Agreed. But it’s a funny music video about a girl who is very very enthused about Ray Bradbury’s writing. Bradbury himself reportedly saw it before he died, and was pleased. (I’ll bet he was.)
This ain’t no church social. And if it is, where’s my sweet tea and Hush Puppies?
ahem…. any chance we can get back to the topic of the secret and the revelation?
My hypothesis was that, with the passage of time, a secret can become a revelation (to some and not to others and maybe to different disciples, gospel writers and early NT Christians at different times and to different extents). That is, the veil over scripture can be lifted, the deafness of hearer’s can be removed and the unbelief of unbelievers can be turned to belief. The veil I see as being the humanity of Christ (‘his Glory veiled’) and the humaness of scripture (including contrdcitions, textual errors, historical inaccuracies and varaint Christologies)
Who has believed what he has heard and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? (Isaiah 53.1)
And I still don’t know what you mean by that, or how one can discuss something so nebulous in concrete terms, which really is what history is about. This isn’t a theology forum.
I strongly dissent from the notion that the humanity of Jesus (there never was a Christ) is a veil–it’s the underlying reality. It’s the core of the gospels, and the reason we talk about them to this day. You’re obsessing with the veil that the gospel writers increasingly threw over his humanity–composed mainly of events that did not happen, words he never spoke. But they all, to some extent, retain his humanity, because it’s too compelling to ignore.
Forget the god. Behold the man.
The historical suggestion is not nebulous, but one of fundamental compatibility between for example, Mark, John & Paul on the basis that different NT authors had different types of insights and different degrees of insight into the question: “who do you say that I am?”. This includes different Christologies – all of which can’t be right unless one takes an ‘eternal destiny’ type approach ie Jesus was destined to become whom he was after his baptism and whom he was after his resuurection and to become whom he will bea at his return. Thus from a perspective outside of time or with foreknowledge, the idea of the pre-existent Logos or archangel might be made compatible with an exaltation or an adoptionist Christology (but proabaly not with the Trinity which I see as a non-sequitur).
My use of the very scriptural metaphor of a veil [of humanity] was not in anyway intented to diminish the very real humanity of either Jesus or the NT authors, but merely to say that there was also something of even higher value behind the physical flesh and blood or physical written text. I beleive this actually applies to all of us to some degree. To use a different Pauline metaphor, we have this treasure in eathern vessels. In other words, we all have some divinity in us – namely our ‘spirits’ or our ‘consciousnesses’. So we are back to trhe mystery of consciousness – the pysche or pneuma of man, the physicaly irreducible nature of our consciousness expressed the through the dust of or flesh and blood brains and bodies and which comes from God (Gen 2:7). In the case of Jesus – a consciousness, though veiled by the flesh, may have been unsullied by the flesh, in the sense that all his decsions were in line with his divine purspose – obedience to God, primarily ‘obedience to death on a cross’.
All of them can’t be right, but all of them can be WRONG. And all of them are, because Jesus wasn’t the Messiah, and in fact there is no Messiah. It was a repurposed idea from Judaism, and there’s not going to be any Jewish messiah either.
I shouldn’t judge. I can get very passionate and poetic about him too, but I try not to let that make me forget that he was still a very fallible person, who was by no means without some serious failings–and who often failed to live up to his own teachings (like anyone is in a position to judge).
His insights are so powerful, but like all visionaries, he needs to imagine some agency whereby his vision can be made manifest. With Plato, it was the Philosopher King and the Guardians. With Marx, it was the Dialectic and the Proletariat (Marx’s very self-serving vision of them–he wanted to use them to get his revenge on the bourgeois). Some earthly authority that will just ram their ideas down people’s throats, and then everybody will remember them forever.
To me, Jesus is greater than any of them–more decent, and more honest, because he sees that no earthly power could ever fix the underlying problem. The problem is that a lot of us are just plain rotten. And as long as that’s true, anything we try will be corrupted. The goats will devour the sheep. We can keep trying, and we must, but that’s the reality. The goats infiltrate any system that can give them power over others. But if the world were entirely composed of men and women of good will, then we could make this world a paradise.
If we could find a way to make sure the sheep have the power, and the goats do not. If we could know them at a glance. If we could find that part of ourselves that is goat, and cast it out, or at least see it for what it is. If we could just get that damn log out of our eyes.
I love him for trying. But that doesn’t change the fact that he failed. We have to do better. The Kingdom of God is a noble vision. But it’s not reality. Unless we make it so ourselves.
