put-off by the part of the service in which we were asking saints to intercede for us before God.  For one, after watching the depiction of St. Cyril of Alexandria in the movie Agora last week, I have my doubts that all of the saints were really that saintly!  Second, as a Protestant, I have a hard time talking to anyone in prayer except for God, plus I am leery about praying to any intercessor except for Jesus Christ.  But, as I thought some more, I could appreciate the ritual of talking to the saints of the past.  Many of us want people to pray for us.  We ask for other Christians to pray for us and to show us that they care.  What’s wrong, then, with thinking that our Christian family goes back many centuries, and that saints in the past pray for us?  I’m not sure if I buy that, but I can understand how such a concept would give Catholics a feeling of connection.

There was a baptism at the Catholic church, and the initiate was asked if he renounced Satan with all of his lies.  I wondered if I did so.  Christianity essentially portrays sexual desire (“lusting after a woman”) as adultery of the heart, but I have a hard time renouncing that.  It just seems unnatural to ask any man to do so!  But does Satan lie to me?  When I am taught to look to people and things for my sense of self-worth, is that not a lie of Satan?  When I am tempted to disregard the dignity of others, am I not being accosted by one of Satan’s lies?

“I had my moments of doubt: in the evangelical church of my childhood on Easter morning, struggling to listen to the familiar resurrection story that suddenly strikes me as a rather inventive way to escape our fear of death.”

I especially felt this way at the Catholic service: I wondered if Jesus truly rose from the dead, or if that were merely one religious story amidst a host of religious stories that are in the world—-many of which Christians would consider untrue because they fall outside of Christianity.  I decided to just kick back and observe what other people believe, and I found that I was especially moved by the music of the service—-how it was loud and powerful, and thereby majestic.

My Mom has struggled with Christianity, and, after the service, she remarked that she believes that something happened on Easter morning to give people hope.  To that, I say “Why not?”  I believe that there are things that occur in all sorts of religions or in life that give people hope—-hope that the future will be brighter, or that they can have a new beginning.  It’s even built into nature, as spring follows winter.  Perhaps that sort of event occurred for the early Christians.

“I had my moments of connection: holding hands with my neighbors during the Lord’s prayer, sharing a meal with family, watching the lady in the wheelchair in the pew in front of me pull herself up, determined to stand through ‘Christ the Lord Has Risen Today,’ seeing fellow Christians raise their hands in joy.”

I especially felt connected during the passing-of-the-peace part of the Catholic service.  I often dread that part of the service.  In fact, I was thinking of staying home specifically to avoid that part of the service!  I fear being ignored, or extending my hand at the wrong time and getting rebuffed.  But the people at the Catholic service were friendly, and so I felt connected.

“I had my moments of disconnect: sitting out the Eucharist because I’m not Catholic, hearing the gospel reduced to salvation from hell, welcomes that felt patronizing from people who have been praying that I come to my senses and go back to believing, behaving, and voting just like them.”

Probably the only time I felt this was when the priest was saying that Christ brings forgiveness to believers.  I thought, “What about everyone else?”  And what about someone like me, who is not even sure what he believes?

What’s in It For You?; The Essence of Covenant; Proverbs and Myth; One Angel or Two?; Constraining Catenae?

1.  Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People, pages 39-55:

Dale Carnegie says that all of us are self-interested: we’re interested in what we want.  But the key to success is for us not to talk to others about what we want, but rather to show others how we can fulfill what they want.  If you’re selling something, for example, your goal should be to show your prospective customer how your product can meet his or her desires.  Your desire is not particularly important to that person (sorry!).

I think that this is an important insight.  My problem is that I’m not always sure what people want, and if I have much to give to them.  Some value what I give.  Some don’t.  But the difficulty of this rule for me shouldn’t excuse me from trying to meet people’s needs, if I at all can, even if those needs are simply wanting someone who will listen to them or show them courtesy.

