Why Saying "Merry Christmas!" Is Appropriate Everyday Through January 5th

On Christmas Eve the young bagger at the grocery store said to me "Happy Holidays", and on the second day of Christmas a college boy in my family corrected me for saying "Merry Christmas!" to him in greeting even though Christmas was "over". The one got only the number right, the other only the name.

How quickly they forget, if they ever learned.

Christmas Day initiates Christmastide, which lasts nearly a fortnight, The Twelve Days of Christmas ending on January 5th, the day after which is The Epiphany of our Lord:

"In England in the Middle Ages, this period was one of continuous feasting and merrymaking, which climaxed on Twelfth Night, the traditional end of the Christmas season. In Tudor England, Twelfth Night itself was forever solidified in popular culture when William Shakespeare used it as the setting for one of his most famous stage plays, titled Twelfth Night. ... The early North American colonists brought their version of the Twelve Days over from England, and adapted them to their new country, adding their own variations over the years. For example, the modern-day Christmas wreath may have originated with these colonials. A homemade wreath would be fashioned from local greenery and fruits, if available, were added. Making the wreaths was one of the traditions of Christmas Eve; they would remain hung on each home's front door beginning on Christmas Night (1st night of Christmas) through Twelfth Night or Epiphany morning. As was already the tradition in their native England, all decorations would be taken down by Epiphany morning and the remainder of the edibles would be consumed. A special cake, the king cake, was also baked then for Epiphany."

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That's why every gift, every card and every greeting from a well-wisher during this time is on-time ... until January 6th.

On the third day of Christmas, I wish you a merry one!

Luke does not keep the story straight: And on earth peace . . . or division?

"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom he is pleased!"

-- Luke 2:14

"Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division."

-- Luke 12:51

'Tis Easier To Keep Holidays Than Commandments

"How many observe Christ's Birth-day! How few, his Precepts! O! 'tis easier to keep Holidays than Commandments."

-- Poor Richard's Almanack, 1743

One-Two Punch Of Acts Of God In Michigan: Nov.17th Wind Storm Knocks Out Power For Over 500,000, Over 400,000 In Dec.21st Ice Storm

Temperatures will fall into the single digits tonight and tomorrow night. Blotches on the map represent some of the over 400,000 who lost electric power in the ice storm which struck Michigan overnight Saturday into Sunday morning. Many will remain without power all week.

Laura Ingraham, Anti-Protestant Bigot

She just called the gay mafia's attack on Phil Robertson "Calvinist".

Oh yeah? You . . . you . . . mackerel snapper.

"Only nutcases claim to be God."

Seen here.

Progress.

Put By More Than Money

So advises the ghost of Christmas present to Scrooge, as played by George C. Scott in one of the many productions I have seen of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. The line is not in the original, but captures the spirit of it pretty well. The idea seems oddly out of place these days, seeing that many people haven't put by nearly enough money to survive what has turned out to be a protracted period of unemployment, crushing debt, dispossession and economic stagnation.

We watch a number of these productions in our home in the days leading up to Christmas every year, and in 2009 Disney produced another which was notably the occasion for some materialist nonsense by one Peter Foster (which can still be accessed in full here):

Would the world have been better without Scrooge? Did he force people to do business with him? Was Bob Cratchit not free to find better employment elsewhere? And if no such employment was available, was that Scrooge’s fault? Scrooge’s “conversion” is also problematic. Once Marley’s spectre has shown Scrooge what the afterlife looks like for the uncharitable, is there any need for the three Christmas ghosts? Scrooge has been “scared good” the old Christian way. With fear of eternal damnation.

The author is at pains in the essay to help the reader achieve, dare we say it, a more charitable view of capitalism than these productions usually afford, the 2009 Disney production starring Jim Carrey in sympathy with and perfectly timed for, it would seem, that odd thing, the wealth re-distributionist 44th president. Foster points out, quite rightly, how there has been a strong tendency in all quarters and evident for a long time, to encourage us to bite the invisible hand that feeds our society. And in this Mr. Foster surely is correct.

But if this tendency often expresses itself in caricatures of the reality in films, it is to miss the point entirely to conclude that Scrooge was simply "scared good." If Mr. Foster had taken the time to re-familiarize himself with Dickens' story, it is not evident from that remark. The ghosts were not superfluous because Dickens was anything but a proponent of some stern form of Christian fundamentalism any more than he was of the revolution of the proletariat. 

