TOWARDS A TWENTY FIRST CENTURY CHRISTIANITY
INTRODUCTION
For a number of years I was a Christian Fundamentalist. I wholeheartedly accepted a Calvinistic framework of Christian theology and led Bible studies and preached in my local church, serving there as a deacon. However, the advent of bi-polar disorder which caused severe mood changes from acute anxiety to acute depression coupled with a fear for my very sanity and other issues from my upbringing all served to put a severe stress on my Christian Fundamentalist conceptual framework of the Divine. In many respects, my Christian faith proved to be a firm rock and foundation during those very uncertain and unstable years, providing me with an anchor and stability when all else seemed to be collapsing. Furthermore, personal mystical experiences served to strengthen and establish this framework of belief. But, my trauma and vulnerability during these years, coupled with an insistent questioning of the nature of revelation and inspiration as a result of my mystical spiritual experiences brought me to question the whole foundation of Christian Fundamentalism – the Bible - and therefore its view of Jesus. For thirty-five years, the impact of Christian Fundamentalism and its views, strengthened and deepened by my heightened spiritual experiences, could not be fully let go of. It is only recently that I have finally got somewhere near the foundation of my study on revelation, inspiration and the Bible – a Bible claimed by Christian fundamentalists to be the inspired revelation of God – to be God’s very Word. Only as the result of a tenacious and determined exploration of theology and psychology in order to get at the root of these things has the pathway finally opened up for me to be able to reappraise the founding teacher of the Christian faith – Jesus.
I miss the camaraderie and fellowship of those ‘heady’ days in the 1970’s. I had a sense of direction, purpose, identity, meaning, value and friendship that I have not recovered or improved on since. I guess other institutions such as the armed forces may provide similar experiences and certainly I do not think that such sentiments are limited to religious experience. So of course, there is part of me that would love to go back to such a sense of meaningful spiritual community but I cannot do so by embracing the ideas that I once did. I have moved on and cannot return to that philosophy. Perhaps though I could cut through the Christian Fundamentalist mentality to embrace a more realistic set of ideas about Jesus, - who he was and what he taught - and to use this revised theology, this new theology, this neo-orthodoxy as a new spiritual conceptual framework that has enough commonality with conventional Christian fellowship to enable me to join a Christian community again. Hence this study – an attempt to get to the roots and foundation of who Jesus was and what he taught – an attempt to strip away the layers of institutionalised theology and centuries of assumptions and presumptions – an attempt by a spiritual minded pilgrim to get back to the basics and foundation of Christianity.
THE HEBREW CHISTIAN SECT
When we look at Christianity, we see that Jesus Christ, the founder of the movement, had been an itinerant preacher, teacher and faith healer and had pursued this ministry for about three years after being baptized by John the Baptist. Though popular with the people he was nearly always at odds with the religious establishment and he caused quite a stir amongst them. They eventually found him guilty of blasphemy, handed him over the governor of the province who sentenced him to death by crucifixion. However, the body of Jesus was soon missing from the tomb and there were claims that he had risen from the dead. The Jews who followed Jesus, his disciples, were initially full of fear and anxiety, but following some experiences whereby they see Jesus after his death, a Jewish Christian sect becomes established in Jerusalem where they remain. They meet in the temple for worship – and become one of a number of Jewish groups or sects.
PAUL – HIS CONVERSION, CALLING AND TEACHING
However, these Jewish Christians were not always readily accepted by mainstream orthodox Jews, with one Jew in particular, a Jewish Pharisee and expert in Jewish law, named Saul, taking particular exception to what he saw as a corrupting group within Judaism. He decided to make it his business to eradicate this troublesome deviant group within Judaism and thus keep the purity of the Jewish religion and practice. He obtained authority to arrest and punish any Jewish Christians that he found and whilst on this purifying mission he too had a vision of Jesus while he was walking on the Damascus Road. In the vision, Saul (later known as Paul) is called by God to be an Apostle to the gentiles or non-Jews. This visionary event occurred about two to three years after Jesus had been crucified. Paul himself tells us that in response to this vision: ‘my immediate response was not to consult any human being. I did not go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went into Arabia. Later I returned to Damascus. Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Peter and stayed with him fifteen days. I saw none of the other apostles—only James, the Lord’s brother. I assure you before God that what I am writing you is no lie. Then I went to Syria and Cilicia. I was personally unknown to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. They only heard the report: ‘The man who formerly persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.’ And they praised God because of me.
Then after fourteen years, I went up again to Jerusalem, this time with Barnabas. I took Titus along also. I went in response to a revelation and, meeting privately with those esteemed as leaders, I presented to them the gospel that I preach among the Gentiles. I wanted to be sure I was not running and had not been running my race in vain. Yet not even Titus, who was with me, was compelled to be circumcised, even though he was a Greek. This matter arose because some false believers had infiltrated our ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus and to make us slaves [to the Hebrew Law and practice of circumcision]. We did not give in to them for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you. As for those who were held in high esteem—whatever they were makes no difference to me; God does not show favouritism—they added nothing to my message. On the contrary, they recognized that I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been to the circumcised, or Jews. For God, who was at work in Peter as an apostle to the circumcised, was also at work in me as an apostle to the Gentiles. James, Cephas and John, those esteemed as pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the circumcised. All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I had been eager to do all along.
(Paul’s letter to the Galatians Ch1 v 11 – Ch 2 v 10)
PAUL AND THE HEBREW CHRISTIAN APOSTLES
The Council of Jerusalem (or Apostolic Conference) is a name applied by historians to this early Christian council that was held in Jerusalem and it is dated to around the year 50 AD. The council decided that Gentile converts to Christianity were not obligated to keep most of the Mosaic law, including the rules concerning circumcision of males, however, the Council did retain the prohibitions against eating blood, or eating meat containing blood, or meat of animals not properly slain and against fornication and idolatry. Descriptions of the council are found in Acts of the Apostles chapter 15 (in two different forms, the Alexandrian and Western versions) and also possibly in Paul's letter to the Galatians chapter 2 which I have just quoted. Some scholars dispute that Galatians 2 is about the Council of Jerusalem (notably because Galatians 2 describes a private meeting) while other scholars dispute the historical reliability of the Acts of the Apostles. Paul was most likely an eyewitness, a major person in attendance, whereas Luke, the writer of Luke-Acts, who was a later follower of Paul, may not have been in attendance and thus may have written second-hand, about the meeting he described Acts 15.
PAUL’S MESSAGE AND THEOLOGY
Paul says that the Jewish Christians did not add anything to his message, which, after the Damascus Road experience can be summarised as something like:
Repent and have a new mind and turn to God
Demonstrate repentance by your deeds.
Jesus Christ is God’s Son.
Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.
He was buried
He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures
But over seventeen years, Paul receives more visions – more teaching – and elaborates on his initial theology to produce a more complex theology and to a basic message that declares:
God is Creator of all things and Sovereign
God is alive
God is transcendent of created things and Self-sufficient
God is present everywhere
God is not without a witness as to His existence.
a) God's provision of rain, crops, food and joy is a witness.
b) Creation is a witness.
God is Just
God is a moral judge:
a) Of the whole world
b) He will judge the world by a man
c) He has appointed a time for judgement
d) He has given proof of the coming judgement to all men or nations
e) Christ's resurrection from the dead is the proof and we are witnesses of this
God is kind – His kindness is shown in His provision of life and food
God's desire for us is that-
a) We should seek Him
b) We should reach out for Him
c) We should find Him.
God commands all men, everywhere, all nations
a) To repent
b) To turn from worthless idols
c) To turn to the living God.
Demonstrate repentance by your deeds.
Jesus Christ is God’s Son.
Christ died for our sins.
He was buried
He was raised on the third day
CHRISTIAN WRITINGS AND THEIR DEVELOPMENT
It is at about the time of this Jerusalem Council in A.D. 50 that we find the oldest Christian writings – which are in fact the writings of Paul – a series of letters and epistles written from A.D. 50 to A.D. 62 – seventeen to thirty years after the death of Jesus. It is a theology that has developed and matured over this time. From his visions and revelations, Paul elaborated a theology concerning Jesus whereby he is the Messiah/Redeemer and God’s supreme sacrificial offering to pay the price for the sins and transgressions of believers. Jesus is presented as eternally co-equal with God, humbled in time and space to come to us in the likeness of flesh, but, following his crucifixion, he is raised up from the dead as a guarantee of the future resurrection of humanity to the Final Judgment and the restoration of all things. Whereas the old Jewish Law was powerless to accomplish this, in the New Covenant established by Jesus, these Laws, both ceremonial and moral, are superseded and transcended by a new relationship to God through Jesus and a righteousness gained not by our works and obedience to the law, but rather imputed to us by and through faith in God. The True Israel is not the Jewish nation with its sign of circumcision, but rather it is the spiritual Israel – those who have faith in God. Thus all Israel will be redeemed, having a righteousness by faith, imputed to them and credited to their account. This exalted view of Jesus is further developed and elaborated in the tradition of John’s later gospel.
We should remember that none of the gospels present in our Bible had been written when Paul was writing his own epistles which is why he does not refer to them. Indeed, they will not be written for another ten to twenty years. There is possibly a ‘sayings’ gospel – a book of the words of Jesus – but not a gospel describing his life and works. Also, the different groups within Judaism and the newly emergent Christianity mean that writings with different emphases begin to emerge – some emphasising the Jewishness of Jesus and his adherence to the Law for example, others emphasising views of his Divinity and his miraculous works and yet others claiming to be written by the Apostles out of reverence for them and following their particular teaching, though they were actually written by their followers. All the time, the idea of the Divinity of Jesus is growing and thus as a general trend we may speculate that the later the gospel is written, the more references they tend to have to events such as the virgin birth, miracles and so on – until we end up with the gospel attributed to John written about A.D. 90-100 – containing the most of these kinds of references – where Jesus is the pre-existent Word of God made incarnate flesh for example. John presents a higher Christology than Matthew, Mark or Luke, describing Jesus as the incarnation of the divine Logos through whom all things were made. Only in John does Jesus talk at length about himself and his divine role, conversations that are often shared with the disciples only. Against the other gospels of the canon, the gospel attributed to John focuses largely on different miracles, given as signs that are meant to engender faith. Synoptic elements such as parables and exorcisms are not found in the gospel attributed to John. The gospel attributed to John presents a more realized eschatology in which salvation is already present for the believer.
VISIONS, REVELATION AND GNOSTICISM
What is important for us to consider here is the foundation of this early Christian teaching. The original foundation in both the cases of the disciples of Jesus and the Apostle Paul is visions. It is through visions and appearances that Paul and the other Disciples/Apostles are persuaded that Jesus has risen from the dead. It is through visions and appearances that they have further teaching/revelation. It is through an appearance that Jesus is seen as ascending to the clouds. Paul describes his Damascus Road experience as such himself: ‘So then, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven.’ (Acts 26). In these accounts, Jesus appears and disappears, enters locked rooms such that they think they have seen a ghost and so on. We can discover what the Apostles themselves understood concerning the nature of these visions and appearances by looking at one of the groups within the early church – the Christian Gnostics.
Early Christianity was not one simple group but very quickly consisted of a wide variety of groups emphasising different traditions and aspects. One such group within Christianity was the Gnostics – themselves a diverse group who had esoteric beliefs with origins in paganism – but who began to adopt and merge some Christian ideas with their own, creating a strand of Christian Gnosticism. Valentinus (also spelled Valentinius) (c.100 - c.160) was the best known Christian Gnostic and for a time the most successful early Christian Gnostic theologian. He founded his school in Rome and according to Tertullian, Valentinus was a candidate for the bishop of Rome, but started his own group when another person was chosen for this role.