Could you try to make your point a bit more simply? As simply as you possibly can. Because I still don’t really get what you’re saying. I can understand what frickin’ Dostoevsky is saying when I read his novels. So I don’t think it’s me. 😉
I wasn’t aware I was veiling my own posts! OK i will try and unveil what I am saying. Just imagine for a brief few moments that you are wrong about Jesus and suspend your judgment on what I am about to say. I beleive we are all supernatural beings – spirits embodied in the flesh. The spirit, which is our consciousnes is more directly from God than our physical body and brain – divine and cannot be causally explained by the physical sciences (although it’s contents can) and cannot be reduced to physical matter and energy (ie ‘dust’ in biblical tems). Jesus, like us, was an embodied spirit, but a one that was destined to be the perfect representative of the creator and a perfectly obedient one – a servant, a suffering servant whose suffering would, in a spotless lamb-like way, propitiate for all the nasty aspects of humanity that you refer to, but whose real nature was deliberately veiled by his humanity and by the imperfections of humanly wtitten scripture and that the secret reality of this hidden glory would only be revealed directly (by divine consciousness to our consciousness) to those willing to beleive, in the face of doubt, to trust in the face of the apparent meaningless chaos of what happens in the world, and in the face of pain and suffering pain, to humble themselves in the face of self-pride to recognize their need for fogiveness. In short, Jesus is the one guy we can really really look up to (as you clearly do), but also the one man in history who actually justifes being worshipped because he was perfectly obedient. That’s basically it and I say pick your Christology and eschatology around that central set of truths. It’s quite orthodox Christianity really!
Okay. This is, you realize, a 100% religious POV. Only without a religion to go with it. I mean, seriously. Tell me one church in this country you could walk into, say what you just said to me, and they’d respond as one, “Wow, this is just what we learn in Sunday School!”
Leaving that aside. This is not a theology forum. It’s a history forum. Bart is 100% right when he says, regardless of whether you believe in miracles, that miracles are not a fit subject for historical discussion. The truth is, if you could prove a miracle, it wouldn’t BE a miracle. If you can prove the supernatural, then it’s just–natural.
If it’s just a matter of personal belief, without any material frame of reference at all, it doesn’t belong here. Frankly, it belongs in the realm of metaphysics, and maybe poetry. (Not necessarily good poetry.)
And I’m not without sympathy for the feelings behind it, and I have those feelings. Feelings alone don’t cut it. (Or to put it a different way, faith without works is dead). And as a scientist (as you say you are), you should know that.
godspell said
Okay. This is, you realize, a 100% religious POV. Only without a religion to go with it. I mean, seriously. Tell me one church in this country you could walk into, say what you just said to me, and they’d respond as one, “Wow, this is just what we learn in Sunday School!”Leaving that aside. This is not a theology forum. It’s a history forum. Bart is 100% right when he says, regardless of whether you believe in miracles, that miracles are not a fit subject for historical discussion. The truth is, if you could prove a miracle, it wouldn’t BE a miracle. If you can prove the supernatural, then it’s just–natural.
If it’s just a matter of personal belief, without any material frame of reference at all, it doesn’t belong here. Frankly, it belongs in the realm of metaphysics, and maybe poetry. (Not necessarily good poetry.)
And I’m not without sympathy for the feelings behind it, and I have those feelings. Feelings alone don’t cut it. (Or to put it a different way, faith without works is dead). And as a scientist (as you say you are), you should know that.
I agree that I am here talking about a metaphysical and theolgical beliefs about Jesus (not miracles), which are not provable or even observable. However, they relate to what NT authors claimed about Jesus and are fit for discussion.
My views are very orthodox, but just couched in different terms: just replace the term ‘consciousness’ with ‘heart’ or simply ‘you’ or ‘I’ etc and my views would fit very well in an evangelical sunday school class, if not in a Roman Catholic one.
I agree absolutely with your point that you can’t prove a miracle (by definition), but what you can do is to point out the deficiency or improbability of alternative physical explanations for any particular alleged miraculous event. Miracles are also absolutely a fit subject for historical discussion.
NT, you seem to be arguing that we need to look for the best explanation as to how Jesus could have done all the seemingly impossible things the gospels claim he did. But we have no objective basis for assuming he did any of these things. None of the gospel authors claim to be an eyewitness to even one miracle. It’s very clear that in many cases, the miracles are actually metaphors. Stories meant to illustrate something about Jesus, not concrete material claims as to his abilities.
I differ with Bart on the point of whether Jesus was believed by some people to be a miracle worker before he was crucified. I think it’s likely that there were stories of things he’d done before his death (faith healings and exorcisms), that got more and more miraculous the more they were repeated. I don’t believe the disciples would have imagined they saw him risen if he hadn’t made them believe he was capable of remarkable things.
Question–do you believe Aimee Semple McPherson could work genuine faith healings?