On the contrary, we should consider that the ghosts sent to Scrooge revealed to him many important truths which speak to the mysteries and wonders of life beyond the superficialities of mere production and consumption with which both Marxism and now capitalism concern themselves in a world flattened by the dismal science of economics. And it is this flat view of life which animates Mr. Foster no less than it does his anti-business bogeymen.

At least the economists of the past paid back-handed compliments to the more real, multi-dimensional world we all used to inhabit, where "markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent" and "in the long run, we're all dead." As Dickens reminds us in the beginning of his story, at Christmas we open our shut-up hearts freely and think of people as "fellow-passengers to the grave," into which no new 3D film technology from Disney will scarcely be able to take us.

No, Dickens is more a proponent of the methods of Socrates than of some wild-eyed hellfire and damnation preacher. Scrooge lives the unexamined life, which to Socrates is a life not worth living. Wedded to a Christian conception of reality in which the grace of God trumps all, it is Divine Providence which sends the spirits who help awaken Scrooge to life's examination and explanation, showing him the meaning behind the "shadows of the things that have been, that are, and are yet to come."

A thoughtful, educated person would instantly be reminded of the shadows constantly beheld by the cave-dwellers in Plato's allegory in Book X of The Republic, whom the philosopher comes down from the mountain to release, fixed in their seats facing the darkness, unable to see behind themselves. He comes to loosen their chains, which stand for Ignorance, that they may turn and see the objects on which the Light shines, creating the shadows their eyes mistook for the true things.

These Socratic ghosts show Scrooge that he once thought his own life had been truly worth living; 
that he was actually happy once, open to the world and other-directed;
that love was real and precious;
that people could mean it when they repented of their mistakes;
that they could change for the better;
that each life has the potential to mean something positive to every one around it;
that people exist who are quite happy without money;
that if individuals mattered to God they should matter to him;
that we must pay homage to ordered liberty, be thankful and toast the founder of our feast, whatever else others may think of him;
that choosing justice for its own sake is as indispensable for the conduct of his own business as for the conduct of the business of life.

"Mankind was my business!" shrieked the ghost of Marley.

And it is ours.

Forget The "White" Jesus: Christo . . . greco italiano!

Just sayin'.

Over a foot of snow in Jerusalem

Photos here. Story here:

Snow continues to fall across Israel Friday morning, reaching new regions of the country and causing major power outages and road closures. Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat released a statement saying "we are battling a storm of rare ferocity." The capital has over 37 centimeters (15 inches) of snow, with deeper snowfall in other areas. ... The Israeli police have released a particularly strong warning to drivers in affected areas against going out in blizzard conditions. Police have warned residents across the country to avoid leaving their homes for any reason during the snowfall.

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[T]hen let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains ... Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a sabbath.

-- Matthew 24:16, 20

Rush Limbaugh Opens A Can Of Worms, Accidentally Discovers American Catholics Are Cheapskates

Looks like Pope Francis' American Catholics are a bigger bunch of cheapskates than even Rush Limbaugh imagines, which would better explain the Pope's recent anti-capitalist remarks than some new turn in the direction of Marxism:

Here Rush Limbaugh paints the figure broadly and still comes up with a pretty small sum:

Let me give you some numbers here.  The citizens of the United States of America in 2012 donated a total of $316 billion to charity.  Catholic Charities USA distributed $4.7 billion.  $316 billion donated to charity by the American people.  Catholic Charities USA distributed $4.7 billion.  The point is -- that's not to denigrate the church -- that is to illustrate as the Reason.com writer said, the pope's big cause is charity.  Without capitalism, there wouldn't be any.  Without capitalism, the Catholic Church wouldn't have any money to donate to anybody.  Without capitalism, there wouldn't be enough people with enough money to give it to the Catholic Church in the form of donations itself. 

But The New York Times, here, claims $2.9 billion of $4.67 billion came from US taxpayers in 2010, and only 3% from churches (just $140 million!):

Catholic Charities is one of the nation’s most extensive social service networks, serving more than 10 million poor adults and children of many faiths across the country. It is made up of local affiliates that answer to local bishops and dioceses, but much of its revenue comes from the government. Catholic Charities affiliates received a total of nearly $2.9 billion a year from the government in 2010, about 62 percent of its annual revenue of $4.67 billion. Only 3 percent came from churches in the diocese (the rest came from in-kind contributions, investments, program fees and community donations).

There is none righteous, no, not one?

