The Little Red Blog

Wednesday with Pascal: Christian Nihilism? (Part One)

{Pascal the existential Russian blue cat may have bitten off more than he can chew with his excursion into Christian nihilism. To be honest, he is less than convinced of his own thesis, thus the question mark in the title. In any case, he will post Part One today and Part Two next week, once he’s had time to finish digesting the sources.}

“What does it profit a man to gain the whole world but to lose his soul?” (Jesus)

David Bentley Hart believed that modern nihilism resulted from Christianity’s failure to hold the cultural ground it had seized, fifteen hundred years ago, from pagan antiquity, leaving in its stead a spiritual vacuum. Other observers, though, have asserted a much more fundamental connection between Christianity and nihilism; some have gone so far as to claim that nihilism is at the very heart of Christianity. How in the world, most of us would ask, could anyone make such an absurd claim?

Well, there’s this: “Do not love the world or the things that are in the world. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the pride of life—is not from the Father but from the world.” And there’s also this: “Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?” And, you know, this: “My kingdom is not of this world.”

The New Testament yields numerous such quotes that seem, at least rhetorically, to set Christians against the world and any of its purported meanings. Christian nihilism, if such it could be called, was not complete nihilism; Christians didn’t believe that nothing mattered. They only believed, or were encouraged to believe, that nothing in this life mattered; mortal existence was merely a passage to eternity (if you were lucky) and Christians were therefore taught to avoid worldly attachments. Paul used himself as an example: “For the Lord’s sake I have suffered the loss of all things, but I count them as rubbish if I gain Christ and am found in him.” He advised his followers not to have children—hostages to fortune, as they say, and distractions from the heavenly prize upon which Christians were to keep their eyes. Jesus had given similar counsel; leave family behind and let the dead bury their dead. Time was short, said Paul, and the world was on borrowed time; you could not invest your hopes in it. Moreover, this world was the realm of Satan, its acknowledged prince; for a Christian, the best counsel, as Paul (or Bob Dylan?) said, was, “Keep a clean nose and watch the plainclothes.” Neither Jesus, Paul, nor their followers needed a weatherman to know which way the wind was blowing.

Again, and in fairness, Christians were not “world-haters,” the epithet famously (and accurately) applied to ancient Gnostics. Christians believed that creation was the work of a loving God, but it had been corrupted by man’s sins; still, they believed that mortal life had value simply because it had been given to us by God. Moreover, most Christians held that the way we live determines our immortal fate; life was an ordeal that tested our faith and our spiritual strength. That notion, however, was put to theological rest in the 4^th century by St. Augustine in his polemics against the Pelagian heresy. Man could not “earn” salvation, said Augustine; salvation could only be a gift of God graciously bestowed on undeserving sinners. Augustine cut the ground out from those who thought that “right” living (moral purity, loving one’s neighbor, keeping the commandments, etc.) and faith in Christ would enable believers to pass through the narrow gate to heaven; as he explained (and as Luther and Calvin reiterated), nothing a man does in this life has any effect at all on God’s judgment—no one deserves to be saved from hellfire, and God’s decisions are both mysterious and irrevocable.

Christianity’s ambiguous stance towards the world could be seen by contrasting the fanatical ascetism of the “Desert Fathers” (e.g., St. Anthony the Great), which morphed into Christian monasticism, with the worldliness of the post-Constantine Church. On the one hand, “The model of Anthony and other hermits attracted many followers, who lived alone in the desert or in small groups. They chose a life of extreme asceticism, renouncing all the pleasures of the senses, rich food, baths, rest, and anything that made them comfortable. They instead focused their energies on praying, singing psalms, fasting, giving alms to the needy, and preserving love and harmony with one another while keeping their thoughts and desires for God alone.” They may not have hated the world, but neither did they embrace it; it offered nothing but snares and delusions.

On the other hand, following Constantine's conversion to Christianity, Christian leaders gained unprecedented status and authority. Christianity became the beneficiary of the emperors’ largesse; it became, in the words of Robert Markus, “increasingly wealthy, prestigious, and privileged.” ¹ Less than a century after Constantine, Christianity was made the official religion of Rome; pagan practices were outlawed. To its credit, Christianity played a crucial role in preserving the legacy of Rome, but it did so in part by taking on some of Rome’s imperial characteristics; the Church could not very well renounce a world in which it played such a prominent role.

Even with the Church triumphant, the strain of nihilism remained, preserved in New Testament texts; for centuries, it would lead periodically to sectarian outbreaks, Gnostic heresies, millennial cults, etc. Jesus’ admonition against trying to serve “two masters” (e.g., God and Mammon) made ordinary Christians wary of earthly ambition, a wariness reinforced by the fact that wealth and power were for the most part out of reach anyway. If Christianity did not deter worldly progress, neither did it encourage it, much less inspire it. In all, Christendom viewed the material world, for all practical purposes, as a crime scene—the crime of Adam, of course, reenacted in perpetuity by all his progeny. Ecclesiastical authorities shepherded their flocks through life, incessantly cautioning them, “Move along, folks; there’s nothing to see here.” For Christians, it wasn’t life's journey that mattered; it was the destination.

