A thought on „The Bible“

One of my critiques of The History Channel’s recently concluded miniseries „The Bible“ is the fast pace it set in each episode. I am critical of this because in our 21st American society we cannot presume that someone knows the background of any particular Biblical story. There is a vast ignorance in our culture about the background and context of the Bible and the events recorded therein. As such, more time needs to be devoted when producing a film or series about the Bible.

Even with a thorough knowledge of the Bible, the miniseries was still too fast paced. Case in point, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, the cornerstone of the Christian faith and the Church, was rushed. Important dialogue was left out that would have clarified the events. The Holy Gospels devote most of their pages to the Passion of Jesus. The Gospels slow down when they arrive at Holy Week and go into great detail about the events. The final episode crammed too much into a 2-hour block. It would have been better to make an additional episode so one could have been devoted solely to the crucifixion and resurrection and the last episode focus on Pentecost and the Book of Acts.

In spite of all this, „The Bible“’s ratings success has shown that there is a hunger for shows that tell a story, and this bodes well for the future of American TV which has way too much „reality“ TV that is void of any substance.

Easter Monday

That very day two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and they were talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them: „What is this conversation that you are holding with each other as you walk?“ And they stood still, looking sad. (Luke 24,13-17 ESV)

Yesterday’s gospel tells about Easter morning, today’s gospel talks about that evening. What a morning and what an evening – and all the difference made by Jesus Christ’s victorious resurrection from the dead. Two disciples are going to Emmaus mourning and crying. Asked by the stranger concerning their sorrow, they give an Easter answer, but without the joy of Easter. They are crying while spreading joyous seeds, which had not yet sprouted to their own rejoicing. In this way you can be rich without knowing about those boxes of treasures – hungry in spite of all your wealth. But this is to change quite dramatically. The stranger can call these sorrowing men out of their distress and bring them to the hopeful glory by his insight into matters. Their hearts start to burn. It was the fire of hope for an eternal life and the resurrection of the body, which even today still has the power to kill all sorrow, kindle comfort and awaken peace and in this way vitalize the soul with eternal joy.

Two disciples go with longing across the veld to Emmaus; their eyes are full of tears, theirs souls full of regrets and they’re sharing words of mourning, but Lord Jesus close already close by to dispel all misery.

Oh, so many hearts are caught up in despair, bewailing own pain and hurt while going forward heavily burdened – yet Jesus is already quite close by to dispel all misery.

If two souls are in discourse Jesus is the third. He knows all hurts, but has the cure too. He won’t fail us even as we are at a loss without hope, but does all to comfort and to heal.  (Johann Neunherz, 1653-1737)

This is a rather free translation of Wilhelm Löhe’s devotion for Monday, the 2^nd Holiday of Easter. It is found on Pg. 160 in Lob sei Dir ewig, o Jesu!   (Eternal Praise to you o Jesus!) edited by A. Schuster and published in the Freimund Verlag, Neuendettelsau 1949.

Irish-Scandinavian St. Patrick's Day

March 17 is St. Patrick’s Day and a national day of pride for the Irish. The day should also be celebrated as one of Scandinavian culture as well. Modern Ireland is a mix of Celtic and Scandinavian culture. Norwegian Vikings raided Scotland and Ireland; they eventually settled in those countries. Dublin was founded by Norwegians under their leader Turgeis as a Viking war base. The cities of Wexford, Limerick, Wicklow and Waterford are anglicized names of their Norwegian names. The Celtic and Norwegian cultures mixed to produce what we now know as Ireland.

Learning from Löhe: Reminiscere

15. "And therefore finally being heard. The intercessory mother had made the whole thing to her daughter and her faithful interchange pleases the Lord. We must pray in our time of need, which can be seen here, even praying in external hardships. These are holy, heavenly souls who live as they perceive as their own, and so strange woe (153) long outlive our own distress, as they perceive external hardships. External needs are no different in the hearts of the saints, intercession and petition are distinctions which  the petitioner should not perceive, but which sees the Lord as gracious and joyfully forgets this distinction when they come to pray. So it is here. This mother's healthy body is sick because her daughter is sick. They begged for help for themselves. Thus the Lord now heals together both mother and daughter, heals the mother lying near His feet, and in the distance the daughter - and His simple help, such as the thanks and honor is doubled by the compassionate love that was doubled in need" (Löhe 152-53; Matthew 15,21-28). 

Why Does God Allow Natural Disasters?

After seeing the images on TV, and perhaps experiencing the storm yourself, you wonder: “Why did this hurricane devastate the lives of so many people in New Jersey, New York City, and thousands of towns up and down the East Coast?” God’s people have asked such questions since the book of Genesis. We find Job pondering why bad things have happened to a righteous man. Others ask Jesus why some kinsmen were killed when a building fell upon them. 