I wonder how this principle can apply to my blog.  My blog is about my interests, thoughts, gripes, likes, and dislikes.  Whether it’s popular or not, however, will depend on the extent to which it meets other people’s needs.  Does it give people information that they are seeking?  Does it inspire them?  Does it make them laugh?  Is it fun for them to read?  Do they identify with what I’m saying, as they rejoice that someone else feels the way that they do?  Do they receive practical advice that can help them solve their problems (as did my blogs through Zosia Zak’s book on strategies for coping with autism)?

At this moment, I’m just going to be myself and let the chips fall where they may.  I don’t, however, spend as much time anymore whining about my problems on my blog, hoping that people will feel sorry for me.  As Dale Carnegie would probably say, other people are self-interested!  They may not care about my gripes, if my gripes don’t help them somehow to cope with their gripes!  So if I ever decide to gripe, it will be so I can vent.  And, if anyone’s not tired of my griping and wants to offer me some helpful feedback, feel free!

I also enjoyed Dale Carnegie’s comments on how applying his principles is a process.  We won’t apply them successfully all of the time.  But, in a cool hour, maybe we can think about what we did right and what we could have done better.  It’s all about growth!

2.  Rolf Rendtorff, The Covenant Formula:

Rendtorff talks a lot about how the covenant is about the LORD being Israel’s God.  That’s the key.

3.  R. Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship, pages 83-84:

In [Aristotle's] first anti-Platonic dialogue…he regarded proverbs as ‘survivals of a pre-literary philosophy’ and treated them in a survey of early wisdom, together with the ‘Orphics’, the Delphic maxims…and the precepts of the Seven Wise Men.

I don’t know enough about proverbs to judge whether or not they came before literary philosophy.  But I found it interesting that the Delphic Oracle did more than give people confusing oracles that could be interpreted in different ways, for it also spoke proverbs.  It gives me a cozy feeling to think about societies that had wise sayings, from people who were esteemed.  It reminds me of Dale Carnegie, and how he refers to the examples of Ben Franklin, Abe Lincoln, and other famous people to teach us successful ways to navigate our lives.  Where would we be without our myths?  They encourage us.  But some feel shackled by them, for these myths present an avenue to success, which doesn’t necessarily work for everyone.

4.  R.P.C. Hanson, Allegory and Event,  page 259:

And in reply to the suggestion of Celsus that the difference on the part of the evangelists about the number of angels appearing at the tomb at the Resurrection impugns the accuracy of their account [Origen] hints that the differences can all be harmonized (as well as allegorized).

Do the Gospels contradict one another in their stories about Jesus’ resurrection?  In Matthew 28, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary go to Jesus’ tomb and see an angel, who descended from heaven and rolled away the stone that covered the tomb.  In Mark 16, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome go to the tomb, wondering who will roll away the stone.  They see a young man clothed in white, sitting inside Jesus’ sepulchre. 

In Luke 24, women who followed Jesus from Galilee go to the tomb, see the stone has been rolled away, and enter the sepulchre to find it empty.  Suddenly, there are two men in shining garments standing near them.  In John 20, Mary Magdalene visits the tomb and sees that the stone has been rolled away, and that the tomb is empty.  She runs to Peter and the disciple Jesus loved, saying that she doesn’t know where Jesus’ body has been placed.  The two disciples run to Jesus’ tomb and find that, indeed, it is empty.  Mary stands there weeping, and two angels appear to her.  Then, Jesus comes to her as a gardener.  That’s how she learns of his resurrection.

How many angels appeared at Jesus’ tomb to inform the women (or woman) that Jesus had risen from the dead?  In my first year at DePauw, I took my first New Testament class, and we heard about these differences.  One Christian student suggested that maybe the women were conceptualizing what they saw in different ways: they all beheld something spectacular, but one woman thought she was seeing one angel, whereas another believed that she saw two.  Another Christian I knew took the same class and lost his faith for a season, in part because of the different resurrection accounts.

In a class that I took the next year, ”Images of Jesus”, I said that the accounts were not contradictory, because if there were two angels, then there was one angel: one, two.  For some strange reason that I can’t pinpoint, the class wasn’t receptive to my idea!

Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort offer the following attempt at harmonization: The question has arisen simply because Matthew and Mark mention one angel, whereas Luke and John refer to two. There is no conflict if there were two angels but Matthew and Mark quote the one who was a spokesperson.

