Book Write-Up: A Doubter's Guide to the Ten Commandments

John Dickson.  A Doubter’s Guide to the Ten Commandments: How, For Better or Worse, Our Ideas About the Good Life Come from Moses and Jesus.  Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016.  See here to buy the book.

John Dickson has a Ph.D. in Ancient History from Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.  In A Doubter’s Guide to the Ten Commandments, Dickson comments on each of the ten commandments.  Although Dickson in his comments shares his knowledge of ancient history with readers and refers them to scholarly books, this book is popular rather than scholarly.

Here are some of my comments on the book:

A. Narrowing down Dickson’s approach to the commandments is difficult, for Dickson does a variety of things throughout the book.  On some commandments, he refers to what the commandments may have meant in light of their ancient Near Eastern context.  In other chapters, by contrast, that sort of analysis was sorely lacking, and Dickson focused instead on philosophical issues (i.e., is God necessary for morality to exist?) or how Judaism and Christianity compare with other world religions.  Both of these issues are relevant to contemporary debates between Christians and atheists.  Parts of the book are rather homiletical, as Dickson quotes such thinkers as C.S. Lewis and John Calvin.  Throughout the book, Dickson discusses the significance of the commandments in the New Testament: how the New Testament interprets, applies, or amplifies the commandments.

The book had a lot of asides and was somewhat meandering.  In some cases, Dickson seemed contradictory, as when he was addressing the question of whether God in the Old Testament blessed people materially as a reward for good behavior and whether that affirmed the prosperity Gospel.  Dickson is against the prosperity Gospel, but he was rather contradictory on material blessings in the Old Testament.  There were also occasions when his point was a bit unclear.  He says more than once that what has influenced Western civilization for the better has been the commandments as they have been interpreted in Christianity, rather than Judaism or their original meaning.  What exactly Dickson’s point was in making that statement is difficult to determine.  Was this his justification for looking at what the New Testament said about the commandments?  Was he somehow marginalizing what the commandments meant in their ancient Near Eastern context or Judaism?  But Dickson does discuss what they meant within those contexts, often positively!  Even the subtitle of the book is confusing: “How, For Better or Worse, Our Ideas About the Good Life Come From Moses and Jesus.”  Better or worse?  Dickson argues consistently that the ten commandments made a positive contribution to Western civilization.  Where’s this “worse” come from?

Part of the book’s charm is in its thoughtful, informed, and honest meanderings.  Still, perhaps the book could have been better organized, with more consideration of the commandments’ ancient Near Eastern context and their place in biblical religion.  In each chapter on the commandments, Dickson could have had sections on what a commandment meant in its original context, how Judaism and Christianity interpreted it, and that commandment’s relevance to today.

B.  Dickson’s overall approach is to see biblical religion as different from, and superior to, other religions.  It is interesting how Christian apologists take different approaches in their comparison of biblical religions with other religions, and the point that they believe their comparison is making.  Dickson stresses the contrasts: he contrasts the Sabbath commandment with ancient views on rest and work, the biblical God with pagan gods, and Christian attitudes on charity with pagan attitudes.  He regards biblical religion as distinct, superior, and revolutionary.  Yet, there are other Christian apologists, such as David Marshall, who look at similarities between Christianity and other religions and imply that this shows God is revealing Godself to humanity, cross-culturally.  (Marshall also makes contrasts and believes that biblical religion is revolutionary.)  Do the biblical religion’s differences from other religions attest to its truth, or are its similarities with other religions what demonstrate the truth of what it is saying?  Such a discussion would be interesting!

The points that Dickson makes are certainly relevant and important to consider.  There may be truth in a lot of what he says about the differences between biblical religion and other religions.  At the same time, one should remember that there are other perspectives on this issue, and that these other perspectives, too, may be referring to details that are true, or that are part of the picture.  Atheist biblical scholar Hector Avalos recently quoted on John Loftus’ “Debunking Christianity” blog a statement by Christian scholar John Goldingday.  This statement appears on pages 42-43 of Goldingday’s book, Do We Still Need the New Testament?:

“What difference did Jesus’ coming make to the world? It has been argued that ‘The Church has made more changes on earth for good than any other movements of force in history,’
including the growth of hospitals, universities, literacy and education, capitalism and free enterprise, representative government, separation of political powers, civil liberty, the abolition of slavery, modern science, the discovery of the Americas, the elevation of women, the civilizing of primitive cultures, and the setting of languages to writing.

“It is easy to dispute this claim. The church resisted some of these developments just listed, some are not particularly Christian, and all were encouraged by humanistic forces and reflect Greek thinking as much as gospel thinking.”

There are passages in Greco-Roman literature that depict Zeus as just and compassionate.  Hospitality was an honored value in the Greco-Roman world, which is why Josephus tried to present Judaism as a compassionate religion to his Roman audience.  Morton Smith, in his article “Common Theology of the Ancient Near East,” which appeared in the Journal of Biblical Literature 71 (1952) 135-147, argued that the ancient Israelites resembled other ancient Near Eastern societies in their belief in a god who was just and compassionate.

This is not to suggest that Dickson should repudiate his viewpoint.  This book would have been better, however, had he thoughtfully wrestled with the other side, as he thoughtfully engages perspectives throughout the book.

C.  There are times when Dickson makes claims without telling the reader the source for his claims.  When he does document his claims, however, he is very helpful.  When Dickson contrasts Christian attitudes on charity with pagan attitudes, he refers readers to a scholarly book on the subject.  When Dickson contrasts Jesus’ stance on vows with Jewish stances, Dickson refers readers to specific passages in the Mishnah about vows that are not binding.

D.  The book is informative.  Dickson’s interpretation of the Sabbath commandment in light of ancient conceptions of work is noteworthy.  Dickson also refers to a medieval Christian concept that a poor person who steals to feed his family is technically not stealing, since the poor person is entitled to provision.  Dickson probably does not say this to recommend such behavior, but rather to show that the commandment against stealing is about more than what’s yours is yours, and what’s mine is mine.

E.  Reading the Sermon on the Mount can be difficult.  When Jesus tells us to reconcile with our brother who has something against us before we offer our gift to God (Matthew 5:24), does that mean we have to make everyone like us, before we can worship God?  But Jesus offended people!  When Jesus says that those who lust after women are adulterers at heart (Matthew 5:27-32), does Jesus forbid men to have a natural sex drive?  And is Jesus really equating hate with murder and lust with adultery?  When I told a secular therapist that, she was baffled: of course, she thought that actual murder was worse than hating someone!

An asset to this book is that Dickson engages these questions.  In some cases, he merely makes assertions.  In other cases, he offers an argument for his interpretation, as he does regarding Matthew 5:27-32.  His sensitivity to these issues was impressive.  His interpretations are reasonable, yet they maintain the challenge of the Sermon on the Mount.

F.  There were discussions in Dickson’s book that were inspiring and edifying.  A discussion that particularly comes to mind concerns how Christians can love everybody, while still maintaining high standards about what is right and wrong.  Humility about one’s own shortcomings plays a key role in that, according to Dickson.
This is a good book, and I am definitely open to reading other books by Dickson.

I received a complimentary review copy of this book from BookLook Bloggers, in exchange for an honest review.

David Marshall on Bart Ehrman's Comparison of Jesus in the Gospels with Apollonius

http://christthetao.blogspot.com/2015/12/bart-ehrman-scams-his-students.html

Note: I don't endorse the post's provocative title, but the post itself is an informative evaluation of Ehrman's argument.

Book Write-Up: Beyond Belief, by Elaine Pagels

Elaine Pagels.  Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas.  New York: Vintage Books, 2003.

Elaine Pagels is a professor of religion at Princeton University.  I have read two of her other books, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent and The Origin of Satan, and found her to be a compelling narrator.

I decided to purchase Beyond Belief in 2011, when I was reading some books by Christian apologist David Marshall.  Marshall was disputing the idea that the so-called Gnostic Gospels were as religiously or historically authoritative as the Gospels in the New Testament.  The so-called Gnostic Gospels are deemed by many scholars to be later than the synoptic Gospels, mainstream New Testament scholars generally do not look to the so-called Gnostic Gospels in attempting to reconstruct historically what Jesus said and did, and scholars who argue that the Gospel of Thomas is later than the synoptic Gospels appeal to possible indications that it drew from the synoptic Gospels.

But I was curious.  I was aware of scholars who made a big deal about the so-called Gnostic Gospels and maintained that there was diversity in early Christianity—-I thought of Elaine Pagels, Karen King, and Bart Ehrman.  I wondered if they seriously believed that Jesus could have been a Gnostic, or Gnostic-like (since the label of Gnosticism itself has come under attack within scholarship, as Pagels acknowledges), and if they held that the so-called Gnostic Gospels were as historically authoritative as the New Testament Gospels.  Well, I read Bart Ehrman’s Lost Christianities, and even he seemed to acknowledge that the Gospels outside of the New Testament were later than the New Testament ones.  Recently, since I found that my review books have not been arriving with haste, I decided finally to read Pagel’s book to get her perspective.

