Kreitsauce's Musings

We’ve seen how biblical creeds and archeological finds are both types of proof for the Gospel message. In this last section,  we turn to ancient writings by secular historians and their Christian counterparts. This will reveal the most clear details of early Christian belief and also provide further evidence for the historicity of Jesus Christ. The Roman historian Tacitus, who wrote of the reign of Nero and the infamous fire that burned Rome during his reign, records the following in his Annals, written in AD 115:

“Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome.” (Tacitus, 15.44)

From this we can confirm the biblical message that Christians were named after Christ, who was sentenced to death under Pilate during the reign of emperor Tiberius. The execution ended the “superstition” of belief in Him for awhile, but the claims of Christ and His followers reasserted themselves shortly thereafter. This agrees completely with Matthew through Acts in the Bible. Gaius Suetonius Tranquillas, another Roman historian who was also the chief secretary of Emperor Hadrian with access to imperial records, writes that Emperor Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome because they “caused continuous disturbances at the instigation of Christus.” (Suetonius, Claudius, 25) Of Nero’s time in power, Tranquillas wrote: “Punishments were also inflicted on the Christians, a sect professing a new and mischievous religious belief.” (Nero, 16)

Josephus mentions James “the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ” in his Antiquities. Many are also familiar with a much-debated passage in Josephus’ Antiquities which seems to state that Jesus resurrected the third day and appeared to many. In this passage, Josephus makes use of quite a bit of Christian language, which is unusual since Josephus, a Jew, was stated to not be a believer by the church father Origen. While as a Christian I would love to believe Josephus actually wrote these words, I have to look at things as they are. Most likely this is a Christian interpolation, as there are translations of the Antiquities into other ancient languages that do not include the subject of the resurrection. However, even after removing the interpolation and evaluating the remaining words for grammatical and historical consistencies, one can look at Professor Schlomo Pines’ translation and commentary on an ancient Arabic edition of the Antiquities which reads:

“At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus. His conduct was good and he was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the Jews and other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. But those who had become disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion, and that he was alive; accordingly he was perhaps the Messiah, concerning whom the prophets have recounted wonders.” (Quoted in Charlesworth’s Jesus Within Judaism, p 95)

Not too bad, Joe! We can turn also to Julius Africanus’ mention of Thallus’ writings concerning (super)natural events surrounding Christ’s crucifixion. Thallus wrote around AD 50, before the New Testament had been penned. Africanus tells us:

“On the whole world there pressed a most fearful darkness; and the rocks were rent by an earthquake, and many places in Judea and other districts were thrown down. This darkness Thallus, in the third book of his History, calls, as appears to me without reason, an eclipse of the sun.”

Africanus accepts Thallus’ history, but rejects his rationale that the darkness was caused by the sun. It’s interesting that secular history can provide so much verification for the Scriptures. In my last post on this subject, I’ll look at what Christian historians have said.

In the last post, we talked about the historical church creeds recorded in the Bible. Now we turn to further evidence for the historical Jesus. First, let’s take a look at the birth of Christ. Luke gives  us a historical account of Jesus’ birth, and he includes a number of clues that are helpful in approximating when the first Christmas took place. In Luke 2:1-5 we read:

^“And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.”

Did people really return to their hometown to be taxed? Was Cyrenius (also spelled “Quirinius”) really govern in Syria during a taxation in Israel? We’ll have to look to historians and archeology for some of these answers. It turns out that the Titulus Venetus, an ancient Latin inscription, explains that a census did in fact take place in Israel and Syria around AD 5-6, and that it was fairly normal for such censuses to take place during the reign of Augustus up until the third century. In his book Christian Origins, Bruce notes that a papyrus dating to around AD 104 records that people were required to return to their hometown for the purposes of taxation and census-taking. What about the subject of Cyrenius? Did he govern Syria when a census took place? It turns out Cyrenius did govern Syria at two separate times. In his book Tells, Tombs, and Treasure, Robert Boyd gives evidence that he governed during an early taxation in 10-4 BC, and he also governed in Syria around AD 6. So we now have a few dates that could legitimately be chosen for the year of Christ’s birth. Historically speaking, Luke builds a very solid foundation for acceptance of the details of Christ’s birth.