Natural disasters are part and parcel of our fallen world. In a perfect world, there would be no floods, tornados or tsunamis. But we don’t live in a perfect world. Rather, we live in a world that has been contorted and knocked off kilter by sin − our sin. God cursed the ground on account of Adam. Thorns and thistles will now grow and make our stewardship of the earth much more difficult. Paul talks about creation groaning under the weight of God’s curse. 

So when we wonder why did God allow this hurricane to happen, we discover from Holy Scripture that natural disasters happen because we are sinful people who live in a world that has been cursed by God on account of our sins. 

Does this mean God is punishing us for some unrepented sin? Is He punishing our nation for national sins that we, as a nation, are guilty of? Only insofar as we live on a world whose nature has been cursed by God as a result of our sinfulness. Hurricanes are just one way, among many, that this cursed earth unleashes because of the curse placed upon it. 

Does this mean God is indifferent or uncaring? Certainly not! We should realize that God has protected us from any number of natural disasters throughout the years. When was the last time an asteroid slammed into the earth and extinguished 4 or 5 billion human beings? When was the last time the earth was soaked with flood waters so that only eight people survived? God watches over us and protects us many, many times. 

It’s just this more recent incident when God seems to have taken a break from rescuing His creation. Or has He? Consider what God is doing in the aftermath of this hurricane. He is working through individuals, organizations and State governments to send help, money and supplies. God’s people are praying for the lives and rescue of those unaccounted. 

God is working through men and women to help ease the awful suffering. God is showing His love for the world by working through the actions of the world to offer assistance. 

You see, God can be found where there’s trouble. God is there with the nurse giving help to one injured in the hurricane. God is with the pilot who flies a cargo plane with needed supplies. God is with those who search for the unaccounted. 

God is found in the midst of our greatest heartache and despair. Rather than seeing a hurricane as the angry and contorted face of God, we should instead look at the true God revealed in Christ. For when we see Christ contorted and suffering on the cross, we see God’s friendly heart, a heart so enamored with His people and His creation that He is willing to give up His only Son to redeem us from all our sins. And Paul tells us that God’s redemption in Christ will one day remove the curse imposed upon creation. 

Christ our Lord intervened in a disaster hundreds of times worse than the recent Hurricane Sandy. Our Savior went to the cross, suffered and gave up His own life to save us from our sins. The Christ hanging on the cross reveals the heart of God and the great love He has for us. And when we realize how much God loves us and that Christ is where our greatest need is that needs fixing, then we realize that our Christian faith points the way to where Christ needs to be now: in boroughs and with people who have suffered greatly. And where Christ is, there we will be. Perhaps merely in spirit and prayers. Or in the sending of support. Or offering other help. Each time you give an encouraging word to your neighbors, bring them a cup of coffee, offer them some respite from the sufferings of the hurricane’s aftermath, the hands and words of Jesus are working and speaking through you. These are Divine words of love and support. God has given us an opportunity to do acts of charity and mercy for our neighbors, and for each other in the household of God. And reminding people that God loves us through Christ and that not even a hurricane can alter God’s good disposition upon us through Christ our Lord and Savior.

Gnostic Christianity

Who exactly were the Gnostic Christians, and what did they believe? You would be hard pressed to go into your local bookstore, iBooks or Kindle and find books on Gnostic Christianity. There just is not a raving passion for studying it. Only a handful of scholars keep the dream alive of Gnostic Christianity.

There is some discussion among scholars as to the position of Gnostic Christians in the early Church. Some, like Profs. Karen King and Elaine Pagels of Harvard and Princeton, respectively, put the Gnostics squarely in the Christian fold. Others, like Prof. James Voelz of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, postulate that they should not even rightly be called Christians. It is true that Gnostic philosophy had infiltrated some corners of the Church throughout the mid-1st and early 2nd centuries (the Apostles Paul and John deal with this Gnostic influence in some of their New Testament writings), but these Gnostic groups were never part of the mainstream Church in terms of numbers, leadership or influence. This may be in part because the apostles  effectively checked their influence with their authority and teaching. 

Gnosticism comes from the Greek word γνωσις (knowledge), and it is a philosophy that held two key ideals: 1. matter is evil and the spirit is good, and 2. God is infinitely divorced from the world. Gnosticism, therefore, fit easily within the framework of Greek philosophy and thought in the first and second centuries. These ideals, however, are both unbiblical. 