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Re St. Anthony and the Desert Fathers:  Desert Fathers - Wikipedia

¹ Robert Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity. Markus, for what it’s worth, would likely disagree with my thesis of ‘Christian nihilism’ and my claims about the ‘world-denying’ aspect of early Christianity; “From the later second century,” he wrote, “Christians had been moving fast towards an assimilation of secular culture.” The spread of Christianity could not have happened if the faith had required of believers an explicit rejection of, or distancing from, ‘ordinary’ life, customs, and habits. “Since that time,” Markus continued, “Christians had begun to penetrate every level of Roman society and had moved even further towards accepting the values and the culture of their pagan contemporaries.”   

Nihilism: when you've got nihil, you've got nihil to lose.

Wednesday with Pascal: The Katechon (Part Two)

{Is it possible that Pascal the existential Russian blue cat thinks that the Katechon is, well, a literal cat? There seems no other explanation for his fascination with this obscure Biblical figure whose identity and significance have never been made clear.}

As we have previously discussed, the apostle Paul (and, arguably, Jesus himself) expected the world to end in his lifetime. “The time is short,” he famously counseled. He also declared, “Salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed,” which suggests a similar expectation, as does “The night is nearly over, and the day has drawn near.” Despite Paul’s missionary zeal and eschatological urgency, however, he did not live to see the eschaton, which, two thousand years later, still has not arrived.

What went wrong with the early Christians’ eschatological timetable? Did they simply misread the signs of the times? Paul, hedging his bets, offered a cryptic explanation for the delay; the eschaton could not take place until the Antichrist (“the man of lawlessness”) was revealed, at which time Jesus would return to smite him and to put the entire cosmos in order. And why was the Antichrist still unrevealed? Because, said Paul, he was being held back by the mysterious and to this day unidentified Katechon.

While one might assume that forestalling the apocalyptic end of the world would be a good thing, the issue is more complicated, at least for Christians. The eschaton, for all its world-historic turbulence, would also see the second coming of Jesus, on the clouds, for his salvific encore (“Parousia”), after which a last judgment would sort out sheep from goats, the blessed from the damned, and the world would be restored to its original pristine glory. Thus, the Katechon, by restraining the Antichrist, also prevents Jesus from returning and the dead from being resurrected. The question then becomes, is the Katechon serving humanity by keeping the world going, or is it serving God in some way, or is it, paradoxically, serving the Antichrist by preventing his final (and, inevitably, fatal) showdown with Jesus? The corollary question is, do we or do we not want the world to end? ¹ Our answer to that determines our feelings about the Katechon.

Paul’s invocation of the Katechon was ambiguous at best. He did not say by whom the Katechon had been deployed, or who would (eventually) remove it. At least in his letters, he did not instruct the Thessalonians to pray for its continuation or to pray for its destruction; he signaled neither gratitude nor resentment towards it.

Reflecting on this, Roberto Esposito writes that “In delaying the explosion of evil, the Katechon at the same time delays the final victory of the principle of good. The triumph of evil is held in check, true, but the divine Parousia is also delayed by the Katechon’s existence. Its function is positive, but negatively so.” Or, in the words of Tim Howles, “There seems to be an ambiguity about the deferral that the katechon enacts. The threat of violence that is associated with the eschaton is certainly held in abeyance. But as a corollary, the future is denuded of its power to infuse the present, inspiring a sense and a direction in time. The contemporary moment becomes one in which nothing can really happen because the sense of historical becoming, that has its truth only in the eschaton, is indefinitely deferred.”

Perhaps if we could identify the Katechon, we might better discern which side It, or He, is on. Unfortunately, as Yohanis Wakuma explains, “The identity of ‘what restrains’ and ‘he who restrains’ remains controversial. Some identify these with God and divine providence; others see the restrainer as a force hostile to God, yet one which remains under God’s control.” Throughout the centuries, the most common suspects for Katechon-hood have been the Roman emperor (or the empire itself); the Catholic Church (or individual popes); the Holy Spirit; the logos; Russia; the United States military; and, less often, Donald Trump. ²

For centuries after Paul invented the Katechon, it remained an obscure and enigmatic notion, a forgotten bit of scriptural minutiae in which not even scholars took an interest. It was rehabilitated after World War II by an unlikely figure: Carl Schmitt, a German political theorist (and influential jurist in Hitler's Third Reich) who believed that the Katechon was both the key to history and mankind’s only hope for survival.

I bet you did Nazi that coming.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

¹ Most Christians are not aware that the “Lord’s Prayer” (the “Our Father”) expresses the desire for the eschaton to arrive; that, after all, is the meaning of “Thy kingdom come…”

² Seriously—Rod Dreher (The American Conservative), now living the good life in Viktor Orban’s Hungary, remarked in 2020 that “In an entirely non-theological sense, I see Trump as a Katechon. I do not believe that the political forces he holds back can be restrained for much longer, simply because they are growing in popularity. It is self-deceiving to think that any politician, even a charming Philosopher-King (which Trump is not), could turn back a vast cultural tide. The best small-o orthodox Christians and other cultural traditionalists can hope for is that our political leaders (in whose number I include federal judges) can hold back enough of it, for long enough, to give us an opportunity to build institutions and other structures that will allow us to ride out the deluge ahead. If Christians like me vote for Trump, it is only because of his role as Katechon in restraining what is far worse.” I think it far more likely that Trump is the "Man of Lawlessness" than that he is the Katechon.  

There must be a Katechon in here somewhere...