Next, let us turn to the subject of Jesus’ crucifixion. Can we establish Pilate’s reign in Israel? Are the details of the crucifixion consistent with what we know from archeology? Is there anything in archeology to indicate that Rome had to deal with the rumors of a resurrection? Boyd’s book notes that coins have been discovered which were minted to commemorate the inception of Pilate’s rule around AD 31. Outside of the Bible, Tacitus and Josephus both record Pilate’s involvement in the crucifixion of Christ. Of course, biblically speaking, the question of who killed Jesus is much more complex.

At this point, I’d like to introduce you to Yohanan Ben Ha’galgol. Well, I would introduce you to him, but, sadly, he is quite dead. His skeleton was found in a stone ossuary about a mile from the Damascus Gate in 1968. Archeologists believe he was killed in AD 70 during the Jewish uprising against Rome. It’s the manner of his death that interests us today, though. According to Dr. N. Haas, a pathologists at Hebrew University, Yohanan (whose name was inscribed on his ossuary) was crucified. He still had a seven-inch-long nail pierced though his heel bones, since apparently Roman soldiers twisted a prisoner’s legs to nail them to the cross. Small pieces of olive wood from the cross were still attached to the nail, which was bent backward to keep the victim in place. Nails had also been driven between the radius and ulna bones in the lower arm. The radius bone was scratched and worn smooth at this point due to the Yohanan’s repeated attempts to pull himself upward to breathe. His lower leg bones were broken, the tibia and fibula bones crushed by a common blow. This sounds stunningly familiar, does it not?

I want to turn to one final piece of evidence which I will risk speculating on. In 1878, a marble slab was discovered in Nazareth. It was an ordinance of Caesar which scholars generally agree was issued by Claudius around AD 41-54. It is translated in its entirety in P. Maier’s First Easter:

“Ordinance of Caesar. It is my pleasure that graves and tombs remain perpetually undisturbed for those who have made them for the cults of their ancestors or children or members of their house. If, however, anyone charges that another has either demolished them, or has in any other way extracted the buried, or has maliciously transferred them to other places in order to wrong them, or has displaced the sealing on other stones, against such a one I order that a trial be instituted, as in respect of the gods, so in regard to the cult of mortals. For it shall be much more obligatory to honor the buried. Let it be absolutely forbidden for anyone to disturb them. In case of violation I desire that the offender be sentenced to capital punishment on charges of violation of sepulchre.” (emphasis mine)

Maier notes that all previous Roman indictments against grave-robbing prescribe only a fine. Why the sudden jump to capital punishment? In AD 49, he expelled the Jews from Rome, and Suetonius remarks that the reason behind the expulsion was because of Christ (see Suetonius’ Claudius for more information, and cross-reference with Acts 17-18, for example.) If Claudius had indeed investigated the beliefs of Christians, he would have quickly discovered the Christian belief in Jesus’ resurrection due to the tomb being empty in spite of it being sealed. Jewish leaders, of course, tried to explain the event by saying that Jesus’ disciples had stolen the body, an event Claudius would have no doubt also uncovered.

So we’ve given a few examples of archeological evidence for the trustworthiness of the Gospels. Do secular historians provide corroborating evidence?

You’ve probably run across someone who challenged your belief in Jesus Christ on the grounds that He is a made-up figure in a religious text. If they’ve been mildly open-minded, they may have asked you for some historical proof that He was real. That’s not easy for believers to do when we’re used to trusting in the Bible as our sole authority for faith and practice. Hmmmm…..where have I heard that before: “sole authority for faith and practice”? Well, there’s no singular answer since that statement is found in numerous statements of faith, confessions, and…..creeds. Let’s check out a few of those creeds.

