Jesus at the Hard Rock Cafe

Photo by Paweł Sikora Sikorr

Larry Hurtado who is a favorite Bible scholar of mine and whom my wife, son, and I got to hear lecture recently, is probably the world's leading expert on how exactly Jesus' followers wrapped their minds around what for them psychologically was an utter impossibility: that this guy they knew was actually God. We can go into that sometime.

Another topic he is studying is just how unique in the world the early Christian movement was. He recently wrote a book called Destroyer of the gods:  Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World, where he points out that a lot of what we take for granted about the whole idea of religion came from Jesus' movement, from Christians.  (*Unfortunately Professor Hurtado passed away in 2019).

A little while back he blogged on one example he came across...

______________________  

Passing by the Hard Rock Café in Edinburgh today, I noticed again their slogan: “Love all, serve all,” and noted that it reflects the (likely unconscious) influence of the NT upon western culture.  For the motto self-evidently owes to the sentiments first expressed in NT passages such as Matthew 5:43-48, with its distinctive injunction to “love your enemies” as well as your “neighbour”, and Matthew 20:26 (and Mark 10:43-44), with the striking demand that “whoever would be great among you must be servant of all.”

I suspect, however, that neither the founders (nor the Seminole Indians of Florida who now own the restaurant chain) are aware of this.  It just shows how the values and themes of the NT have now become part of the conceptual “ground water” of western culture.

My recent book, Destroyer of the gods:  Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World (Baylor University Press, 2016) makes the points that early Christianity (in the first three centuries) had distinctive features, and that these once-distinctive features have now become cultural commonplaces for us.  I don’t refer to the Hard Rock Café or its slogan, but there’s lots of other (and, hopefully, more interesting) stuff that I hope will address our “cultural amnesia.

Was Jesus a Poet?

Jesus reciting one of his most famous works, 
'Blessed are the Poor in Spirit'

Painting by Henrik Olrik

Another answer from my 'Quora ministry':


Q: Was Jesus a Poet ? If yes, how good was he ?



A: Yes, Jesus was most definitely a poet! He certainly had the eye and soul of a poet in weaving the wild flowers that God clothed so grandly and the sparrows ‘not one of [whom] will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care’ into his teaching.

But more to the point, in common with some other ancient teachers and the Israelite prophets, much of Jesus’ teaching is cast in poetic form. Scholars have found that when they reverse-translate Jesus’ sayings back to the original Aramaic (Jesus’ native tongue) they are almost all poetry. This made it easier for the crowds to remember. The scholar Henry Wansbrough says that in Matthew especially, “the rhythm of the sayings is beautifully balanced, often with a neat double opposition (‘grapes from thorns or figs from thistles’ in Matt. 7.16; ‘the harvest is rich but the laborers are few’ Matt. 9.37).” 

This statement by C. E. Schenk was made in the 1920s but is even more true today:

When one comes to the words of Jesus he discovers that in a very true sense His speech answers to the requirements for Hebrew poetry. Examples of synonymous, antithetic, synthetic and causal parallelism are the rule rather than the exception in the utterances of Jesus. For the synonymous form see Matthew 10:24; for the antithetic see Luke 6:41; for the synthetic and causal forms see Luke 9:23 and Matthew 6:7. Not alone are these forms of Hebrew poetry found in the words of Jesus, but also the more involved and sustained poetic utterances (Luke 7:31-32). 

How good was he? Well, 2000 years later people are still reciting his stuff...

Leaving Nazareth

Christ in the Synagogue

Painting by Nikolay Ge, 1868

Nobody upvoted this response, which happens on Quora sometimes. In fact, almost nobody paid attention to the question at all.  But I didn't think it was too bad for a short answer. 


Q: Why did Jesus have to leave Nazareth to get his first followers?

A: Nazareth in Christ’s time was a tiny, insignificant village of around 400 people — not much of an audience. Also, as his quoting of a popular proverb (“not without honor, except in his hometown”) indicates, they were not inclined to see this carpenter, whom they’d watched grow up, as a possible Messiah. In fact, Luke's Gospel reports they were downright hostile! Add to that the rumor that he was illegitimate — born out of wedlock.

To expose his message to as large an audience as possible — and generate followers — it would have been necessary to base his operation in a larger, slightly more cosmopolitan town like Capernaum (population 1500+) and canvas all of Galilee, as the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) describe.

In addition, John’s gospel indicates that Jesus met his earliest and most important students (Peter, Andrew, and possibly John) in the crowds that gathered around John the Baptist, south of Galilee on the Jordan river.