The word ‘esoteric’ means ‘pertaining to the more inward’: mystical. The dictionary defines ‘esoteric’ as information that is understood by a small group or those specially initiated, or of rare or unusual interest. Esotericism therefore refers to the holding of secret doctrines, the practice of limiting knowledge to a small group, or an interest in items of a special, rare, novel, or unusual quality. ‘Mysticism’ is ‘the pursuit of communion with, identity with, or conscious awareness of God through direct experience, intuition, instinct or insight’. Mysticism usually centres on a practice or practices that are intended to nurture such spiritual experiences or awareness. ‘Gnosticism’ (Greek: γνῶσις gnōsis, knowledge) refers to a form of mystical, revealed, esoteric knowledge and this notion of immediate revelation through divine knowledge seeks to find absolute transcendence in a Supreme Deity. The ancient Nag Hammadi Library, discovered in Egypt in the 1940s, revealed how varied the Gnostic movement was. The writers of these manuscripts considered themselves ‘Christians’, but their syncretistic beliefs borrowed heavily from the Greek philosopher Plato.
PAUL’S CHRISTIANITY AND CHRISTIAN GNOSTICISM
If the whole basis and foundation of the Apostle Paul’s theology is grounded upon visions and revelations and if the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus can be explained at least in part by similar revelatory visions experienced by the disciples, then why was there an antagonism towards the mystical element brought to the church by Gnostics and the Christian teachers in the early church? Why weren’t the visions, revelations and gnosis of these esoteric believers accepted by the Apostles and Elders when such experiences appear to lie at the very heart of the foundation of Christianity itself? If we look at some of the verses from the Bible relating to Gnosticism, we can note that these are all from secondary writers – that is, they are probably not written by the Apostle Paul even though they are attributed to him, but rather probably written by close followers of Paul:
‘As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain people not to teach false doctrines any longer or to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. Such things promote controversial speculations rather than advancing God’s work—which is by faith. The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith’. (I Timothy 1 v 3-5)
‘For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths’. (II Timothy 4 v 3 – 4)
‘Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you. Such a person also goes into great detail about what they have seen; they are puffed up with idle notions by their unspiritual mind. They have lost connection with the head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow’. (Colossians 2 v 18-19)
I want to suggest that the Apostle Paul together with the Apostles in Jerusalem believed that in their visions and revelations they encountered an objective phenomenon, namely the real Jesus literally appearing ‘out there’. In the same way, at the transfiguration of Jesus, I think that the disciples thought that they saw the real Moses and Elijah as real tangible ‘objects out there’:
‘After six days Jesus took Peter, James and John with him and led them up a high mountain, where they were all alone. There he was transfigured before them. His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” (He did not know what to say, they were so frightened.) Then a cloud appeared and covered them, and a voice came from the cloud: “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!” Suddenly, when they looked around, they no longer saw anyone with them except Jesus.’ (Mark 9 v 2 – 8)
THE NATURE OF VISIONS AND APPEARANCES
There are two distinguishing features about Christian (and probably Hebrew) visionary experiences:
a) What is seen in the vision is considered as existing objectively ‘out there’ – it is not just a subjective, imaginary experience produced by and in the mind.
b) What is seen is a real person – like Jesus, Moses or Elijah – as opposed to mythical or imaginary persons or deities like Zeus.
c) In angelic visitations, the Angels were considered to be objectively real – they were not mythical fantasies and neither were they just a subjective or symbolic creation of the mind and imagination. They were real, objectively existing spirit-beings.
It would seem then that in these visions, the recipients believed that they were seeing the actual, real, people – people such as Moses, Elijah and Jesus – people who had actually existed and been alive but who were now dead; or they believed that they were seeing real, objectively existing spirit-beings. They were not seeing fantasy figures or mythical beings or symbolic creations from their minds and imaginations. Paul did not consider that he had received some kind of presentation that had arisen solely in his mind or imagination, or from his sub-conscious, or that his imagination and mind had been stimulated in some way to present to his mind a subjective, symbolic representation of a Jesus-like figure. No, he believed that he had actually met the objectively existing, real, historical, once-dead and now-resurrected Jesus in his vision, as opposed to some fantasy or myth created in his mind or some mere, what we would call today, psychological/emotional/cathartic experience. This is why Paul says: ‘Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?’ even though there is no evidence that he ever met Jesus prior to his crucifixion. (I Corinthians 9 v 1). Paul sees no difference between his visionary, revelatory experiences of Jesus such as that in his Damascus Road experience and the experiences of the other eminent Apostles, that is, those who were in Jerusalem and who were with Jesus when he was alive: ‘for [says Paul] I am not in the least inferior to the most eminent apostles’ (II Corinthians 12 v 11).
This is why connection with the head – Jesus – is so important to Paul and his followers. For them it is the seeing of the objectively existing real, once-dead and now-resurrected Jesus coupled with the faithful following of the teaching received in this (and probably other) encounter(s) that distinguishes the Christian experience as ‘sound’, placing it in opposition to the ‘mere’ ‘idle notions’ encountered by the Christian Gnostics, because in Gnostic mystical encounters, they did not necessarily ‘see’ real historical people, but rather they may ‘see’ spirit-beings, wise guides and demi-gods, which they may well have interpreted in symbolic, allegorical ways instead of regarding them as literally and objectively existing. For Gnostics, the resurrection was a ‘spiritual’ event rather than a physical one, for example.
Therefore for the Apostle Paul and his devotees, such experiences as those of the Gnostics and Christian Gnostics literally had no ‘real’ foundation – because the recipients had not encountered actual, objective real people – let alone Jesus. Paul and the Apostles believed that their visions were the perception of an objective, empirical reality – and the perception of a real person, that actually existed and lived and died, appearing to them in an empirical fashion to instruct them, whereas in contrast, the Gnostic’s ideas are seen as being the product of an inflated imagination that has lost touch with (for the Apostles) the real foundation – Jesus.
ARE THE APOSTLES CORRECT IN THEIR VIEW OF VISIONS?
The point is, is this Apostolic interpretation correct? I would argue that they are mistaken. I would suggest that the experience is a subjective rather than an objective one and that the imagery and symbolism that is presented to the imagination in these experiences often arises within the context, personality and historical experience of the recipient. Insights are gained and changes of perspective are made – Paul changes from opposing Jesus to serving Jesus, yet he does so in a way that he sees as totally consistent with his deeper Jewish context and background, which is re-interpreted in an innovative and novel way – a way often severely disliked and opposed by many of the orthodox Jews of his time. But certain other things remain the same also – Paul remains quite a ‘black and white’ or ‘all or nothing thinker’ – remaining quite dogmatic in his beliefs and even intolerant - at first he was intolerant of Christians: a sect that he sought to eliminate – then he was intolerant of those Jews who would try and insist on bringing back and imposing obedience to the Law. Also typical of such mystical/revelatory/visionary experience, Paul regards his approach as the only way – all other approaches to God are approaches made in the darkness of ignorance, or they are false: anything not based on Jesus is false teaching and to be opposed. This certainty and assurance of the content of his message arises from the unmediated nature of mystical experience.
On the other hand because of their acceptance of the imagination as a medium for Divine communication and because of the near limitless scope of the imagination, the Gnostics had little in the way of a single belief, or common set of symbols for the Divine. Tertullian noted of the Christian Gnostics that they had: ‘no unity, only diversity….most of them disagree with one another, since they are willing to say – and even sincerely – of certain points, ‘This is not so.’.’ This lack of a core, unified set of symbols for the group as whole meant that even if they had not had a tendency to elitism, (although Jesus had this too), it would still not have gained popular, unified widespread support in the same way that Christian orthodoxy eventually did, because orthodox Christian believers created a focussed and increasingly clearly defined set of ideas and symbols that identified and distinguished it from other groups. They had clearly defined ideals and aims and shared symbols and ideas.
HOW CHRISTIANITY DEALT WITH ‘FALSE’ CHRISTIAN GNOSTIC VISIONS
The view that I am proposing is confirmed by the way in which the early church Apostles and leaders dealt with the perceived problem of Gnosticism. Let’s just look again at Gnosticism itself for a moment. Gnosticism involved a direct mystical encounter with the Divine and like the Jewish Apostles and the Apostle Paul himself, Gnostics took their spiritual authority and foundation from these kinds of encounters/visions/revelations. Gnosticism took a number of forms, including Christian mysticism. It contended that human perfection and salvation was found in the immediate knowledge and experience of the fullness of the Divine, that is, gnosis. A resurrection out of the realms of ignorance and the material occurred during the attaining of this knowledge, whereby the evil physical world and ignorance were transcended. For some Gnostics, Jesus was seen as a spirit and the resurrection of Jesus was seen as a spiritual resurrection and some of these Gnostics considered the idea of a physical resurrection as being ridiculous. Sin and transgression was either irrelevant or transcended in this experience of unity with the Divine. The transcendent God may speak or manifest to us through angels, spirit-guides or by all manner of symbols and metaphors. In Christian Gnosticism, these kinds of ideas were expressed using Christian terminology and symbolism.
It was countered in the early orthodox church by using the following arguments:
Perfection is found in Christ, not in knowledge or the experience of gnosis. (Colossians 1 v 28)
Knowledge and wisdom is found in Christ, not in mystical or Gnostic experience. (Colossians 2 v 2 – 4)
The fullness of the deity is found in Christ, not in anything or anyone else. (Colossians 2 v 8-10)
Contact with Christ is vital. Losing contact with Christ leads to a puffed up and empty imagination. (Colossians 2 v 18, 19)
Christ is true knowledge. Ideas that oppose this are false knowledge. (1 Timothy 6 v 20)
The resurrection is yet to occur in the future. The notion that we are already being resurrected is false and is an idea that spreads like gangrene. (2 Timothy 2 v 18)
God is not a liar: we do sin and miss the mark. To say that we do not sin makes God out to be a liar. (1 John 1 v 10)
Knowledge of God is evidenced by our obedient submission. Continuing to behave immorally is to be in error. (1 John 2 v 3)
True spirits testify that Jesus is the Son of God. Therefore, test the spirits. (1 John 4 v 1-3)
Jesus came in physical flesh. Jesus was not just a spirit e.t.c. (Docetism) (2 John 7)
Christian Gnostic ideas were simply counteracted by or opposed with orthodox Christian ones: of these ten arguments, seven of them simply refer to ‘facts’ concerning the chief cornerstone of the Christian faith: Jesus Christ. Of the other three, one refers to God as True, one to the resurrection as being in the future and the last to submission to a righteous God as being the evidence of the knowledge of God. This really reflects what we have been saying: the focus of the foundation and authority for the Christian faith is Jesus Christ: His Person, life and work; and Jesus is real – an actual person who lived and died – and as far as the Apostles were concerned, was physically resurrected and appeared objectively and empirically to the Apostles in visions, giving them teaching and making them witnesses of the resurrection. For such Christians the Gnostic view on the other hand is based on myths (where it uses pagan or non-Christian ideas, or where it allegorises Christian ideas to mean something new) and on an inflated subjective imagination as opposed to an objective reality. Neither is it based on the life and work and objective, empirical resurrection of a real person and thus when it interprets Christian theology, Christian Gnosticism draws out false teaching – such as the idea that Jesus is just a spirit, or that we do not sin and that the resurrection is spiritual and not physical.