The LORD rewarded me according to my righteousness; according to the cleanness of my hands he recompensed me. For I have kept the ways of the LORD, and have not wickedly departed from my God. For all his ordinances were before me, and from his statutes I did not turn aside. I was blameless before him, and I kept myself from guilt. Therefore the LORD has recompensed me according to my righteousness, according to my cleanness in his sight.

-- 2 Samuel 22:22ff.

As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one.

-- Romans 3:10

And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?

-- Job 1:8

Reza Aslan's Revolutionary Jesus Saves The Proletariat

In The Washington Post here:

Jesus did not preach income equality between the rich and the poor. He preached the complete reversal of the social order, wherein the rich and the poor would switch places. ... Jesus is not simply describing some utopian fantasy in which the meek inherit the earth, the sick are healed, the weak become strong, the hungry are fed, and the poor are made rich. He is advocating a chilling new reality in which the rich will be made poor, the strong will become weak, and the powerful will be displaced by the powerless.

This is where political presuppositions intrude on a scholar's imagination.

 

Aslan must relegate Jesus' belief in the imminent in-breaking of the kingdom of God through divine action to the realm of utopian fantasy because he wants Jesus to be a political radical instead of a mistaken eschatological prophet.

No one would be more appalled than Jesus by a liberal's kingdom of God exhausted by equality between rich and poor. But Jesus did not simply preach a revolution which would benefit the poor at the expense of the rich. Jesus expected few to be saved, not merely a reversal of fortunes for the many over the few. It is not just a simple matter of reversal but of final judgment under God's perfect justice which animates all the difficult sayings of Jesus, beginning with the call to repentance, which meant first of all renunciation of the world, not just for the rich but also for the poor: "No one can be my disciple who does not say goodbye to everything that he owns."

The real Jesus is more chilling than Reza Aslan wants to admit, indeed, more chilling than Christians want to admit. Jesus imagined an end to the world as we know it, transformed and swept clean as in the days of Noah, not by water, but by the fires of hell, into which the tares, the sons of the devil, are cast at the final harvest. That is the meaning of "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel."

Not-So-Forward-Thinking Kmart Shopper Spends Half Her Holiday Budget On Ornaments, Hats And Decor

Reported here in all seriousness:

A Kmart store in New York City that opened at 6 a.m. on Thanksgiving and stayed open for 41 hour straight was packed on the holiday. Clothing was marked down 30 percent to 50 percent. Adriana Tavaraz, 51, headed there at about 4 p.m. and spent $105 on ornaments, Santa hats and other holiday decor. She saved about 50 percent. But it's not likely Tavaraz will be back in stores too many more times this season. Money is tight this year because of rising costs for food and rent, and Tavaraz already spent much of her $200 holiday budget. "Nowadays, you have to think about what you spend," she said. "You have to think about tomorrow."

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The woman named Folly is brash.

She is ignorant and doesn’t know it.

-- Proverbs 9:13

Income Inequality As Taught By The Gospels Increases Dramatically At The Last Judgment

The End must be near since perfect income inequality (1.0) is closer now than when we first believed.

And he answered them, To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. For to him who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.

-- Matthew 13:11f.

So take the talent from him, and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to every one who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth. When the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

-- Matthew 25:28ff.

For to him who has will more be given; and from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.

-- Mark 4:25

Why then did you not put my money into the bank, and at my coming I should have collected it with interest? And he said to those who stood by, Take the pound from him, and give it to him who has the ten pounds. (And they said to him, Lord, he has ten pounds!) I tell you, that to every one who has will more be given; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.

-- Luke 19:23ff.

For nothing is hid that shall not be made manifest, nor anything secret that shall not be known and come to light. Take heed then how you hear; for to him who has will more be given, and from him who has not, even what he thinks that he has will be taken away.

-- Luke 8:17f.

William Lane Craig Doubts The Accuracy Of Matthew's Presentation Of Jesus' Apocalyptic Sayings

When the evidence is uncomfortable, if you can't trim it, cast doubt on it.

Here (italics mine):

Matthew blends in with Jesus’ mission charge to the twelve disciples certain prophecies about the end times, about the coming of the Son of Man. So you get a verse like Matthew 10:23, “When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next; for truly, I say to you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel, before the Son of man comes.” Originally this was probably a saying about the end of the world, the coming of the Son of Man; but here Matthew has woven it into this mission discourse to the Twelve. ... [B]y putting this saying in this context, Matthew makes it sound as if Jesus is saying to the twelve disciples, “Before you have gone through all the towns of the Israel, the coming of the Son of Man will occur.”