How about “Jesus Christ is come in the flesh“? Sound familiar? Oscar Cullmann, author of a classic on early creeds entitled The Earliest Christian Confessions, identifies this statement as a concise creed on the subject of Christ’s deity and nature. That’s what most creeds were about, happily. It is creeds, therefore, that offer us some of the best evidence for the existence of Christ. The reason for this is that even though they are included in the New Testament, creeds like the one I just mentioned existed before the books of the New Testament were written. The various human penmen of the New Testament quoted these creeds on occasion to summarize doctrine, but they didn’t create them.

Here’s another creed that may sound familiar, though it is somewhat more complex.

“Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

This creed should found familiar to most believers, since it is written out for us in Philippians 2. It is identified as a creed not only by Cullmann, but also Bultmann, Neufeld, and Fuller. Ironically, these scholars, who are not exactly conservative, point out this creed in particular as proof to a very early belief in Christ. If Christ’s death and resurrection did take place around AD 33, and the various books of the Bible did not begin to be written until AD 50 or so, then the creeds became standardized less than 17 years after the events actually happened. Obviously, this is significant because that means the very people who popularized the creeds were those who had witnessed events in the life of Christ. They know of Whom they spoke!

Another early confessional creed is found in 1 Timothy 3:16:

“And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness:

God was manifest in the flesh,

Justified in the Spirit, seen of angels,

Preached unto the Gentiles,

Believed on in the world,

Received up into glory.”

Moule points out that the early date of this creed (before Paul’s ministry) plus the rhyme-pattern that is made clear through a study of Greek literature are evidence of this creed’s use in pre-Pauline hymns. When we read this passage, we are given a glimpse of ancient Christian worship!

The two passages most clearly identified as creeds by the majority of New Testament scholars are 1 Corinthians 11:23-24 and 1 Corinthians 15:3-7. Paul essentially declares them to be creedal in nature by using the terms “delivered” and “received”, both of which are technical terms for the passing on of Scripture in the rabbinical tradition. Do a quick word search of the New Testament. They aren’t used by Paul or anyone to describe simple communication. Paul is passing along information from another source, a source which uses parallelism through the “and that” of Hebrew narrative tradition and Peter’s Aramaic name (“Cephas”) in the place of his Greek name. We can therefore easily surmise at this point that this creed originates in Israel. This is significant since this means that the people who created the creed were very near the events of the gospels in terms of time (less than two decades) and space (Israel as opposed to somewhere else in the Roman Empire.) Because of this we must take the following statements, at least, to be factual:

1. Jesus died by crucifixion
2. Jesus was buried
3. Jesus’ death caused despair on the part of His disciples
4. Jesus’ tomb was found empty
5. The disciples believed they had seen Him alive and well
6. The disciples were transformed from faithless doubters to bold witnesses
7. This message was the center of the early church, which was founded in Jerusalem
8. The early church was born and grew
9. James, who had been a skeptic, converted
10. Paul, another skeptic, also was converted

That’s the minimum any thinking skeptic would have to accept. A number of creeds believed by hundreds, perhaps thousands, so geographically and chronologically close to the events of the Gospels make it hard to believe that at least these items are not true. Whatever else your conclusion, you have to deal with all of these items somehow. Hopefully an honest skeptic will realize that there is something else going on here and eventually embrace the full message of the Gospel by faith grounded in reason.

But is there more evidence from other sources? Glad you asked….

On at least two occasions that I am aware of, Rob Bell has made some very telling blunders when dealing with history.

In the first case, he often interprets what Jesus says in light of the rabbinical writings known as the Talmud and the Mishna. The problem with this is that neither set of writings were codified until around 200 years after Jesus’ birth. In other words, Jesus didn’t say anything in light of either set of writings, and the attitude of the rabbis had most likely changed significantly after the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. Moreover, neither document is known for being historically accurate concerning the 1st century or the Old Testament. Bell’s misunderstanding of history taints his understanding of Scripture, which is dangerous.