Orthodox Christianity then, continually returns to and remains anchored in what is seen as the objective foundation of the real resurrected person – Jesus Christ - who himself lived and taught within a Jewish context and background and (it is claimed) objectively appeared post-resurrection to teach and instruct the founders of the church as witnesses of this fact. Orthodox Christianity cannot step out of what it perceives as this real, objective framework and therefore has a tendency to reject all other approaches to God, whether they are alternative external religious systems or esoteric, inward spiritual approaches. It rejects the use of non-Christian myth, allegory and symbolism as alternative pathways to the Divine and insists that Jesus is the only way to God – all else is false doctrine and has lost contact with the head.
But I am suggesting that there a real doubts concerning this view. I am suggesting that this emphasis on the real, the literal, the objective and the empirical content of visions and appearances is a mistake. When Paul was on the Damascus road, he was accompanied by his companions, but they did not experience what Paul experienced – thus casting doubt on the objectivity of the vision. ‘The men travelling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone’. (Acts 9). ‘My companions saw the light, but they did not understand the voice of him who was speaking to me’. (Acts 22). The way in which Jesus appears and disappears, or the way people change as in the transfiguration all suggest a more subjective experience.
THE DEVELOPMENT AND OUTLINE OF CHRISTIAN ORTHODOXY
Nevertheless, the proto-orthodox view of Paul and the Hebrew Apostles was maintained and through numerous disputes, divisions and so-called ‘heresies’ this proto-orthodox view grew and developed into the orthodox view – a view elaborated by church leaders in the fourth century together with a ‘canon’ or set of gospels and epistles that were considered suitable to be used as a rule of faith and conduct – thus eliminating or marginalizing other Christian writings, such as for example those by the Christian Gnostics. Alternative viewpoints on the virgin birth, incarnation and trinity were eliminated or driven underground by a mixture of polemical treatises which came from all sides but which the proto-orthodox camp won. Orthodox Christian leaders ordered that writings that were considered spurious or heretical were to be burned and those people not conforming to the emerging orthodoxy or ‘one belief’ were deprived of church office and/or excommunicated. The new orthodoxy or one belief is summed up in the creeds that began to emerge at this time – succinct statements outlining the main beliefs:
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth, of things visible and invisible.
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the begotten of God the Father, the Only-begotten, that is of the essence of the Father.
God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten and not made; of the very same nature of the Father, by Whom all things came into being, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible.
Who for us humanity and for our salvation came down from heaven, was incarnate, was made human, was born perfectly of the holy virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit.
By whom He took body, soul, and mind, and everything that is in man, truly and not in semblance.
He suffered, was crucified, was buried, rose again on the third day, ascended into heaven with the same body, [and] sat at the right hand of the Father.
He is to come with the same body and with the glory of the Father, to judge the living and the dead; of His kingdom there is no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, in the uncreated and the perfect; Who spoke through the Law, prophets, and Gospels; Who came down upon the Jordan, preached through the apostles, and lived in the saints.
We believe also in only One, Universal, Apostolic, and [Holy] Church; in one baptism in repentance, for the remission, and forgiveness of sins; and in the resurrection of the dead, in the everlasting judgement of souls and bodies, and the Kingdom of Heaven and in the everlasting life.
VISIONS: A PERCEPTION OF THE OBJECTIVE OR THE SUBJECTIVE?
But I am suggesting that these ideas are built on a mistake – a mistake based on the idea that the visions of the Apostles and some other early Christians were literal, objective, empirical events-out-there. I am suggesting that the truth is that these visions were subjective.
There can only be these two understandings of these experiences of the Disciples and Apostles – in their visions they either:
a) Witnessed objective, real, empirical phenomena, or
b) Had a non-usual subjective experience.
As we have seen, Christian orthodoxy took the first view, as did the Disciples and Apostles themselves in what seems to be a traditional Hebrew understanding of these phenomena. If they are correct, then indeed, the events surrounding Jesus are the most momentous in history and Jesus himself is the most unique person in history being the Word of God Incarnate. More than this, our relationship to Jesus – our trust and commitment to him - or otherwise – has, according to Paul especially, eternal consequences, because our relationship to Jesus determines our standing on the coming Day of Judgment. According to Paul the death and resurrection of Jesus has secured the physical resurrection of all humanity together with the securing of a new, uncorrupted creation. Following the resurrection comes the Judgment where all moral imbalance is corrected and either Jesus takes the penalty for our transgressions and failures upon himself, or, if we have rejected Jesus, then it is we who take the penalty upon ourselves. Those who entrust themselves to Jesus are adopted as sons of God and if sons, then heirs to a great inheritance. All this is perceived as real, tangible, objective reality. It is for this reason that everything: our behaviour, spirituality, thoughts, passions and so on – has to be founded on the real, objective resurrected Jesus Christ. It is for this reason that orthodox leaders of the early church were critical of those who lost contact with Jesus Christ – the Head and Foundation – the chief cornerstone of the faith. It is the understanding that these events are real and objective that motivates much present day Christian Fundamentalism and it is the desire to give people the opportunity to entrust themselves to Jesus that motivates certain aspects of missionary work and evangelism – because unless people hear the good news about Jesus they are doomed to a lesser resurrection – a resurrection of anguish and sorrow as they bear the just penalty for their own transgressions and failings in their new resurrected body. This is the heart of orthodox Christianity. The resurrection is central to Paul's philosophy and faith. If there is no resurrection, he says of all people, Christians are most to be pitied. (I Corinthians 15 v 19).
The second view is that the Disciples and Apostles did not experience a literal, objective event. Rather, what they saw and heard was an internal, subjective event. This does not mean however that the experience is to be dismissed or that it is a mere product of the mind. Today, in our predominantly materialistic world-view, many would tend to reduce these experiences, these visions, to a mere unusual activity of the brain – in other words – they would reduce it to a mere material event caused by the interaction of neurones, impulses and other activity in the brain that are then experienced by the individual as visions. A similar sort of reductionism goes on with regard to any modern day claims to mystical experiences such that they are often dismissed or marginalized as some sort of unusual brain state or activity, or even as mental ‘illness’. When some of these objectors are then able to reproduce in some form or another such states in the laboratory, they think that they have proved their point, but this is by no means so. Also in a similar way, those who would call themselves rationalists – those who pride themselves on the use of logic and reason often dismiss such experiences by using the pejorative term ‘enthusiasm’, by which they mean someone who is governed by their emotions and feelings to the detriment of their reason and logic. However, if we look at Paul’s writings, we can see a legal mind at work – where he tends to state a doctrine, then anticipate objections and answer them before drawing out the practical implications of his doctrine. Paul was no mere ‘enthusiast’.
THE FOCAL POINT OF REVELATION
Where then do the images, sounds and sensations contained in these spiritual visions come from? Like philosophy, other religions and branches of psychology, Christianity and Judaism uses subjective abstract terms to describe subjective experience. The word ‘mind’ is a simple example. We cannot put a person in a laboratory and surgically operate on them and open their skull to reveal the mind. We can reveal the brain – but not the mind. Terms like ‘mind’, ‘ego’, ‘heart’, ‘intellect’ all describe subjective qualities that emerge from our objective, empirical, physical being. This is why a person cannot be ‘mentally ill’. The concept ‘mental’ is an abstract concept and not a concrete one which ‘brain’ is. ‘Illness’ is a concrete concept and therefore the phrase ‘mental illness’ is a conceptual mis-match, or mixed concept. The ‘brain’ can suffer disease and illness but the ‘mind’ cannot. Using these abstract terms then, Christians and some other religions talk in terms of these images arising in the ‘ground’ of our being, in the ‘essence’ of who we are, in our ‘soul’ and ‘heart’, in our ‘True Self’. Also such experiences, as we have seen, have the sense of being received – the person does not actively speculate and construct such ideas and forms of the Divine or spiritual themes using reason and logic, but rather there is an arising and emerging, manifesting as concepts in our imagination and intellect and as feelings and emotions in our heart. The subjective locus or central focus of this experience is our ‘True Self’ or ‘soul’ or ‘essence’ with the forms becoming manifest in our mind or imagination, in our emotions and in our inclinations.
Thus it is then that those on the spiritual path are encouraged to listen to the ‘Still Small Voice’, in Christian terms, the ‘Spirit of God’ within, the ‘Inner Light’. I want to further suggest that the ‘Still Small Voice’ is present in everyone as part of our ‘ground of being’: it is the Voice that is niggling and insistent, always asking questions about Existence, Meaning and Ultimate Things. This is the point or locus where Spirit meets the material, the locus or focal point of personal inspiration and revelation. The Spirit of God within is quiet and cannot be seen with physical eyes because Spirit is Subtle. The Source of these images, Divine representations and teachings then, is what Christians would call God: the Transcendent Spirit Essence, but these images and teachings, these revelations, are expressed from the ‘soul’ or ‘individual essence’ to our minds, imaginations and hearts in meaningful, personal, individual forms that fit our temperament, background and circumstances. Many spiritual masters argue that they are given to us in the degree and capacity to which we can accommodate them. They are personally tailored image forms to suit us as particular individuals in a particular place and time. Just as with the Apostle Paul, as we later contemplate, reflect and study the content of these received encounters, teachings and forms and apply our rational, analytical faculties to them, we, as individuals may then begin to rationally, logically, through the means of analysis, construct a personal web of meaning and orientation with regard to our relationship to the Divine. In other words we begin to construct a personal theology, a personal religious philosophy, which others may or may not find useful and relevant. So there is not only the Godly aspect to the Still Small Voice arising from the Spirit of God, but also an individual, personalised quality of mind in the forms presented to, used and interpreted by the individual. However, such forms of theology and God remain closer to our natural ignorance than they do to Infinite Spirit. Such ideologies, philosophies and theologies are to a great degree still a human construction and they ultimately become just one partial, flawed perspective, often set against other flawed perspectives, sometimes in violent warfare.
Furthermore, though the Inner Voice of the Spirit of God is quiet and cannot be seen with physical eyes because Spirit is Subtle, the spectacular declaration of the existence of God is already done in the material realm through the very existence of the Universe. The whole Universe declares the power of Spirit. But because of our natural ignorance, or in Christian terms, our sinful blindness, people do not see this. Rather, they tend to reduce the Universe to the material level and to material terms. All the spectacular power of God is displayed in the Universe for those who can see: nothing more can be displayed in the material realm. Even so, despite the ignorance and blindness that we naturally have concerning God, it is to be understood that the Spirit of God is in all people as fully as anyone or anything else. But our natural ignorance, blindness and our natural inclination - the state of our heart and mind nevertheless takes us away from God by making the darkness of our ignorance even thicker. Thus we do not hear the ‘Voice’ of God, neither are we usually aware of God’s presence. It is as if we are in a room with two doors and the Still Small Voice is present between the doors. One of the doors we can open easily: the door of Ignorance. We can open it wide and certainly the spiritual seeker may feel an unwelcome coldness. The other we can barely open at all: so intense is the blinding light behind it that we can only open the door a little way. Material existence and the expressions or manifestations of forms in the imagination concerning God are much closer to and more tolerant of Ignorance than of Light and our natural ignorance drowns out the Still Small Voice almost completely, though it does not extinguish its subtle persistence.