This is a perfect illustration of my contention. If Matthew 10:23 did not mean that the Son of Man was going to come again before the mission of the Twelve was over, there is no reason to think that Matthew 24:34 means that the Son of Man is going to come again within the first generation. We can’t be sure how this saying was originally given or what its context was. ...

But now look at how Matthew handles this verse in Matthew 16:28. Here Matthew, telling of this same event, rewords it. Remember, they didn’t have quotation marks. This is paraphrased. Here is Matthew’s way of putting it: “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.” Now that does [italics original] sound as if they are going to see the return of the Son of Man in their own lifetime! But we know that Matthew is paraphrasing this passage in Mark 9:1, which doesn’t really say that. Matthew is passing it on in a somewhat different way. This case again illustrates my point. These sayings may have a very different meaning in their original context. Someone who only knew Matthew 16:28 might well think that Jesus is saying, “There are people here who will not die before they see my parousia,” but when you read Mark 9:1, that is not at all obvious.

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At least with Albert Schweitzer's interpretation, Matthew and Mark are allowed to stand as reliable presentations of (failed) apocalyptic.

So who's the "conservative", William Lane Craig, or Albert Schweitzer?

Jesus is the door of a sheepfold

I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.

-- John 10:9

The Deleted Anonymous Harvard Ichthus Blog Post "Why Us?"

click on the image and open in a new window to enlarge

In the interest of freedom of speech, which is dead on almost every college campus, and dead at google which also removed the cached version, the screenshot at the left from The Boston Globe, here, is reproduced.

So don't tell us there is nothing google, bing, et alia can do about removing filth off the internet. If they can remove something a Jew for Jesus wrote because it is offensive to Jews, they can remove anything.

They just have to want to.

John The Baptist Is Eli'jah

Head shrine of San Silvestro in Capite

And as they still went on and talked, behold, a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them. And Eli'jah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. And Eli'sha saw it and he cried, "My father, my father! the chariots of Israel and its horsemen!" And he saw him no more. Then he took hold of his own clothes and rent them in two pieces.

-- 2 Kings 2:11f.

Behold, I will send you Eli'jah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the LORD comes.

-- Malachi 4:5 (Hebrew 3:23)

For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John; and if you are willing to accept it, he is Eli'jah who is to come.
-- Matthew 11:13f.

Hagar Is A Mountain In Arabia

 

 

"Hagar is Mt. Sinai in Arabia." 

-- Galatians 4:25

The rich always ye have with you, by definition

"For the poor always ye have with you."

-- John 12:8a

h/t Chris

Maybe Anti-Calvinist Methodism Would Be More Attractive If It Were More Intelligent

How can you hope to attract "millennials" if you misspell it eleven times (even the tag!)?

See for yourself, here.

Even N.T. Wright Has Occasionally Come Close To Saying Jesus Was Nuts

My case has been, and remains, that Jesus believed himself called to do and be things which, in the traditions to which he fell heir, only Israel’s God, YHWH, was to do and be. I think he held this belief both with passionate and firm conviction and with the knowledge that he could be making a terrible, lunatic mistake. I do not think this in any way downplays the signals of transcendence within the Gospel narratives. It is, I believe, consonant both with a full and high Christology and with the recognition that Jesus was a human figure who can be studied historically in the same way that any other human figure can be. Indeed, I have come to regard such historical study not just as a possibly helpful source for theology but a vital and non-negotiable resource: not just part of the possible bene esse, but of the esse itself. Partial proof of this drastic proposal lies in observing what happens if we ignore the history: we condemn ourselves to talking about abstractions, even perhaps to making Jesus himself an abstraction. Fuller proof could only come if and when systematicians are prepared to work with the first-century Jewish categories which are there in the historical accounts of Jesus and which shaped and formed his own mindset.

-- Jesus' Self-Understanding, N.T. Wright (2002)

Western orthodoxy has for too long had an overly lofty, detached, high-and-dry, uncaring, uninvolved, and (as the feminist would say) kyriarchical view of god.  It has always tended to approach the christological question by assuming this view of god and then fitting Jesus into it.  Hardly surprising, the result was a docetic Jesus, which in turn generated the protest of the eighteenth century and historical scholarship since then, not least because of the social and cultural arrangements which the combination of semi-Deism and docetism generated and sustained.  That combination remains powerful, not least in parts of my own communion, and it still needs a powerful challenge.  My proposal is not that we understand what the word “god” means and manage somehow to fit Jesus into that.  Instead, I suggest that we think historically about a young Jew, possessed of a desperately risky, indeed apparently crazy, vocation, riding into Jerusalem in tears, denouncing the Temple, and dying on a Roman cross—and that we somehow allow our meaning for the word “god” to be recentered around that point.