Sunday Sermon: In the Beginning

{In 1959, an ancient manuscript was discovered in a cave somewhere in Egypt. Scholars have tentatively dated the scroll itself to circa 500 BCE. The manuscript contains a controversial version of the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, written in a rare form of proto-Aramaic, which has made it difficult to translate. While ancient scrolls were often hidden in caves to preserve them, scholars suggest this one was hidden to keep anyone from ever reading it.}

In the Beginning

In the beginning, while God was creating the heavens and the earth, Satan looked on and said, “What is He up to?” And God said, ‘Let there be light,” and Satan asked, ‘What the hell is light?’ And there was light, and it shone in the darkness, and Satan was not happy about it, and that was the first day.

The next day, God, whose Spirit had been hovering over the waters, looking for a place to land, decided to create an expanse to separate water from water, so that His Spirit could cease its eternal hovering. God separated the water under the expanse from the water above it, and God called the expanse ‘sky’.  Satan was puzzled—‘Why would you put water above the sky? It makes no damn sense.’ And that was the second day.

Then God got down to business and created land, which He ordered to produce vegetation, seed-bearing plants, and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kind. And Satan shook his head and said, “I don’t like where this is going. I don’t like it one single bit.” And that was the third day, whether Satan liked it or not.

Next, God spoke into existence the sun and moon and stars, and Satan said, ‘Where was the light coming from on the first three days if there was no sun or moon or stars?’ And God was annoyed by Satan’s constant criticism, and it was the fourth day, and anyone could see there would be trouble ahead.

Day five, God outdid himself, filling land and water and sky with living creatures, some of which were most horrible to behold and dangerous to confront and many of which were just icky, but God said, ‘It’s all good,’ and Satan stomped off to Hell where he complained to the other angels, saying, ‘I’m telling you, he’s getting rid of us. He’s got a plan, damn it, and we’re not part of it.’ And all the angels were sore afraid and began to grumble, talking about forming a union and going on strike. And it was the fifth day, as I have already mentioned.

When he awoke on the sixth day, God could barely contain His excitement. ‘Today is the first day of the rest of our lives!’ He exclaimed. ‘Let us make man,’ He said, ‘in our image and in our likeness, and let us see what will happen.’  And God took His own advice and created man in His own image; male and female He created them (which is to say, not as androgynous creatures but separately according to their gender, which was a thing very important to God to keep straight, so to speak). And God gave man dominion over pretty much everything, especially woman, and He declared again, ‘It’s all good,’ but Satan said, ‘Just give it time.’

Satan approached God and said to Him, ‘With all due respect, Lord, have You really thought this through?’ And God replied, ‘Go piss up a rope. What could possibly go wrong with my perfect creation?’ And Satan said, ‘Well…’

Yawning, God announced, ‘I have had myself quite a week, and I have earned my rest. I will take a brief nap of a thousand thousand millennia, after which I will be on the golf course if anyone needs Me.’ To Satan, God said, ‘You’re in charge while I’m gone. Let me know if anything interesting happens.’ Satan sighed. ‘Of course, Lord,’ he agreed.

And it was the seventh day, and God took His rest, having created an incomparable universe, a veritable Paradise, a machine that would go of itself, to be watched over by God’s faithful servant Adam who was in turn watched over by God’s faithful lieutenant, Satan. And Satan descended to Eden to see what was up; he took one look at Adam and scoffed, ‘Image of God? This bozo? I don't think so.' Then Satan beheld Eve and, lo, that was a game-changer. ‘Why did no one inform me of this delightful creation?' Satan demanded. 'Perhaps I have been too hasty in doubting the wisdom of the Lord.’ Donning his best snakeskin suit, Satan slithered up to Eve and said, 'Please allow me to introduce myself. I'm a man of wealth and taste...'

From then on, Satan and his fellow angels busied themselves upon the earth, never waking God from His nap. 

A simple 'Watch Out for Snakes' sign would have saved us all a lot of trouble...

Sunday Sermon: The Man Comes Around

The Man Comes Around (by Johnny Cash)

 

And I heard as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying come and see and I saw, and behold, a white horse

 

There's a man going around taking names

And he decides who to free and who to blame

Everybody won't be treated all the same

There'll be a golden ladder reaching down

When the Man comes around

 

The hairs on your arm will stand up

At the terror in each sip and in each sup

Will you partake of that last offered cup?

Or disappear into the potter's ground?

When the Man comes around

 

Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers

One hundred million angels singing

Multitudes are marching to the big kettledrum

Voices calling, voices crying

Some are born and some are dying

It's Alpha and Omega's kingdom come

 

And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree

The virgins are all trimming their wicks

The whirlwind is in the thorn tree

It's hard for thee to kick against the pricks

 

Till Armageddon no shalam, no shalom

Then the father hen will call his chickens home

The wise man will bow down before the throne

And at His feet they'll cast their golden crowns

When the Man comes around

 

Whoever is unjust let him be unjust still

Whoever is righteous let him be righteous still

Whoever is filthy let him be filthy still

Listen to the words long written down

When the Man comes around

 

Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers

One hundred million angels singing

Multitudes are marching to the big kettledrum

Voices calling and voices crying

Some are born and some are dying

It's Alpha and Omega's kingdom come

 

And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree

The virgins are all trimming their wicks

The whirlwind is in the thorn tree

It's hard for thee to kick against the pricks

 

In measured hundred weight and penny pound

When the Man comes around.