Secondly, and perhaps more seriously, Bell twists the facts- intentionally, in my opinion- in one of his videos. Here’s a Youtube clip of the video in question:

I take special issue with Bell’s explanation of Caesar Augustus’ claim at deity. Most people doubt he actually thought he was a god. Furthermore, I’ve never read that Augustus himself called his birthday celebration “Advent.” Well, I should say that I’ve never heard that said by anybody who wasn’t quoting Bell. It was Virgil that referred to the celebration as adventus, which simply means “coming.” Virgil believed that Augustus would usher in a golden era for the Roman empire. The celebration wasn’t so much about Caesar’s birth as it was about his reign. As for Christianity, Christians didn’t start formally celebrating Advent until the 4th Century. It seems to me that makes all of this a moot point.

Here’s what Ethelbert Stauffer, whom Bell is referencing, says in his book Christ and Caesar concerning two coins in honor of Caesar:

The symbolic meaning is clear: a new day is dawning for the world. The divine saviour-king, born in the historical hour ordained by the stars, has come to power on land and sea, and inaugurates the cosmic era of salvation. Salvation is to be found in none other save Augustus, and there is no other name given to me in which they can be saved.

Notice Stauffer says this writing as a 20th-century believer. He isn’t saying that people believed that and would say that in precisely those words. That’s his explanation of the inscriptions on two coins. To say that Christ and Caesar had this much in common is either a terrible error or twisting the facts to make a point. Bell spins a yarn at the cost of the truth, which is never a good thing.

Just turn me loose,
Let me straddle my old saddle
Underneath the western sky.
On my cayuse,
Let me wander over yonder
Till I see the mountains rise.
I want to ride to the ridge
Where the west commences,
Gaze at the moon till I lose my senses,
Can’t look at hobbles and I can’t stand fences,
Don’t fence me in.

My grandparents and parents both listened to old cowboy songs when I was a kid, and while I didn’t really like most of them, this one really stuck out to me. It’s about not wanting boundaries, a concept I think most of us can appreciate. Of course, there are some boundaries that are good. We live our lives safely because of them. Unfortunately, some postmodern believers are of the opinion that fences aren’t very good for faith. In other words, some of those Bible teachings aren’t as big of a deal as we make them out to be.

Rob Bell makes it obvious that he’s of this persuasion in Velvet Elvis, where he makes the following assertion:

“What if tomorrow someone digs up definitive proof that Jesus had a real, earthly, biological father named Larry, and archeologists find Larry’s tomb and do DNA samples and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the virgin birth was really just a bit of mythologizing the Gospel writers threw in to appeal to the followers of the Mithra and Dionysian religious cults that were hugely popular at the time of Jesus, whose gods had virgin births? But what if, as you study the origin of the word ‘virgin’ you discover that the word ‘virgin’ in the gospel of Matthew actually comes from the book of Isaiah, and then you find out that in the Hebrew language at that time, the word ‘virgin’ could mean several things. And what if you discover that in the first century being ‘born of a virgin’ also referred to a child whose mother became pregnant the first time she had intercourse? What if that spring were seriously questioned? Could a person keep on jumping? Could a person still love God? Could you still be a Christian? Is the way of Jesus still the best possible way to live? Or does the whole thing fall apart?…If the whole faith falls apart when we reexamine and rethink one spring, then it wasn’t that strong in the first place, was it?”

While Bell also affirms that he does believe in the virgin birth, he makes it obvious that the virgin birth really isn’t essential to the Christian faith as far as he is concerned. Then there’s Tony Jones, who makes his position very clear. He’s the “theologian-in-residence” of Solomon’s Porch and an outspoken writer for the Emergent Church movement. In an interview with Relevant magazine, Tony said:

Statements of faith are about drawing borders, which means you have to load your weapons and place soldiers at those borders. you have to check people’s passports when they pass those borders. It becomes an obsession- guarding the borders….I don’t want to spend it [his life] guarding borders. I’d like to spend it inviting people into the kingdom. Statements of faith don’t do that.

In that same interview, Jones went on to say that he doesn’t see a reason why a lesbian pastor and a conservative couldn’t get along in the same church. I beg to differ, Tony.