-- Jesus and the Identity of God, N.T. Wright (1998)

When his family heard what was happening, they tried to take him away. "He's out of his mind," they said.

-- Mark 3:21

Rebellion To Tyrants Is Obedience To God

"I don't understand how people can call themselves Christians today who are not at the same time enraged opponents of this regime. A truly devoted Christian must be a devoted opponent!"

-- Henning von Tresckow to his wife in April 1943, quoted in Bodo Scheurig, Henning Von Tresckow: Ein Preusse Gegen Hitler (Gerhard Stalling Verlag, 1973), 147

"The whole world will vilify us now, but I am still totally convinced that we did the right thing. Hitler is the archenemy not only of Germany but of the world. When, in few hours' time, I go before God to account for what I have done and left undone, I know I will be able to justify what I did in the struggle against Hitler. God promised Abraham that He would not destroy Sodom if only ten righteous men could be found in the city, and so I hope for our sake God will not destroy Germany. No one among us can complain about dying, for whoever joined our ranks put on the shirt of Nessus. A man's moral worth is established only at the point where he is ready to give his life in defense of his convictions."

-- Henning von Tresckow before his suicide, after the failure of the July 20th plot, 1944, quoted in Joachim Fest, Plotting Hitler's Death (Weidenfield & Nicolson, 1996), 289–290

How To Make Yourself Smarter

Just redesign yourself, and presto, you are smarter, just like that!

Jesus, God's Instrument To Advance Monotheism In The World

Seen here:

Franz Rosenzweig spoke of Judaism as the sun — that is the source — and Christianity as the rays of the sun — that which spreads monotheism to the world. The greatest Jewish philosopher, Maimonides, of the Middle Ages saw Islam and Christianity as the preparation for God’s eventual Kingdom.

Peter Leithart Hates America And The Protestantism Which Gave Birth To It

in good standing with no longer Protestant PCUSA

Where else? In "grace and cooperation with grace" First Things, here:

The Reformation isn’t over. But Protestantism is, or should be.

Protestantism is a negative theology ... 

Mainline churches are nearly bereft of “Protestants.” ...

Though it agrees with the original Protestant protest, Reformational catholicism is defined as much by the things it shares with Roman Catholicism as by its differences. Its existence is not bound up with finding flaws in Roman Catholicism. ...

Protestantism has had a good run. It remade Europe and made America. It inspired global missions, soup kitchens, church plants, and colleges in the four corners of the earth. But the world and the Church have changed, and Protestantism isn’t what the Church, including Protestants themselves, needs today. It’s time to turn the protest against Protestantism and to envision a new way of being heirs of the Reformation, a new way that happens to conform to the original Catholic vision of the Reformers.

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Flattery will get you nowhere, Peter.

"By definition, Roman Catholic is an oxymoron."

Is Missionary Self-Defense Taught By Jesus?

Is missionary self-defense taught by Jesus? The short answer is, No.

But Robert Gundry seems to think so, here, in criticism of the Zealot hypothesis revived by Reza Aslan:

Though Jesus wasn't "a violent revolutionary bent on armed rebellion," he "instructs his disciples immediately after the Passover meal" to go sell their cloaks and each buy a sword, as for a violent revolution. So says Aslan, but he fails to mention the context of an evangelistic mission requiring not only a sword for self-protection but also a purse, bag, and sandals for travel, just as he fails to mention that Jesus' bringing a sword has to do, figuratively and contextually, with division in families over whether to follow Jesus, not with revolution against Rome (compare Jesus' saying in the different context of violence that "all who take the sword will perish by the sword"). Undoubtedly Jesus was crucified as "The King of the Jews"—i.e., as a messianic rebel—but Aslan has to doubt or deny that the Sanhedrin shifted from the religious charge of blasphemy, under which they condemned Jesus, to a false political charge of sedition when arraigning him before Pilate [emphasis added].

The key evidence is in Luke 22.33-38:

And he said unto him, Lord, I am ready to go with thee, both into prison, and to death. And he said, I tell thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this day, before that thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me. And he said unto them, When I sent you without purse, and scrip, and shoes, lacked ye any thing? And they said, Nothing. Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one. For I say unto you, that this that is written must yet be accomplished in me, And he was reckoned among the transgressors: for the things concerning me have an end. And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And he said unto them, It is enough.