Essentially, Pagels does regard the Gospel of Thomas as later than the synoptic Gospels, but she believes that it came before the Gospel of John in the late first century C.E.  Actually, her contention is that the Gospel of John was responding to the Gospel of Thomas: whereas the Gospel of Thomas encourages people to look within themselves to find God, which they can do because they are made in God’s image, the Gospel of John rejects such an experiential approach and exhorts people to look to Jesus to find God.  Pagels observes that Thomas is portrayed negatively in John’s Gospel, and she notes that Thomas in John’s Gospel even missed out on getting the Holy Spirit when Jesus was giving his disciples the Spirit.  While Pagels does not go into much detail about how John’s portrayal of Thomas constitutes an attack on the Gospel of Thomas’ ideology, she does note one area in which it might: Thomas in John’s Gospel wants to see for himself that Jesus is raised from the dead, and, after Jesus shows himself to Thomas, Jesus praises those who do not have to see to believe.  Thomas in John’s Gospel had an experiential approach to religion, Pagels states, and the Gospel of Thomas also had an experiential approach; John’s Gospel, however, rejects such an approach.

But does the Gospel of Thomas in any way reflect what the historical Jesus was like?  Pagels does not tackle this question head-on, but she raises a variety of considerations.  She expresses some openness to the idea that the Gospel of John reflects eyewitness testimony to Jesus, for she states that “His account shows his familiarity with Judaea and its local Jewish practices, and includes details which suggest that he traveled with Jesus and his other disciples during their last journey to Jerusalem, as he claims to have done” (page 59).  But she also mentions other views. 

Overall, my impression is that Pagels thinks that Christianity has always been diverse, even in the first century.  According to Pagels, Mark’s Gospel seems to portray Jesus as a man who became divine, whereas John and Thomas depict Jesus as already divine and pre-existent (on some level, in the case of the Gospel of Thomas), and Paul refers to an earlier Christian hymn about Jesus’ pre-existence in the form of God (Philippians 2).  The Didache, a Jewish-Christian document that Pagels says predates the gospels of Matthew and Luke by ten years (though she refers in an endnote to scholars who argue differently), presents the Lord’s supper as a ritual of unity among believers, whereas the Gospel of Mark associates it with Jesus’ death.

As far as I could see in reading this book, Pagels does not talk about the historical Jesus that much, for her focus is on the diverse things that early Christianity said about Jesus.  Would not John’s possible status as an eyewitness to Jesus make him historically authoritative about what Jesus said and taught?  I cannot speak for Pagels, but she might respond that, even if John was an eyewitness to Jesus, he had his own interpretation of Jesus’ significance, as did other Christians in the first century.  I don’t know if Pagels would go so far as to say that all we have are interpretations when it comes to Jesus, but she does seem to believe that interpretations are significant.  Consequently, she does not religiously marginalize the Gospel of Thomas but finds it useful to her spiritually, and she does not appear to believe that church fathers were upholding more authoritative Gospels when they affirmed the synoptics (John’s Gospel, according to Pagels, was more controversial) while dismissing other Gospels.  For her, it seems to me, the Gospel of Thomas had something valuable to say, whether or not it reflected the historical Jesus, and she says that both the church and the voices that came to be marginalized suffered when the other voices were silenced.

In Beyond Belief, Pagels attempts to chronicle how the other voices came to be excluded.  She says that Christians were persecuted, certain church fathers sought to unify the church, and they were dismayed by new prophetic voices.  They also believed that the so-called Gnostic Christians were encouraging cliquishness by saying that Christians who followed their teaching had superior understanding to Christians who did not.  After Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity, Constantine wanted for Christians to arrive at some unity of belief rather than squabbling amongst themselves.  Although Pagels does not appear to care for the outcome of these events, she does not demonize the church fathers or Constantine, for she is rather sympathetic to the church fathers as they sought to preserve the suffering church, argues that Constantine was more open to diversity than many people realize, and notes some of Constantine’s positive policies, such as the ones that helped the poor.  As a historian and an effective narrator, she seeks to understand the perspectives of historical figures.

Pagels depicts the second century church as persecuted, and I wonder if she would modify that position in light of Candida Moss’ The Myth of Persecution (see my post about that book here).  Unlike a number of other people (i.e., atheist and Christian apologists), I do not think that Moss was arguing that Christians never suffered at the hands of authorities in the first two centuries, or at least that her arguments necessarily lead in that direction.  Rather, she is saying that the Roman authorities did not specifically single out Christians for persecution, even if they prosecuted Christians for crimes, and that martyrdom stories contain anachronisms and served an ideological purpose.  Still, Pagels does appear to accept the historicity of some of these martyrdom stories, and that is why I wonder if she would modify her position in light of Moss’ arguments.

Another question that was in my mind concerned allegorical interpretation of the Bible.  Pagels says that Irenaeus was against how the so-called Gnostic Christians sought deeper meaning in the Bible and the story of Jesus, which would indicate that he supported a more literal interpretation.  But there were many church fathers who engaged in allegorical interpretation of the Bible.  Would Irenaeus oppose that, or would he say that it was all right, as long as it agreed with a literal interpretation of the story of Jesus (his understanding of orthodoxy)?

Pagels talks about other fascinating topics as well: how some church fathers opposed the new prophets by saying that prophecy ceased, whereas other church fathers did not go that far; so-called Gnostic Christian stances on baptism; and how certain so-called Gnostic Christians responded to the threat of excommunication by saying that they did not even believe in that kind of unloving God.  Moreover, while so-called Gnostic views often strike me as cryptic, there were times when what they were saying seemed wise, or down-to-earth.  I think of the statement that truth comes to us in reference to our readiness to receive it, or Valentinus’ view that Jesus overturning the tables symbolizes Jesus overthrowing things in our lives that inhibit us from being a fit place of habitation for the Holy Spirit.

There are scholars who may disagree with Pagels’ arguments, but I found Beyond Belief to be an enjoyable and informative read.

Book Write-Up: The Saviour God

S.G.F. Brandon, ed.  The Saviour God: Comparative Studies in the Concept of Salvation Presented to Edwin Oliver James, Professor Emeritus in the University of London by Colleagues and Friends to Commemorate His Seventy-Fifth Birthday.  Manchester University Press, 1963.

This 1963 book was edited by S.G.F. Brandon, who would later go on to write Jesus and the Zealots (see my review of that here).  The Saviour God is a collection of scholarly essays about the concept of salvation in various religions, including ancient Near Eastern religion, mystery cults, the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, Buddhism, Taoism, Yoruba African religion, Islam, and Hinduism.  “Salvation” is a broad-ranging term, and it can encompass gaining eternal life, receiving blessings in the here and now, becoming enlightened or freed from selfishness, being released from the cycle of reincarnation, or political liberation.  A common thread across these religions (with exceptions) is a reliance on some higher power for salvation, whether that be defined as a deity, an advanced human being, or something more impersonal.

At least three issues in particular stood out to me as I read this book:

1.  A couple of scholars touched on the question of whether Christianity influenced certain non-Christian conceptions of salvation.  The Yoruba in Africa have a story about the Supreme Being sending a divine sort of being (though some versions say he was human) named Qrunmila to the land to persuade the gods to accept the elements or to give people guidance and blessing.  The author of the essay about this topic, E.G. Parrinder, does not believe that this story came about through Christian influence, for “most of these myths seem indigenous and they are not hard to explain from local materials” (page 121).  While stories about Qrunmila and other African saviors may overlap with Christianity, it is important to recognize that Yoriba religion and its treatment of the savior deity have their own emphases, some of which differ from Christianity; such emphases include divination, a focus on fertility, and avatars.

Another scholar in the book asked the question of whether certain Buddhist conceptions of a savior could have been influenced by Nestorian Christianity, but this scholar chose not to to answer that question.

2.  Within popular debates, people wonder if the myth of Osiris had any influence on the story of Jesus, since Osiris was a dying and a rising god.  Detractors among both Christians and non-Christians emphatically say “no,” noting that Osiris after he was resurrected impregnated Isis and went to the underworld to rule, which was quite different from Jesus’ resurrection (see my post about this topic here).  Interestingly, the scholars in The Saviour God who wrote about Osiris knew a lot of the Egyptian story—-Osiris and Seth fight, Seth kills Osiris, Osiris is resurrected and impregnates Isis with Horus, Isis later exacts revenge on Seth, etc.—-but they left out the part about Osiris going to the underworld soon after his resurrection.  One scholar quoted a passage by Lucius, a participant in the Isis mystery religion, that denied that Osiris was even under the earth, placing him instead in some pure, deathless realm.  All of this puzzled me.  Was not Osiris the Egyptian lord of the underworld?  Did these scholars not know that?  Did Osiris going to the underworld become more evident to scholars over time?  If so, did such a discovery or fresh reading mark the time when scholars concluded that the Osiris-Jesus parallel did not hold water?

3.  When I was reading David Marshall’s books, an issue that came up was tribal and Asian acknowledgment of a Supreme Being.  Marshall was criticizing the view that religion went through animist, polytheist, then monotheistic stages, arguing instead that belief in a Supreme Being was long a part of tribal and (certain) Asian religions.  See my posts about that topic here, here, and here.  Where did the essays in The Saviour God line up on this issue?  The essay about African religions disputed that the Yoruba religion was animistic instead of theistic, noting a belief in a Supreme Being, while also acknowledging diversity and complexity.  An essay about Chinese religion, however, regarded Chinese religion as focused on ancestors initially, before there developed some sort of belief in a Supreme Being.

Book Write-Up: Can Evangelicals Learn from World Religions?, by Gerald R. McDermott

Gerald R. McDermott.  Can Evangelicals Learn from World Religions?: Jesus, Revelation & Religious Traditions.  Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2000.

I would like to thank Intervarsity Press for my review copy of this book.