To sum up, Nazareth was a small and rather hostile audience, but Capernaum, the Galilee region, and particularly John the Baptist’s hangers-on provided more fertile soil for Jesus’ unique message.

One

Irenaeus of Lyon

"There is one body and one Spirit, and God chose you to have one hope. There is one Lord, one faith, and one baptism. There is one God and Father of us all, who rules over everyone. He works through all of us and in all of us."

(Letter to the Ephesians chapter 4 verses 4 - 6, ERV)

___________________

Irenaeus was a leader, thinker, and writer in the early Christian Movement. He had grown up in the church at Smyrna (in today's Turkey) led by Polycarp, a legend in the early church. Polycarp had been a student of John the Apostle himself, and he passed on stories and teachings from John and other "elders" in the Movement. Irenaeus absorbed it all with the fabulous mind he had. As an adult he moved east to Lyons, France where he cared for the Movement's outpost there and handed on the 'deposit of faith' as he had heard it from Polycarp, who had received it from St. John the Apostle who received it from... Well, I imagine you can see what makes Irenaeus so important in the history of the Christian Movement.

Today, Irenaeus describes what was in the revelation Jesus entrusted his Apostles with, and how carefully it was handed on.

Now the Church, although scattered over the whole civilized world to the end of the earth, received from the apostles and their disciples its faith in one God, the Father Almighty, who made the heaven, and the earth, and the seas, and all that is in them, and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who was made flesh for our salvation, and in the Holy Spirit, who through the prophets proclaimed the dispensations of God—the comings, the birth of a virgin, the suffering, the resurrection from the dead, and the bodily reception into the heavens of the beloved, Christ Jesus our Lord, and his coming from the heavens in the glory of the Father to restore all things, and to raise up all flesh, that is, the whole human race, so that every knee may bow, of things in heaven and on earth and under the earth, to Christ Jesus our Lord and God and Saviour and King, according to the pleasure of the invisible Father, and every tongue may confess him, and that he may execute righteous judgment on all. 

The spiritual powers of wickedness, and the angels who transgressed and fell into apostasy, and the godless and wicked and lawless and blasphemers among men he will send into the eternal fire. But to the righteous and holy, and those who have kept his commandments and have remained in his love, some from the beginning [of life] and some since their repentance, he will by his grace give life incorrupt, and will clothe them with eternal glory.

Having received this preaching and this faith, as I have said, the Church, although scattered in the whole world, carefully preserves it, as if living in one house. She believes these things [everywhere] alike, as if she had but one heart and one soul, and preaches them harmoniously, teaches them, and hands them down, as if she had but one mouth. For the languages of the world are different, but the meaning of the [Christian] tradition is one and the same. Neither do the churches that have been established in Germany believe otherwise, or hand down any other tradition, nor those among the Iberians, nor those among the Celts, nor in Egypt, nor in Libya, nor those established in the middle parts of the world.

Irenaeus of Lyons (early 2nd century – c. AD 202)
Against All Heresies book 1 chapters 10 sections 1 - 2 (written about AD 180)

Intersection

(This is a slightly expanded repeat of a previous post. I'm still at a conference.)

Jesus of Nazareth taught his students that, "For when two or three gather together in My name, I am there in the midst of them," (Gospel of Matthew 18.20, Voice). The rest of the New Testament, particularly the Acts of the Apostles, is permeated with the idea that he, through the Holy Spirit, is there at meetings of Christians.

This means that church is not a club where we get together for donuts on Sunday, it's a place where Heaven and Earth interlock. Just like Israel's temple in Jerusalem, only more so. Paul the Apostle taught,

What mutual agreement does the temple of God have with idols? For we are the temple of the living God, just as God said, “I will live in them and will walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people."

(Second Letter to the Corinthians 6.16 )

Assuming we haven't forgotten this, the Lord Messiah will quite often speak there.

Are we listening?

"If the voice calls you again, I want you to say, “Speak, Eternal One. Your servant is listening”,” (First Book of Samuel, 3.9, Voice ).

Does the Bible Teach Anything Clearly?

Photo courtesy Rushay (RUSH) Booysen

"Well, that's an odd title for a Christian blog," you may say to yourself.

Maybe, but a scholarly blog I ran across recently (thanks to Twitter) quotes Wayne Meeks, a famous biblical scholar, who believes we should stop using the phrase, "The Bible clearly teaches..."

So let us renounce the phrase, “the Bible clearly teaches” (says Dr. Meeks).  And every time we hear it let us immediately be on our guard... In our situation, when people say, “the Bible clearly teaches,” instead of, for example, “we can learn from the Bible if we stand within a certain community’s tradition,” or “we can find these ideas in Scripture if we construe Scripture in such-and-such a way”… when they do that, they are really masking the locus of the authority they are claiming.