REIFICATION: THE OBJECTIFYING OF SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE
The locus of Divine forms arise then from our ‘True Ground’ and Nature: from ‘Essence within’ manifest in us as the Still Small Voice arising from our ‘Innermost Self’. We are not saying that saying that God is just in the imagination: this would be a reductionist stance whereby the Divine is reduced to mere brain activity and the configuration of neuronal pathways. God is not perceived by the recipient of such experiences merely as a fantasy of the imagination. Rather, we are saying that saying that it is in the imagination and in the heart that delimited forms of and inclinations towards Infinite Transcendent God emerge from the Source or Essence in our True Nature and Ground – in Christian terms, our ‘soul’. The Divine forms in revelatory visions and experiences then are not just a figment of imagination or a fantasy, but neither is the Divine form a reified abstract idea turned by us into a perceived ‘objective reality’.
However, the tendency to turn these forms and revelations into a concrete objective reality ‘out there’ is a strong one. This is known as the process of reification: turning metaphors and symbols into an objectively existing concrete object: into something that exists ‘out there’. It is to transfer something that is subjectively and internally perceived in the imagination and intellect and then to transpose it into a literally existing, empirical object ‘out-there’. For example we may turn metaphorical, symbolic manifestations of a Christian saint like Saint Christopher into an external spirit/soul/entity which is seen as independently existing ‘out there’ or ‘up there’ and which is also seen as being capable of acting upon us, the subject, as well as on the world and universe around us, thus, in this case, keeping us safe in our travels. This process of reification happens for a number of reasons. Firstly, it happens because as creatures of form, we are nearly always operating in a rational/active/logical mode that uses forms. We are always making reference to ‘things out there’ in order to successfully navigate and operate in the material world. Secondly, because many of the images and concepts that we have concerning God are anthropomorphic, or human-like, there is then a tendency to reify these anthropomorphic images and concepts so that we tend to think of God as ‘Big-Person-in-the-sky-out-there’. Thirdly, because these experiences take place at such a deep level within us, at the ‘ground’ of our being or ‘soul’, they may appear very real and certain. There is an immediacy or unmediated quality about the revelatory/mystical/Gnostic experience that makes it seem vitally real and certain. The experience is not initially mediated by reason and logic or transmitted through external stimuli, but it is internal, subjective and to a great extent non-mediated by reason, analysis and logic.
Reification is a danger that those who receive these experiences have to be constantly aware of. If reification takes place then there follow a whole raft of burdens of proof – of the need to prove that what we experienced does indeed exist ‘out-there’. If we say something exists ‘out there’, then it is quite right that people ask for proof, for evidence. If we are saying in effect that Saint Christopher is a ‘spirit/soul entity-out-there’, then it is reasonable for people to want to observe St Christopher, measure St Christopher and have proof or evidence of St Christopher and any effects he may have. This is not the position that I am taking.
Reification seems common in religion generally however, restricting ourselves to Christianity, believers may reify particular saints – such as St. Christopher as we have seen. They may invoke other saints for particular areas of their life – especially the Virgin Mary, the mother of God. They may even invoke angels as guides or protectors. In each case, the object of veneration or appeal is considered as something that really exists ‘out-there’, a ‘spirit/soul entity-out-there’ that is capable of acting upon us and our circumstances. On the darker side they may believe that evil spirits and the devil exist ‘out-there’, ready to oppose them in their faith or to hinder or malign them in some way. The Apostle Paul, or one of his followers expresses this view in the letter to the Ephesians: ‘Put on the whole armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the craftiness of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places’. (Ephesians 6 v 11,12). But here, in each of these cases, the ‘spirit/soul entity-out-there’ that is appealed to has some sort of ‘scope’ or ‘purview’ or ‘domain’. St. Christopher is appealed to with regard to journeys and travelling and other saints too have their specific areas. Even the devil is curtailed and limited by the sovereign power of God – let loose on a leash as it were in order to accomplish the higher purposes of God. However, many Christians reify the Spirit of God and none more so today perhaps than Christian fundamentalists. It is Christian fundamentalists who take this process of reification to its near-absolute conclusion. The difference here is that this is no lesser spirit or saint that is being reified, but God’s Spirit which has the widest and fullest domain or scope of all as Almighty God.
THE RISE OF REASON, SCIENCE AND FUNDAMENTALISM
With the advent and onslaught of the Age of Reason and the development of modern science grounded firmly in a materialistic perspective, traditional religious ideas came under increasing scrutiny and stronger and stronger challenges. As a defence reflex within Christianity, some Christians hardened their approach and became less flexible with regard to Scripture and the teaching it contained. Certain doctrines, such as for example a literal six-day creation period and/or a young earth theory, whereby through calculating dates in the Bible, the earth was said to have been created between 6,000 and 10,000 B.C., became ‘badges’ of identification – ‘markers’ of a ‘true believer’ conserving and holding steadfastly to the traditions of truth held to by previous generations of Christians. Such believers hold tenaciously to what they understand to be the fundamentals of Christianity, to the traditional orthodox forms of God. What this systematic, ultra-conservative orthodoxy does amongst other things is to define and conceptualise God in a way that seems unquestionable. This view sees the Bible as the Word of Infallible, Perfect God, written by men inspired by God in such a way that all corrupting influence which would give rise to false and mistaken ideas about God is restrained and withheld. To question the orthodox teaching arising from the Bible therefore is to do no less than to question God, to doubt it, is to doubt God, to suggest alternative or contradictory ideas to those of Scripture is to fall into error, to be self-deceived or deceived by the devil, or to oppose God.
Despite this, Christian fundamentalists know that the Bible will sustain different interpretations and different degrees of emphasis on different passages of Scripture and that these in turn lead to different practices. Thus even within fundamentalist Christianity, we have Congregationalists, Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians and so on all within the Christian protestant fundamentalist banner. This is accepted and tolerated - so long as the main principles: plainly understood verses and truths of the Scripture that conceptualise particular forms of God are agreed upon.
But what the Christian fundamentalist has done is to elevate these writings and the ideas and concepts that they contain to an Absolute level and it is this that is one of their mistakes. Let me give an illustration. Christians call God the ‘Father’ – ‘Our Father who is in heaven…’ Yet if the point is pressed, many Christian fundamentalists will agree that God is not male and certainly not female (since Christian fundamentalism is male orientated and patriarchal). They will acknowledge that the term ‘Father’ is a metaphor for a God that cannot be defined by gender: a God that transcends gender. Nevertheless, the word ‘Father’ is useful for describing the relationship that the believer has with God and for the way in which God deals with humanity. It engenders the whole Judaic-Christian theology of the only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, as well as the Apostle Paul’s approach whereby believers are thought of as being adopted as sons of God and therefore heirs to the inheritance of God. But when it comes down to it, at a certain level, many Christian fundamentalists do not see God as a literal ‘Father’ or even as ‘Male’, but rather use the term in this ‘useful metaphor’ way. Christian Fundamentalists are not always as literal in their interpretations as is usually made out. With regard to the creation account in Genesis many Christian fundamentalists take a similar approach. Because of the advances of science many fundamentalist believers find the literal interpretation too difficult to maintain, so instead of being inflexibly defensive they will talk about the six days of creation not in terms of literal twenty-four hour days but in terms of ‘figurative days’, that is periods of unspecified length symbolically described as ‘days’ or adopt some similar technique to avoid the difficulty. As long as the main principles and ideas of the Christian fundamentalist faith are not compromised, such ideas may again be tolerated.
The question we have to ask is: Are such forms of God absolute and final? Are such ideas and concepts of the Divine Ultimate? I suggest that they are not and we see a clue why in the approach by Christian fundamentalists themselves to the Divine Name ‘Father’ as I have just outlined above. The concept, attribute, Name, quality, characteristic, relationship of ‘Father’ is not Absolute because God transcends gender – God is neither Male nor Female and therefore not ‘Father’. I want to suggest that there is a higher view of God than that which is encompassed and bordered by conceptual ideas and forms, whoever may advocate them – Christian, Jew or Muslim – and whatever forms they may be. God is transcendent of the concepts and formulations of ‘Father’, ‘Creator’, ‘Love’, ‘Judge’ and so on. These descriptive terms and forms are all limited, finite, relational terms but God as Absolute is Infinite, Transcendent and Unique. Essence alone is Real – Essence alone has Primary Self-sufficient existence – all else is manifestation of Essence and thus dependent upon Essence for its secondary existence. The Absolute is transcendent of all these limited forms, names and designations. These forms, names and descriptors, these concepts of God are in fact just useful metaphors that stand between us as creatures of form and the Formless, Infinite Absolute. We, as temporal, spatial, finite forms stand in relation to Transcendent Infinite Formless God and these are relational terms that reveal aspects and facets of our finite relationship with an Absolute that we cannot comprehend or encompass with forms, ideas and concepts. Essence transcends any philosophy or theology or conceptualisation.
One mistake that Christian fundamentalists fall into then is to elevate the language and conceptual ideas portrayed in Scripture to the level of Absolute – such that these main ideas become inseparable from the Divine and thus have to be conserved and defended at all costs. The Bible and the ideas it contains are seen as inseparable from God: attack the ideas and it is God that is being attacked. The attention of the Christian fundamentalist is taken away from Transcendent Absolute Spirit and instead directed to the relative level of Scripture and scriptural ideas which are then falsely elevated to the level of Absolute Spirit. This reification of and focus on form and concept actually distracts the attention away from Absolute Transcendent Divine because the eyes of the Christian fundamentalist are often not on Spirit, but on conformity to and agreement with a set of conceptual forms which actually fall short of Absolute Spirit and are merely pointers to That which cannot be known. We start to have big problems when we mistake these relational symbols, metaphors and allegories for absolute concrete realities through the process of reification, or delimit Spirit solely to one absolute set of symbols to the exclusion of others, not allowing for the infinity, transcendence and paradox of Infinite, Timeless, Formless Spirit. It is by these processes that we might soon find ourselves thinking of God as some old, grey-bearded Man-in-the-sky, or as a stern Judge-looking-down-on-us who is taking account of all that we do, or as a compassionate, merciful Father ready to heal and forgive.
THEOMORPHISM
Because the Apostle Paul and the other disciples all believed that what they had encountered in their visions was an objective reality – namely that they had really seen the physically existing resurrection body of Jesus it meant, as we have seen, that they remained fixed to this foundation. The resurrection was a real, objective event and to stray from the objective, real, resurrection of Jesus was to lose touch with the foundation of the faith. This notion of Jesus as the resurrected Messiah and therefore the only way of salvation becomes a fixed form of the Divine. However, I am casting doubt on the objectivity of these visions and suggesting rather that they are subjective experiences. And we can go further: what the Apostle Paul and the disciples did not learn because of their insistence on this objectivity of their visions, was the lesson that some higher stage mystics have learned – namely that God is theomorphic – that is, God changes in form in order to meet people where they are in a personally relevant and significant way. No delimited form can encapsulate the Infinite Divine and because of the Divine Infinity, such delimited forms as God does present to us are non-repeatable. The forms, the symbols, the figures in mystical encounters are metaphorical and allegorical – they stand between the delimited, bounded world of material form and the Boundless, Formless Empty, Infinite Spirit. They are known, meaningful, personal symbols that reveal aspects of the Unknowable Absolute. The Apostle Paul did not realise or move to the position that every believer has their own unique personal Lord or recognise that such delimiting forms and beliefs merely bind and tie the believer, limiting and obscuring as much as revealing Infinite Spirit. Nevertheless, in serving their delimited personal Lord, the pilgrim’s intention, their ‘objective’, is the Unknowable, Infinite, Formless Essence.