 

And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts and I looked and behold, a pale horse and his name that sat on him was death and Hell followed with him.

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Johnny Cash-The_Man_Comes Around - YouTube

Johnny Cash - When The Man Comes Around ((Original Version)) - YouTube

(from Valachi Art)

Looking for Jesus in All the Wrong Places

“Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other apostle, the one whom Jesus loved, and said, ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!’” (John 20:1—2)

“The historical location of Arimathea is uncertain, although it has been identified with several towns. Though it was "a town of Judea" according to Luke 23:51, it is not otherwise documented.” (Wikipedia)

Outside of Christian scriptures, no trace today remains of either Arimathea or of any “Joseph” associated with it. Assuming they ever existed, history—documented history, that is—dropped them as soon as it was done with them, which is to say, as soon as they had served their purpose. Is it possible that Arimathea, along with its most famous citizen, ascended like Jesus to heaven?

Like that of the notorious miscreant Barabbas, Joseph of Arimathea’s presence in Jesus’ story is confirmed by all four canonical gospels. Unmentioned prior to Jesus’ death on the cross, and never clearly identified as to his connection to the deceased, Joseph boldly approached Pilate for permission to give Jesus a proper burial. Pilate consented; Joseph and his servants (he was a wealthy man) then saw to it that Jesus’ corpse was respectfully wrapped in linen and covered with spices and ointments (which would, as it turned out, prove unnecessary). The tomb in which Jesus’ body was placed (according to Matthew’s account) was Joseph’s own; in any case, it was close enough to Calvary for the body to be moved there quickly. The entire process was rushed because the Sabbath was drawing near, and because of the unsettling presence of Roman soldiers; the ritual would have to be completed after the Sabbath.¹

There is no reason to question either the existence of Joseph of Arimathea or the authenticity of his reported actions, which were entirely plausible even if, under the circumstances, unexpected. There is, however, cause to question why Joseph disappeared from the narrative quite so quickly when there was ample reason for him to have lingered at least a bit longer; because it came to pass (as they say) that less than forty-eight hours after Joseph had sealed Jesus up inside a tomb, that tomb was discovered to be empty, and Jesus’ body was nowhere to be found.

Now, I am no Sherlock Holmes, nor even an Inspector Clouseau, but it seems to me that, if a dead and buried body were to go missing, I would begin my investigation by questioning the last person known to have been in possession of said body. In the four canonical gospels, however, not a single person does this; not a single person even suggests doing it. No one says, at any point, “Someone go fetch Joseph of Arimathea—perhaps he moved Jesus’ body and reburied him elsewhere.” When rumors circulated (according to Matthew) that the disciples had stolen the corpse for some sort of Weekend at Bernie’s escapade, no one said (or was recorded as having said), “Bring Joseph of Arimathea in for questioning. He took custody of the body, so he can tell us what happened to it.”

What if, miraculously, Jesus had survived the crucifixion? Unlikely, to be sure, but not impossible. Under the circumstances, it would have been sensible for someone to have inquired of Joseph of Arimathea: “Hey, are you sure Jesus was dead when you put him in the tomb? Because he’s not there now, and people are kind of freaking out about it.”

I am not necessarily questioning Jesus’ resurrection, but I am definitely questioning the reliability of the gospel accounts which, having introduced Joseph of Arimathea at a pivotal point in the narrative, disposed of him abruptly, despite his having been the best possible source of information about Jesus’ whereabouts. No one was better positioned than Joseph to confirm or to deny the extraordinary claims that (some of) Jesus’ disciples were making.   

Maybe Pilate should have insisted that Joseph post bond before taking Jesus’ body. “Listen to me,” Pilate could have said; “if anything happens to this body, if it mysteriously vanishes or if it’s stolen or if it turns up somewhere it shouldn’t be, well, you’ll forfeit the money you’ve put up, and then we’ll have yet another corpse on our hands, won’t we, Joseph?”  This would have motivated Joseph to keep better track of the dead man entrusted to him.   

Far be it from me to suggest that a major world religion, one which has endured now for two millennia, began with a flimsy and unsupported premise. The premise—that Jesus Christ had been raised, by God, from the dead—persuaded enough people to get the ball of Christianity rolling; and once it started rolling, it gathered speed and rolled over everything in its path. It’s just that I can’t help imagining Joseph of Arimathea standing there watching Christianity gain momentum, waving his arms, and shouting, “Guys! Guys, I thought you knew—I moved the body! You were looking for Jesus in the wrong place!”

My guess is he would have been ignored. As the saying goes, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” ² When it comes to the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, in the absence of documentation, and lacking any testimony from Joseph of Arimathea, legend will just have to do.

______________________________________

Joseph of Arimathea - Wikipedia

¹ The burial might also have been hurried by the fact that (in Matthew’s account) darkness had come over the land at the very moment of Jesus’ death, followed by an earthquake, followed by a host of dead people getting up out of their graves and wandering the streets of Jerusalem.   

² From “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”.

When Spellcheck Fails

 

Give Us Barabbas or Give Us Death!