Now, I have to agree with Dr. Meeks in one sense. Most of the times that Christianity has had egg on its face over the last 2000 years have been times when we weren't actually insisting on some scripture but on our own explanation of it. Handy example: the legendary conflict between Galileo and the Catholic Church. What the Church actually ended up defending was the greek scientist Ptolemy's idea of how the universe works -- not that "God the Father Almighty [is the] maker of heaven and earth," as the old creed says. Galileo himself believed that too, after all.

Teachers of Christianity always have to make sure that what we're defending is what the Bible itself says and not our explanation of what the Bible says.

That isn't my main point today but it would make a good topic, so I may post on it in the future.

Fuzziness

That doesn't seem to be Dr. Meeks' main point either. He appears to be saying that the Bible itself isn't clear, that you can't say the Bible clearly teaches anything because it clearly doesn't. To get anything worthwhile out of it at all you must "construe" it or draw its meaning from a "certain community's tradition."

But think about this: All of the things the Bible contains were written by people who knew what they meant at the time. And much of it was written to other people who also knew what they meant. And although we live at a 2 to 3 thousand year remove from their time, it is still entirely possible to recover what they meant. Historians and textual critics and archaeologists do it all the time and with all kinds of books -- not just the Bible.

Have you ever read Homer's Iliad and Odyssey?  You may not have gotten every cultural nuance but did you pick up the main points? Doesn't the Iliad clearly teach that Agamemnon and Achilles, both full of pride, quarrelled over the captured princess Briseis causing Achilles to leave the battle (trust me, it does).

What about Plato and Aristotle? Do we know pretty clearly what they taught? Yes. Why? Because we know a lot about them, their world, and can read their language. Sort of like any other book you read. Including the Bible.

If we read it intelligently, the Bible is quite clear on most things. True some passages are a bit obscure (nobody is sure what St. Paul is getting at here, for instance. Or here.). But it is not a fuzzy, obscure book, and there are a disturbingly large number of things that 'the Bible clearly says'.

Theologian Thursday: Vincent on Finding the Real Thing

The straight stuff

Many, many people claim to follow Jesus or be part of the Christian Movement, even while disagreeing widely with each other. How do you know you're getting the real deal? Today's theological visitor, Vincent of Lérins, tells us that if you want to find the straight stuff you need to go old school.

In the universal or catholic Church itself, we must make sure that we hold the faith that has been believed everywhere, always, by all. For what is actually and strictly "catholic," or "universal," as the name itself and it's nature imply, is spread out universally.  And we will be following this rule if we follow these three things: universality, antiquity, consent. We follow antiquity if we do not depart in any way from the teachings and understandings that were obviously held widely by our holy ancestors and fathers. And we follow consent when we stick to the consensual definitions and determinations of all -- or almost all -- the priests and great teachers in antiquity 

...But someone might say, "Then, won't there be any progress in Christ's Church?" On the contrary, there will be as much progress as possible. Only someone who envies humans and hates God would try to stop it. But it must be real progress, not alteration, of the faith. In progress something grows within itself, but in alteration it is transformed into something else. So the intelligence, knowledge, wisdom of individuals and of everyone, of a single person just as much as the whole Church, should grow and make vast and vigorous progress over the ages and centuries. But this will happen within each type of thing, that is in the same teaching and in the same meaning.  

Vincent of Lérins (died AD 445)
Commonitory, chapters 2 & 23

Why Unpack?

As we were discussing in the last post, Jesus' original teaching to his disciples was slowly unpacked and developed over the following few centuries. Not changed or discarded, but filled out and explained.  But why should it be "unpacked" at all?

Why can't we just stick with "the pure word of the Bible" and ignore whatever happened after the last New Testament book was written? Or better yet (as some people say) why not go by Jesus' words alone. The Apostles never understood him anyway, you know.

One reason is this: People ask questions.

The appearance of a person like Jesus raised a lot of questions. Eventually they dawned on people and the early Christian Movement had basically two choices: either tell them to 'just believe' (which was tried), or come up with an answer. And not just any answer, not something off the top of your head. After all, you were handling a revelation from God, not just some good ideas devised by a philosopher. This required some serious thinking.

Just one example: here is a question asked by an early critic of Christianity named Celsus: If there is only one God, as Jesus himself taught, and you worship Jesus also as a God, how are the two related? "If," Celsus wrote, "these people worshipped one God alone, and no other, they would perhaps have some valid argument against the worship of others. But they pay excessive reverence to one who has but lately appeared among men, and they think it no offense against God if they worship also His servant," (Against Celsus, book 8 chapter 11 - 14)

It was this question, which Christians had already been asking themselves for awhile, that led 150 years later to the concept of the Trinity.