** you do not have permission to see this link **
Self-evidently, she was not the Messiah (she would have been horrified if anyone said she was), and she was in many ways a very flawed person (though I think a good one, overall), and yet she ‘cured’ many more people than Jesus ever did. And she insisted, over and over (as Jesus did) that it wasn’t really her doing it. That the power came from God and from the faith of the people who claimed to be healed, and given what we know of the mind/body connection, the latter is almost certainly true. The former–well–believe what you want.
I don’t rule out the fantastic, but it’s not a historian’s job to evaluate it. Report the known facts, interpret them as best as you can.
What moves me about some of the miracle stories is not the miracle itself, but the way Jesus reacts to the people asking him for help. “You could heal me if you wish it.” “I wish it.” Of course he did. Because like McPherson, he saw pain and desired to ease it.
You’ve seen Resurrection, right? With Ellen Bursteyn. It’s like that. Not about special powers. Just caring about others. That’s the miracle. It doesn’t matter whose name you do it in. What matters is wanting to do something. Because you feel the pain of other people as your own. And that is a terrible thing. And it exacts a terrible price.
gs: I will reply but I am about to jump on a plane
Judith: that was a very kind comment, but I would want to say that the scholarship of Bart far exceeds anything I could even hope to aim at, even in my own field of neurology and neuroscience, let alone in theology at which I am a total and utter amateur.
Hi gs
I don’t think that there are many scholars who don’t believe that Jesus was considered, by both ordinary people and the religious authorities of his day, to be a miracle worker of great ability compared with other workers of miracles, who were also considered bona fide. Just as with Aimee Semple McPherson (whom I had not come across before, but was clearly extraordinary), the evidence was not from laboratory-controlled conditions, but was nevertheless over-whelming. There are of course far more Charlatans and even those who conduct miracles, are likely to over-estimate their powers, as are their followers – even more so, but there is never that much smoke without some underlying fire. I agree that the Semions (signs) in John more so than the Dumamises (wonders) of the synoptics are indeed often meant to illustrate something about Jesus, but of course they are also concrete material claims as to his abilities! Why do you want so much to doubt this?
Aimee Semple McPherson may well have done more miracles than Jesus. Billy Graham certainly preached more sermons and to more people than all of the apostles put together. Miracles were said to be only one of the signs of Jesus’s messiahship and not unique to it, although it seemed that there was a belief among 2nd temple period pharisees and other ‘messianic expectors’ of the time, that certain categories of miracles e.g. healing those born blind or dumb were messianic, which is what gave the pharisees such a problem with Jesus. Jesus himself predicted that his followers would do even greater things than he and there have been many miracle workers through history, including many well attested ones who have not been ‘Christian’ per se.
It may not be the scientist’s job, but it’s certainly the historian’s job to evaluate miraculous claims and take a view!
As you may know from Bart, the “I wish it” is rendered by some texts as being said with anger rather than sympathetic passion! It’s one of his textual variant favourites :-), so may not have been a good choice to make your point, which I agree with anyway.
I’ve not seen Resurrection, but I fully agree with you that what matters is our intention to do good to others, not just in the context of healing, but certainly in that context as well. I certainly offer up silent prayers in my mind for patients who are suffering and whom I can’t help with scientific medicine. So, I 100% am with you that ‘what matters is wanting to do something, because you feel the pain of other people as your own’, but it doesn’t always exact a terrible price and I’d be interested to know what you mean by that. Maybe you have suffered deeply and the pain of others serves to remind you, or maybe you fear that you will suffer and the suffering of others terrifies you? Just in case I am right about that, I just offered a silent prayer up for you and it didn’t have far to go because as I write this, I am at 39,000 feet, going through some scary turbulence ????. I’m also in a 777 and that’s supposed to be the perfect number (?of the Kingdom of God) ????.
It strikes me that you should try something. You are clearly someone of not inconsiderable empathy. Why not start praying (silently or outload if appropriate) for those who are suffering around you and keep a diary and check on your results. I should probably do the same, because I have noticed some people unexpectedly getting better. Of course, it’s not laboratory-controlled science, but it might add some grist to the mill of faith. To be clear though, I am not suggesting prayer instead of kind actions, but alongside.
Hey, Air Canada has in flight wifi – not free though and we are crammed in like sardines. Air Canada made the choice to get rid of all it’s 747s and convert 777s from a 360 seat configuration to 458 seats and save 30%. I won’t travel with them again if I can help it. Westjet is much better.
I don’t think most serious scholars consider it a proven fact that Jesus was considered the greatest wonder-worker of his day. You have no basis for that. Most people never even heard of him until long after he was dead, and that is a fact. There were more famous miracle workers in that era, Jewish and pagan. Jesus had better long-term PR. But he also had more interesting things to say than “Look what I can do!”