“Now it was the custom at the Feast [of Passover] to release a prisoner whom the people demanded.” (Mark 15:6)

“The custom of releasing prisoners in Jerusalem at Passover is known to theologians as the Paschal Pardon, but this custom (whether at Passover or any other time) is not recorded in any historical document other than the gospels, leading some scholars to question its historicity and make further claims that such a custom was a mere narrative invention of the Bible's writers.” (Wikipedia)

When it comes to Jesus’ last day on earth, all four canonical gospels tell essentially the same story (albeit with certain idiosyncratic variations): Jesus is arrested, questioned by the Sanhedrin, and sent for judgment to Pilate, the Roman governor. Pilate, having interrogated Jesus and having found no guilt in him, invoked the supposed ‘custom’ of releasing a prisoner at Passover as a gesture of mercy. He hoped thereby to release Jesus, but the hastily assembled crowd clamored insistently for the release of a “notorious criminal” named Barabbas, who enters and exits the narrative faster than you can say, “Pilate did what? Barabbas who?”

It defies credulity to claim that a Roman procurator such as Pontius Pilate would have allowed the arbitrary whim of a mob—a mob likely paid off and stirred up by the local authorities—to force his hand. Nothing in the gospels’ accounts of Jesus’ trial before Pilate rings true, but the single most risible detail is Pilate’s reluctant decision to release Barabbas, whom Mark described as being “in prison with the insurrectionists who had committed murder in the [recent] uprising.” Luke’s account has the crowd shouting at Pilate, “Away with this man [Jesus]! Release Barabbas to us!” Pilate meekly acquiesced, after going on record that he had not found Jesus guilty of any crime deserving of crucifixion. John’s gospel narrative has Pilate claiming to have found no grounds whatsoever for charging Jesus with any crime at all; but, again, “Pilate tried to set Jesus free, but the Jews kept shouting, ‘Give us Barabbas!’”

What can a poor boy do but to give into popular demand, because in sleepy Jerusalem there ain't no place for a god become man? 

The passion narratives set forth by the Christian evangelists are obviously contrived “set pieces,” dramatic fabrications as little tethered to history as the tales of Hercules or Samson. The gospels’ account of Jesus’ ‘trial’ served two purposes: first, it exculpated the Roman authorities (Pilate), thereby communicating to Rome that Christians had no beef with the empire; they were loyal citizens who could be trusted not to rebel. Second, it inculpated the Jewish authorities and the Jewish people, thus widening the growing chasm (at the time the gospels were written) between Judaism and nascent Christianity and, not incidentally, making anti-Semitism a cornerstone of the Church. This, like so much else, had been prophesied, in this case by John the Baptist who correctly noted, when asked about Jesus, “He must become greater; I must become less.” The torch had been passed to a new Chosen People, the followers of Jesus.   

Barabbas was released. Like Lazarus, he thereupon vanished, never to be heard from again (except in fictional accounts, such as his on-screen portrayal by Anthony Quinn). ¹ What sort of man was he: a brigand, a rebel, a murderer, as charged, and a prime candidate for recidivism? But perhaps he too had been the victim of injustice, hauled before the authorities and thrown into prison for crimes he had not committed? Perhaps, while in prison, he prayed to Israel’s God, begging to be set free?

An alternative timeline: Jesus is set free, Barabbas is crucified, and the Jerusalem mob, furious that Pilate has defied them, turns the city upside down. Pilate predictably sends out his troops to restore order, which they do by cutting down every Jew in sight. Jerusalem, not for the first time or the last, is drenched in blood. Jesus, whose near-death experience has left him shaken, is whisked away by his equally frightened disciples; they return to their lives in Galilee—that is, to the uneventful lives they had been living before being seduced by Jesus and his messianic dreams.

Barabbas is dead, his corpse thrown into a ditch alongside others who had met a similar fate. Jesus goes back to Nazareth, sadder but wiser, where he lives quietly with his mother, his brothers, and his sisters. He takes a wife, perhaps, and raises a family of his own. Jesus’ brother James, however, becomes restive at home; one evening, he surreptitiously takes his leave and returns to Jerusalem, where he becomes the respected leader ("James the Just") of a group of Jews who honor the teachings of Jesus while patiently awaiting the arrival of the next true messiah. As James explains it, rummaging through the dustbin of history for all the failed messiahs and all the messianic pretenders, all the con men and charlatans and swindlers and grifters, and all the lunatic, deluded, and possessed visionaries, the naïve and the calculating: “There must be,” James insists, “a pony in here somewhere.”

Two thousand years later, in whichever timeline you choose, the world is still waiting for its pony.  

________________________

¹ Anthony Quinn’s Barabbas was a 1961 film based on a 1950 novel by the Nobel Prize-winning Swedish novelist, Par Lagerkvist: “Barabbas watches Jesus as he bears the cross to Golgotha, witnesses the crucifixion, and then spends the rest of his life trying to understand why he was chosen to live rather than Jesus.” “Survivor guilt,” first-century style.

For other speculations about Barabbas, see Barabbas - Wikipedia

"Give us Zorba the Greek," cried the crowd.

Wednesday without Pascal: Who Canceled Lazarus?