Here’s Origen’s attempt at harmonization in Contra Celsum V:56 (see BOOK V): Proceeding immediately after to mix up and compare with one another things that are dissimilar, and incapable of being united, [Celsus] subjoins to his statement regarding the sixty or seventy angels who came down from heaven, and who, according to him, shed fountains of warm water for tears, the following: It is related also that there came to the tomb of Jesus himself, according to some, two angels, according to others, one; having failed to notice, I think, that Matthew and Mark speak of one, and Luke and John of two, which statements are not contradictory. For they who mention one, say that it was he who rolled away the stone from the sepulchre; while they who mention two, refer to those who appeared in shining raiment to the women that repaired to the sepulchre, or who were seen within sitting in white garments.

Origen says that Matthew and Mark refer to the one angel who rolled away the stone, whereas Luke and John are discussing the two angels who appeared to the women and told them of Jesus’ resurrection.  But, in Matthew and Mark, the one who rolls away the stone is the one who tells the women about Jesus’ resurrection (though, actually, Mark doesn’t explicitly say that the young man was the one who rolled away the stone). 

That brings up other questions.  In Mark, the women show up and the young man was sitting inside the tomb.  In Luke, they arrive and see the tomb is empty, with no young man sitting inside of it.  Suddenly, two shining men are standing next to them.  Are these different versions?  Did both somehow happen?  Could both have happened?

I wonder if Origen even thought that this whole issue mattered that much, for he says in V:57:  Moreover, regarding the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, we have this remark to make, that it is not at all wonderful if, on such an occasion, either one or two angels should have appeared to announce that Jesus had risen from the dead, and to provide for the safety of those who believed in such an event to the advantage of their souls.

“Either” one or two angels?  Origen seems to be saying (my paraphrase): “Look, it doesn’t matter how many angels appeared to the women.  Maybe it was one.  Maybe it was two.  What’s noteworthy is that the women experienced something supernatural.  The Gospels agree that the women saw something.” 

5.  N.F. Marcos, The Septuagint in Context, page 287-288:

According to Marcos, “A catena is a collection of fragments taken from different works (commentaries, homilies, scholia) by ancient writers on texts from Scripture.”  Basically, you open up a Bible, and you see in the margins thoughts about the passage from commentaries and sermons.  Marcos states that catanae “began to be formed at the beginning of the 6th century when original production of patristic literature was in decline.”  But the concept came from before that, dating back to the first century C.E. and earlier.  Scholia had notes on the “more difficult or stranger” passages of Homer, located near the Homeric text.  Certain Hellenistic medical and judicial works had a body of text, with comments in the margins by renowned experts.  There are Jewish texts that are similar: I’ve seen such books in the Rare Book Room of the Hebrew Union College library.  In them, you have Scripture, surrounded by passages from commentaries.  These texts date to medieval times.

I’m not sure if Judaism was imitating Christian catanae, or if the Jews did this sort of thing at the same time that the Christians were beginning to do so.  But it’s cool to open up a passage of Scripture, and to study it with the ancients.  We can read things that did not occur to us when we initially looked at the biblical text.  Yet, it can also be constraining, for here are traditions telling us to see the text in a certain way.  Can we develop fresh insights, or allow the biblical text to speak for itself, when there are so many other interpretations going through our heads?  

Easter Reflections: My Resurrection

When I was at Harvard, I asked a Catholic friend of mine what the resurrection of Jesus Christ meant to him. He replied without hestitation, “My resurrection.” He was referring to his spiritual rebirth as a Christian, which the apostle Paul associates with Christ’s resurrection in Romans 6.

“Can man be saved, Mr. Heep?,” Mr. Leeds asks Cleveland Heep in M. Night Shamaylan’s Lady in the Water. What he meant was “Can a person ever have a new beginning?” Cleveland Heep was a surgeon who had lost his wife and children to a murderer, and he coped with his loss by hiding out in an apartment complex, doing his job as an apartment maintenance man. He hadn’t moved past his pain! Could he have a fresh start, a new beginning?