Can Evangelicals Learn from World Religions?  Professor Gerald R. McDermott answers yes.  McDermott sees examples in Scripture of God using concepts or people from non-Israelite religions to teach God’s people.  There is Abraham’s equation of the Canaanite god of Melchizedek with his own God, the ancient Israelite appropriation of the Canaanite god El, the way that God functioned as Abraham’s personal deity (a type of deity that was common in ancient Mesopotamia), and Jesus’ appeal to certain Gentiles as exemplars of faith.  McDermott looks at church history, noting times when concepts in non-Christian religions helped notorious Christian thinkers through intellectual snags, providing them with resources to arrive at reasonable explanations for puzzles in the Christian faith.  McDermott also discusses how concepts from Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Islam can instruct evangelical Christians, as they highlight to evangelicals elements of Christianity that might be neglected, teach evangelicals a new way to understand and apply their tradition, or demonstrate piety and devotion to evangelicals.

Another significant feature of this book is that McDermott interacts with the question of how God might be involved in world religions.  McDermott notes that non-Christian religions have concepts that overlap with Christianity, and McDermott believes that God is somehow behind that, revealing himself to non-Christians.  Why doesn’t God provide people in non-Christian religions with a fuller revelation, rather than just dropping some concepts here-and-there that overlap with Christianity?  McDermott notes that there are times when God does provide a number of people with a revelation that is incomplete: Jesus, for example, spoke to the multitudes in parables, while offering fuller explanations to his disciples; ancient Israel had a conception of God that was incomplete, at least in comparison with the revelation in Jesus Christ.  According to McDermott, God may be using “veils to protect His pearls from being trampled by swine” (page 102), or God may be basing his level of revelation on where people are spiritually.  God may not want to reveal grace fully to some cultures, preferring instead to allow them to be in a system of salvation by works so that they can learn human inability.  McDermott also refers extensively to Jonathan Edwards, who offered reasons that God put Israel through a system of animal sacrifices rather than revealing to them grace through Jesus Christ at the outset: so that ancient Israelites could learn respect for God’s law and the necessity for atonement, whereas ancient Israelites might take God’s mercy for granted had they been permitted at that time simply to flee to God’s mercy.  Similarly, McDermott contends, God has reasons for giving an incomplete revelation of himself within non-Christian religions.

Does God reveal bits and pieces about himself within world religions to bring non-Christians to salvation?  McDermott says a couple of times that his focus in this book is revelation within world religions, not the question of whether or not non-Christians can be saved within those religions.  But McDermott does say on page 103 that “some of the religions may be providential preparations for future peoples to receive the full revelation of God in Christ” (page 103).  Whether or not McDermott believes that people in non-Christian religions can be saved with the light that God gives them, or that non-Christian religions can provide the soil for non-Christians in the afterlife to receive salvation through Jesus Christ, McDermott does appear to maintain that God’s incomplete revelation of himself in non-Christian religions may have a salvific purpose: that God could be setting the stage for future generations to receive Christ.

On some level, I have encountered the sorts of arguments that McDermott presents in other sources.  C.S. Lewis stated in his chapter “Nice People or New Men” in Mere Christianity that “There are people in other religions who are being led by God’s secret influence to concentrate on those parts of their religion which are in agreement with Christianity, and who thus belong to Christ without knowing it.”  (Not that McDermott explicitly believes that those non-Christians are saved, for he does not take a position on that in this book, but C.S. Lewis, like McDermott, talks about people in world religions responding to Christian-like themes within their own religions.)  David Marshall’s books talk about areas in which world religions overlap with Christianity.  Ron Dart, a preacher I listened to growing up, said that the sacrificial system within the Old Testament was designed to reinforce to ancient Israelites that they needed a substitutionary death to atone for their sins.  (I don’t know if I agree with Dart on this, for I don’t think there is evidence that the animals were expiating sin by dying in place of the sinners, but I don’t want to get too deeply into that topic here.)  Paul Knitter and William Placher discuss what Christians can learn from non-Christian religions, and how non-Christian religions can deepen Christians’ appreciation of themes within the Christian faith.


I cannot say, however, that McDermott’s book was boring to me, or that it was a “Been there, done that” sort of book, as far as I was concerned.  I learned from McDermott’s book about the differences between fundamentalism and evangelicalism (since I, as one who is rather liberal, tend to conflate the two), and the significance of the filoque (the idea that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son) to the question of whether God is involved in other religions.  I also found McDermott’s discussion of practical ways that world religions can teach evangelicals to be quite edifying.  As one who is insecure about whether people like me or not, I especially appreciated McDermott’s discussion of how certain Asian religions address what attitude one should have when one is disliked.

I was recently telling my Mom that McDermott’s book is actually one of the best books about theology that I have read as of late.  (I distinguish theology from biblical studies.)  I have been reading more liberal theologians, and their language is often dense, plus I wonder where exactly they are going with their arguments, if anywhere.  McDermott, however, managed to be deep and scholarly, and yet lucid and practical.  While some of his abstract discussions were not exactly neat (since, well, conceptualizing things accurately with all of the exceptions to the rule can be a difficult task), I did appreciate that he provided examples from church history of the sort of thing that he was talking about: Christians learning from other religions.

Do I have any disagreements with McDermott’s arguments in this book?  Well, I have questions that are rooted in some of my own outlook.  I tend to gravitate towards the historical-critical method of interpreting the Bible—-a method that interprets the biblical writings in light of their own historical contexts.  I believe that there are areas in which the historical-critical method overlaps with and diverges from McDermott’s approach.  Where the two overlap is that both essentially acknowledge that biblical religions have been influenced by other religions.  (Well, some scholars would minimize that influence, but my impression is that many biblical scholars acknowledge it.)  Where the two diverge is that historical criticism would say that we should attempt to understand the Hebrew Bible in light of its ancient Near Eastern context, while denying that we can understand it in reference to early Christianity, Asian religions, Neo-Platonism, or Islam.  My impression is that historical criticism would also treat the biblical writings as rather static—-that they meant something to their original authors and audiences, within their historical context, and that is their meaning—-whereas McDermott presents a more dynamic process in which the Spirit supposedly highlights fresh implications to the biblical writings and brings the church to newer understandings (without contradicting earlier orthodoxy).  A historical critical reading, to use an example, would probably say that the Hebrew Bible was okay with slavery, and that’s that, whereas McDermott argues that the Spirit brought the church to the realization that slavery was wrong.  McDermott also apparently disagrees with how historical criticism highlights tension within the Bible, for he believes that the Bible has a coherent narrative.

I wouldn’t exactly say that McDermott should have devoted a section to the topic of historical criticism, but I do believe that the topic is relevant to the sorts of issues that he is discussing.  How can we justify hermeneutical approaches that go beyond the historical-critical method, as McDermott's approach seems to do?  On what basis can we justify interpretations of the biblical text that don’t limit themselves to the text’s original, historical meaning?  Reader response?  Intertextuality?  McDermott's approach is arguably rather intertextual in that McDermott, as a reader, juxtaposes the Bible with the teachings of other religions, allowing the latter to influence his understanding of the former.  But, in contrast to many reader response and intertextual approaches, McDermott does not seem to locate interpretive authority in the reader, but rather he appears to believe that the Spirit helps people to interpret the text as God desires.  I find that approach rather subjective, but I do admit that McDermott's intertextuality does generate interesting thoughts.

I also question whether McDermott should be so quick to dismiss the tension within Scripture (if I am correct that he does that).  Perhaps biblical diversity has the same theological significance that McDermott sees in the existence of diverse religions throughout the world: that God is interacting with people in different ways, based on where they are.

That said, this is an excellent book.  Click here for information that Intervarsity Press provides about it.

The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony

I missed last week's Bible study at my church because I was sick, but I got to attend last night, and I also had an opportunity to read the transcript for last week's DVD presentation that the group watched. 

Essentially, what I'll do is write a post today and a post on Monday, and both will touch on last night's Bible study and the study of the week before.  Today's post will be on whether or not the Gospels contain eyewitness testimony, and my post on Monday will talk about Jesus being a different kind of Messiah from what people were expecting.  My Bible study group is going through A Fragile Stone, Peter: Jesus' Friend With Michael Card. 

Michael Card appears to assume that the Gospels contain eyewitness testimony to Jesus.  In the past, my mind would have been pretty closed to that, and I would have dismissed such a notion as uncritical naivety.  Why?  Well, one reason was that I was getting a different story in my academic New Testament classes.  Another reason was that the people I knew who did believe that the Gospels contained eyewitness testimony tended to rely on pious assumption or religious bullying rather than any appeal to argument.  To illustrate this point, I was talking with a friend about the contradictions between Mark and John on the day that Jesus died, and my friend responded: "But both writers were there when Jesus died, so wouldn't you expect for them both to get the date right?"  I then said, "Actually, we don't know who wrote the Gospels."  It amazed and irritated me that my friend essentially assumed that I shared his conservative Christian beliefs about who wrote the Gospels.

Nowadays, I'm a little more open to the notion that the Gospels contain eyewitness testimony, albeit I'm not overly dogmatic about it.  This is because of scholarly books I have read, or books I have read that draw from biblical scholarship, that argue that the Gospels contain eyewitness testimony.  There was Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.  There was Lee Harmon's John's Gospel: The Way It Happened, which will be coming out in January.  And, while I don't particularly care for David Marshall's apologetic chest-thumping in his books, I at least have to give him credit for presenting arguments that the Gospels contain eyewitness testimony, rather than simply assuming that they do or resorting to religious bullying.  I regard the view that the Gospels contain eyewitness testimony to be legitimate, even though I don't think that it's the only legitimate view out there.