METAPHOR AND ALLEGORY
Those who have experienced transcendence should be able to extract a reasonably coherent and systematic philosophy or theology from their experiences, and indeed, this is what the Apostle Paul and the disciples did. But the important thing to remember, and something which should distinguish those who experience transcendence from fundamentalists, is that these forms of belief are limited, metaphorical, and liable to change. They do not form a complete explanation – the mind cannot encompass God – they are not literal and concrete and should not be reified as such – they are transient and not permanent or eternal, but relative to our personality and contexts of our education, geographical and temporal location. They are finite formulations created in some degree of Ignorance of the Formless Unknowable Infinite. Different backgrounds, contexts, personalities and different depths of transcendent experience mean that different, contradictory, paradoxical systems of theology arise. Such systems are not only different from person to person but also within a person over time. This means that different people have different perspectives on:
Aspects and facets of God and the spiritual realm.
How God should be approached
The nature of Unity and interconnectedness
How Divine Truth is communicated
The nature of Guidance (if any) from the Divine
The role, (if any), of providence, fate and destiny
The nature of the post death state
The nature and usefulness (if any) of Prayer
The importance and relevance of sin, guilt or moral failure before the Divine
The need (if any) for Forgiveness.
The value and method of seeking to walk a righteous path
The role, (if any), of Ritual and Ceremony
In other words, this seems to take us closer to a Gnostic perspective than the more inflexible and literal approach taken by the Disciples and Paul.
CHRISTIAN WRITINGS AND THEIR DEVELOPMENT
We need to get to the situation before Paul’s visions and his particular interpretation of their content, which later developed into Christian orthodoxy. What we would like to do is to go back to the fledgling Christianity that existed when Jesus was teaching and that existed shortly after his death before these visions of resurrection and ascension occurred to try and get to the heart of the ministry of Jesus. Of course it is here that we hit a near impenetrable problem: Jesus himself left no writings or record of his teaching and life and the earliest Christian writings that we do have are those by Paul himself, written between 50 – 65 A.D., and as we have seen, the very foundation of Paul’s Christianity and his writings are these very visions and appearances. The gospels that we have in our Bibles are written later and none of them seem to be written by the Disciples themselves, so we have no actual eyewitness accounts of the ministry and teaching of Jesus. It has long been noted that the three gospels attributed to Matthew, Mark and Luke contain very similar accounts and for this reason they are known as the ‘synoptic gospels’. It would appear that these three gospels may have drawn on an earlier document – an earlier gospel which is thought to be a ‘sayings gospel’ – that is, a record of statements and sayings by Jesus rather than an account of his life and ministry. This hypothetical gospel is referred to by scholars as Gospel ‘Q’ which is a reference to this gospel being ‘source’ material for the gospels that we do have. It is thought that this lost gospel could have been written any time between 40 to 70 A.D., but Paul himself makes no reference to any gospel. There seems to be no way of knowing whether Paul used such a proto-gospel document in any way. His own writings seem to be a reasonably systematic and developing theology based on the consequences and implications of his ‘objective’ visions in the light and context of his Jewish upbringing, Jewish history and tradition. Certainly his writings seem to indicate a preference to rely on ‘what he received from Jesus Christ’ (in his visions) rather than any reliance on other testimonies.
It is considered by scholars that the author of Luke’s gospel and of the Acts of the Apostles was a companion of Paul’s. Paul’s last letter, to the Philippians, was written about 62 A.D. The Acts of the Apostles does not record the death of Paul so it may be that the Acts of the Apostles and the Gospel attributed to Luke were written sometime after 62 A.D. but before the death of Paul, since one would assume that his death would have been mentioned in Acts if this event had occurred when the document was written. But dates for the authorship of nearly all the New Testament documents have a wide range and vary according the different theories of different scholars and I do not think that it is profitable for us to go too far down this speculative route. It is however generally agreed that the first Gospel to be written was that which is known to us as the Gospel attributed to Mark and it is believed by some scholars that it is based on the teaching of Peter. Again, the dates of authorship for this document are wide, but it is generally attributed to about 70 – 75 A.D., that is, forty to forty-five years after the crucifixion and some twenty to twenty-five years since the meeting of Paul with the Council in Jerusalem – and therefore twenty to twenty-five years into the ministry of Paul to the Gentiles. Nevertheless, since the author seems to be following the tradition of the Hebrew Christians as opposed to the Pauline tradition, it may be less affected by the theology that Paul was developing as a result of his visions. We can also note that the Gospels are quite different in style from the writings of Paul. The Gospels are not systematic philosophical or theological documents. They do not make theological propositions and then anticipate and seek to answer any objections before outlining practical consequences of the doctrine. They are not set out in this formal, legalistic or philosophical way at all. Rather, they contain sayings attributed to Jesus and portray events in his life and ministry that sometimes serve to illustrate or reinforce either the sayings themselves or the portrayal of the character and nature of Jesus that the author wishes to declare.
Thus for example, the Gospel attributed to Matthew upholds the Jewishness of Jesus, written as it is by a Jewish Christian. It is in the gospel attributed to Matthew that we read that ‘not one jot or tittle shall pass from the law’ (moral or ceremonial) and this is quite a different sentiment from that expressed by Paul to the Gentiles. There was pressure being exerted by some Jews that Gentile Christians should undergo circumcision. But these Jewish traditionalists are branded as false believers by Paul and indeed, much of Paul’s letter to the Galatians is about this issue of the Christian’s relationship to the old Mosaic laws and commandments: ‘And certain men came down from Judea and taught the brethren: “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” Therefore…. Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and dispute with them.’ (Acts 15 v 1). So we can see that even at this stage, there are differences of emphasis, different nuances and different balances of ideas within the broad movement of Christianity.
THE PERSON, LIFE AND TEACHING OF JESUS AS PORTRAYED IN THE OLDEST GOSPEL
Given that it is the Gospel attributed to Mark that appears to be the first that is written, and that like The Gospels attributed to Matthew and Luke, it may be using an older but now lost Gospel as source material, all we can do in our search for a more contemporary picture of Jesus and his ministry is look a little more closely at the Gospel attributed to Mark to see what it does and does not say about Jesus. In overview we find this:
The Gospel attributed to Mark makes no reference to the virgin birth at all but it is the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist that begins the gospel attributed to Mark. Right away we need to take an aside to look at the major groups within Judaism at this time so that we get some idea of the context and background of Jesus.
BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT OF THE TIMES
John the Baptist was an itinerant preacher and a major religious figure who led a movement of baptism at the Jordan River. Some scholars maintain that he was influenced by the Essenes, although there is no direct evidence to substantiate this.
ESSENES
The Essenes were a Jewish religious group that flourished from the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century CE that some scholars claim seceded from the Zadokite priests. Being much fewer in number than the Pharisees and the Sadducees (the other two major sects at the time) the Essenes lived in various cities but congregated in communal life dedicated to asceticism, voluntary poverty, daily immersion, and abstinence from worldly pleasures, including marriage. Many separate but related religious groups of that era shared similar mystic, eschatological, messianic, and ascetic beliefs. These groups are collectively referred to by various scholars as the ‘Essenes.’ Josephus records that Essenes existed in large numbers, and thousands lived throughout Judæa. The Essenes believed they were the last generation of the last generations and anticipated Teacher of Righteousness, Aaronic High Priest, and High Guard Messiah, similar to the Prophet, Priest and King expectations of the Pharisees. The Essenes have gained fame in modern times as a result of the discovery of an extensive group of religious documents known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, commonly believed to be their library. These documents include preserved multiple copies of the Hebrew Bible untouched from as early as 300 BCE until their discovery in 1946. Some scholars, however, dispute the notion that the Essenes wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Roman writer Pliny the Elder (died c. 79 A.D.) in his Natural History (N'H,V,XV). relates in a few lines that the Essenes do not marry, possess no money, and had existed for thousands of generations. Unlike Philo, who did not mention any particular geographical location of the Essenes other than the whole land of Israel, Pliny places them in Ein Gedi, next to the Dead Sea. A little later Josephus gave a detailed account of the Essenes in The Jewish War (c. 75 A.D.) with a shorter description in Antiquities of the Jews (c. 94 A.D.) and The Life of Flavius Josephus (c. 97 A.D.). Claiming first hand knowledge, he lists the Essenoi as one of the three sects of Jewish philosophy alongside the Pharisees and the Sadducees. He relates the same information concerning piety, celibacy, the absence of personal property and of money, the belief in communality and commitment to a strict observance of the Sabbath. He further adds that the Essenes ritually immersed in water every morning, ate together after prayer, devoted themselves to charity and benevolence, forbade the expression of anger, studied the books of the elders, preserved secrets, and were very mindful of the names of the angels kept in their sacred writings.
The accounts by Josephus and Philo show that the Essenes led a strictly celibate and communal life – often compared by scholars to later Christian monastic living – although Josephus speaks also of another ‘order of Essenes’ that observed being engaged for three years and then being married. According to Josephus, they had customs and observances such as collective ownership, elected a leader to attend to the interests of them all whose orders they obeyed, were forbidden from swearing oaths and sacrificing animals, controlled their temper and served as channels of peace, carried weapons only as protection against robbers, had no slaves but served each other and, as a result of communal ownership, did not engage in trading. Both Josephus and Philo have lengthy accounts of their communal meetings, meals and religious celebrations. After a total of three years' probation, newly joining members would take an oath that included the commitment to practice piety towards ‘the Deity’ and righteousness towards humanity, to maintain a pure lifestyle, to abstain from criminal and immoral activities, to transmit their rules uncorrupted and to preserve the books of the Essenes and the names of the Angels. Their theology included belief in the immortality of the soul and that they would receive their souls back after death. Part of their activities included purification by water rituals, which was supported by rainwater catchment and storage.
THE PHARISEES
Two other major groups within Judaism were the Pharisees and Saducees. The Pharisees were at various times a political party, a social movement, and a school of thought among Jews during the Second Temple period under the Hasmonean dynasty (140–37 BCE) in the wake of the Maccabean Revolt. Conflicts between the Pharisees and the Sadducees took place in the context of much broader and longstanding social and religious conflicts among Jews dating back to the Babylonian captivity and exacerbated by the Roman conquest. One conflict was class, between the wealthy and the poor, as the Sadducees included mainly the priestly and aristocratic families. Another conflict was cultural, between those who favoured hellenization and those who resisted it. A third was juridico-religious, between those who emphasized the importance of the Temple, and those who emphasized the importance of other Mosaic laws and prophetic values. A fourth, specifically religious, involved different interpretations of the Scriptures and how to apply the Torah to Jewish life, with the Sadducees recognizing only the written letter of the Torah and rejecting life after death, while the Pharisees held to Rabbinic interpretations additional to the written texts. Josephus indicates that the Pharisees received the backing and goodwill of the common people, apparently in contrast to the more elite Sadducees. Pharisees claimed prophetic or Mosaic authority for their interpretation of Jewish laws, while the Sadducees represented the authority of the priestly privileges and prerogatives established since the days of Solomon, when Zadok, their ancestor, officiated as High Priest. After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE Pharisaic beliefs became the basis for Rabbinic Judaism, which ultimately produced the normative traditional Judaism which is the basis for nearly all contemporary forms of Judaism.
