Judith said
Stephen: "...was I wrong then or am I wrong now?'
I know how you feel about my quotes. Even so:
"More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of." Tennyson
It's not just the words we are praying but where we are when we are in prayer. It's as though we are in some other place where there is no time, no place. Wish I had your gift for writing, Stephen, to be able to tell you what that is like.
  

Judith it troubles me that you might think I am bothered by anything you post.  

I would hesitate to call myself a mystic but I had (have?) a very active inner spiritual life.   I would enter into trance states quiet easily.  I remember once as a child being transfixed by dust motes falling endlessly through a shaft of light in the front hall of my parent's home.  I never discussed it with anyone.  Baptists weren't too keen on that kind of thing.   Even now I have quite vivid dreams heavy on the religious imagery.  I've seen Jesus and once, the Virgin Mary!  (Explain that*!) Mostly though they are apocalyptic.  I once saw the moon change into a purple crystal and fall to the earth in my front yard.  In one such dream I remember a fleet of luminous ivory ships sailing across the sea. 

Those "other places" you speak of are quite real.  But I believe they exist inside of us. 

*How did I know it was the BMV?  I have no idea.  In the dream I knew it was her.     

ps: While I'm on the subject the only actual deity that has ever appeared to me was Shiva in his aspect as ** you do not have permission to see this link **, Lord of the Cosmic Dance, who came boiling out of the wall, arms akimbo, in my old apartment in Atlanta.  This experience, had while awake, was doubtless augmented by the fact that my next door neighbors, two Rastafarians, had just visited and the atmosphere inside had a much much higher (pardon the awful pun) proportion of Tetrahydrocannabinol molecules than of oxygen.     

That last question feels different from the rest of the thread, and I do not want to answer it quickly in public.

I think you are right that any access to Christ, if there is access, is inwardly received. Where I hesitate is only here: inwardly received does not necessarily mean inwardly generated. Love, guilt, forgiveness, address, all reach us inwardly, but that does not by itself prove that we made them.

But your final question, whether the younger Stephen was wrong then or the later Stephen is wrong now, is not something I should answer for you in a forum reply. I only want to say this: I would resist the assumption that the later doubt automatically has more authority just because it came later. It may. But it is not forced.

That is probably as far as I should take it here.

I know how you feel about my quotes. Even so:

"More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of." Tennyson

It's not just the words we are praying but where we are when we are in prayer. It's as though we are in some other place where there is no time, no place. Wish I had your gift for writing, Stephen, to be able to tell you what that is like.

I would put it this way: the Resurrection asks to be received, not proven, but received is not the same as internalized. Something is still being received, from outside, that could have been otherwise. That is the narrow ledge I am trying to stand on, between the apologist who wants it compelled and the reading that makes it wholly inward.

Which lands us back at your question. The mystery survives exactly where awareness is not absolute: where there is enough to be addressed by, and not so much that there is no room left to refuse.

Well I don't doubt that something happened.  History is so full of dead, forgotten prophets and their lost acolytes that I think we have to consider it probable that some experience lies behind the genesis of the movement.  The movement itself certainly exists without a doubt and it got its start somewhere.  I guess what I'm really saying is that it is only through “interior spiritual transformation” that one could have any access to whatever happened.  How else could a modern believer experience Christ in any way except through “interior spiritual transformation”?  Of course we can read the Bible but at best there Jesus is a character in a book.   A character that may come alive in our imagination but not any differently than any other literary character.  

I used to pray when I was young.  I thought then I was in contact with something or someone outside myself.  I suppose the question now is, was I wrong then or am I wrong now?  

“Can a mystery survive within a field of absolute awareness?” is better than anything in my post, and it is the same question. Thank you for putting it that way.

Your second point goes further than mine, and I think you are right. To objectify the Resurrection into a fact that forces assent is not only the wrong measure of revelation. It is self-defeating. You can grant a proven fact and remain wholly untouched by it. James saw this a long time ago: even the demons believe, and shudder. Assent extracted by proof is exactly the belief that changes nothing. The apologist who finally compelled agreement would have produced trembling, not faith.

So the compulsion project hollows itself out from the inside, and you see that as clearly from outside as I do from within.

Where I would hesitate is the next step. It is tempting to conclude that the Resurrection must then be purely a matter of “interior spiritual transformation,” with no factual claim attached at all. I do not go there, and not because I want to smuggle the proof back in. If nothing happened that the testimony is testimony to, then betrayed trust could not wound faith in the way I argued above that it can. The claim has to remain vulnerable to the discovery that the witnesses invented it. A purely interior reading buys immunity from that kind of defeat, but at the price of the very exposure that keeps it honest.

I would put it this way: the Resurrection asks to be received, not proven, but received is not the same as internalized. Something is still being received, from outside, that could have been otherwise. That is the narrow ledge I am trying to stand on, between the apologist who wants it compelled and the reading that makes it wholly inward.

Which lands us back at your question. The mystery survives exactly where awareness is not absolute: where there is enough to be addressed by, and not so much that there is no room left to refuse.

Can a mystery survive within a field of absolute awareness?  