But, if the Gospels contain eyewitness testimony, does that mean that I have to be an evangelical Christian?  If what we have is eyewitness testimony that the disciples saw the risen Jesus, does that entail me having to embrace, say, the inerrancy of Scripture?  A number of evangelicals believe so: they think that, once you accept the Christian belief that Jesus rose from the dead, you then have to believe in inerrancy, for Jesus' resurrection demonstrates the truth of the Christian religion.  But I'm skeptical that I have to take that kind of step.  For one, even if Jesus rose from the dead, that doesn't mean that every closed-minded, dogmatic, authoritarian, bullying, ignorant evangelical or fundamentalist depiction of God that I have ever heard is true.  Maybe Jesus rose from the dead and Jesus is a nice and loving person, even as a number of conservative Christians distort (unintentionally), misunderstand, or misapply the things that he said.  Second, even if Jesus rose from the dead, that doesn't make the problems in the Bible go away----the contradictions, the diverse ideologies, the troubling acts and commands of the Old Testament God, the patriarchalism, the ways that the Hebrew Bible reflects ancient Near Eastern culture, the incompatibility between the Bible and modern science and archaeology, the unfulfilled prophecies, and the list goes on. 

Michael Card holds that the Gospels contain eyewitness testimony.  But I wonder if, somewhere along the way, he was influenced by scholarly or apologetic arguments for this position, for he doesn't seem to just assume that the Gospels contain eyewitness testimony, but rather he actually appears to be informed about the issue.  He notes that the Gospel of John manifests awareness of certain details, such as the risen Jesus cooking over a coal-fire, and the name of the person whose ear Peter cut off being Malchus.  As Michael Card says, John tells the story of Peter's denial in such detail because he was actually there: "He knows the girl at the gate, the servant girl.  In fact, she gives him permission to come in."  Michael Card is also aware of the tradition that the Gospel of Mark contains Peter's eyewitness testimony.  And he may believe that this point is relevant to what Mark excludes and what Luke contains: Card says that only Luke had the heart to narrate that, after Peter's third denial of Jesus, Jesus turned and looked at Peter, which broke Peter's heart.

In some of these cases, Card appears to overlap with Richard Bauckham's arguments.  Bauckham highlights the importance of the naming of names in John's Gospel, and Bauckham also argues that Mark's Gospel draws from Peter's testimony (see here, here, and here).  Card does not really offer a sustained argument for the latter, but he does note that John names names.  Moreover, Card, like David Marshall, seems to think that vividness of narrative is a sign of eyewitness testimony, but Bauckham diverges from that argument, since vividness may be a part of a literary style rather than an indication that the author is an eyewitness.  At the same time, it does seem to me that the author of John's Gospel portrays the Disciple Jesus Loved, the source of the story in John's Gospel, as present at the events that are narrated.  Could that be fraudulent, or a literary device?  I can't disprove that it is either of those two.  But, in my opinion, it could also be an indication that John's Gospel is based on eyewitness testimony.

People in my group were raising their own questions about whether the Gospels contain eyewitness testimony.  For example, after Jesus rises in Mark's Gospel, a man tells a group of women to go tell the disciples----and Peter----that Jesus is going before them into Galilee (Mark 16:7).  You'll notice that Peter is singled out.  One lady asked if Peter (the source of Mark's Gospel) could be telling the story to make himself look important, and that's why it singles Peter out.  Someone else asked how Peter knew that the man was singling Peter out when he was not even there with the women, and people in the group concluded that Peter must have gotten that piece of information from others.  In my opinion (and I did not express this in the group), even if the Gospels reflect eyewitness testimony, that still coincides with them having a human element: people having biases, people gathering information, people including some things and not others, etc.

Christianity in China

In my post here a while back, I asked about whether or not Christianity had any influence on Chinese religion, since I was reading a book by David Marshall (True Son of Heaven) that noted parallels between the two to argue that God was preparing the Chinese people through their own culture to receive Jesus Christ.  A commenter offered me information on the history of Christianity in China.

On page 143 of The Cambridge History of Christianity: Constantine to c. 600, David Bundy discusses Christianity in China:

"Early evidence about China is suggestive, but at this time the data still remains fragmentary.  Bardaisan suggested, about 180, that there were Christians in China, a not unreasonable possibility given the activity on the trade routes.  Certainly there were political/economic embassies between the Chinese and Roman empires during this period.  By the late sixth century (c. 578), there was an East Syrian missionary, Mar Sergius, residing in Lint'ao.  By 635, another East Syrian missionary, A-lo-pen...arrived in China with a mandate to organise the Christians and to represent them before the emperor.  At this point there is no indication of the nature of the communities he found there, although permission was given to establish (and populate!) a monastery during the reign of the Emperor T'ai-Tsung (627-49).  The most important source for the period 635-781 is the so-called 'Nestorian stele' at Xi'an, which includes names of Syriac and Chinese Christian leaders in China, as well as a list of Chinese Christian texts.  Other early Chinese Christian documents excavated in western China were edited with photographic reproductions by Y. Saeki."

Completing Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses

I finished Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony. In my latest reading, Bauckham defends his view that the Gospel of John was written by John the Elder, not John the son of Zebedee, and he also discusses broader questions about how we should approach eyewitness testimony as historians----with trust, with skepticism., etc.?

Regarding John the Elder's authorship of the Gospel of John, Bauckham argues that Papias identified the Gospel of John with that particular individual, even though Eusebius does not preserve that for us, since Eusebius believed that John the son of Zebedee (not John the Elder) wrote that Gospel. Bauckham looks at the Muratorian Canon, which is "the earliest known example of a New Testament canon list" (page 425), and he notices that what it says about Mark is similar to what Papias says in Eusebius. Bauckham concludes that the Muratorian Canon is relying on Papias. The Muratorian Canon calls John a disciple, right before calling Andrew an apostle, and Bauckham maintains that it is distinguishing John (the author of the Gospel) from the Twelve in doing so, and that Papias himself did not regard that John as one of the Twelve, but rather as John the Elder. Later, however, when discussing the implication by Justin Martyr and Clement that John the apostle wrote the Gospel of John, Bauckham argues that "apostle" can refer to people other than the Twelve. After all, Clement referred to Clement of Rome as "Clement the apostle"! Personally, I have difficulty saying that the Beloved Disciple was not one of the Twelve, for he is sitting right next to Jesus at the last supper (John 13:23), which tells me that he was part of Jesus' inner circle.

At the same time, something that I found interesting was Bauckham's discussion about John the Beloved Disciple being a priest in the Temple. Polycrates, a second century bishop, refers to the Beloved Disciple as a priest, and Acts 4:6 mentions a priest named John. This intrigued me because I vaguely recall reading that the Beloved Disciple was close to the high priest, and the justification for this may have been that the Gospel of John appears to manifest awareness of the priestly establishment's deliberations and plots about Jesus----for example, that the high priest decided it would be expedient for one man to die for the sins of the people. If the Beloved Disciple were a priest, then he was not the son of Zebedee, for John the son of Zebedee was a fisherman.

Regarding how historians should approach eyewitness testimony, Bauckham essentially says that we should do so with a degree of trust, since eyewitness testimony is essentially our main source for historical reconstruction, and yet we should look at the sources critically, evaluating their coherence and consistency and comparing them with other evidence that we have. And there were some arguments that Bauckham made that reminded me of David Marshall's arguments for the Gospels being eyewitness testimony: that the Gospels describe events that are somehow unique (unique in terms of wonder), and that the resurrection stories are bare-boned in their accounts of what happened.

I was thinking some about eyewitness testimony as I was reading Susan Faludi's 1991 book, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. (You will see my posts on that in March, which is Women's History Month.) Faludi profiles anti-feminist intellectual Sylvia Ann Hewlett. Hewlett says that, when she was teaching economics at Barnard College, she tried to balance child care with career, and yet she got no sympathy from the feminists at the college, whom she says were opposed to a maternity policy. Jane Gould, who at the time was the director of the Barnard Women's Center, disagrees with Hewett's recollection of the events, for Gould says that feminists formed the committee supporting maternity leave, that Hewett did not play a central role in that campaign, and that the women opposing maternity leave were not even feminists. That tells me that eyewitnesses can remember events differently. Bauckham may then say that I'm focusing too much on the individual rather than collective memory, for he makes that distinction within his book. He may believe (if I am interpreting or characterizing him correctly) that collective memory is more reliable than individual memory, since people can then help each other remember and correct each other's mistakes. Perhaps, but it can also result in a kind of group-think in which people subordinate their own personal recollections and interpretations to what the herd (or the strongest personality within the herd) wants them to think.

I would not throw out the importance of eyewitness testimony, however, for, as Bauckham states, it is often all that we have for reconstructing the past! I also would not be as extreme as, say, the Jesus Seminar in terms of evaluating the Gospels for what is historical and what is not. For example, why should we dismiss as un-historical (or less likely to be historical) everything in the Gospels that accord with Christian theology after the time of the historical Jesus? Perhaps Jesus originated some of those ideas. But there should be a degree of criticism when looking at the sources, an awareness that people describe the past in light of their biases and ideologies.

Something that I wished Bauckham addressed more was why Matthew doubles certain characters: Matthew presents Jesus healing two demoniacs or blind men, whereas Mark says Jesus healed one. To what would Bauckham attribute this? To the eyewitnesses performing the story differently? Why would they add a demoniac or a blind man? To different recollections of the same event? That's how some handle this issue, but Bauckham actually agrees with much of New Testament scholarship that Matthew is drawing from Mark a lot.