Fences do more than create borders to defend. They protect from attack. God’s Truth and God’s people should be defended from attack. Christianity as a faith and Christians as individuals called to holy living don’t exist without fences. There’s another way of looking at this, though, and I wish Tony would take a step back to consider it. Perhaps it isn’t that Christians are choosing to fence themselves in as if they were in a zoo. Perhaps Christians are instead called to the wide world of orthodoxy (right faith) and orthopraxy (right practice.) The fences exist to separate the evil on small reserves outside of the wide world of the Christian faith. We are on the outside, and evil and error are fenced in.

God’s Truth as revealed in His Word must be revered and defended if necessary. Paul insisted that there was a difference between right belief and wrong belief, even if wrong belief is appealing, when he wrote Galatians 1:8: “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.” He instructed pastors to be well-trained in Scripture so that they could defend the faith in Titus 1:9: “Holding fast the faithful word as he hath been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers.”

Christianity isn’t simply a way of life. It is a way of life that is founded on faith in the Truths of God’s Word. Anything that is precious and unique and special is worth protecting and preserving. As J. Gresham Machen wrote nearly a century ago:

When men talk thus about propogating Christianity without defending it, the thing that we are propagating is pretty sure not to be Christianity at all. They are propagating anti-intellectualistic, nondoctrinal Modernism; and the reason why it requires no defense is simply that it is so completely in accord with the current of the age.

If we don’t take our Christianity seriously and consider it worthy of protecting, maybe our faith isn’t really Christianity at all. The faith once delivered to the saints needs to be protected so that it doesn’t spoil, but it’s not about fencing it in. It’s about fencing evil  and error in so that we are truly free.

When I was in college, the experimental theater class would occasionally put on small productions entitled “Tell Me a Story.” They didn’t have a huge budget, but they would dress in costumes generally and spend an evening performing short dramas, usually around a particular theme. After a night titled “Tell Me a SCARY Story”, I remember watching my fellow students dart to their dorms in groups thanks to the night’s fare and thinking to myself about how drama is such a powerful method of communication.

In fact, anything involving the use of narrative seems to exert a good deal of influence over us. Perhaps that’s why so much of the Bible is made up of narrative. Some Christians believe that the Bible should be understood strictly as narrative, especially since our postmodern society leans heavily in this direction. I don’t have anything personal against my brothers in Christ, but I definitely have a problem with limiting God’s Word to a narrative whose story must be consistently reinterpreted.

On this subject, Rob Bell said in a 2004 interview in Christianity Today that he and his wife were in the process of “discovering the Bible as a human product.” In his view, the Bible is more like a member of his church community with stories to share about a variety of topics. Bell’s desire is to avoid the mistake of placing the Bible on the dissection table and forgetting to look into and be changed by “the Perfect Law of Liberty.” Brian McLaren is even more transparent when he writes:

When we theological conservatives seek to understand the Bible, we generally analyze it. We break it down into chapters, paragraphs, verses, sentences, clauses, phrases, words, prefixes, roots, suffixes, jots, and tittles. Now we understand it, we tell ourselves. Now we have conquered to text, captured the meaning, removed all mystery, stuffed it and preserved it for posterity, like a taxidermist with a deer head.”

It’s a tragedy that people would analyze God’s Word without it applying to themselves, and it happens all too often. I suspect that the emergent church is more of a reaction against modernism than it is a return to right thinking. McLaren would tell us that intensive Bible studies are the result of the Enlightenment, I would ask him to peer further back into the past. In doing so, he would see the Bereans, apostles, church fathers, Reformers, Puritans, Methodists, and Baptists all involved in this very sort of Bible study. Christians have always believed that the Word of God is worth studying by whatever means necessary.

It’s true that the Bible includes a good deal of narrative. However, the Bible is also almost entirely made of propositional statements. In his book The Post-Evangelical, Tomlinson ironically states: “Post-evangelicals are less inclined to look for truth in propositional statements and old moral certitudes and more likely to seek it in symbols, ambiguities, and situational judgments.”