Ironically, Mr. Leeds himself was probably coping with some sort of pain. The actor who plays him, Bill Irwin, says so much in an interview on the DVD. Plus, Mr. Leeds tells Cleveland, “You don’t want to end up like me.” “Like me” means sitting in front of the TV all day and not really interacting with anyone, as Mr. Leeds does. Mr. Leeds wanted Cleveland to have a fresh start because he recognized the negative impact of not doing so, but he did not believe that a new beginning was possible for him (Mr. Leeds). Later in the movie, Mr. Leeds doesn’t manifest much faith, for he says that he wanted there to be more than this horrible world, but he realized that sooner or later he had to face reality. But he goes back on his doubt when he urges Mr. Heep to at least try to heal the water narf Story–to undertake his role as “Healer” in the drama that the apartment complex is experiencing. So the movie is not just about Cleveland Heep’s new beginning, but Mr. Leeds’ as well.

On Christmas, I read Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. I talked with my therapist about it, and I asked him how Scrooge (or anyone, for that matter) could change. Scrooge had a dream that altered his perspective of himself and life, but what would keep him from returning to his greed, selfishness, and bitterness? My therapist responded that we can easily relapse to where we were, but that’s why we need to set certain things in place to keep that from happening. Change takes diligence, in short! For me, that means greeting people by name and introducing myself to at least one person at the meetings that I attend. I can easily become lazy on that, but, as I said, change requires diligence.

That may have been the point of the Easter sermon that I heard this morning. The priest referred to I Corinthians 5, which exhorts the Corinthian Christians to purge out the old leaven of malice and wickedness so they can become a new lump, celebrating the festival with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. The priest remarked that being a Christian (actually, he said “Catholic”) is a lot of work, which is why it is a lifelong process!

Some may say that the Christian life is not a matter of working hard, however. One of my relatives likes Jimmy Swaggart, who preaches that faith in the cross is the only path to spiritual victory. The way Swaggart tells it, trusting in Jesus will lead us to the point where we don’t even want to sin, negating the need for intense struggle. I’m not sure if the Christian life is meant to be a passive process, but I think that faith in a God who loves me is important to me becoming a new person. I have to trust that life is God’s way of making me better, meaning that God is on my side, not condemning me. So I have a role in my spiritual renewal, and God has a role. It’s a cooperative process!

My mind wanders to a post that I wrote in response to Ken Brown: Jack, Sawyer, and Selflessness. Ken was contrasting two Lost characters: Jack and Sawyer. Jack started out as a selfless leader and became a selfish jerk. And Sawyer began as a selfish jerk and evolved into a selfless leader. For Ken, the lesson was that each one of us can have a new beginning by making selfless decisions. My point in my post, however, was that things are not always that easy, since we can fall into funks that are hard to climb out of.

But perhaps Ken has a point. Maybe I can have a new beginning each day, as I choose to make good decisions and not bad ones. I can set my mind on the bitterness of my past and present, or I can think thoughts of faith, hope, and love. I can greet people by name, or pray for people, or do something for somebody else. But, again, this takes discipline! There have been times when I have set spiritual goals, only to violate them and give up! That may be why I need some sort of hope and inspiration, which is what religion claims to provide.

FSE: Knowing

Yesterday, I saw Knowing, which starred Nicholas Cage.

Knowing is a science fiction movie. At its beginning, we’re in the 1950′s, and we meet an odd little girl named Lucinda, whose special idea is selected by her school. Her idea is for the school to create a time capsule, which would be opened four decades later. While the other students are putting in pictures they drew of what they think the future will be like, Lucinda puts in a page of numbers.

Four decades later, a little boy is handed Lucinda’s page of numbers, and his father, an MIT professor, learns that it details a series of disasters from the 1950′s until the end of life on earth, which is imminent. The professor gets in touch with Lucinda’s daughter and granddaughter. His son and Lucinda’s granddaughter both hear messages from strange whispering people, who give them visions of the coming destruction of earth by a solar flare. These whisperers turn out to be aliens, who are trying to get the kids off of earth. Guided by the aliens and the numbers, the two kids go to a place where a spaceship can take them away, allowing them to start life anew on another planet. We see from the other spaceships leaving the earth that these kids were not the only ones chosen to survive.