Overall, this was a good book, particularly in that it looked at what the New Testament and early Christian literature said about the transmission of traditions.

Psalm 63

For my weekly quiet time this week, I will comment on select verses in Psalm 63. I will use the King James Version, which is in the public domain.

A Psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of Judah.

Some say that Psalm 63 was composed when David was on the run from Saul. Others say it was composed when David was on the run from Absalom. After all, v 11 refers to the king, so does that not imply that David was already king when he composed this Psalm, which was not the case when he was on the run from Saul? Defenders of the "Saul" view will then retort that David technically was king when he was running from Saul, for he had already been anointed by Samuel.

And then there are many who do not believe that there is a connection between the superscription and the actual context of the Psalm itself. Some place the origin of Psalm 63 in the time of Judah's exile. And others envision its setting to be a king of Judah praying to God for help within the safety of the sanctuary.

¹O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is;

According to Sigmund Mowinckel, it is on account of this verse that scribes applied Psalm 63 to David's time in the wilderness of Judah. In the wilderness, David was literally in a dry and thirsty land, but he was also thirsting after God, for David was away from God's sanctuary. And yet, within this scenario, David still had access to God when he was away from the sanctuary, enough to compose a Psalm for God and to have a degree of confidence that God would listen to him.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon and Keil-Delitzsch both made a big deal about the line "my flesh longeth for thee". How can the flesh long for God, they inquired, when Paul presents the flesh as something that is against God and his laws? I was not surprised that Spurgeon was trying to reconcile this verse with Pauline anthropology. I was a little surprised that Keil-Delitzsch were struggling with this issue, however, for, although they are conservative, they are also critical in their interpretation of the Bible.

Spurgeon's solution was that David's longing for God in his soul was impacting his flesh, or his body. I tend to gravitate towards what the Intervarsity Press Bible Background Commentary said, though: that ancient Israel and Mesopotamia did not envision a radical dualism between the soul and the body, unlike ancient Egypt.

²To see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary.

There is debate about whether the Psalmist is away from the sanctuary or inside of it. If the Psalmist is away from the sanctuary, then he is thinking back to the times when he saw God in the sanctuary and desires for God to return him to there, or he is hoping that God will be as powerful and glorious amidst the Psalmist's exile as God was in the sanctuary. If the Psalmist is inside of the sanctuary, then he is hoping to experience God while he is there, and his hunger and thirst for God in a dry and thirsty land in v 1 is a metaphor for how he is feeling spiritually and has nothing to do with him being in a literal desert away from the sanctuary. Presumably, according to this view, the Psalmist in the sanctuary wants to experience God there as he has in the past.

³Because thy lovingkindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee.

Orthodox Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch comments (in the words of the Artscroll) that "Experiencing God's kindness is more precious than life itself because it is only the closeness of God that gives life its value and meaning". Atheists and agnostics who live fulfilling lives will probably dispute this notion. I myself do not dogmatically claim that a person has to believe in God to have a valuable and meaningful life. I do, however, think that Rabbi Hirsch's words can challenge all sorts of people to distinguish between merely existing and truly living. For me, my belief in a benevolent God is one factor that gives my life meaning.

⁴Thus will I bless thee while I live: I will lift up my hands in thy name.

⁵My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness; and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips:

Many interpreters remark that the Psalmist is comparing his experience of God with eating marrow and fatness. It's good when I can arrive at that point----when my experience of God is as satisfying as a filling and tasty meal. Unfortunately, in my opinion, some people who say that Christians should enjoy God do not present a God who is enjoyable to be around. Their God strikes me as a judgmental and unfair glory-hog who gets mad too easily. But I am happy when Christians (such as George MacDonald, Martin Luther, C.S. Lewis, Madeleine L'Engle, and even David Marshall) and Jews (such as some of the rabbis) present a God whom I can love, and yet a God who also challenges me.

⁶When I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the night watches.

One of the interpreters in Spurgeon's Treasury of David says that the Psalmist meditates at night because that is a time when he is not occupied with other matters. And I appreciated the interpreters I read (such as Chuck Smith) who say that meditating on God can be something that one can do when one has insomnia: that way, one can spend that time of sleeplessness productively, gaining wisdom, strength, and an assurance of God's love.

⁷Because thou hast been my help, therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice.

Some think that the Psalmist is in the shadow of God's wings in the sense that he is in the safety of the sanctuary, away from his enemies, for the sanctuary was a place of asylum. Others maintain that the Psalmist is away from the sanctuary but is in the shadow of God's wings because God is protecting him.

⁸My soul followeth hard after thee: thy right hand upholdeth me.

⁹But those that seek my soul, to destroy it, shall go into the lower parts of the earth.

The phrase that the KJV translates as "to destroy it" is le-shoah, which means "to devastation". The idea could be that the enemies are seeking to destroy the Psalmist's soul, or that their pursuit of the Psalmist's soul will result in their own destruction. The Septuagint probably reads the phrase as le-shav, "to vanity", for it says that the enemies are seeking the Psalmist's soul in vain.

¹⁰They shall fall by the sword: they shall be a portion for foxes.

The words that the KJV translates as "They shall fall" are yagiru-hu, which means "they will pour him" or "they will hurl him down". Who is to be hurled down to the sword? Marvin Tate and Keil-Delitzsch believe that the "him" is the king. Tate says that the idea here is that those who hurl the king down to the sword will become a portion for foxes. Keil-Delitzsch maintain, however, that the idea in vv 10-11 is that the king will rejoice in God even when he is endangered and is in a land of hungry foxes. Some preachers said that Psalm 63 is about delighting in God regardless of one's outward circumstances. I can see value in appreciating God for God's sake----because God is kind, righteous, etc. But I also believe that the Psalmist is hoping that God will concretely demonstrate those attributes by actually helping him and delivering him from his enemies, as God has helped him in the past.

¹¹But the king shall rejoice in God; every one that sweareth by him shall glory: but the mouth of them that speak lies shall be stopped.

Names, Appeals to Eyewitnesses, and Whether It Matters

I'm continuing my way through Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony.

There were a lot of arguments that I encountered in this book for the Gospels containing eyewitness testimony:

1. When a Gospel mentions the name of, say, a person whom Jesus heals, Bauckham believes that we are seeing an appeal to the eyewitness testimony of that person whom Jesus healed. Bauckham does not believe that we are seeing something similar to Second Temple Jewish literature's tendency to name anonymous characters from the Hebrew Bible (one that comes to my mind is the Pharaoh in Genesis 12), for the Gospels that give the names of certain people whom Jesus healed leave a lot of characters anonymous. Moreover, Bauckham notes that the names often reflect Palestinian Jewish names from 330 B.C.E. to 200 C.E. (which means that they were not ascribed to anonymous characters by a Diasporan author), and that the Palestinian Jewish names are in many cases not the most popular, increasing the likelihood that they are authentic to the people who were healed (since, if an author were simply ascribing names to anonymous characters, he'd probably pick a popular name). According to Bauckham, the reason that we see traditions in which the people healed are anonymous, while being named in a parallel tradition, is that those transmitting the traditions at some point chose not to mention the names because members of the Christian community no longer knew who these people were. Bauckham also refers to Quadratus, whom Eusebius mentions. Quadratus says that he knew people Jesus healed during his own lifetime, demonstrating (for Bauckham) the importance of eyewitness testimony in early Christianity.

There are many questions that I have. First, when does Bauckham date the Gospel of John? Many scholars date John as being later than the synoptics. But John names people who are anonymous in the other Gospels. If the other Gospels drop names because those names are no longer relevant to the Christian community, why would a later Gospel, John, mention those names? Or does Bauckham believe that John contains earlier traditions, and that John is faithfully preserving those traditions, even if they have stuff (the names of some whom Jesus healed) that is not relevant to its audience, which does not know who these people are? Second, would a person ascribing a name to an anonymous character only choose a popular name? Bauckham discusses the naming that occurs in extra-canonical literature: the centurion at the cross is named Petronius in the Gospel of Peter, two medieval testimonies to the Gospel of the Nazarenes say that the woman with the hemorrhage was named Mariosa, etc. Were these popular names? Third, does the extra-canonical or Second Temple Jewish literature that names certain characters name all characters, or is there a mixture of named people and anonymous people, as we see in the Gospels?

2. Bauckham advances other arguments: the emphasis on certain women seeing events in the life of Jesus, the statements in the New Testament that the disciples were eyewitnesses to Jesus, and the way that Mark frames his story with Peter, which, for Bauckham, supports Papias' view that Mark contains eyewitness testimony going back to Peter himself. Bauckham regards some of the factors that people have cited against the historicity of the Gospels----contradictions on the names of the women who witnessed the risen Jesus, and contradictions on the names of the disciples----as verifications of the carefulness and knowledge of those who preserved those traditions. Regarding the names of the women, Bauckham notes examples in which Gospel writers do not mention as eyewitnesses to the risen Jesus certain women whom they highlighted earlier in their Gospels, and the reason for this (for Bauckham) is that those particular women were not known as eyewitnesses to the risen Jesus, and so the Gospel writers did not mention them as such. For Bauckham, the Gospel writers are being careful in naming who was an eyewitness. On the names of the disciples, Bauckham maintains that the names are different out of a desire to avoid confusion of certain disciples with each other, since some of them have the same name. For Bauckham, the knowledge of these accounts about the epithets that were used to distinguish the disciples from each other attests to the "hypothesis that the Twelve were the official eyewitnesses and guarantors of the core of the gospel traditions" (page 108).