Prof. James Voelz of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis believes Gnosticism is a merging of Platonism, Persian, Judaism and Christianity ideas. He also sees similarities between Gnosticism’s secret-saving knowledge and its modern offshoots in Masonic Lodges and Mormonism. He rightly identifies Gnosticism not as a Christian heresy but as an completely different religion. 

The Gnostic Christians believed Christians could and should receive a special knowledge to advance up the ladder of spirituality and salvation. This knowledge was something other and different from what was written in the books of the New Testament.  This belief separated them from the rank and file Christians. In this sense, the Gnostic Christians were a type of Christian Masonic Lodge where one moved up the ladder by obtaining the secret knowledge known to those in the community who had received it directly from Jesus or by someone higher up than they in the community. It is easy to see why the early Church and her theologians fought against these Gnostic Christians, for they added to the accepted Scriptures. This is the history of all the sects and heresies: they add documents to the Bible that are put on par with, or above, Holy Scripture. As such, the Gnostic Christians had separated themselves from all the other churches by adding to the accepted canon of Scripture. In part, this is why the early Church began to put together an authoritative list of what books were Holy Scripture, and which were not. In 397, the Council of Carthage established the authorized canonical list to be the 27 books in what we currently have in the New Testament. Earlier theologians and bishops had lists (as early as 170), all of which basically agreed with the accepted list compiled in 397. None of their individual lists included any sort of Gnostic Christian writings. By the way, these canonical lists were based on the witness to the antiquity and apostolicity of the various canonical books, rather than decreeing that the canon contained certain books. Furthermore, the Gnostic Gospels were merely a collection of Jesus' sayings, wisdom and knowledge. They rarely mention or quote the Old Testament. There are no miracles in them, and they did not focus on Jesus' death and resurrection for the salvation of the world. Prof. King's papyrus fragment seems to fall into this type of literature. The Gnostic Christian texts were never seriously entertained by many Christians as legitimate representations of the faith. Although some, like Pagels and King believe and teach otherwise. 

The Gnostics tried to merge their philosophy with Christianity. Where Judaism and Christianity emphasize the role of faith alone in salvation and the salvation of both body and soul, Gnostics taught that the soul’s salvation depended on the individual possessing quasi-intuitive knowledge of the mysteries of the universe and of magic formulas. Gnosticism fundamentally rejected the Old Testament, its theology about the goodness of creation and especially the idea that all the nations would be blessed through Abraham and his faith. We see the beginnings of this clash between Judeo-Christian theology and classic Greek philosophy already in the Apostle Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians. In chapter 15 where he discusses the resurrection, Paul is dealing with the Gnostic aversion that the body would be resurrected and reunited with the soul. The Greeks only believed in an eternal soul that sheds off the body at death. They didn’t care about a resurrection, because being rid of the corrupt body freed the pure soul. In Greek thought, a resurrection would be a step back, for the body imprisoned the soul and death released the soul. Paul teaches in this letter that Christianity is anchored in Christ’s resurrection, and our own. Gnostic Christians found this, the central teaching of the Christian faith, to be distasteful. 

There is no strong evidence to suggest that the Gnostic Christians vied with the orthodox from the beginning. The earliest discovered Gnostic Christian document is the Gospel of Thomas which appears about 130. This is well after the New Testament books were already recognized as authoritative and widely circulated, read and accepted as Scripture. 

The Gospel of Thomas draws on most of these New Testament documents and adds some new ideas about Jesus and faith. All other major Gnostic Christian texts—like the Gospel of Truth, the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of the Hebrews, the Gospel of Mary, and so on—are clearly written in the second and third centuries. This is well after the Christian Scriptures are collected and accepted as a canon of texts. These canonical lists were used to evaluate other Christian writings in light of those that were apostolic. Among the second-century lists of authoritative Scriptures, the Gnostic texts are never listed—not even by the unorthodox, Gnostic-leaning Marcion in 140. There was never a time when a wide selection of books, including Gnostic ones, were widely deemed acceptable in the Church. 

In light of the fact that Gnosticism clashed with several important aspects of the Old and New Testaments, Gnostic „Christians“ don’t deserve to even be regarded as a legitimate development of the Christian faith, and therefore don’t fall into the category of Christian sects, but as a completely new religion that is antithetical to Christianity. And yet, Profs. King and Pagels argue that they are a viable and important part in the life of the early Church. Prof. King even shies away from labeling the Gnostic Christians as heretics or even Gnostic. While studying Gnostic "Christianity" might be beneficial for learning about life in general in the 2nd and 3rd centuries in the Middle East, we are not going to learn anything about the early Church since the Gnostics were not a recognized part of the believers. No amount of essays, books and presentations by Profs. King and Pagels is going to change the course of history. It is not about the victors writing the history, but about Gnostic Christianity being a dog that simply won't hunt. The Church rejected the Gnostics. They survived for a few centuries as eccentrics here and there, but in the end their ideals and philosophy simply did not carry and win the debate or the day. 