Pharisaic views were non-creedal and non-dogmatic, and heterogenous. Not one tractate of the key Rabbinic texts, the Mishnah and the Talmud, is devoted to theological issues; these texts are concerned primarily with interpretations of Jewish law, and anecdotes about the sages and their values. Only one chapter of the Mishnah deals with theological issues; it asserts that three kinds of people will have no share in ‘the world to come:’ those who deny the resurrection of the dead, those who deny the divinity of the Torah, and Epicureans (who deny divine supervision of human affairs). Another passage suggests a different set of core principles: normally, a Jew may violate any law to save a life, but in Sanhedrin 74a, a ruling orders Jews to accept martyrdom rather than violate the laws against idolatry, murder, or adultery. (Judah haNasi, however, said that Jews must ‘be meticulous in small religious duties as well as large ones, because you do not know what sort of reward is coming for any of the religious duties,’ suggesting that all laws are of equal importance). In comparison with Christianity, the Rabbis were not especially concerned with the messiah or claims about the messiah.
One belief central to the Pharisees was shared by all Jews of the time: monotheism. This is evident in the practice of reciting the Shema, a prayer composed of select verses from the Torah, at the Temple and in synagogues; the Shema begins with the verses, ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God; the Lord is one.’ According to the Mishna, these passages were recited in the Temple along with the twice-daily Tamid offering.
Pharisaic wisdom was compiled in one book of the Mishna, Pirke Avot. The Pharisaic attitude is perhaps best exemplified by a story about Hillel the Elder, who lived at the end of the 1st century BCE. A man once challenged the sage to explain the law while standing on one foot. Hillel replied, ‘That which is hateful to you, do not do to your friend. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation -- go and study it.’
According to Josephus, whereas the Sadducees believed that people have total free will and the Essenes believed that all of a person's life is predestined, the Pharisees believed that people have free will but that God also has foreknowledge of human destiny. According to Josephus, Pharisees were further distinguished from the Sadducees in that Pharisees believed in the resurrection of the dead.
It is likely that Josephus highlighted these differences because he was writing for a Gentile audience, and questions concerning fate and a life after death were important in Hellenic philosophy. In fact, it is difficult, or impossible, to reconstruct a Second Temple Pharisaic theology, because Judaism itself is non-creedal; that is, there is no dogma or set of orthodox beliefs that Jews believed were required of Jews. Josephus himself emphasized laws rather than beliefs when he described the characteristics of an apostate (a Jew who does not follow traditional customs) and the requirements for conversion to Judaism (circumcision, and adherence to traditional customs). In fact, the most important divisions among different Jewish sects had to do with debates over three areas of law: marriage, the Sabbath and religious festivals, and the Temple and purity. Debates over these and other matters of law continue to define Judaism more than any particular dogma or creed.
Unlike the Sadducees, the Pharisees also believed in the resurrection of the dead in a future, messianic age. The Pharisees believed in a literal resurrection of the body.
Fundamentally, the Pharisees continued a form of Judaism that extended beyond the Temple, applying Jewish law to mundane activities in order to sanctify the every-day world. This was a more participatory (or ‘democratic’) form of Judaism, in which rituals were not monopolized by an inherited priesthood but rather could be performed by all adult Jews individually or collectively; whose leaders were not determined by birth but by scholarly achievement. In general, the Pharisees emphasized a commitment to social justice, belief in the brotherhood of mankind, and a faith in the redemption of the Jewish nation and, ultimately, humanity. Moreover, they believed that these ends would be achieved through halakha (‘the way,’ or ‘the way things are done’), a corpus of laws derived from a close reading of sacred texts. This belief entailed both a commitment to relate religion to ordinary concerns and daily life, and a commitment to study and scholarly debate.
The Pharisees believed that all Jews in their ordinary life, and not just the Temple priesthood or Jews visiting the Temple, should observe rules and rituals concerning purification. The Pharisees believed that in addition to the written Torah recognized by both the Sadducees and Pharisees and believed to have been written by Moses, there exists another Torah, consisting of the corpus of oral laws and traditions transmitted by God to Moses orally, and then memorized and passed down by Moses and his successors over the generations. The Oral Torah functioned to elaborate and explicate what was written, and the Pharisees asserted that the sacred scriptures were not complete on their own terms and could therefore not be understood.
The sages of the Talmud believed that the Oral law was simultaneously revealed to Moses at Sinai, and the product of debates among rabbis. Thus, one may conceive of the ‘Oral Torah’ not as a fixed text but as an ongoing process of analysis and argument in which God is actively involved; it was this ongoing process that was revealed at Sinai, and by participating in this ongoing process rabbis and their students are actively participating in God's ongoing act of revelation.
The commitment to relate religion to daily life through the law has led some (notably, the Apostle Paul and Martin Luther) to infer that the Pharisees were more legalistic than other sects in the Second Temple Era. Jesus also spoke harshly against the Pharisaic Law. In some cases Pharisaic values led to an extension of the law.
Just as important as (if not more important than) any particular law was the value the rabbis placed on legal study and debate. The sages of the Talmud believed that when they taught the Oral Torah to their students, they were imitating Moses, who taught the law to the children of Israel. Moreover, the rabbis believed that ‘the heavenly court studies Torah precisely as does the earthly one, even arguing about the same questions.’ Thus, in debating and disagreeing over the meaning of the Torah or how best to put it into practice, no rabbi felt that he (or his opponent) were in some way rejecting God or threatening Judaism; on the contrary, it was precisely through such arguments that the rabbis imitated and honoured God.
THE SADUCEES
The other main Jewish group, the Sadducees, were a sect or group of Jews that were active in Ancient Israel during the Second Temple period, starting from the 2nd century BC through the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. The sect was identified by Josephus with the upper social and economic echelon of Judean society, and may have been comprised originally of members of the priestly clan. As a whole, the sect fulfilled various political, social and religious roles, including maintaining the Temple. Their sect is believed to have become extinct sometime after the destruction of Herod's Temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD.
The religious responsibilities of the Sadducees included the maintenance of the Temple in Jerusalem. Their high social status was reinforced by their priestly responsibilities, as mandated in the Torah. The Priests were responsible for performing sacrifices at the Temple, the primary method of worship in Ancient Israel. This also included presiding over sacrifices on the three festivals of pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Their religious beliefs and social status were mutually reinforcing, as the Priesthood often represented the highest class in Judean society. It is important to note that the Sadducees and the priests were not completely synonymous. Cohen points out that ‘not all priests, high priests, and aristocrats were Sadducees; many were Pharisees, and many were not members of any group at all.’ As mentioned above, it is widely believed that the Sadducees were descended from the House of Zadok and sought to preserve this priestly line and the authority of the Temple.
The Sadducees oversaw many formal affairs of the state. Members of the Sadducees:
· Administered the state domestically
· Represented the state internationally
· Participated in the Sanhedrin, and often encountered the Pharisees there.
· Collected taxes. These also came in the form of international tribute from Jews in the Diaspora.
· Equipped and led the army
· Regulated relations with the Romans
· Mediated domestic grievances.
According to Josephus, the Sadducees believed that:
· there is no fate
· God does not commit evil
· man has free will; ‘man has the free choice of good or evil’
· the soul is not immortal; there is no afterlife, and
· there are no rewards or penalties after death
The Sadducees rejected the belief in resurrection, which was a central tenet of the teaching of Jesus. This often provoked hostility between the two groups. Furthermore, the Sadducees rejected the oral law as proposed by the Pharisees. Rather, they saw the written law as the sole source of divine authority. The written law, in its depiction of the priesthood, corroborated the power and enforced the hegemony of the Sadducees in Judean society.
A SUMMARY OF DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THESE JEWISH GROUPS
Differences between Saducees and the Essenes:
The Dead Sea Scrolls, which are often attributed to the Essenes, suggest clashing ideologies and social positions between the Essenes and the Sadducees. In fact, some scholars suggest that the Essenes began as a group of renegade Zadokites, which would suggest that the group itself had priestly, and thus Sadduccean origins. Within the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Sadducees are often referred to as Manasseh. The Scrolls suggest that the Sadducees (Manasseh) and the Pharisees (Ephraim) became religious communities that were distinct from the Essenes, the true Judah. Clashes between the Essenes and the Sadducees are depicted in the Pesher on Nahum, which states ‘They [Manasseh] are the wicked ones...whose reign over Israel will be brought down...his wives, his children, and his infant will go into captivity. His warriors and his honored ones [will perish] by the sword.’ The reference to the Sadducees as those who reign over Israel corroborates their aristocratic status as opposed to the more fringe group of Essenes. Furthermore, it suggests that the Essenes challenged the authenticity of the rule of the Sadducees, blaming the downfall of ancient Israel and the siege of Jerusalem on their impiety. The Dead Sea Scrolls brand the Sadduceean elite as those who broke the covenant with God in their rule of the Judean state, and thus became targets of divine revenge.
Differences between the Saducees and the approach of Jesus
The New Testament, specifically the books of Mark and Matthew, describe anecdotes that hint at hostility between Jesus and the Sadduceean establishment. These disputes manifest themselves on both theological and social levels. Primarily, Mark describes how the Sadducees challenged the Jesus’ groups belief in divine resurrection. Jesus subsequently, defends his belief in repentance against Sadduceean resistance, stating ‘and as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the story about the bush, how God said to him ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?’ He is God not of the dead, but of the living; you are quite wrong.’ The tone and content of the passage are indicative of theological and sociopolitical dispute. Jesus challenges the reliability of the Sadducees’ interpretation of Biblical doctrine, the authority of which enforces the power of the Sadduceean priesthood. In addition, the Sadducees address the issue of resurrection through the lens of marriage, which hinted at their real agenda: the protection of property rights through patriarchal marriage that perpetuated the male lineage. Furthermore, Matthew depicts the Sadducees as ‘brood of Vipers,’ and a perversion of the true Israel. The New Testament thus constructs Jesus as being in opposition to the Sadducees.
Differences between the Saducees and the Pharisees
The Pharisees and the Sadducees are historically seen as antitheses of one another. Josephus, the author of the most extensive historical account of the Second Temple Period, gives an extensive account of Jewish sectarianism in both Jewish War and Antiquities. In Antiquities, he describes ‘the Pharisees have delivered to the people a great many observances by succession from their father which are not written in the law of Moses, and for that reason the Sadducees reject them and say that we are to esteem those observance to be obligatory which are in the written word, but are not to observe what are derived from the tradition of our forefathers.’ The Sadducees rejected the Pharisaic use of the Written law to enforce their claims to power, citing the Written Torah as the sole manifestation of divinity. Furthermore, the Rabbis, who are traditionally seen as the descendants of the Pharisees, describe the similarities and differences between the two sects in Mishnah Yadaim. The Mishnah explains that the Sadducees state, ‘So too, regarding the Holy Scriptures, their impurity is according to (our) love for them. But the books of Homer, which are not beloved, do not defile the hands.’ The Sadducees thus accuse the Pharisees as the opponents of traditional Judaism because of their susceptibility and assimilation into the Hellenistic world. When synthesized, one can discern that the Pharisees represented mainstream Judaism in the Hellenistic world, while the Sadducees represented a more aristocratic elite. Despite this, a passage from the book of Acts suggests that both Pharisees and Sadducees collaborated in the Sanhedrin, the high Jewish court.
ROMAN OCCUPATION
The other thing that we should note of course is that all of this is in the context of Roman occupation. The whole country is being governed by Romans, something that is resented by many and actively resisted by some groups of zealots.
THE LIFE, MINISTRY AND TEACHING OF JESUS
So to return to our narrative of the Gospel attributed to Mark, the story begins with the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist. This is an unusual experience for Jesus, somewhat akin to Paul’s Damascus Road experience. Immediately on coming out of the water, Jesus sees heaven opened and hears a voice saying ‘You are my beloved son in whom I am well pleased’ and immediately he feels compelled to go to the wilderness where he stays for forty days living among the wild animals. Here he has more unusual experiences considering himself tempted by the devil and ministered to by angels.