The movie puzzled me at first. Why would Lucinda need to write the numbers, if the aliens offered the kids direct guidance, making the numbers apparently superfluous? And how did the other children know the way to leave earth, since they did not have an MIT-professor father who could decode the numbers?

For the first question, I concluded that the numbers represented the aliens’ attempt to involve the professor in the whole process–of getting the kids off the planet. If the kids were just relying on visions from the aliens, then the professor probably wouldn’t have believed them, or he would have resented the aliens for trying to take away his son. But the numbers involved him in the process of gradually learning about the earth’s imminent destruction, so he was more at peace with the aliens’ agenda at the end of the movie, since it didn’t come out of the clear blue sky.

For my second question, I concluded that the aliens guided other children off of the planet in different ways. The numbers were their way to help Lucinda’s granddaughter and the professor’s son, but they could have used other means to get the other children off of earth–in a manner that respected the kids’ free will and the parents’ reluctance to be separated from their children.

This reminds me of a few things. First of all, the movie makes a big deal about determinism vs. randomness. On his blog, Roger Ebert states that the movie assumes everything that happens has been determined in the past and thus cannot be changed. For Ebert, such a notion undermines human free will, which is a key component of many theistic religions. But, in my opinion, the aliens work with human free will rather than against it. None of the human characters are robots, but they have their own thoughts, feelings, and emotions as human beings. The aliens respect humanity, which is why they resort to guiding the professor and the children to the right conclusions by giving them puzzles to work out. Similarly, even Calvinists assert that God uses means to bring the elect to Christ, meaning that (for them) it’s not just a matter of God pre-programming people towards the Christian religion. Those who believe in fate and predestination do not erase from the equation the human ability to make choices, to feel, to experiment, to have opinions–in short, to be human.

Second, I thought about James McGrath’s recent posts on Jesus’ resurrection on his blog, www.exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com. McGrath dismisses a lot of Christian apologetics for the resurrection of Jesus. Christian apologists say we know Jesus rose because of the empty tomb and the mass sightings of the risen Jesus. According to McGrath, such an argument does not coincide with the Bible. In John, when Mary sees the empty tomb, she does not conclude that Jesus rose from the dead, but rather that someone moved the body. That means that the empty tomb didn’t necessarily prove the resurrection, in the mindset of the early Christians. And Matthew’s Gospel states that some people doubted when they saw the risen Jesus. For McGrath, there were a variety of reasons that the early Christians concluded that Jesus rose from the dead. McGrath does not list them (as far as I know), but possibilities include seeing the risen Jesus and the prophecies of the Old Testament.

Similarly, in terms of the movie Knowing, the aliens use a variety of means to bring the children to the truth: the numbers, direct guidance, their connection with their family, etc. That may be how God interacts with Christians today. Sure, he gives us a book that contains his general will, and it fulfills a role similar to that of the numbers in the movie. But he also guides us through his Holy Spirit and other people (or so Christians claim).

Anyway, these are just my thoughts. See Knowing, even though my post just gave you a lot of spoilers!

Forum on Mary Lane’s Comment

Under my post, Person with Asperger’s Seeks Spiritual Home, I sort of violated my own rule. I told my readers not to respond to what other commenters are saying under the post, since its aim is to help the spiritual seeker with Asperger’s (Anthony), not to ignite a feud.

But Mary Lane made a comment that I had to respond to. She said the following:

I would have to say that most likely those who feel that they need to dabble into religions outside the Scriptures that God has given us, are living life on the edge-okay? The Devil is just as real as the God who created him (Isa.45:7) and he is very adequately disguising himself in the religions of men and organizations. Innovative novices are subject to being “taken at his will” (II Tim.2:25-26) It behooves those of us who decide to remake God into a more palatible Image, to consider that the actual Designer of that designer religion, may not be able to save us. (Just FYI)

Mary Lane may be addressing me and/or Anthony, since both of us have looked into non-Christian religions. Anthony dabbled in Kabbalah and was thinking briefly about studying Buddhism, and I’m currently reading the Koran, with Buddhist and Hindu scriptures lined up on my desk for future projects.