Where has all the Good Scholarship Gone?

A couple of weeks ago, Prof. Karen King of Harvard Divinity School made a presentation in Rome on a papyrus fragment that made the sensational claim: Jesus said: "my wife". Prof. King breathlessly named this papyrus the "Gospel of Jesus' Wife." Here is a link to her draft essay. 

Modern scholarship seems to be on the decline. Here's why: 

First, a 3rd or 4th century Coptic Gnostic Christian papyrus fragment that is the size of a business card containing thirty words in eight fragmented lines is touted as the greatest find in Christian antiquity in the last several years. Seriously? The papyrus looks like it has gone through a paper shredder. It has absolutely NO context. We are being told that it reveals earth-shattering revelations about early Christianity. Hardly. 

Good scholarship avoids sensationalism and trite soundbites (the mainstream news media gave us both). Prof. King did not help matters by giving the fragment the exhilarating name of the "Gospel of Jesus' Wife". The Smithsonian Channel was ready to air a special on King and this papyrus this past Sunday (September 30). The Smithsonian Channel has postponed their special. However, you can read an article on the papyrus in the Smithsonian Magazine. 

Other scholars (and the Vatican) have raised concerns about this papyrus. The Vatican seems to have denounced it as a forgery. I think the Vatican has responded with a knee-jerk reaction. Further tests are welcomed. I do not doubt Prof. King and the tests that have already been conducted. Hopefully, after another round of tests are finished the Smithsonian Channel will air their special. I look forward to seeing more about this papyrus. I do not think it should, or will, have an impact in the Church. I am sure, however, that some fringe groups with specific agendas in the Church will make some hay from this papyrus. 

Second, there is no context for this papyrus. Prof. King has said that it is a fragment of an unknown Coptic Gnostic Christian text. It contains nothing earth-shattering. It reads like the average Gnostic Christian texts we already have, in particular the "Gospel of Thomas". True, Prof. King notes that this is the first document we have where Jesus says "my wife". Okay, fine, but this phrase appears in a fragment of disconnected phrases. This phrase is nothing extraordinary, for it is something I would expect to find in Gnostic Christianity given their views on Jesus, women and sexuality. Besides Dan Brown beat this horse to death with his DaVinci Code novel. 

Third, too often modern scholarship makes grandiose claims. I understand that part of this may be the desire to publish one's findings or add to the prestige of one's academic institution. This papyrus will probably be Prof. King's one shot at 15 minutes of fame, and I can't blame her for taking the bull by the horns. Early Christianity and Gnostic Christianity are, after all, here specialty. Sound scholarship, however, involves plenty of research (often tedious and dull), extensive testing, peer critiques and criticism. I think Prof. King has done her best to uphold good scholarship. Others on both sides of the issue have not labored as intensely on this papyrus. I do, however, think Prof. King has made some eager grandiose claims that have exacerbated the emotional claims of others, both pro and con regarding this papyrus. 

Prof. King (and her fellow Gnostic Christianity scholar, Elaine Pagels) would have us believe that the Gnostic Christians represent a purer and more authentic version of Christianity. The early Church, her bishops and theologians quickly and rightly challenged the claims of the Gnostic Christians. Furthermore, contrary to King's and Pagel's assertion, Gnostic Christianity was not a numerous movement, and it was not popular among the average Christians. Gnostic Christianity is simply a dog that won't hunt.  It did not vie for supremacy against the Church.

Fourth, too many Christians seem to be intimidated by scholarship. This ought not be the case. The Church and Christianity have traditionally encouraged scholarship. I look forward to passionate debate on this papyrus, Gnostic Christianity and the other topics such debate naturally brings into the fray. The Church has nothing to fear in quality scholarship and discussions. 

If this papyrus is proved to be authentic, then it still does not legitimize the claims made by. Prof. King. Authenticity does not guarantee reliability and truth. Historic, creedal Christianity has withstood struggles and adversities for two millennia. If it were not for The few Gnostic Christian scholars like Profs. King and Pagels, Gnostic Christianity would be forgotten and ignored by both the Church and the world. 

The collapse of sound scholarship goes hand in hand with the decline of traditional liberal arts education. Sound scholarship, with its rigorous debates from both sides of the issue, is sorely needed in this post-postmodern world with its instantaneous news and sensational claims.