John the Baptist is arrested on Herod’s orders for his own protection and it is at this time that Jesus comes to Galilee and begins to preach and teach. His message:
- the time is fulfilled
- the kingdom of God is at hand
- repent – turn away from your present ways and turn to God
- believe this good news
He begins to gather followers and his teaching in the synagogue astonishes people in terms of both the new doctrines he presents and the authority with which he presents them. A synagogue is a Jewish house of assembly or house of prayer. When broken down, the word could also mean ‘learning together’. Synagogues are consecrated spaces that can be used only for the purpose of prayer, however a synagogue is not necessary for worship. Jesus being permitted to speak in a synagogue would indicate that he was a respected figure and also that he could speak Hebrew in addition to the Aramaic that was the common language of the area. There is further amazement as he begins casting out unclean spirits and healing people. The crowds quickly grow as they bring those who are sick and possessed for healing. Jesus links this healing to forgiveness of sins.
From the crowds of followers, he ordains twelve of them as his disciples and with the charge that they:
- should be with him
- would be sent out to preach
- would have power to cast out spirits
- would have power to heal sicknesses
But Jesus very quickly finds himself at odds with those in authority in the synagogues such as the priests and scribes, who begin to challenge his teaching and authority and the sort of company he keeps. Jesus says that he has not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance: to turn from their present ways and thoughts to God. Other Jewish religious groups like the Pharisees also begin to challenge his teaching and behaviour by using doctrinal technicalities and Hebrew tradition against him, or by accusing him of performing his healing by the power of the devil.
When his family arrive amongst the crowds pressing to see Jesus, he declares that the spiritual-minded people around him are his family. The crowds become so great that he is forced to preach and teach outside the synagogue but he does so only in parables: illustrative stories of every day life that are used to declare a few spiritual ideas. This is a deliberate use of spiritual discrimination to obscure spiritual matters from those outside who are not really spiritually inclined and likely to ridicule the message and the messenger. He explains the meanings of parables only to his disciples. When the twelve asked him about parables he says to them, ‘To you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but to those outside, all these things are done in parables: so that in seeing they may see, and yet not perceive; and in hearing they may hear, and yet not understand; in case at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them’. He continues his preaching and healing as he moves about the area from town to town. He talks about:
- a coming judgment when all secrets will be revealed.
- the growth of the word of God from something very small to very large.
- The impossibility of putting new doctrines into old frameworks and traditions.
He appears to have power of the wind and storm and performs more healings and more casting out of spirits and in many cases, the spirits, through those they have possessed, call Jesus ‘Son of the most high God’. The crowds are astonished at his teaching, wisdom and abilities. The crowds think that Jesus is:
- Isaiah risen from the dead or
- A new prophet or
- Someone come as one of the old prophets
Meanwhile, King Herod had respected and feared John the Baptist as a holy and righteous man and had watched him and heard him gladly. But Herod had married his brother’s wife and John the Baptist had condemned him for this. Herod’s new wife wanted John killed so in order to protect John the Baptist, Herod had him imprisoned. However, Herod was later cornered into making an oath that turned into an obligation to have John the Baptist beheaded. News of Jesus reached Herod who was convinced that Jesus was John the Baptist risen from the dead.
The fame and popularity of Jesus increases even more, with people laying out their ill and sick relatives and friends in the streets that they might be touched by him. There is an incident of Jesus walking on the water. The Pharisees return to criticize him but Jesus condemns them as hypocrites or play actors speaking good words but their hearts being far away. They are accused of putting forward the ideas of men as the commandments and word of God as rejecting the word of God or making it of no effect in favour of human tradition. Jesus indicates that he has come primarily to the Jews, not to the Gentiles or non-Jews.
He continues his travels and preaching and healing and there are a couple of instances where he feeds the crowds with what appears to be little food.
Jesus asks his disciples who they think he is and they repeat what the crowds are saying, that he is Isaiah risen from the dead or a new prophet or someone come as one of the old prophets, but Peter says that Jesus is: the Messiah.
The word ‘messiah’, means ‘anointed’ and is a term used in Judaism, Christianity and Islam for a redeemer figure expected in one form or another by each of these religions. More loosely, the term ‘messiah’ denotes any redeemer figure and the adjective ‘messianic’ is used in a broad sense to refer to beliefs or theories about an improvement of the state of humanity or the world at the end of the age, that is a figure concerned with what are believed to be the final events in history, or the ultimate destiny of humanity. The word ‘messiah’ is used in the Old Testament to describe priests and kings, who were traditionally anointed with holy anointing oil as described in Exodus 30 v 22-25. For example, Cyrus the Great, the king of Persia, though not a Hebrew, is referred to as ‘God's anointed’ (messiah). People and things are anointed to symbolize the introduction of a sacramental or divine influence, a holy emanation, spirit, power or god. In later Jewish messianic tradition and eschatology, ‘messiah’ refers to a leader ‘anointed by God’, and in some cases, a future King of Israel, physically descended from the Davidic line, who will rule the people of the united tribes of Israel and herald the Messianic Age of global peace. In Judaism, the messiah is not considered to be God or a Son of God. The translation of the Hebrew word Mašíaḥ as Χριστός (Khristós) in the Greek Septuagint, the oldest of several ancient translations of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, became the accepted Christian designation and title of Jesus of Nazareth, indicative of the principal character and function of his ministry, thus Jesus ‘Christ’, or Jesus ‘Messiah’.
This statement by Peter that Jesus is the Messiah introduces a series of statements about the suffering, death and rising of Jesus and about his coming in glory and power at the end of the age.
Then we have the vision of the transfiguration of Jesus who appears in garments of the brightest and purest white, with Moses and Isaiah. The disciples hear a voice out of the clouds saying ‘This is my beloved Son: hear him’. Then suddenly Moses and Isaiah vanish leaving only Jesus who instructs them to say nothing till the Son of man is risen from the dead.
The ministry of Jesus continues, with talk about the meaning of rising from the dead, the return of Isaiah, faith and the rigours of discipleship, divorce, riches and the kingdom of God and servant-hood.
Jesus then enters Jerusalem on a donkey with the crowds laying down palms and saying ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the Kingdom of David that comes in the name of the Lord! Praise in the highest!’ Then Jesus enters the Temple at Jerusalem and angrily overturns the tables and chairs of those changing money in order for people to buy sacrifices and of those selling doves and so on for sacrifice, condemning them all as a den of thieves.
The religious leaders want to be rid of him now because they are afraid of him and because he is gaining popular support with the people who are astonished at his teaching. Jesus has further theological confrontations with the Jewish religious leaders, but they are afraid to arrest him because of his popularity amongst so many people. When asked what is the greatest commandment, Jesus is portrayed as stating that the first two commandments and the greatest, are:
a) One should love God with one's entire heart, soul, mind, and strength
b) One should love one's neighbour as one would love oneself
Once again religious leaders seek to trick him with theological questions but in the temple, when Jesus preaches, he condemns the scribes as lovers of status who are full of pretence. Jesus seems to advocate material poverty in the spiritual life. Though quite radical to the Pharisees and Sadduccees, non-ownership was the normal way of life for Essenes, who lived at varying levels of asceticism and this is one of the reasons that many scholars suspect that Jesus was originally part of an Essene group. More teaching about the end of the age follows. By now the chief priests and scribes are deeply envious of him and want him secretly abducted and killed, but the Passover feast is near and they fear the reaction of the people. Secretly, Judas Iscariot goes to the priests and offers to betray Jesus.
Following the Passover supper and a night of intense outdoor prayer by Jesus, Judas arrives with a crowd of religious authorities who are armed with swords and sticks, and Judas betrays Jesus with a kiss. The disciples flee and Jesus is taken in custody to the high priest who has with him the assembly of chief priests, scribes and elders. But they cannot find a witness against Jesus in order to legally have him convicted. There are many false witnesses but their testimonies do not agree. Finally, after remaining silent during these proceedings, Jesus is asked by the High Priest: ‘Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed?’ Jesus replies ‘I am, and you will see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven’. At which point the High priest tears his clothes in anger and says ‘Why do we need any further witnesses? You have heard the blasphemy. What do you think?’. They all condemn Jesus as guilty and pronounce the death sentence and they begin to spit on him, slap him, push him about and mock him. The chief priests consult with the elders and scribes and they tie Jesus up and take him to Pilate, the Roman Governor. Jesus hardly speaks. Pilate knows that the religious officials are envious of Jesus so he offers the people the chance to release one person – a common thief named Barabbas or Jesus, but the chief priests then stir up the crowd who shout for the crucifixion of Jesus. So, wishing to keep the people content, Pilate releases Barabbas, whips Jesus and delivers him for crucifixion. The chief priests and scribes are smugly content – ‘He saved others; himself he cannot save. Let messiah the King of Israel descend from the cross so that we can see and believe.’. Jesus dies on the cross.
The day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea goes to Pilate and begs for the body of Jesus. Pilate is amazed that Jesus is already dead and after checking this fact with his soldiers, Pilate gives the body to him. Joseph wraps Jesus in fine linen and lays Jesus’ body in a stone sepulcher and rolls a large stone across the entrance. After the Sabbath, Mary the mother of Jesus and Mary Magdalene and Salome bring spices to anoint the body at sunrise. When they get there, the large stone has been rolled away and inside they see a man clothed in white who says: ‘He is not here – go to Galilee and you will see him there as he said’. They are amazed, trembling and afraid and dare not speak to anyone.
Jesus preached the resurrection of the dead reflecting the common Jewish belief of the time that the righteous and unrighteous await Judgment Day in peace (in the bosom of Abraham) or in torment, respectively. The belief in the resurrection of the dead was largely a late innovation in ancient Jewish thought and the Sadducees, who considered only the Pentateuch to be divinely inspired, considered it to be a false teaching. Since Deuteronomy decrees the obligation of Levirate marriage, (Deuteronomy 25 v 5), i.e., the brother of a dead man must marry the dead man's wife if the wife is childless, the logical conclusion is that if there are seven brothers, each dying for some reason, the wife could potentially have been married seven times, and hence if the dead were resurrected she would find herself in a highly polygamous situation. According to Mark 12 v 18 – 27, the Sadducees used this logical conundrum to challenge the idea of the resurrection of the dead, but Jesus argues that the resolution is simple—there will be no marriage after the resurrection and the people will be like the angels in heaven. Jesus is described by Mark as going on to justify the doctrine of resurrection, by referring to the story of the burning bush, in which God is described as stating, at one moment in time, that he is the God of each of the three Patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, using the present tense—I am ... not I was. Mark portrays Jesus as stating that, since God is God of the Living and not of the dead, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are still living, i.e., resurrection.
In Mark, with the discovery of the empty tomb we have no definite statement regarding the presence of an angel, but just of a man in a white robe; but by Matthew and Luke we have references to angels and by the time of Luke’s writing, this seems to become two angels.
‘When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body. Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and they asked each other, “Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?” But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.
“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’”
Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.’ (Mark 16 v 1-7)
Mark, says nothing more concerning the resurrection of Jesus. There are some extra verses in some later manuscripts but it seems that this is where the original gospel attributed to Mark ends.