Here are two points:

1. On one hand, Mary Lane’s comment convicts me. I’d like to think that God is somehow involved in all religions, but is such the case, according to the Scriptures? Paul said that those sacrificing to other gods were actually worshipping demons (I Corinthians 10:20), even though Zeus often stood up for justice. Revelation 12:9 affirms that Satan has deceived the whole world.

But there is also a strand of biblical tradition that appreciates the wisdom of other cultures. Paul quotes Stoic authors in Acts 17, in his attempt to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And, as Randall Heskett points out (see Wife Swap), the Book of Proverbs includes chapters that contain the wisdom of non-Israelite kings (e.g., Proverbs 31). And there are Christians (e.g., C.S. Lewis, the Pope) who view other religions as preparatory for belief in Christ. In the second century C.E., Justin Martyr even posited that Socrates was open to the divine logos, even though the incarnate Word, Jesus Christ, would come centuries later.

2. Mary Lane criticizes remaking God into a more palatable image. As you can tell, she doesn’t care much for pick-and-choose religion! But, as I wrote under the post, I wonder why she is a Christian and not (say) a Muslim. A lot of evangelicals will respond, “Well, because the God of Christianity loves us so much that he sent his only Son to die for us, whereas Islam’s deity is rather harsh.” But isn’t that accepting an image of God just because it’s more palatable than another image?

Or an evangelical may respond, “Because Jesus rose from the dead.” Well, Islam claims that Muhammad ascended to heaven! Why should we accept one truth claim and not another?

Another common evangelical response: “Because the early Christians were willing to die for their faith, and who would die for a lie?” But the early Muslims also suffered for their beliefs. They were persecuted and kicked out of Mecca. Why would people suffer for a lie?

Please address these comments here and not under the post about Anthony’s search for a spiritual home.

Thanks, to all who will participate.

WordPress readers: See Forum on Mary Lane’s Comment  on Blogger, since that may be where Mary Lane responds.

The Resurrection Body in the Synoptics

In my post, N.T. Wright on the Risen John, Steven Carr and I have a brief discussion about Jesus’ resurrection in the Gospels. Like a lot of Christians, I said that the risen Christ of the Gospels has a glorified body with spiritual characteristics, since it can morph and vanish into thin air. Steven responded as follows:

“The body of Jesus does not morph. It was the eyes of his onlookers which were changed. First they were kept from recognising him and then their eyes were opened. No suggestion that the body had changed. Indeed, the Gospels have the traditional Jewish view that resurrected people were unchanged from how they died. The Jesus of the Gospels knew that people expected to recognise him by his wounds, which obviously would still be present after resurrection. Everybody knew that the wounds would still be there. That is how Jesus could prove he was not an imposter. The face could be faked, but the wounds would be the sure sign of a resurrected being. Entirely different from Paul’s idea of moving into a transformed, glorious body” (emphasis mine).

I’m sure Steven was speaking primarily about the Gospels’ accounts of Jesus’ resurrection, as in the stories that appear at the end of the books. But he got me thinking about their presentations of the resurrection in general. Actually, they are quite nuanced about the types of bodies that we will have. Come to think of it, they have various pictures of Jesus’ resurrection body as well!

In Matthew 13:43, Jesus says that the righteous will one day “shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (NRSV). The sounds like how Daniel 12:3-4 envisions the resurrection: “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.” In this specific passage of Matthew, Jesus seems to believe in a resurrection that entails astral glorification, not receiving the same type of physical body that went into the ground.

And there are passages in which Jesus’ body shines like the sun. When Jesus appeared to Saul in Luke/Acts, for example, he blinded him with a bright light (Acts 9:3, 8, 17; 22:6-7, 14; 26:13-16).

Or take Jesus’ transfiguration. Mark 9:1-3 states:

“And he said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.’
Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them,
and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.”