I take your point that in many cases believers are their own worst enemies.  Even as a non-believer I find the current crop of apologists tirelessly striving to "prove" the Resurrection as a historical "fact" utterly astounding. They don't see that by objectifying the experience of the Resurrection (whatever it's "nature") and removing it from the space of interior spiritual transformation, they're simply hollowing out their own project.  Is one "saved' by believing that the Resurrection was a historical fact?  Aren't they creating a category of thought where one could conceivably accept the historicity of the Resurrection but have no spiritual commitment whatsoever?   

Earlier this week, in connection with the John Q&A, I suggested that Ehrman and some of his apologetic opponents sometimes share a hidden measure: the explicit proposition (my reply is still awaiting moderation.) The stated “I am God” becomes the thing whose presence or absence settles the question. If Jesus says it in that form, the apologist thinks the matter is decided. If Jesus does not say it in that form, the critic thinks the claim has not really been made.

The Pilate legends show another face of the same assumption. The measure is no longer proposition but compulsion. Revelation counts only if it leaves no room not to see. Proposition and compulsion are not identical, but they belong to the same prior image: revelation, if it is real, must become unmistakable in the form we already know how to test.

In the Handing Over of Pilate, that image becomes almost literal. Caesar speaks the name of Christ, and at that moment the whole multitude of the gods falls down and turns to dust. The people go home shaking. There is no ambiguity left. No interpretation is needed. The divine name is spoken, and the rival gods collapse.

That is the move the canonical passion narratives do not make. Pilate remains ambiguous. Rome is not converted. The gods do not fall. The cross is not defended by a public metaphysical knockout. The legend removes the openness the Gospels keep. It gives the proof no one can deny.

And that craving is not confined to the legend.

The legend writes the compulsion straight into the story: the gods fall because they must. Some apologetics try to recover the same thing from the evidence, making the empty tomb function as a fact that forces assent. And some skepticism accepts the same standard from the other side: if the idols did not fall, if the miracle cannot be made the most probable historical explanation, then nothing revelatory was there.

Within Ehrman’s historical method, that last point holds. A historian working with ordinary probability cannot make a miracle the most probable explanation. I am not objecting to that rule as a rule of historical method. The quieter move lies beneath it, where the non-compelling is silently equated with the absent.

That is the assumption I am trying to name.

Now the obvious objection has to be faced, because otherwise this becomes too easy. The canon itself is not innocent of this movement. Mark is spare: a cry of dereliction, a centurion’s restrained confession, women who flee in fear. John heightens almost everything: the pre-existent Word, signs as manifestations of glory, a Jesus who lays down his life of his own accord. So yes, the tradition itself moves toward the more explicit and the more compelling.

But here I want to keep to what is on the page: the direction of the texts, not the hidden intentions of their authors. I do not want to infer intention from result. That is the same restraint I think Ehrman is right to keep when he refuses to move too quickly from “historically unreliable” to “intended as fiction.”

So the claim is more limited. The line is not arbitrary. The canon approaches compulsion and stops short of it. John heightens, but the idols do not fall. Pilate is not converted. Rome is not shaken into faith. And at the sharpest point, Thomas is given the proof he asks for and then placed second: blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.

That matters. The canon does not simply lack the craving for compelling proof. It knows that craving, lets it appear, and then subordinates it. The legend keeps the craving and drops the subordination.

Direction shared, threshold not.

This also matters morally. In both Pilate texts, and especially in the Handing Over of Pilate, Christ is magnified, Pilate is increasingly released from responsibility, and “the Jews” are made to carry the weight. The result is grotesque. A story that wants to honor Christ imagines imperial vengeance against the Jewish people: scattering, enslavement, erasure. That is not a harmless legendary flourish.

And this is where the question stops being only literary or historical. Someone could fairly ask: does this distinction make faith immune? If revelation does not have to compel, then what could ever count against it? If no falling idol is required, would no silence, no absence, no counter-evidence matter?

I do not want that escape hatch.

A ground that carries without compelling is still exposed to defeat, but along its own axis. It rests on testimony, on goodness, on the sense of being addressed. So it can also be wounded or defeated in that same currency.

If the resurrection witnesses were shown to have invented the claim, the testimony that carries would fall. The early tradition knew this, which is why Matthew already answers a stolen-body charge. A claim defended against falsification is not immune to falsification.

If the goodness that made the gospel credible to me were revealed, in the people who embodied it, as cruelty wearing a holy face, that would not be a small difficulty. It would be a real blow. Not every wound to faith comes through counter-evidence in the narrow historical sense. Some come through betrayed trust.

And a text like the Handing Over of Pilate belongs here too. It does not disprove the resurrection. But it does show the gospel being betrayed by the form of its own defense. Christ is honored by imagining the punishment of the Jews. The cross is defended by removing ambiguity, removing vulnerability, and turning revelation into domination.

That is why I do not think “carrying without compelling” is an evasion. Compelling proof is confirmed by evidence and defeated by counter-evidence. A carrying ground is confirmed by trustworthy address and defeated by betrayed trust. Same currency on both sides. That is what makes it a real epistemic category and not just a way of dodging the argument.