I have a few more points:

1. I read in some of David Marshall's books that the vividness of the Gospel narrations supports their status as eyewitness testimony. Bauckham disagrees with this argument. (He does not mention Marshall, specifically, though, since the argument is probably widespread.) According to Bauckham, a gifted storyteller can use vivid language, plus a record of eyewitness testimony is not necessarily vivid, for vivid details can disappear as a writer records what he hears from an eyewitness.

2. Bauckham makes some statements that make me wonder if the Gospels are exact transcripts of what actually happened, even if they do contain eyewitness testimony. First, Bauckham argues that Matthew and Levi the tax-collector were not the same person (one reason being that Mark does not identify the two with each other), and that the Gospel of Matthew applies the story about Levi to Matthew because it seeks to "to narrate the call of Matthew in the Gospel that was associated with him" (page 111). But Bauckham does not appear to think that the writer of the Gospel of Matthew was being dishonest, for he says that the writer knew that Matthew was a tax-collector, and that the story of Levi "is so brief and general it might well be thought appropriate to any tax collector called by Jesus to follow him as a disciple" (page 111). In any case, what we see in this scenario is not exactly the same as recording what really happened. Second, Bauckham states on page 127: "For readers who know Mark, it will seem that John displaces Peter from the priority he has in Mark..." Even if John and Mark reflect eyewitness testimony, both filter events through ideology and a desire to exalt or dethrone certain people.

Bauckham also refers to something that Plutarch wrote that was fictional, and yet was in accordance with "the conventions of historiographic writing known in his time"----conventions that, in part, are relevant to eyewitness testimony (pages 119-120). Does this mean that a work can be fictional and yet appeal (in some manner) to eyewitnesses? I wouldn't say that this is entirely true of the Gospels, but I do think that the fact that an appeal to eyewitnesses does not necessarily equal historicity should be remembered as one weighs whether or not the Gospels reflect eyewitness testimony and are historically-accurate.

Martin Luther King Day 2012

For my post today on Martin Luther King, Jr., I will use as my starting-point something that David Marshall says on pages 113-114 of True Son of Heaven: How Jesus Fulfills the Chinese Culture:

“American magazines like Time and Atlantic Monthly have followed the lead of these [skeptical] scholars with cover articles on the ‘historical Jesus.’ If you’d lived by the Sea of Galilee in the First Century, the articles within implied, life would have proven tamer than the Gospels say. Storms would have risen and fallen with the prevailing winds. The blind stayed blind, and the dead, dead. As for the charismatic young teacher, Jesus…It seems he was a sagacious young radical who stirred up some scientifically-preliterate peasants. As the years passed, his disciples garbled and exaggerated his deeds. One gathering of scholars called the Jesus Seminar voted on Jesus’ ethical teachings: the few which were his, and the greater portion, which they say got thrown into the mix by later enthusiasts.”

I have not been a fan of evangelical apologetics, with all of the arrogant chest thumping that accompanies them. But, when I read this passage from Marshall, my immediate thought was “How sad!” In my opinion, it would have been sad had Jesus not performed those miracles—-miracles that healed the brokenness of this world and gave people happiness and hope.

What’s this have to do with Martin Luther King, Jr.? King himself held some pretty liberal views theologically—-and I would not be surprised if some of them overlapped with the sorts of approaches that Marshall critiques. But King still believed in the power of God to help him to heal a broken world. He believed that the words that the Gospels attribute to Jesus could somehow challenge people and be a means to make the world a better place. King had a dream. Has that dream been fulfilled, or disappointed? A little of both, I think. But, in the end, I hope that his dream does not fall flat.

I remember hearing Pastor Tim Keller say that the Gospel gives the hope to people working for social justice that they are on the winning side—-that their dream for justice would one day be realized. Martin Luther King was motivated by this hope. I think that whatever justice we achieve in this society will be imperfect and incomplete, for we are flawed human beings. But I also believe that there are areas in which society progresses, and that justice, whenever and wherever it exists, is right, important, and beneficial, and is thus worth the effort to promote, effect, and protect.

David Marshall: "Guan Yin"

I read Chapter 8 of David Marshall’s True Son of Heaven: How Jesus Fulfills the Chinese Culture. This chapter is entitled “Guan Yin”. Guan Yin is an East Asian goddess of compassion. Marshall opens this chapter with a story about a man’s concubine and his son. The son hated his father’s concubine because his father paid more attention to the concubine than to his wife, who was the son’s mother. On a family picnic, there were bandits nearby, and the son planned to kill his father’s concubine, thinking that the bandits would be blamed. But the concubine cried out to Guan Yin, and the son could not lift a finger against her. The son eventually became an official in Taiwan, and he told an American friend that the concubine was immoral, but that Guan Yin, a compassionate bodhisattva, desires to save every sentient being, regardless of how moral or immoral they are.

(On a side note, what would Marshall do with this story? It’s an eyewitness account of an event that appears to be supernatural. Does this account verify the existence of Guan Yin, the way that Marshall believes that the Gospels as eyewitness accounts support the truth of Christianity?)

Marshall believes that there are parallels between Guan Yin and Jesus. He quotes Guan Yin as saying: “Yes, the world has need of me, even if I have to die. My love can overcome death.” At the same time, Marshall does not think that, overall, Guan Yin has challenged immorality in China. Marshall talks about brothels in China. “Guan Yin has been worshipped [in the Dragon Mountain Temple] for a hundred years without disturbing business”, Marshall says on page 97. “She reaches out her thousand arms to the brothels, one for each girl in the district, and draws back…cash.” Marshall says that China needs an intolerant Savior, one who gets angry and overturns tables in standing for justice.

But Marshall tells a mythical story about Guan Yin that depicts her as transformative. The story dates back to 1102, and it’s about Miao Shan, an incarnation of Guan Yin in China. Miao Shan’s father (a king) had her killed because she would not marry his choice to be her husband. Wikipedia’s summary provides more details: the suitor was wealthy, and Miao Shan offered to marry the suitor if her father would ease suffering in aging, illness, and death. According to Marshall, after her death, she went to hell. But Miao Shan transformed hell, as “Irons fell off prisoners” and “Ogres learned to smile” (page 94). When her father became sick, Miao Shan visited him and healed him after plucking out her eyes. Marshall states that the king repented in response to his daughter’s gesture, and she became whole again.

The wikipedia summary tells a variant of the tale, which discusses what happened when the executioner sent by the king tried to kill Miao Shan, and failed because she had some sort of supernatural protection:

“Miao Shan, realising the fate the executioner would meet at her father’s hand should she fail to let herself die, forgave the executioner for attempting to kill her. It is said that she voluntarily took on the massive karmic guilt the executioner generated for killing her, thus leaving him guiltless. It is because of this that she descended into the Hell-like realms. While there she witnessed first hand the suffering and horrors beings there must endure and was overwhelmed with grief. Filled with compassion, she released all the good karma she had accumulated through her many lifetimes, thus freeing many suffering souls back into Heaven and Earth. In the process that Hell-like realm became a paradise. It is said that Yanluo, King of Hell, sent her back to Earth to prevent the utter destruction of his realm, and that upon her return she appeared on Fragrant Mountain.”

Essentially, Miao Shan took the guilt of her would-be executioner, went to hell, and liberated suffering souls, on the basis of her own good karma that she had accumulated in her incarnations. She does sound like Jesus, in a sense. I am not an expert on Chinese religion, so I do not know if some maintain that Miao Shan was based on Jesus, or if scholars think that there are simply common themes that appear across different cultures.

These are beautiful stories. I do think that it would be better if Guan Yin stories encouraged more social and moral transformation, but that’s a problem that all sorts of religions have, including Christianity: they can get to the point where they sanction the establishment rather than challenging it. As far as China needing an intolerant savior (Jesus) is concerned, I can see Marshall’s point—-if the savior is intolerant about moral matters, or issues pertaining to social justice. But intolerance concerning doctrinal points? That doesn’t make as much sense to me.

David Marshall: "Buddha Walks the Silk Road"

I have three items for my write-up today on Chapter 7 of David Marshall’s True Son of Heaven: How Jesus Fulfills the Chinese Culture. This chapter is entitled “Buddha Walks the Silk Road”.

1. On page 82, Marshall critiques the Buddhist belief in reincarnation: “Buddha didn’t want to believe in rebirth. In [the movie Little Buddha], he called it a ‘curse.’ And of course, Buddha was right. Life has meaning as a story. But what if after every chapter, you forget the chapter you just finished? What if (to use another Little Buddha example) you make on false move and spend 500 lives as a goat? If the Asian view of reincarnation is correct, this world is like a slope in hell up which we each push our boulder, each time to have it crash down on us again.”

I agree with Marshall’s critique. But is the Christian doctrine of eternal torment in hell that much better? One problem I have with hell is that, as Marshall notes, life is a story. It just does not make sense to me for a person to live and to grow and to learn lessons and to love and to be loved and to suffer, and then to die and go to hell just because he failed to accept Jesus Christ as his personal Savior before his death. The story sounds incongruous, to say the least. Some people I know who believe in reincarnation (and these are not Easterners, but people from the West) think that reincarnation makes sense because it gives us opportunities to learn lessons that we may not have learned in a previous lifetime. I wonder how efficacious the lesson would be, though, if we cannot even remember the previous lifetimes, or even this lifetime after we die and become something else. But perhaps my Western friends who believe in reincarnation would respond that the lesson is still inside of us, even if we don’t remember the exact details of how we learned it, or what the lesson was.