Matthew adds the detail that Jesus’ face shown like the sun (17:2), and he expresses “the kingdom of God has come with power” as “the Son of Man coming in his kingdom” (16:28). Many Christians associate Jesus’ statement that some disciples will see his glorious return with the transfiguration scene, and for good reason, since the text itself provides the temporal connection of “six days later.” When Peter, James, and John saw the transfigured Christ, could they have been looking at the way that Christ will appear at his second advent? And, if so, doesn’t that imply that Jesus’ resurrection body (the one he’ll come back with) shines like the sun?

Steven is correct to note that many Jews expected the resurrection bodies to be roughly the same as the bodies that went into the ground. When I was at Harvard, I went to a symposium that had Paula Fredericksen, a New Testament scholar from Boston University, and she said that some rabbis believed there would be sex after the resurrection. I guess they thought our risen bodies would have some of the same functions that they have now! And the Gospels indicate that many Jews held that sort of belief, for the Sadduccees asked Jesus, “In the resurrection whose wife will she be? For the seven had married her” (Mark 12:23). In their view, the doctrine of the resurrection assumed that people would still be getting married after they rose from the dead.

But Jesus did not agree. He said, “[W]hen they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven” (Mark 12:25). Luke 20:36 adds, “Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection.” Jesus may be saying that resurrected bodies are spirit, like the bodies of angels. In any case, he maintains that there will be discontinuity between our present bodies and the ones we will receive in the resurrection.

And yet, there are some bumps even in that interpretation, for Jesus also says that people in the resurrection will eat and drink. Look at the following passages:

Matthew 8:11: “I tell you, many will come from east and west and will eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven[.]“

Matthew 26:26: “I tell you, I will never again drink of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.”

Mark 14:25: “Truly I tell you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”

Luke 13:29: “Then people will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God.”

These passages say that the risen Christ will eat in the kingdom of God, as will lots of other people (who are presumably resurrected). How does that mesh with what Paul says in I Corinthians 11:13: “‘Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food,’ and God will destroy both one and the other”?

Liberal scholars will probably say that the Gospels simply have different traditions about the resurrection. For a lot of them, the Gospels are a cut-and-paste job, and the books that emerge are not always internally consistent.

Is there a way to reconcile these differences? One possible approach is to take the sequential track, which we see in the first century C.E. Jewish apocalyptic work, II Baruch. George Nicklesburg says the following about II Baruch in his article on “Resurrection” in the Anchor Bible Dictionary:

“The souls of the dead, presently gathered in the ‘treasuries’ of Sheol (21:23; 30:2–5), will be raised in their original form so that the living may recognize them. Thereafter, the righteous will be freed from the limitations of this age and transformed into glory like the stars and the angels, with whom they will inhabit paradise in the age to come.“

In this model, we are initially raised with physical bodies, but our bodies transform into spiritual bodies somewhere along the way. So maybe we will be able to eat after our resurrection–until God decides to destroy our stomach and food, that is. My problem with this approach is that I Corinthians 15 seems to indicate that we’ll receive our spiritual bodies right when we’re resurrected, not some time afterwards (see vv 44, 52-54).

Another approach is to say that our resurrected bodies can morph. That means the risen Jesus could appear to his disciples as a flesh-and-blood human being, but he could also morph into a more glorious figure–one who shines like the sun. His wounds are still important when he appears to his disciples in his risen state, for they show that he’s come back from the dead. He’s not just some disembodied spirit floating around, but he has conquered death through his bodily resurrection (see Luke 24:39). And yet that body can appear in different forms.

I’m not sure if that solves the problem of whether or not our risen bodies will eat. Within my Armstrongite heritage, I was taught that we will eat for pleasure in our new, spirit bodies, but not out of necessity for survival. And yet, Paul in I Corinthians 11:13 seems to be criticizing the Corinthians because they eat for pleasure a little too much. “You say you eat to live and live to eat,” Paul appears to be saying. “Well, you won’t always be eating, since God will destroy the body and food. So shouldn’t you be setting your mind on higher things, and not just on something temporary, like eating?”

But maybe the sequential model actually works here: our spiritual bodies will eat for a while, until God destroys the stomach. I don’t know.

Update on Resurrection Posts

I said that I just wrote my last resurrection post for a while. But I may write another one this coming week.

The reason is that Steven Carr has gotten me to think about the composition of Jesus’ risen body.