A SUMMARY OVERVIEW
In an overview summary of the gospel attributed to Mark we find:
Jesus – His person and identity –
Jesus’ identity:
demons to keep secret: Mark 1:25, Mark 1:34, Mark 3:12
people to keep secret until resurrection: Mark 9:9, Mark 1:44, Mark 5:43, Mark 7:36, Mark 8:30
Jesus – His work and mission –
Jesus has come to give life as a ransom for many: Mark 10:45
Jesus has come to serve: Mark 10:45
Jesus has come to teach: Mark 1:38
Jesus – His message/Gospel –
Parables given to those outside synagogue: Mark 10:1, Mark 4:11-13, Mark 4:34, Mark 6:34, Mark 4:2
Jesus taught in synagogues: Mark 1:21
Jesus taught on Sabbath: Mark 6:2
Jesus is light not to be hidden: Mark 4:21-25
Jesus preached outside: Mark 2:2, Mark 2:13, Mark 4:1
Repent: Mark 1:15, Mark 6:12
Jesus – His Names
Bread is Christ’s body: Mark 14:22
Servant: Mark 10:45
Bridegroom: Mark 2:19,20
Christ or messiah (by Jesus/high priest): Mark 14:61,62
Christ or messiah (by Peter): Mark 8:29
Holy One of God: Mark 1:24
King of the Jews: Mark 15:2
My Son (by God the Father): Mark 9:7
Rabbi (by teacher): Mark 11:21
Ransom: Mark 10:45
Shepherd: Mark 14:27
Son of God (by centurion): Mark 15:39
Son of God (by unclean spirits): Mark 3:11, Mark 5:7
Son of Man: Mark 10:53, Mark 2:10, Mark 2:28, Mark 8:31, Mark 9:30
Teacher (by crowds): Mark 10:35
Teacher (by disciples): Mark 10:17
Jesus – His Miracles –
Miracles could not be done in home town because of lack of faith: Mark 6:5
Jesus – His Excorcisms –
Casts out evil spirits: Mark 1:26, Mark 1:39, Mark 9:25-28
Jesus – His Healing –
Healed diseases: Mark 1:34, Mark 1:40-42, Mark 2:10,11, Mark 3:5, Mark 6:56, Mark 7:35
Healed fever: Mark 1:31
JESUS – THEMES AND THREADS IN HIS TEACHING –
Approaching God –
Believe the good news about God: Mark 1:15
Repentance: Mark 1:15, Mark 6:12
Prayer and Worship –
Jesus Prays: Mark 1:35, Mark 14:32, Mark 6:46
New Covenant –
Blood of New Covenant poured out for many: Mark 14:23,24
Law and commandments -
Law and commandments supported by Jesus: Mark 1:44
Eternal life obtained by following law and sacrifice: not possible with man, but possible with God: Mark 10:8-25
Tradition, Rituals and ceremonies –
Love to God and man more important than ceremony: Mark 12:33
Critical of Tradition: Mark 7:6-8
Standing/relationship with God –
Elect: Mark 13:20,22
Predestination, preparation : Mark 10:40
Heaven/spiritual realm and earthly/material realm and authorities –
Moneychangers expelled for trading in the temple: Mark 11:15
Spiritual and material contrasted: Mark 12:17, Mark 8:33
Kingdom of God/ Kingdom of heaven – (The spiritual realm within) -
Kingdom of God is near: Mark 1:15
Kingdom of heaven is like a seed growing into large tree: Mark 4:30-32
Kingdom of heaven is like sown seed - it grows, ripens, then harvest it: Mark 4:26-29
Eschatology (Last things) -
Jesus returns in clouds at the end of the world: Mark 13:26
Punishments after death: Mark 12:40
Rewards after death: Mark 9:41
Eternal life -
Eternal life obtained by following law and sacrifice: not possible with man, but possible with God: Mark 10:8-25
Faith –
Faith heals the person: Mark 10:52, Mark 5:34
Faith: When God sees faith He forgives sins: Mark 2:5
Jews -
Jews are like tenants: Mark 12:1-11
Prophecy –
Jesus Prophesies his own death and resurrection: Mark 10:33,34
Jesus Prophesies Peter’s denial: Mark 14:30
CONCLUSIONS
So what do we make of these summaries and overviews of the Gospel attributed to Mark? Certainly what we have here is a Gospel that is more down to earth than that say of the later gospel attributed to John. There is no mention of the virgin birth, no mention of the Divine nature of Jesus, a focus on faith healing rather than on miracles, no mention of visions of the risen or resurrected Jesus or of his ascension to the clouds. There are various debates about aspects of Jewish religion – what it is lawful to do on the Sabbath, what is the primary commandment, how tradition relates to the Law of God, how effective ceremonies and rituals are, condemnation of the hypocrisy of some Jewish leaders in imposing heavy burdens on followers of God, ethical teaching about marriage and teaching about humility and faith. There are debates with Jewish leaders about the authority of Jesus, especially in terms of his proclaiming forgiveness of sins, coupled with debates as to the source of his power to heal. Yes, there is mention of the forgiveness of sins, especially in relation to healing and mention of his death as a means of forgiveness, there is also support for the idea of a resurrection of humanity after death and the idea that Jesus will return at the end of the age. There are prophesies concerning his betrayal, death and resurrection and the circumstances of the end of the age. But taken as a whole, this is certainly less miraculous and transcendent than the other, later gospels and the writings of Paul.
Prior to visions of Jesus risen from the dead, we find his disciples in a state of fear and dejection. At this point they considered that:
Jesus was a prophet
Jesus was powerful in what he said and did before God and all the people.
The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death
They crucified him
We hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel.
There is also a record of the reaction of the religious leaders to the empty tomb and missing body of Jesus: the elders and priests bribe the soldiers who were supposed to be guarding the tomb….’When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed.’.
However, as we know, quite a number of the followers of Jesus had visions that Jesus had risen from the dead and that he eventually ascended to the clouds and out of their sight. These visions gave the Disciple/Apostles hope, strength and courage given their understanding that what they had seen was the literally existing objectively real resurrected Jesus. Thus the movement that Jesus had started survived his death and was carried on by his brother James the Just and also by the other Disciples/Apostles of Jesus who also proclaimed Jesus’ resurrection. The movement became a Jewish sect – one of many – and became based in Jerusalem where these Jewish Christians regularly attended the Temple.
Post visionary experience their message seemed to be:
Jesus is God’s servant
Jesus is holy and righteous, the Righteous One—the Messiah
Jesus is the author of life
You Jews betrayed and murdered Jesus
But God raised him from the dead, and we are witnesses of this (by reason of the visions that we have had of an objectively real resurrected Jesus)
What you Jews and your leaders did to Jesus was done in ignorance
God was fulfilling what all the Jewish prophets had foretold about the Messiah
Therefore repent of your sins, have a new mind and turn to God
He will again send you Jesus, your appointed Messiah.
Because Jesus must remain in heaven until the time for the final restoration of all things
Jesus the Son of Man is standing in the place of honour at God’s right hand.
Already we see the beginnings of the deification of Jesus and with that will come the need for the Virgin Birth, the Word made flesh and so on, all arising from this reification of the contents of their visions.
AN OUTLINE OF THE TEACHING OF JESUS
What do we seem able to say about Jesus? What did he teach? The original perception of him seems a little more down to earth:
He was possibly an Essene.
He submitted to the baptism of John the Baptist which inaugurated personal spiritual visions and experiences.
At John the Baptist’s arrest, he commenced his ministry, travelling the countryside, preaching in synagogues.
He was a prophet, foretelling his own death, suffering and resurrection
Jesus was powerful in what he said and did.
The crowds considered that he healed and cast out evil spirits and thus he gathered a large following.
Faith heals the person and when God sees faith, he forgives sins.
He came to give life as a ransom for many, to serve and to teach.
He preached that the time is fulfilled: the kingdom of God is at hand, therefore repent – turn away from your present ways and turn to God and believe this good news
He was variously referred to as Servant, Bridegroom, Holy One of God, King of the Jews, My Son (by God the Father in a vision), Rabbi (by a teacher), Teacher, (by crowds and disciples), Ransom, Shepherd, Son of God (by centurion and unclean spirits), Son of Man.
He believed in and practiced prayer, particularly solitary prayer
He supported the Law and Commandments with a view that what was impossible for human beings was possible with God. But he was critical of tradition and ceremony, especially when burdensome or placed on a par with God’s Word.
The Jews are like tenants - they are custodians of divine things
The Kingdom of God seems to be the spiritual realm within and it is near, and like a small seed growing into a large tree.
He believed in election, predestination and preparation of people by God
He believed eternal life was obtained by keeping the Law and maintaining sacrifice
He advocated material poverty and despised materialism in the temple
He antagonised religious leaders of the day
He was eventually condemned to death by religious leaders on charges of blasphemy out of envy
His followers hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel – the anointed one or messiah.
He believed in the resurrection of the dead and in the Judgment and punishments and rewards
He believed he would return in clouds in power and glory
A BASIC SET OF CHRISTIAN VALUES AND BELIEFS
Thus a follower of Jesus would accept:
The need for repentance - turning around from our present ways and turning to God.
The ceremony of Baptism for repentance.
The need to follow Mosaic Law – moral and ceremonial, with faith in God to cover personal failings and shortcomings.
Prayer – especially solitary prayer.
The spiritual kingdom within and the importance of its cultivation.
Election and predestination by God.
Asceticism – material poverty and a selling of possessions to give to the poor.
Faith healing
Believe in eternal life gained through obedience to the Law and personal poverty.
Believe in the resurrection of the dead.
Believe in a future Judgment by God with rewards and punishments following.
Believe in a period of false prophets and messiahs and a period of suffering before the culmination of all things.
Believe that Jesus was anointed by God.
Seek to follow the teaching of Jesus.
Believe that Jesus will return in the clouds in power and glory.
Celebrate the ceremony of the bread and wine until Jesus returns.
Tend to have non-conformist attitudes to and be critical of hypocritical, presumptuous, man-made religious traditions, leaders, practices and institutions.
It is these kinds of ideas that would have to form the basis of any revised neo-orthodox Christianity. Even though I have questioned the nature of the experiences whereby the Disciples and Apostles ‘saw’ the resurrected Jesus, we still end up with a commitment to a post-death resurrection, because this is something that Jesus plainly believed in and taught. How far we agree with the ideas of the theology listed above is of course up to us but I would suggest that anyone calling themselves a ‘Christian’ would have to subscribe to most if not all this outline theology since at the bare minimum, this is what Jesus appeared to preach, teach and practice. To move away from these ideas is to move away to a different spiritual path – which according to what we have seen is perfectly acceptable – since we all worship our personal Lord – but in making such a move, we do move away not only from the sort of Christian orthodoxy that the Apostle Paul developed, but also we move away from the teaching of the founder, leader or teacher whose name we claim to take and whose teaching we therefore claim to follow.
A PERSONAL CONCLUSION
For myself, much as I would at times like to join a community or fellowship with shared symbols and meanings in spirituality; and much as Christianity has been the heritage and tradition of my country for hundreds of years, I find that I cannot subscribe to many of the precepts above. My own experiences, like those of the Christian Gnostics and the broader Gnostic movement and world-wide mystical spirituality in general has taken me out of Christian Fundamentalism and on a different path which I have elaborated in some of my other studies. I do not throw the baby out with the bathwater – there is much that is insightful and profitable in Christianity – I still delight in reading and studying Christian mystics such as Meister Eckhart; and I still gain profit from reading Christian theologians – but I also profit from reading Sufi Islamic thinkers such as Ibn al-Arabi, and Rumi, and from reading Hindu Advaita sages such as Shankara and others.