2. On pages 87-90, Marshall critiques Buddhism because it undermines family bonds. After all, Buddhism began when Siddhartha left behind his family to seek Enlightenment! On page 89, Marshall comments on another scene in Little Buddha: “To kill desire for spiritual fellowship with beings who are external to ourselves and different is to kill our humanity. It is indeed like giving our children over to an ogre. Yet, in another scene this same monk showed how even trained Buddhists have too much of the image of God on their souls to fully give their hearts to the ogre called ‘detachment.’ The Old Master died and was buried, his successor found. The American boy was ready to go home. The Tibetan monk who brought him to India from America choked back tears as he said goodbye, saying to the boy’s father, ‘I’m afraid I’m not a very good example of Buddhist detachment.’”

Some of you reading this who did not see the movie may wonder what is going on. I won’t summarize the movie in this post, but you can read about it here. Essentially, the point that Marshall is making is that Buddhism promotes emotional detachment from friends and family, since attachment is what leads to suffering, but that even some Buddhists feel sad when somebody close to them dies, and that is because they have the image of God on their souls. I like Marshall’s appeal to the image of God—-the notion that none of us is far from knowing about God’s goodness, on some level, since God’s image is upon us. But what about the things in the Bible that offend people’s moral sensitivities—-the slaughter of women and children in the Conquest, for example? And, speaking of detachment, what about Jesus’ exhortations to his disciples to hate or to leave their families (Mark 10:29; Luke 14:26)?

I don’t think that Jesus in the Gospels was against family, in an overall sense. He raised a man from the dead and restored him to his mother (Luke 7:12-15). He told someone from whom he exorcised demons to go home and to tell his friends what God has done for him (Mark 5:19). He criticized Pharisees for dishonoring their parents (Mark 7), as well as lambasted divorce while presenting marriage as a life-long bond that no man can put asunder (Matthew 19).

Moreover, one reason that Jesus believed that the disciples should prefer him over their families was that he knew that many of them would be placed in a situation where they would have to choose, for families would be hostile towards Christianity and would even persecute it (Matthew 10:36; Luke 12:53). But it also appears to be the case that the disciples were expected to leave behind their families and to travel with Jesus. Jesus praises the disciples for doing so in Luke 14:26. When a man wants to follow Jesus but asks that he first be allowed to say farewell to his family, Jesus likens that to putting one’s hands to the plow and looking back. Perhaps Jesus was afraid that the family would persuade the man not to follow Jesus. Or maybe Jesus thought that the apocalypse was so urgent that there wasn’t time to dilly-dally by saying good-bye to one’s family. In any case, there is a sense in which Jesus promoted a sense of detachment from family, even though that’s far from being the whole story, for Jesus also affirmed family-ties—-in his healing ministry, in his teaching, in his example (at times), etc.

3. On page 85, Marshall talks about how the Taiwan Chinese have adapted Buddhism to their culture: “Taiwan Chinese have more temples per capita than anyone else in the world. Most Taiwanese answered my survey by telling me they went to the temples and believed in Buddhism. They had positive feelings toward Siddhartha: ‘With great compassion he saves people who are in distress.’ ‘(He was) a person who loved people.’ But, when asked the purpose of life, few if any said ‘to escape suffering’ to ‘to attain detachment.’ Almost no one believed in reincarnation. The only one of the Four Noble truths that seemed to have stuck in most minds was the idea of right conduct, thought and attitude, which in any case Chinese believed long before Buddhism came to China. If I were to pick an antonym for what the vast majority of Chinese really think, it might be ‘Buddhism.’”

Buddha promoted detachment as a way to alleviate suffering, which is consistent with monasticism. But many Chinese like marriage and family and happiness and prosperity, or fu. As a result, they have adapted Buddhism to their culture. This reminds me of what one of my commenters, Looney Fundamentalist, said under my post, “David Marshall: “The Pursuit of Happiness”", after I talked about Marshall’s statement that Buddhism is opposed to desire. Looney has Chinese relatives and lives in Taiwan, and he said the following:

“With all my Chinese relatives, the notes on the Eastern religions always bring in a disconnect. I had listened to several lectures on this subject recently from a western professor that reinforced this. The only thing I have ever heard prayed for by Buddhists is health, wealth and good grades. i.e. the prosperity gospel on steroids.”

David Marshall: "Congratulations, Get Rich"

I have two items for my write-up of Chapter 6 of David Marshall’s True Son of Heaven: How Jesus Fulfills the Chinese Culture. The chapter is entitled “Congratulations, Get Rich”, and it focuses on fu, which is happiness, or prosperity.

1. On page 73, Marshall states: “Only a fraction of traditional Chinese cures have been tested in Western laboratories. How many valuable secrets are hidden on back shelves and in the knapsacks of herb salesmen? Health is an esoteric art in China, and many remarkable drugs are likely to vanish if folk medicine is neglected.”

I love this passage! Why? Part of the reason is that my Grandma and my Mom owned a health food store for many years. Part of it is the notion that perhaps the East has things to teach the West, which means that the West doesn’t have all the answers. And part of it is the sense of mystery that’s there.

2. On page 78, Marshall states: “We don’t need to be ashamed of our animal desires; the mouth was formed to be filled with food, as the dirt was to grow plants. Yet it also implies God must be the foundation of our most basic pleasures. Man does not live by rice alone. We are also made to know God.”

I agree with this balanced approach. But there is a strong tradition of asceticism within Christianity, and at least part of the reason is things that show up in the New Testament. Here are some passages in the KJV. Some of them have been interpreted in the history of Christianity to tend towards asceticism, whereas others perhaps can be interpreted in that direction:

Matthew 6:19-20: “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal…”

Matthew 5:28: “But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.”

Matthew 19:12: “For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.”

Luke 12:33: “Sell that ye have, and give alms; provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no thief approacheth, neither moth corrupteth.” (The audience here is, not the rich young ruler, but Jesus’ little flock. So Protestants can’t say that Jesus’ command to sell possessions applied only to that one rich man!)

I Corinthians 7:1-9: “Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband. Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: and likewise also the wife unto the husband. The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife. Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency. But I speak this by permission, and not of commandment. For I would that all men were even as I myself. But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that. I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, it is good for them if they abide even as I. But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.” (Here, Paul appears to tolerate and even encourage sex within marriage, but there has been a long-standing belief that he is presenting celibacy as better.)

Granted, there are New Testament passages that tend in the opposite direction. Jesus came eating and drinking (Matthew 11:19; Luke 7:34). Jesus changed water into wine at a wedding (John 2). Hebrews 13:4 praises the marriage bed. I Timothy 4:3-4 criticizes ascetics who sought to forbid marriage and the consumption of certain meats, which were made to be eaten with thanksgiving. But there also appears to be a tradition that there is something special about voluntary poverty and celibacy, and that tradition seems to be present in rudimentary stages within the New Testament. And this tradition was influential throughout the history of Christianity, which explains monasteries, Origen castrating himself, Christian disdain for sexuality, Christian misogyny, etc. Elaine Pagels talks about this in her book, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent.

What’s my point? Marshall’s argument throughout this book has been that China should embrace Christianity, or, more accurately, the Christianity that he believes is of the Bible. For Marshall, Christianity preserves the best of Chinese culture and religion, while also lacking the deficiencies within them. In the case of fu, Marshall maintains that Christianity is all for bodily pleasures and prosperity, but that it wants for us to also worship God—-for God to be the foundation of our pleasures. But my point is this: Christianity has come in so many shapes and sizes that it’s hard to say that “Christianity” will meet China’s desires and needs. Is the tradition of Christian asceticism consistent with China’s regard for fu? Marshall could then say that the Christianity that he’s promoting is the biblical one, but I think that many different forms of Christianity are biblical, in some sense: they just emphasize different passages.

David Marshall: "Son of Heaven"

I have three items for my write-up today on Chapter 5 of David Marshall’s True Son of Heaven: How Jesus Fulfills the Chinese Culture. Chapter 5 is entitled “Son of Heaven”.

1. On page 55, Marshall states: “Lao Tse wrote that he who was ‘without thought of self’ would be able to ‘accomplish his private ends.’ Chinese history is full of notable examples. Confucius passed up official posts to remain untainted. In the shadow of Qin’s burial mound, Han Wei founded the great Han Dynasty by listening to people and avoiding pretense of god-hood. Nationalist founder Sun Yat-Sen won a revolution but in the interest of peace, allowed his rival to rule. In the Gospels we find evidence that God had the same idea: that Absolute Power could accomplish great things in the guise of weakness.”

The impression that I have gotten from what I have read so far of Marshall is that he believes that the positive moral elements of the Bible constitute evidence for its divine-inspiration (albeit not the only evidence). But how can one say that, when people in non-Christian cultures and religions are able to arrive at the insight that (say) humility is good, an insight that conflicts with people’s tendency to exalt and to benefit themselves? I’m open to saying that God is able to instruct people throughout the earth, in all sorts of cultures. Marshall argues this, on some level, when he presents Christianity as ingrained within all people, explaining the presence of Christian-like themes in different cultures. I personally am not going that far, however. I’m just acknowledging that God may illuminate people throughout the world about certain moral principles.