According to my Armstrongite heritage, Jesus rose as a spirit being, which means that his risen body did not have flesh. For Armstrong, when Jesus appeared to the disciples in the Gospels, he was not showing them his true self. He was just manifesting himself as a fleshly being for their benefit. I mean, he couldn’t demonstrate his full splendor, could he? That would blind them!

When I took N.T. Wright’s class on the resurrection, I became exposed for the first time to how a lot of Christians interpret “spiritual body” in I Corinthians 15: They see it as a spirit-filled body as opposed to a soul-filled one, or as a body that is physical yet has spiritual characteristics (e.g., immortality, the ability to morph and vanish into thin air, etc.).

But I was never really convinced by the orthodox position. For one, what’s it mean to say that Jesus has a spirit-filled body? That he has the Holy Spirit? Why’s Jesus need the Holy Spirit? We’re the sinful people who need the Spirit to live a good Christian life. Jesus didn’t need that!

Also, what’s it mean to say that we’ll become spirit-filled rather than soul-filled bodies? That sounds to me like possession! The soul is who I am–my personality and wishes and desires and thoughts. Will that be gone in the resurrection? But that’s me!

As far as the “spiritual body is a glorified physical body” spiel goes, I’m not so sure. That seems to be making a spiritual body into something other than a spiritual body.

But I only heard one lecture from Wright on this subject. I’d like to read his fuller treatment of it in his book. And so I’ll read the relevant chapter and do a write-up, maybe next week.

Stay tuned!

The Resurrection and Baptism

In the Resurrection Debate, atheist Steven Carr debates Christians John Twistleton and James Hollingsworth about the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection.

As I indicated in my post, The Resurrection Debate: The Blog and Sources, I wasn’t too impressed by many of the Christians’ “arguments.” But there were a few occasions when Twistleton managed to shine, particularly in his posts, John Twisleton – March 27 and John Twisleton 2 April 2008. There, Twistleton actually wrestles with what Paul has to say about the resurrection, and he makes a pretty convincing case that Paul viewed it as bodily. But, alas, making a few good arguments every now and then doesn’t save a sinking ship, and Twistleton’s complaint at the end that Carr uses Paul too much didn’t help him much either. It’s like Twistleton was afraid of Paul, when he didn’t have to be!

Twistleton does well to bring up Romans 6, which likens the Christian’s baptism to Jesus’ resurrection. A sinner symbolically goes into a grave and comes out a new person, in the same way that Jesus was buried in a tomb and emerged from it with a new body. In my opinion, that model of resurrection entails an empty tomb, since it presents the person going into the grave and coming back out of it. If that’s Paul’s model, then the empty tomb motif is a part of Christianity’s earliest traditions.

Paul’s comparison of resurrection with the spiritual life of the believer is important, especially in light of a discussion I had with Steven on Romans 8:11: “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you” (NRSV). Under my post, Tim Keller’s Two Gospels?, I said to Steven:

“And Paul did define resurrection in one place as rescucitating a corpse. In Romans 8, he says that God will quicken your mortal bodies.” Steven responded that Romans 8:11 is about the here and now, meaning that it is spiritual, not physical and literal. According to Steven, Romans 8:11 describes sinners receiving life through God’s Spirit, which enables them to bear spiritual fruit in the here and now. For Steven, it is unrelated to literal life after death–the type that occurred with Jesus and that will occur with all believers. Consequently, as far as Steven is concerned, Romans 8:11 is irrelevant to Jesus’ resurrection, so we cannot use it to say that (in Paul’s mind) God quickened Jesus’ body.

But can one radically distinguish Paul’s teaching on spiritual resurrection from what he believes about the resurrection of Jesus? He likens the former to the latter in Romans 6! And, in Romans 8:11, Paul mentions twice that God raised Christ from the dead as he seeks to assure his readers that God will quicken their mortal bodies. So is it that much of a stretch to assume that Paul defines resurrection as God quickening a dead body, which would be consistent with an empty tomb?

I’ll close here. This will probably be my last official post for a while on the resurrection, but I’ll still interact with Steven and others under the posts I have already written. I need variety in my posts!