I can’t read Greek, but I’ve never read “I wish it” as an expression of anger in any translation (interpretation depends on more than just deep knowledge of a given language, and you can’t get tone of voice from a line of text). Though it wouldn’t be strange for someone who is constantly being besieged by people who want his help to feel a mite beset upon–if he was just a human being. Which he was.
Where and how and who for and even whether I pray is my own affair. I can feel beset upon as well. Glad you enjoyed the flight. 😉
Yes I accept there’s only the gospels to go on, but I think most scholars accept he was considered a miracle-worker on the basis of these. Yes, he had far more important things to do, but healing allowed him to express his love and empathy for those suffering – he was well ‘aquainted with grief’
Jesus saying ‘I wish’ with anger vs passion alternatives in Mark 1:41: ** you do not have permission to see this link **
NIV tranlates it as ‘indignant’ others go ‘with passion’…. apparently similar Greek words AND ** you do not have permission to see this link **
Yes, I agree that he was besieged, but he may have also felt insulted by the question: maybe he was effectively saying “of course I want you to be healed, why would you even ask that question?”
Is there any evidence that Aimee Semple McPherson actually healed anyone? A claim about an imaginary cure for an imaginary disease doesn’t count.
…what you can do is to point out the deficiency or improbability of alternative physical explanations for any particular alleged miraculous event.
The problem is that there will never be a case where a miracle is a more probable explanation than a physical one.
Hi Stephen, If you read the wikkipedia link gs posted, then you will know as much as me about this remarkable lady! As for your Hume-esque observation, I broadly agree and we had this very discussion somewhere back in the thread (before gs and Robert started segwaying from consciousness to science fiction authors 
)
Stephen said
Is there any evidence that Aimee Semple McPherson actually healed anyone? A claim about an imaginary cure for an imaginary disease doesn’t count.…what you can do is to point out the deficiency or improbability of alternative physical explanations for any particular alleged miraculous event.
The problem is that there will never be a case where a miracle is a more probable explanation than a physical one.
There is absolutely no proof, and dude, I linked to a fairly long Wikipedia article, so you should know as much as I do. 🙂
But if many people believed she could heal people, in the 20th century, and scientists and journalists couldn’t prove that she didn’t, and some people of no religious faith at all were convinced she had some kind of weird power–maybe you’re missing my point. I’m not saying she worked real miracles. I’m as skeptical as you are, but my skepticism doesn’t cut just one way. (One-way skepticism is a blunt instrument.)
I’m saying that she was able to convince a lot of people that she did have the power to heal, even though she kept insisting she had no power at all, and it was just faith–the term ‘faith-healing’ can be interpreted as “If you believe you’ll be healed, you would be.” If you’ve read much at all (and I think you have) you know doctors talk all the time about this phenemonon. People who were supposed to die, and they didn’t–and no scientific explanation at all. Doesn’t mean there isn’t one. But they can’t find it. So they talk helplessly about the ‘mind-body connection’ and ‘spontaneous remission’, all the while knowing they have no idea what just happened. And this is Life. Like it or not. If your goal in life is to explain everything, then you are a failure by definition.
So it just seems perverse to me to say “Well, miracles don’t exist, so Jesus couldn’t have been believed to be a miracle worker” when we know very well that lots of people in that time period were thought to be miracle workers, and lots of people in our more scientific era as well.
Some people are like Neuro–determined to believe. Others are like you–determined to disbelieve.
I don’t think either approach qualifies as serious thought on the subject. Sometimes there’s no answer, so be like the doctors (who know more science than you ever will) and just admit you don’t know what the hell happened.
To me, it seems much more likely than not that Jesus attempted to heal people, of both physical and spiritual ailments (unlikely he drew a clear line between the two, since almost nobody did then), and that at least some of these people came to believe they’d been healed.
No doubt, like many of the people McPherson ‘healed’, some of them felt worse again later, and the gospels didn’t preserve that memory, because why would they? No reporters and physicians lurking about to debunk an itinerant rabbi in a backwater province in a time when debunking wasn’t much of a thing, and basically everybody believed in supernatural agencies (pagans at least as much as Jews).
But reportedly (in the 20th century, with no end of skeptics wanting to debunk her, and quite a lot of religious people who did not like her and wanted her discredited), some of the people McPherson ‘healed’ continued to say they were in good health. Just feeling better can make you better, and that’s a fact. Or at least a frequently observed occurrence. And in a world of storytellers, people will keep improving the story, and there you are.
Maybe they were imaginary illnesses, as you say–but remind me how much psychiatrists charge an hour these days? Haven’t seen one since I was a kid. And you can see for yourself how much good it did me. 😉
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