I guess my problem is with an apologetic argument that a specific religion (Christianity) is from God and is authoritative because it has good principles. Even if Christianity takes good principles further than other religions do, I think that an atheist can easily make the argument that Christians are arriving at moral insights on their own, without divine revelation. As I’ve said, I’m open to the concept of divine illumination, but my problem with Christian apologetics is that there is often a variety of ways to interpret so-called evidence, and not all of those ways support Christianity being the one authoritative religion.

2. In my post here, I mentioned some of the inadequacies that David Marshall believes are present in Confucianism, weaknesses that (according to him) Christianity does not have. I forgot to mention one inadequacy, which Marshall discusses on pages 59-60. Confucius said that, if you’re a government official, and you learn that your son has been embezzling funds, then you should bend the rules for your son’s sake. There’s much to admire about such grace and loyalty to family. But, as Marshall points out, this outlook has caused problems, such as nepotism. Emperor Qin went the other direction, according to Marshall, when he elevated rules over relationships, as he “made public office a prize to be won through diligence rather than birth.” Marshall can see strengths and weaknesses in both perspectives. Marshall believes, however, that “this conflict disappears” for followers of Jesus, who base their roles on the love of God that fills them, and who feel free to rebel when human authority goes too far.

I guess my issue here is with Marshall’s implication that Christianity makes ambiguity go away, in terms of the issue of justice and mercy. I don’t think that it does. For one, the question of when people should receive mercy and when they should get justice—-and how to balance mercy and justice—-is not always cut-and-dry, even from a Christian perspective. In my opinion, if a son of a Christian official embezzled funds, that official probably wouldn’t want for his son to go to jail, since that would result in the son having a record that could impact the rest of his life, the son facing threats in jail, etc. And yet, the official would desire for his son to learn that certain things are wrong, and he’d fear that the son facing no consequences at all would not help him in the long run. What should the official do? It’s complex. Christianity may offer some principles as guidelines, but it doesn’t make ambiguity go completely away.

Second, I can understand why Marshall believes that Christianity is a revolutionary religion, a religion that promotes rebellion against authoritarianism. After all, Jesus overturned tables in the temple, as Marshall notes more than once. At the same time, Marshall should at least wrestle with the fact that prominent strands of Christianity have historically promoted submission to unjust authorities, on the basis of such passages as Romans 13. John MacArthur is not getting his idea that the American Revolution was a bad idea out of the clear blue sky! He’s drawing from an influential Christian tradition.

3. On page 60, Marshall states: “It’s one thing for a leader to call himself ‘lord’ from a palace surrounded by walls and bodyguards…But suppose a rebel should march openly into the capital. Suppose his followers shout praises to God for the ‘new order’ he brings. Suppose only a band of weak-kneed fishermen and a couple rusty swords stand between him and the Emperor. Imagine, to top it off, he won’t let his side fight. What can you say about a revolutionary like that? Either he is a fool. Or he has a plan.”

Marshall may be expressing his admiration for Jesus here, or he may be making an apologetic argument—-that Jesus would only do something that weird if he was who he said he was. Perhaps it’s both. Can I think of another explanation for why Jesus would rebel and not even allow his disciples to fight—-as if Jesus had a death-wish? Why would any rational person—-especially someone who imparted wise teachings—-do such a thing? Perhaps Jesus did indeed expect for his death to accomplish something in terms of the imminent kingdom of God. Scholars have debated this, but there are some, such as Albert Schweitzer (if I’m not mistaken), who maintained that Jesus had a purpose behind proceeding towards his death. But does that mean Jesus was right? There are many people who die for causes. That doesn’t mean that their causes are divinely-authoritative.

At the same time, I would like to believe in a silver lining: that Jesus accomplished something with his death. I have problems with that being mixed up with Christian exclusivism, but perhaps I can believe that Jesus’ death was redemptive, on some level, without being the sort of person who believes that people have to believe one way in this life to avoid going to hell.

Wrestling with David Marshall's Depiction of Jesus, and Conservative Evangelicalism in General

For my write-up today on David Marshall’s True Son of Heaven: How Jesus Fulfills the Chinese Culture, I’ll feature three quotes from Chapter 4, “The Tao of Revolution”, then I will ramble on about God, Jesus, and Christianity.

Page 44: “Human nature yearns for God. Even the most atheistic ideology can only disguise or pervert this drive. [James' note: Marshall often talks about how Communist nations have practically idolized or promoted the idolization of Communist leaders, such as Lenin, Stalin, Mao, etc.] Recent mass suicides and murders by cults in Tokyo, Texas and Switzerland, are extreme examples of what happens when people set the wrong altar on Mount Tai.”

Page 45: “Sometime later my friend [who was involved in the occult] felt so depressed she decided to step in front of a car. (I learned firsthand in Taiwan how common suicidal impulses are among those who do business with spirits.) At that moment a stranger came up to her and told her, ‘Don’t kill yourself. God loves you.’ She became a Christian.

“What do you do when you don’t believe in spirits, but at night your house shakes and invisible feet stomp across your hall? On my first visit to China, friends I was traveling with met a young woman with this problem. Atheist professors and Buddhist priests were unable to help her. She’d become a nervous wreck and lost many pounds. My friends prayed with her and both house and occupant found peace.”

Page 50: “Which should China choose; the Way of Loyalty, or the Way of Rebellion? She needs both. Not just two teachers who attract two different kinds of people. [James' note: Marshall's referring to Confucius, who emphasized family loyalty, and Mao, who conducted a revolution that brought a mixed-bag of reforms and terror.] She needs a sage who binds disparate strands of morality into a single thread and joins broken fragments of truth. China is looking for a leader, humble and kind like Confucius and with his integrity. She also needs a general who is bold enough to reach for Heaven: a man with fire in his soul. Somebody who stands against oppressors and says, ‘Love the weak or face the wrath of God.’ The ancient realist Hsun Tzu wrote of human nature, ‘Crooked wood needs to undergo steaming and bending by the carpenter’s tools; then only is it straight.’ Two thousand years ago in Israel a carpenter opened shop—-not to work wood or stone, but human hearts.”

Although I have critiqued Marshall’s arguments, Marshall’s depiction of Jesus still attracts me. Marshall presents Jesus as someone who was kind and compassionate, who healed others in a quiet and low-key manner and was a champion of the sick, the poor, and the marginalized. And Marshall talks about how these features of Jesus inspired his followers throughout history to care for others and to bring about reforms.

But I’d have a hard time going back to conservative evangelicalism—-with its smug attitude, its judgmentalism, its obsession with doctrinal points that strike me as irrelevant to the human condition (i.e., whether water baptism is a requirement for salvation, Calvinism, etc.), its view that its simplistic narrative and “answers” adequately take into account the complexities of life (i.e., the nature of unbelief, the struggles of homosexuals, the existence of different religions, etc.), its exclusivist tendency to look down on people who behave or live their lives differently, its marriage to the Republican Party, its discouragement of learning different facts and points-of view (which is not true of all or even most conservative evangelicals, but I have noticed a tendency towards that within conservative evangelicalism), its belief in hell for all who do not believe exactly one way, its chest-thumping support for Israel, as if God takes sides in such a complex issue, and the list goes on. I’m not just criticizing others here, mind you. I’m also criticizing the way that I was back when I was more of a conservative evangelical. And, although I dislike my current bitterness and realize that my present state is far from ideal, I do not want to go back to where I was. Even if I’m attracted to Marshall’s depiction of Jesus, Christianity has so much baggage in my mind that I fear that my attraction to this compassionate Jesus would turn out to be a mere blip on my mind’s radar.

I just gave you a list of problems I have had with conservative evangelicalism. Now I’ll list areas in which my hopes in it have been disappointed. Conservative Christianity emphasizes community, but I have a hard time fitting into groups. Christianity says that Jesus changes people, but I find that I’m the same person—-shy and introverted. I’ve gotten to the point where I feel that I have to deal with myself as I am, and to make the most out of that, rather than trusting in a god to make me something completely different and beating up on myself when that does not take place.

Do I long to worship someone? In a sense, I do. That’s why I have liked certain celebrities or politicians or characters in books, television, and movies. I wouldn’t exactly say this means that all of human nature “yearns for God”, for there are plenty of people throughout the world who do not worship the God of the Bible, Judaism, and Christianity, either because they’re atheists, or they have a depersonalized depiction of God, or they equate God with the cosmos, etc. But I believe that, for me personally, I need to look to a power greater than myself. I’ve been told all of my life that the object of my adoration should be God, but, to be honest, I never really understood why that particular being should receive my admiration or adoration. God seems at times to be too distant or abstract to me. Threatening me with hell or punishment does not increase my adoration for God. Perhaps I can focus on the compassion and humility of Jesus, but, to be honest, there are times when Jesus in the Gospels strikes me as an apocalyptic, my-way-or-the-highway, know-it-all, conditionally-loving psychopath. It’s hard for me to “adore” God, per se. But perhaps my faith needs to be destroyed for it to be reborn. Maybe there is garbage in my previous depictions of God that needs to go, and I can then embrace God in a more positive, healthy way.

Marshall’s stories about spirits stood out to me because I have long admired Jesus’ authority over unclean spirits. It makes me feel safe, especially when I watch a scary movie or hear stories about demons. I desire security in this scary world. But there are people in non-Christian contexts who believe in a higher power who subordinates demons, or spirits. Can I believe in the concept, without accepting the baggage of evangelical Christianity?

I’ll stop here.