{Pascal the existential Russian blue cat has requested permission to set aside for this week his series on Professor Kevin Slack’s Hillsdale College lectures. Instead, Pascal will graciously allow me to share some of my thoughts on the final days of Jesus; I have done the reading, and I have some questions.}

In the four canonical gospel narratives we possess, three fascinating but mysterious characters appear: in chronological order, they are Lazarus of Bethany, brother of Martha and Mary; Barabbas, a convicted criminal rumored to be a revolutionary of some kind; and Joseph of Arimathea, a place never found on a map or identified by historians. Those three characters, and the roles they play in Jesus’ story, are headscratchers, to say the least; where they came from and what became of them are just as unknown as the location (or even the existence) of Arimathea.

Lazarus figures into the gospel of John—the latest of the four gospels to be written, composed by an alleged eyewitness perhaps sixty-five years after Jesus’ death. The eleventh chapter of John’s book is all about Lazarus being taken seriously ill, his sisters sending a message to Jesus (“Lord, the one you love is sick”), and Jesus’ nonchalant response; rather than hurrying to Lazarus’ bedside, Jesus is content to take his time, explaining, “This sickness is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” To his puzzled disciples, he adds, “Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe.”

Lazarus was indeed dead; four days after he had been placed in a tomb, Jesus arrived; he was admonished by the grieving sisters, and he responded, as was his wont in John’s gospel, with a speech. Then, standing outside Lazarus’ burial place, he wept, as John succinctly states (“Jesus wept.”) Then Jesus ordered the tomb to be unsealed, prayed briefly to his Father in heaven, and called out loudly, “Lazarus, come out!” Which Lazarus did, just long enough to take a bow and then vanish from the narrative and from history; what became of him is unknown, as he had apparently served his purpose, that is, that God’s Son Jesus be glorified.

Lazarus’ return to life also served to further rile up the Jewish authorities, who already had been looking for ways and reasons to get rid of Jesus. What strikes me as counterintuitive is that “the chief priests, the Pharisees, [and] the Sanhedrin” immediately decided, upon hearing of what Jesus had done, to kill him—that is, to kill a man who had publicly demonstrated his power over life and death, a man for whom calling forth someone from the tomb could be done with three simple words: “Lazarus, come forth!” I would not think you would want to trifle with, much less plot against, a man with that kind of power. I would think that priests and holy men might consider the possibility (as the rabbi Gamaliel later points out) that “If this activity is of human origin, it will fail, but if it is from God, you will not be able to stop this man; you will find yourself fighting against God.” That strikes me as a persuasive argument.

Nevertheless, as we know, Jesus was arrested and put to death. Unlike Lazarus, he did not spend four days in a tomb before being brought back to life; he managed it in only three, a record that remained unsurpassed until Harry Houdini. No one should have been surprised that Jesus rose, given that he had previously raised Lazarus; but surprised everyone was. Nor is there any record of the resurrected Jesus dropping in on Lazarus, Mary, and Martha in Bethany; had they been run out of town on a rail or relocated into a kind of Judean “witness protection program”? They are not mentioned in the Book of Acts or, so far as I know, anywhere else in the canonical scriptures. They may have been closer to Jesus than anyone, aside from his family and his twelve disciples, but they were not included in his glorious Easter parade.

If Lazarus was so beloved by Jesus that his death prompted Jesus for once to show a genuine emotion (not counting his occasional displays of annoyance, impatience, or anger), why did we not hear of him before his sickness and death? Moreover, how is it that this one spectacular miracle (or “mighty deed”) was not mentioned by either Matthew, Mark, or Luke, appearing only in the gospel of John? The silence of the other evangelists is even more strange if John is correct in suggesting that the raising of Lazarus was the last straw for Jesus’ opponents and the immediately precipitating motive for his arrest.

I am not, I hope, engaging in exegetical nit-picking. Gospel discrepancies are not hard to find, but for the most part they are irrelevant to the credibility of the larger narratives. In this case, however, it is simply not plausible that Matthew, Mark, and Luke all completely ignored the man Lazarus, whose death wounded Jesus deeply and whose resuscitation led, in fairly short order, to Jesus’ death. ¹ 

So much for Lazarus of Bethany, but what are we to make of Barabbas or of Joseph of Arimathea?

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¹ In fairness, it also prefigured or foreshadowed Jesus' resurrection.

 

Thus sayeth the Lord: "Come out, come out, wherever you are."

Sunday Sermon: By the Rivers of Babylon

"By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept / when we remembered Zion." (Psalm 137: 1)

St. Augustine, glossing Psalm 137 (“By the rivers of Babylon”) and sounding like Ecclesiastes:

‘The rivers of Babylon are all things which are here loved and pass away. For example, one man loves to practice husbandry, to grow rich by it, to employ his mind on it, to get his pleasure from it. What he has loved is not a foundation of Jerusalem, but a river of Babylon. Another man says, it is a grand thing to be a soldier; all farmers fear soldiers, are subservient to them, and tremble at them. If I am a soldier, farmers will fear me. Madman! You have cast yourself headlong into another river of Babylon, and that still more turbulent and sweeping. You wish to be feared by your inferior; you should fear Him who is greater than you.

To be an advocate, says yet another, is a grand thing; eloquence is most powerful; clients hang on every word of their advocates, looking for loss or gain, death or life, ruin or security. This too is another river of Babylon; you do not know where you have cast yourself, its roaring sound is the din of water crashing against rocks. Mark that the river flows, it glides on; beware, for it carries everything away with it.