The Standard Model

Faithfully passing on the teaching

While talking yesterday about everybody's favorite segment, "Theologian Thursday," I said that the theologians Authentic Light gives a platform to are those who base their ideas on what was

"taught by Christ to his Apostles, passed on by them to the Christian Movement, and it's ramifications largely unfurled and explained by around AD 400... the consensus reached by the Christian Movement doing the hard work of theology during that time." 

In other places I've mentioned that this site essentially teaches the Apostle's Creed or a deposit of faith that was filled in as time went by.

Behind each of those descriptions is a bit of history that I'd like to spell out for you in case you've ever wondered. It's nothing very complex but is important to realize. In one sentence: You can trace a smooth, direct line through history from Jesus teaching in the1st century to what the Christian Movement was teaching in the 5th.

By "smooth" I don't mean easy; there was plenty of debate and controversy. But they are the same profound "doctrines" -- Jesus' doctrines -- once they have been unpacked.

Jesus, humanly speaking, was a 1st century Palestinian Jew whose deeds and words as Messiah have that fact as their background. He taught his Apostles who faithfully handed it on to the Christian Movement. We can see those same teachings being elaborated in the New Testament and on through the first several centuries until a consensus on most questions was reached.

This "Standard Model" Christianity is the authentic light that we teach here -- as will all the theologians who visit.

To put it differently

Here are the same points elaborated a bit for people who like elaborated points:

1. Jesus of Nazareth did not exist in a vacuum. Instead he lived in a specific time and situation (namely 2nd Temple Judaism in early 1st century Palestine) carrying out the role of Messiah of Israel. What this background was like has been nailed down to a high degree of detail by historical research, and in this atmosphere a good number of silly ideas about him could, frankly, never have happened. On the other hand, the general situation described in the Gospels fits that time like a glove. Therefore his life, death, resurrection, and teaching must be understood against that backdrop if you want to know how people originally took him.

2. Like any good rabbi, Jesus taught his way by word and deed to his students, the Apostles. Unlike most rabbis, he specifically ordered them to teach it to the rest of the world. History shows that the "Easter Event" (fancy scholar talk for his resurrection) brought the Christian Movement into being, and Jesus' teaching was faithfully passed on to them.

3. From there you can trace a smooth progress of those teachings being elaborated and explained. You can see this happen throughout the New Testament, out into the 2nd century after the first generation of Christians had died out, and through the following centuries until most of the big questions had been settled through prayer, discussion, debate, and peer review finally leading to a consensus.

Lost History?

 Some groups have the belief that somewhere along the way something awful happened that radically corrupted Christ's Movement into a "false church." I used to belong to one of those groups. We liked to quote a book whose name I forget to the effect that, "And so [after the last Apostle died, around AD 96] a curtain fell over church history for 100 years. When it rose again a very different church had taken its place."

But this is untrue. No curtain fell and we have at least as much information on what happened during the 2nd century as we do concerning the first, when the New Testament was being written. In fact, while writing this post I just the idea of putting up a list of all the Christian writings from AD 96 through AD 196.

My point is that the history of the 2nd century shows that same smooth progress of elaboration and explanation of Jesus' original teachings as had happened in the first. The only thing that had truly changed by AD 200, which was already changing when "the curtain came down," was how the church was governed now that the Apostles were gone. But then, that would make a good subject for another post!

Every Day

You're right, I haven't posted too much in June. And here I've promised to finish a series on life after death (and before the resurrection), one on the Great Announcement (aka the Gospel), and a long delayed explanation of the Trinity. What a sluggard!

So it might seem a little foolhardy for me to to announce that from now on there will be a post -- an article, quote, video, scripture with brief comment or what have you -- every day of the week. But that's what I'm doing.

There are several reasons why I sometimes stop posting. It's usually not because of writer's block; instead it's normally because I've never committed to a writing schedule where I have to put write something everyday, no matter how lame it is. Without that commitment pushing me I tend to get buried in a pile of tiny details as I try to get my post just so. Or overwhelmed by a frequent sense of inadequacy: "What do I really have to contribute anyway?" 

But it's pretty much "Writing 101" that getting up everyday and just writing for a specific period of time is what most writers need to do in order to produce anything. I've always resisted doing that.

But I really do need to post here every day from now on. Authentic Light is something I feel like I have to do, regardless of the depth or shallowness, usefulness or uselessness of what I post. Hopefully you'll find something worthwhile.