One has to wonder where the animosity toward propositional statements came from. After all, we make use of them every day. Every time we state a fact, we are making a proposition. We don’t have to be right about the fact we are stating, but a proposition is made nonetheless. “The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain.” “I love artichoke hearts.” “My cat’s name is Olivia.” Whether it’s an account of David vs. Goliath or Jesus’ assertion that He is Way, Truth, and Life or Paul’s teaching on salvation being by grace instead of works, propositional statements are all over the Bible. To be honest, I have no idea why emergent church leaders even bother writing about this. After all, their own claims and assertions are themselves propositional statements!

It seems the postmodern believers are quite fond of the “good fences make good neighbors” mantra. You must either adhere to one extreme or the other, and never the twain shall  meet. It’s either propositions or narratives, being informed or being transformed, knowing what to believe or knowing the Lord of those beliefs. The Bible doesn’t put such burdens on us, fortunately. We can boldly proclaim the truths of Scripture when they are stated outright, and we can also enjoy and learn from the narrative of Scripture.

So go ahead. Tell me a story. Just make sure you get your facts right, and make sure there’s a point to it all.

The new Star Trek movie has revived the sci-fi lover in me. It’s been so long since I’ve seen anything Trek that I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed it. I guess I’m a nerd, but that’s not really a shock to anyone. Anyway, I remember growing up thinking how cool it would be to fly a spaceship through the universe and see all of those heavenly bodies up close. I also remember thinking how dangerous it would be to fly blind through a nebula. Picard and company always seemed to have a hard time with that. Nebulae were dark, mysterious lonely places where it was easy to get lost and you never knew what new danger the crew of the Enterprise would find.

My other passion involves a good mystery. I enjoy a whodunnit?, conspiracy theory, or whatever. Anything with an excellent plot is sure to make me happy. I think that’s key, though. There’s got to be a good plot, a train of thought or order of events I’m supposed to follow.

It seems to me that there is some tension in modern Christianity as to whether or not we’re supposed to treat our faith- propositional truths and experiential reality- more like a nebula than like a good mystery novel. Mysteries can be understood and followed. They serve a purpose. Nebulae, well, at least Gene Roddenberry’s conception of nebulae- seem to be unsolvable and ultimately unknowable. That just doesn’t seem to be the kind of faith Jesus wants us to have, yet such a perspective persists.

Some in Christianity have taken on a post-modern perspective on faith and emphasized the journey over the destination. Now, don’t get me wrong, there is something of a journey involved in Christianity, and it’s one to be enjoyed. My point is that the journey must have purpose. There must be progress made. There must be a sense of compulsion to move onward, and, while a humble expression of humility is refreshing, to simply say “I don’t know, but let’s talk about it” ad infinitum just doesn’t seem to be what Christianity is all about.

This perspective effects every area of the postmodern (some say “emergent”) Christianity.

1. Evangelism- According to Dave Tomlinson’s book The Post-Evangelical, “Evangelism should be seen as an opportunity to ‘fund’ people’s spiritual journeys, drawing on the highly relevant resources of ‘little pieces’ of truth contained in the Christian narrative.” (Which pieces of the Bible aren’t truth? Do people ever reach the destination of their spiritual journey?)
2. The Bible- Tomlinson also writes in the same book: “To say Scripture is the Word of God is to employ a metaphor. God cannot be thought of as literally speaking words, since they are entirely a human phenomenon that could never prove adequate as a medium for the speech of an infinite God.” (Funny. That’s not what Jesus means when He says “My words shall not pass away.”)
3. Salvation- In his book How (Not) to Speak of God, Peter Rollins says that “we need to be evangelized as much, if not more than those around us.” (So we never finish being evangelized? When can a person be defined as a Christian?”
4. Apologetics- Rob Bell says in his popular book Velvet Elvis: “You rarely defend the things you love. You enjoy them and tell others about them and invite others to enjoy them with you.” (This is just plain ridiculous. I don’t know that it’s within the scope of this post to talk about Bell’s statement, but I thought it was too crazy to pass up. Who doesn’t defend someone or something they truly love when it’s necessary?)

And that’s just a start!