To sail the seas and to trade is a grand thing—to know many lands, to make gains from every quarter, never to be answerable to any powerful man in your country, to be always traveling and to feed your mind with the diversity of the nations, and to return enriched by your gains. This too is a river of Babylon. When will the gains stop? When will you be secure and content with the gains you have made? The richer you are, the more fearful you will be. Once shipwrecked, you will be stripped of everything, and rightly will you bewail your fate in the rivers of Babylon.’

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Quoted in Bob Goudzwaard's Capitalism and Progress

Psalm 137 is a lament written when Israel languished in exile in Babylon. The psalm closes with this charming benediction: "Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction, / happy is the one who repays you / according to what you have done to us. / Happy is the one who seizes your infants / and dashes them against the rocks." 

Watching the River Flow

 

Sunday Sermon: Job at the Circus

Stanley Diamond, from “Job and the Trickster”:

The Book of Job, generated by an archaic civilization, no longer primitive, represents the origins of our own conceptions of good and evil. It is, so to speak, an ideological pillar of our civilization. Like Plato’s ‘Republic,’ which was composed at roughly the same time, ‘Job’ is bent upon denying human ambivalence and social ambiguity; it insists upon the obliteration of injustice. Plato tells us that, in this world as we know it, there is no remedy for injustice. The Book of Ecclesiastes makes the same point: ‘There is a vanity that takes place on earth, that there are righteous men to whom it happens according to the deeds of the wicked, and wicked men to whom it happens according to the deeds of the righteous.’ The Book of Job is an effort to understand and come to terms with the blind injustice of the world; it represents the religious conscience of western civilization. ¹

In ‘Job,’ the relationship between good and evil is obscured, perhaps deliberately; for God apparently commands Satan, but is distinguished from him. Evil is being segregated as a principle from the principle of good. ² At the same time, since God can ultimately control Satan, He is omnipotent and yet (as Jean Calvin formulated) not responsible for the evil that men choose to do through the mediation of the devil. ³ Therefore, the concrete ambiguity of the human condition is denied; good and evil have a dual origin rather than, as in the complex unity of primitive consciousness, a single source.

In the Book of Job, integrated acts have been disintegrated into contrasting ideas; human actions are now seen as representing and being driven by principles that are abstracted from the reality of actual human behavior. Real behavior is never wholly good nor wholly evil; such purity is never encountered, least of all in primitive societies. It is only with the civilized reversal of principles and persons that such an attitude becomes conceivable; the abstract principle becomes a weapon against the person.

Job’s civilized failure may be defined as the refusal to understand and to accept the relationship between good and evil, and its expression in human ambivalence. That ambivalence is incorporated into the myths and rituals of primitive peoples to an extraordinary degree. The mythic personification of ambivalence (since we are dealing with primitive perceptions and not abstract conceptualizations) is most directly realized in the figure of the trickster; but with the advent of civilization, the trickster’s concrete and ramifying image becomes a segregated and vicarious aspect of human existence, acted out by the clown as an entertainment. At the same time, the trickster is epitomized abstractly in the civilized assumption that evil, reified, befalls good men; put another way, the concrete image of the trickster is transformed into the problem of injustice.

The circus that surrounds and depends upon the clown is a diminished setting, then, for a moral struggle. The grotesque inversions of the clown, the defiance of death, the terrifying reality that seems to overflow the circus ring itself only to recede to a totally alien experience the next moment, and the superhuman skill of the performers—these are serious matters indeed. Laughing at a circus demands the capacity to laugh at oneself, to identify with the risks and reversals of identity that take place before our eyes; and this laughing at oneself means accepting the ambivalence of the human condition, for which civilization gives us little instruction or opportunity. Thus, the strange gravity of audiences, particularly the expressions on the faces of the children, encountered at circuses.

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¹ Diamond also notes (as do other commentators) the “embarrassing denouement” of the Book of Job: “Job restored to health, property, and domestic felicity, over and above his original affluence.” For Diamond, Job is to be contrasted with the “integrity” of similar tales from more primitive cultures “in which the peculiar delusions and pathologies of civilization have not yet become evident” and in which no such felicitous postscript betrays the narrative.

² It was not always so. According to Isaiah, “I form the light and create darkness; I make peace and create evil; I the LORD do all these things.” (The classic translation was “I make weal and create woe.”) Also, the prophet Amos: “Shall there be evil in the city, and the LORD has not done it?” As much as exegetes try to take God off the hook, He insists on His responsibility for the complete catastrophe.

³ Just as “The devil made me do it” is no defense for humanity, neither can the devil rely on “God said I could do it” to exculpate himself.

Job: "There must be a pony in here somewhere..."

 

Deuteronomy (Part Three): A Series of Unfortunate Events

{In which Pascal the existential Russian blue cat concludes his exegesis of the Book of Deuteronomy, which he finds beyond objectionable.}

The most impressive (and, frankly, appalling) thing about Deuteronomy is its catalogue of divine curses. While the blessings promised to Israel by Moses (speaking for the LORD) were generic—peace, prosperity, milk and honey, longevity, fecundity, and total victory over its enemies—the curses for disobedience were vivid, creative, and worth reviewing at length. The following excerpts are just some of the LORD’s threats against His beloved Israel:

If you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees, all these curses will come on you and overtake you: You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country.  Your basket and your kneading trough will be cursed. The fruit of your womb will be cursed, and the crops of your land, and the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks. You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out. The Lord will send on you curses, confusion, and rebuke in everything you put your hand to, until you are destroyed and come to sudden ruin because of the evil you have done in forsaking him. The Lord will plague you with diseases until he has destroyed you from the land you are entering to possess. The Lord will strike you with wasting disease, with fever and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew, which will plague you until you perish. The sky over your head will be bronze, the ground beneath you iron. The Lord will turn the rain of your country into dust and powder; it will come down from the skies until you are destroyed.