So my question is not whether the Handing Over of Pilate is historical. It is not. My question is what kind of revelation it gives us on the page.

When a tradition defends the cross by removing the doubt and making the idols fall, is it defending the cross, or quietly abolishing it?

And is the skeptic who waits for the idols to fall standing on different ground from the apologist who promises that they will, or on the same ground: the assumption that revelation, if real, must compel?

Jarek said

The apparition in Medjugorje was not a big deal. More important was the question asked by Father Tadeusz Rydzyk to the pilgrims he brought. "We came. We saw. You see for yourself what it's like here. If Mary has gathered us for a purpose, maybe we can do something together? What do you think?"
  

we ortodox think you guys reinvented turism with medjugorje, but why won't you tell what is on the otter side of those hills/mountains, Croatian word: gorje [medju means between]

• • The Crime (August 6, 1941): During World War II, the Croatian fascist Ustaše regime carried out a systematic genocide against the Orthodox Serbian population. Ustaše forces rounded up roughly 600 women, children, and elderly civilians from the nearby Orthodox village of Prebilovci. [** you do not have permission to see this link **]
  • The Execution Site: They marched them over the hills to Šurmanci—which is part of the exact same Catholic parish as Medjugorje. There, the victims were thrown alive into the deep limestone karst formation known as the Golubinka pit. In total, around 4,000 Orthodox Serbs from the lower Neretva basin were slaughtered in these pits during that summer. [** you do not have permission to see this link **]
  • The Communist Cover-Up: After the war, Jozo Tito’s communist government sought to suppress ethnic tensions by literally pouring concrete over the execution pits in 1961/1962. The horror was physically sealed away and censored under the banner of "Brotherhood and Unity." [** you do not have permission to see this link **]

• • Opening the Pits: In the late 1970s and 1980s, as Yugoslavia began to fracture, the families of the victims began demanding that the concrete caps be broken open so their relatives could receive a proper Christian burial. [** you do not have permission to see this link **]
  • The Apparitions Begin: On June 24–25, 1981, the local children reported seeing the Virgin Mary (Gospa). This occurred right on the slopes of the hills bordering Šurmanci. [** you do not have permission to see this link **]
  • The Contrast: To the Serbian Orthodox Church, it has always been deeply troubling that an apparition calling itself the "Queen of Peace" allegedly chose to appear on the exact hills overlooking unconfessed, un-excavated mass graves of murdered Orthodox children, without the messages ever addressing or acknowledging the horrific crimes committed by the local population's elders just 40 years prior. [** you do not have permission to see this link **]

• • The remains were finally exhumed in 1990 and placed in a memorial chapel in Prebilovci, which was then promptly blown up by Croatian forces during the 1992 Yugoslav wars (and has since been rebuilt as the Church of the Resurrection). [** you do not have permission to see this link **]
  • Meanwhile, the multi-million dollar pilgrimage industry of Medjugorje keeps tourists strictly focused on the front side of the mountains, leaving the bloody history of the gorje entirely out of the brochures. [** you do not have permission to see this link **]

• • Do you want to look into how the Vatican's recent official statements handle the complex local history of Medjugorje?
  • Should we discuss the specific local Franciscans who guided the visionaries and their historical ties to the region?

wbhiggins said
I am a first timer to the forum and am trying to figure out how this works. Is there anyone on here that knows Catholic Church history? I have a question about the Protoevangelium of James and Pope Gelasius I.
  

protoevangelium is highly respectable in orthodox, and I myself see nothing disputable in that text; I think Catholics think the same, so you can read it without any doubt or hesitation

John Harris said
“The lion” may represent the compulsive passions or attachments that inhabit a person. If the man eats the lion, he masters those passions and subjugates them to his humanity. If the lion eats the man, the person becomes ruled by those passions, even while outwardly remaining human.

Thank you, John. I think that is a very reasonable interpretation! For anyone who may be wondering, here is the text of Logion 7 of the Gospel of Thomas:

Jesus says: “Blessed is the lion, that a person will eat and the lion will become human. And anathema is the person whom a lion will eat and the lion will become human.”

Bart doesn't respond to posts here, but he does on the Recent Posts.  It doesn't have to be on topic.  Usually his responses are toward questions posed, so you might want to ask a question at the end like, "What do you think?"

You mentioned again that you do not feel you understand Logion 7 in the Gospel of Thomas. I realize the saying is notoriously difficult, but I wonder whether the image may be simpler than it first appears.

“The lion” may represent the compulsive passions or attachments that inhabit a person. If the man eats the lion, he masters those passions and subjugates them to his humanity. If the lion eats the man, the person becomes ruled by those passions, even while outwardly remaining human.

My own thought: When a child tries to distinguish between self & non-self, he chooses dichotomies that he hopes will help him to understand. It never helps, but he carries the dichotomies into adulthood, which become his passion. When he seeks gnosis, the attachment to these becomes an obstacle.

At any rate, I wanted to share the thought. Thank you again for all the work you do.

το σιλλικυπριον

Cool research bro, nobody had any idea.

Ok then, that’s a new kind of street preacher.

οι χριστοι εισιν οι λογοι του σαρκος