In the postmodern (emergent) view, God ceases to be knowable, because you have emphasized the nebulousness of faith and even God and de-emphasized the point of the journey. God’s infinity swallows up His knowability. Salvation must be pieced together, and we may never fully arrive. This isn’t the way Paul spoke though. On Mars’ Hill he said: “For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.” It sounds like a mystery worth solving to me!

Mystery does not remove human responsibility or the importance of theology and knowing God. Didn’t Paul chide the Jews for having zeal without knowledge in Romans 10:2? Didn’t Jesus chide the disciples for being of little faith in Matthew 14:31? Doubt may be a part of the Christian life, but it isn’t the emphasis of the Christian life. Uncertainty is not proof of humility.

In the end, such postmodern believers insist that the Christian life is all about examining ourselves more and more deeply and not so much about examining the details of doctrine. I would say that postmodern believers simply need to grow up. Yes, there is value in finding our own weaknesses and being honest about failures and hurts. Maturity, however, requires us to stop being so fragile. Spiritual maturity demands growing in grace and in wisdom, laying aside weights and sin, and making Christ our everything. Love covers sin, and we would do well to fall so in love with Jesus that we don’t fall into the temptation of glorifying past failures.

What our world needs is authentic Christians (not transparent Christians) who are willing to – as a friend of mine says- enter the Mystery and abandon themselves to God. But the Mystery need not be nebulous.

“Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” -Jesus, Matthew 16:24-26

Are Jesus’ words simply a command? Oh, I have no doubt that He is telling us what we ought to do. It’s just that it seems to me He is also describing reality for us. He’s stating a fact. He tells us that self-denial is required if you and I want to experience the abundant life. It’s like me telling my students that they have to learn their vocabulary and grammar lessons well in order to become an effective communicator or to master the English language. I’m not simply commanding them to work. I’m explaining to them “how to get there from here.”

We can either live our lives for contemporary happiness (pleasurable feelings) or classic happiness, a life of righteousness, wisdom, peace, and goodness. Philosophers call this “the good life.” Jesus says: “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” He calls this very same sense of classic happiness “the abundant life.” A pleasurable life is completely dependent on external factors- health, wealth, success, money, power, fame, beauty- while true happiness is the result of the internal working of God’s Word and God’s Spirit in a person’s life. It’s the result of a life of conformity to the way God meant life to be lived. This is why Jesus said that those who live out the Beatitudes of Matthew 5 will be “blessed.” That word we translate as “blessed” is the same word that is elsewhere translated “happy.”

How much better is the life of a disciple than the life of a person who is addicted to themselves? If pleasure is the holy grail, then you and I have no choice but to run forever, chasing the next adrenaline rush, the next calorie-filled binge, the next romance, the next purchase, the next sexual encounter….maybe even the next inspiring or energy-filled church service. Since none of these things work well as ends in themselves, we end up like T. S. Eliot’s Hollow Men.

Discipleship, in contrast to narcissism, brings true satisfaction with life, because life gains a whole new sense of meaning and purpose. We have real freedom to do what is right, to live a life of intimacy with God. This life of discipleship and self-denial does not mean living without desire or without anything that brings pleasure. God does not call us to the monastery but to live life in the world but not of the world.

Living the life of the disciple, rather than being a difficult one, is actually quite liberating. There’s no stress from being constantly consumed with the need to feel happy. There’s no need to be in control. There’s no need to keep up with the Jones’ when it comes to possessions, or to mask feelings of emptiness by living vicariously through celebrities. Where would our twisted form of capitalism be without Americans’ codependence on material things and spiritually-bankrupt celebrities? Gary Sinise notwithstanding, that is.

Jesus said that His yoke is easy and His burden is light. Is it possible that self-sacrifice, self-discipline, and yielding to Christ is actually easier than the path most people take? Perhaps God intended for us to live this way, and the initial difficulty in being a true disciple of Christ is merely the same difficulty with forming any good habit. Perhaps it is that a life is discipleship is something you and I can actually get “good” at, a skill that we can learn.

Maybe just as one gets better at soccer, singing, or math, we can get better at the art of discipleship, the art of self-denial.