Cursed in the morning, cursed in the evening, cursed pretty much all the time. When you arouse the wrath of God, there is no place to run and no place to hide:

The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You will come at them from one direction but flee from them in seven, and you will become a thing of horror to all the kingdoms on earth. Your carcasses will be food for all the birds and the wild animals, and there will be no one to frighten them away. The Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, festering sores and the itch, from which you cannot be cured.  The Lord will afflict you with madness, blindness, and confusion of mind. At midday you will grope about like a blind person in the dark. You will be unsuccessful in everything you do; day after day you will be oppressed and robbed, with no one to rescue you.

Could things get any worse for Israel? Unfortunately, yes:

You will be pledged to be married to a woman, but another will take her and rape her. You will build a house, but you will not live in it. You will plant a vineyard, but you will not even begin to enjoy its fruit. Your ox will be slaughtered before your eyes, but you will eat none of it. Your donkey will be forcibly taken from you and will not be returned. Your sheep will be given to your enemies, and no one will rescue them. Your sons and daughters will be given to another nation, and you will wear out your eyes watching for them day after day, powerless to lift a hand. A people that you do not know will eat what your land and labor produce, and you will have nothing but cruel oppression all your days. The sights you see will drive you mad. The Lord will afflict your knees and legs with painful boils that cannot be cured, spreading from the soles of your feet to the top of your head.

Lemony Snicket himself could not have conceived such unfortunate events:

You will become a thing of horror, a byword and an object of ridicule among all the peoples where the Lord will drive you. You will sow much seed in the field but you will harvest little, because locusts will devour it.  You will plant vineyards and cultivate them but you will not drink the wine or gather the grapes, because worms will eat them.  You will have olive trees throughout your country but you will not use the oil, because the olives will drop off.  You will have sons and daughters but you will not keep them, because they will go into captivity.  Swarms of locusts will take over all your trees and the crops of your land. The foreigners who reside among you will rise above you higher and higher, but you will sink lower and lower. They will lend to you, but you will not lend to them. They will be the head, but you will be the tail. you will serve the enemies the Lord sends against you. He will put an iron yoke on your neck until he has destroyed you.

You can’t say that Israel wasn’t warned, or that the warnings were anything but clear:

All these curses will come on you. They will pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the Lord your God and observe the commands and decrees he gave you. They will be a sign and a wonder to you and your descendants forever.  Because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege, you will eat the fruit of the womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you. Even the most gentle and sensitive man among you will have no compassion on his own brother or the wife he loves or his surviving children, and he will not give to one of them any of the flesh of his children that he is eating. It will be all he has left because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of all your cities. The most gentle and sensitive woman among you—so sensitive and gentle that she would not venture to touch the ground with the sole of her foot—will begrudge the husband she loves and her own son or daughter the afterbirth from her womb and the children she bears. For in her dire need she intends to eat them secretly because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of your cities.

What part of “obey” did Israel not understand?

If you do not carefully follow all the words of this law, which are written in this book, and do not revere this glorious and awesome name—the Lord your God—the Lord will send fearful plagues on you and your descendants, harsh and prolonged disasters, and severe and lingering illnesses. He will bring on you all the diseases of Egypt that you dreaded, and they will cling to you.  The Lord will also bring on you every kind of sickness and disaster not recorded in this Book of the Law, until you are destroyed. You who were as numerous as the stars in the sky will be left but few in number, because you did not obey the Lord your God. Just as it pleased the Lord to make you prosper and increase in number, so it will please him to ruin and destroy you. You will be uprooted from the land you are entering to possess.

After all that, it would be back to Square One without passing Go or collecting any more manna:

The Lord will give you an anxious mind, eyes weary with longing, and a despairing heart.  You will live in constant suspense, filled with dread both night and day, never sure of your life.  In the morning you will say, “If only it were evening!” and in the evening, “If only it were morning!”—because of the terror that will fill your hearts and the sights that your eyes will see.  The Lord will send you back in ships to Egypt on a journey I said you should never make again. There you will offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you.

Dennis Prager, author of The Rational Bible (three volumes so far: Exodus, Genesis, and Deuteronomy) and self-proclaimed authority on morality, history, and the Meaning of Life, proclaims the Deuteronomic code a moral advance for mankind and the foundation of Western civilization. On the other hand, Marcion of Sinope, an early Christian bishop and prominent heretic, considered Deuteronomy conclusive proof that the God of the Hebrew scriptures could not have been the same loving, merciful God described by Jesus in the gospels; Israel’s LORD, said Marcion, was a murderous, bloodthirsty, monstrous imposter.

To coin a phrase: Deuteronomy reports; you decide.

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For a more nuanced view of Deuteronomy than either Pascal or Dennis Prager has to offer: https://dirtbagchristian.substack.com/p/the-duties-of-deuteronomy-one-of

The LORD Smash!