The Purpose of Authentic Light

Justin Martyr in his
Philosopher's robe

This is the fourth and final post of my beginning-of-the-year "housekeeping" series. The other three can be found here, here, and here. This one will be about what Authentic Light's purpose is, what I'm hoping to accomplish here.

In the first half of the 2nd century, there was a man named Justin whom I admire quite a lot. He was a philosopher who had been a follower of Plato until he met an old man as he was walking by the sea one day. He continued to wear his philosopher's robe but from that day on he taught what he considered the ultimate philosophy: Christianity. He once described what he did this way:

“I live over a man named Martinus at the Timiotinian Bath... If anyone wanted to visit me, I communicated the teachings of truth to them.”

That's pretty much what the Authentic Light blog is for: communicating simple, radical Christianity to interested parties. It's simple because in a way there's not much to it. The basics can be recited in under a minute. And it's radical because that simple teaching can (and does) change everything.

Brand Names

But there is a dizzying number of  brands of Christianity, aren't there, all clamoring for us to do it their way and subtly -- or not so subtly -- denigrating the competing brands. When people unfamiliar with the Movement Christ founded, or who have only heard bad things about it, or who had a bad experience with one brand, decide to look into Christianity for themselves, they are faced with a spinning, bewildering sea of claims and counterclaims. As St. Paul said about another type of confusion, "If some people come in who are without understanding or don’t believe, they will say you are crazy," (First Letter to the Corinthians chapter 14 verse 22, ERV).

At one time though, Christianity was one thing, and every follower of Jesus knew what it was. It was taught "everywhere, always, and by all". Christianity, at the beginning, was the deposit, the revelation we discussed yesterday. It's basic outlines can be seen throughout the New Testament and then, before the last Apostle had died, traced in the letters of Clement, Ignatius of Antioch, and Polycarp of Smyrna, and in the writings of Aristides, Athenagoras, and the noble Justin Martyr mentioned above. Plus a large crowd of others. It slowly expanded until the late 400's as more meat was put on the bones. But they were always the same bones given once and for all to the saints, expanding (changing the metaphor here) as they were unrolled and their implications realized.

Today, (giving up and mixing my metaphors with abandon) those same unrolled bones lie at the base of every Christian group -- Catholic, Protestant, Anglican, and Orthodox. In many churches creeds are read every Sunday, ostensibly to remind us of this. We hear them, but we often don't recognize what the words mean. And of course, that eventually gets boring, and ultimately meaningless.

But if you do learn the words, if you grasp the full meaning of that wildly, madly, powerfully, wondrous revelation (and no, it can never be fully grasped because it speaks of infinite things), you might just find yourself swept up in a revolution far bigger than yourself.

As one of my favorite theologians says, "I plan to present nothing new or original in these pages... I am dedicated to unoriginality." It is my contention that ordinary, garden variety Christianity is the most exciting thing in the world. Authentic Light is not here to argue or with a compulsion to convince anybody. All I hope to do, like Justin Martyr, is to "communicate the teachings of truth." This site is content to turn that message loose in all its rugged glory and let it work.

Most Eligible Scripture

If you come here to learn or discuss basic, historic Christianity, chances are you've been looking into your Bible quite a bit. Of course, so are a lot of other people. Ever wonder what everybody else might be interested in?

According to the leading online Bible site BibleGateway.org here are the top 10 scriptures looked up by the 456 million visitors to their site in 2013:

1. John 3:16
2. Jeremiah 29:11
3. Philippians 4:13
4. Romans 8:28
5. Psalm 23
6. Proverbs 3:5-6
7. 1 Corinthians 13:4-7
8. Romans 12:2
9. Philippians 4:6
10. Joshua 1:9


And we most wanted to know what Scripture taught about these 10 topics:

1. love
2. peace
3. faith
4. children
5. heart
6. hope
7. joy
8. prayer
9, strength
10. pray

The article has some other interesting factoids as well. Read it here.

"... Out of the holy Scriptures"

Meditation for a Sunday Morning
(Borrowed from the Creedal Christian blog, one of my favorites.)


"I now feel compelled instead to write to encourage you to contend earnestly for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints."

Letter of Jude chapter 1 verse 3

______________________

No doctrine concerning the divine and saving mysteries of the faith, however trivial, may be taught without the backing of the holy Scriptures. We must not let ourselves be drawn aside by mere persuasion and cleverness of speech. Do not even give absolute belief to me, the one who tells you these things, unless you receive proof from the divine Scriptures of what I teach. For the faith that brings us salvation acquires its force, not from fallible reasonings, but from what can be proved out of the holy Scriptures.

 ~ St. Cyril of Jerusalem (ca. 313-386)