If you know anything about ABC’s sitcom Scrubs, then you know that narcissism is a major theme of the show. I don’t necessarily endorse the show, but check out the list of episodes and see if a pattern doesn’t emerge. Besides the pattern of the episode titles, there’s the name of the lead character itself- John Dorian. His name is a reference to Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. I won’t spoil the whole novel for you, but suffice it to say that Wilde attempts to show what selfishness and pleasure-seeking will do to a person. In Wilde’s novel, the picture of Dorian is an outward reflection of his inward destruction caused by narcissism. Such selfishness and pleasure-seeking are the two primary characteristics of a narcissistic individual, and it is just such an individual that is becoming predominant in today’s society. Most of our culture has taken on the temperament of an adolescent- no, an infant.

While individuality is a good thing, the sort of individualism seen today is something to be astonished at. We make decisions based on life goals and personal interests as though we weren’t responsible for the well-being of the community at large. We are superficial; we objectify people and are driven only by self-interest. We are passive so long as we are entertained, but we hate boredom. That is the chief evil, since pleasure is the greatest good to be achieved. We define our level of happiness according to how often our cravings for food, entertainment, clothing, and goods are met. We’re concerned with sex, outer beauty, and feeling good. Since these cravings can never bring ultimate satisfaction, they merely form an addiction that will never end.

“Take up your cross and follow Me.”

“Forget it,” our culture says.

Now it’s all about self-gratification. Pain, suffering, enduring difficulty, hard work, and self-denial are so far removed from us, the words of Christ seem foreign. Jesus knows better, though. Suffering brings gain, and losing your life means you will have abundant life.

More on this thought later.

Great as a Burger, Bad as a Worldview

Who can forget the famous old-school commercial for McDonalds’ Big Mac, advertising “two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame seed bun”? I love Big Macs, but then I also have an addiction to White Castle’s Slyders. They’re little guys, but they’re this perfect little blend of a thin slice of beef, cheese, grilled onions, and a bun. Maybe it’s my penchant for anything dealing with food, but I like to relate worldviews to food. There are basically two different kinds of worldviews you and I could study, and they have radically different implications. There are Slyder worldviews and Big Mac worldviews.

Slyder worldviews are palatable to some, but they lack substance in a very real way. In such worldviews, there is no meaning or purpose. There is no objective sense of right or wrong or a means of assigning value to a person or thing. There is no God, no Heaven or Hell, no ultimate justice. There is just the physical world, and death simply ends being and consciousness. In such a view, our world just simply exists. Everything is one big accident. Bertrand Russell asserted that our world was a Slyder world in his Philosophical Essays:

“That man is the product of causes which have no prevision of the end they are achieving: that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be buried underneath the debris of a universe in ruins. Only on the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation be safely built.”

The problem is that, like the White Castle menu item, a Slyder worldview doesn’t describe reality very well. It doesn’t explain how humans function. It’s all good and well to say that monogamy is just a social invention, but that doesn’t explain why the promiscuous are rarely truly satisfied. June Vanderkam, a 2001 graduate of Princeton knows that well: “Hookups do satisfy biology, but the emotional detachment doesn’t satisfy the soul. And that’s the real problem — not the promiscuity, but the lack of meaning.” We all hunger for meaning, and a Slyder worldview does nothing to truly satisfy that hunger. The Slyder worldview robs life of meaning, and fails to replace it with anything, well, meaningful. In our world filled with “reality” TV, celebrity gossip, pornography, drugs and alcoholism, movies, music, video games, and professional sports, one wonders if all of this hype is really just a feeble attempt to stave off society’s craving for real meaning and purpose.

Only Big Mac worldviews can satisfy this craving. Big Mac worldviews attempt to answer questions concerning meaning and purpose.  There is a strong sense of objective right and wrong, and people and things have intrinsic value. God, Heaven, Hell, and ultimate Justice all exist, and God is active in His creation. Everything happens for a purpose, and all of life carries meaning. Compared with Slyder worldviews, a Big Mac worldview is significantly more satisfying, more palatable, and more fulfilling. In a very real way, such a worldview really is what we crave.