The first thing to be said about this is that if Reza Aslan has to doubt or deny a shift in charges by the Sanhedrin, Gundry has to believe and assert a shift in context to the evangelistic in this passage which is plainly absent.

To be sure, Luke here makes Jesus allude to Luke 9.3:

And he said unto them, Take nothing for your journey, neither staves, nor scrip, neither bread, neither money; neither have two coats apiece.

But now Luke makes Jesus reverse this command in the new context, and what's new about it is that Jesus plainly anticipates there will be a threat to the safety of the disciples, who like Peter will deny him and run away. Jesus isn't anticipating some new missionary activity for the disciples. He's imagining their scattering, and so their vulnerability, sheep without their shepherd.

If I were going to be mean, I'd call Jesus a situation ethicist on Gundry's reading. But Gundry's idea of new missionary activity is clearly by analogy from the previous instruction, not in evidence in the new instruction itself. At least on Luke's presentation of Jesus' words, the new situation might logically require carrying weapons, but to imagine a missionary reference at this point in the narrative looks strained, to say the least. And why weren't weapons needed before? Won't God continue to protect his own now without them? Faith as the grain of a mustard seed.

The problem is that Luke's overall presentation of the arrest of Jesus looks fanciful and muddled, quite apart from this reversal in the mouth of Jesus. It's almost as if Luke is trying to harmonize the unharmonizable. And this passage about swords seems to be representative of that.

For example, in 22:24 the whole question of who would be the greatest among the disciples intrudes unnaturally in the narrative, after Jesus' prediction of his betrayal by one of his very followers at the Passover meal, as if to suggest the disciples are a bunch of narcissists at the hour of Jesus' greatest need. And hadn't Luke brought up this argument going on amongst the disciples way back in chapter 9 already? Why bring it up again? Matthew by contrast knows nothing of this controversy popping up at the Lord's Supper.

Then in 22:43 an angel appears to Jesus to strengthen him at the Mount of Olives, but since the disciples are all asleep as this occurs, who is there to observe this, that Luke might know of it, hm?  Did a little birdie tell him? Matthew does not know of it, even though he claims to know about many appearances of angels otherwise, including to Jesus' father, Joseph.

Additionally, what sense does it make that one of the disciples took off an opponent's ear with a sword and didn't get arrested for it on the spot with Jesus, if Jesus is perceived by his opponents to be an insurrectionist King of the Jews on the Zealot hypothesis? Arrest the ring leader, along with his armed followers, right? In Matthew at least, where there is no new talk of acquiring weapons for such a situation, Jesus rebukes the resort to weapons forthrightly, and the offending disciples escape, as they do also in John but not without a second divine sign in addition to the healing the ear that was cut off.

And, of course, in the past missionary activity the disciples have had to eschew self-defense instruments such as staves according to Luke's own account, but now suddenly they already are seen to be in possession of swords! "Oh look, here's two", they say now, like Jesus didn't know they've had them all along.

Is that narrative to be believed while at the same time Jesus expresses indignation at his opponents for coming for him by night with weapons? Isn't that the pot calling the kettle black on Luke's reading? Neither Matthew, Mark nor John (!) make Jesus look quite so foolish, allowing weapons for us, but not for you.

There's something funny going on in the tradition about all of this, which may be illuminated by examining all the passages in the gospels mentioning swords and staves, where you will find not the slightest hint of approval for carrying weapons of any kind, except perhaps in two places.

In Matthew 10:34 we have this:

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.

Yet the explanation following this makes it clear, as Gundry points out, that this is a metaphorical sword, one meant to explain repentance in the most radical terms as that which divides the follower of Jesus even from normal human relationships, as the case may require, just as a real sword would:

And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.

That leaves us with Mark 6:8 only, which isn't even about a sword, but only about a staff, truly more of a defensive weapon than is a sword, which is an offensive one:

And commanded them that they should take nothing for their journey, save a staff only; no scrip, no bread, no money in their purse.

Mark, unfortunately, is not supported in this reading by Matthew nor by Luke, who both correct Mark and say Jesus commanded them to take not even that. Interestingly, when Luke's Jesus refers to this in chapter 22 (cited above), however, he merely summarizes what he had made explicit in chapter 9, glossing over the staves entirely, which he had earlier specifically prohibited. Luke is making Jesus look rather fast and loose with the facts here.

Was that intentional on Luke's part? I think so. Luke is writing from a later period, coping with the new reality of the kingdom's coming having been already long delayed. He is at pains to rationalize the Christian's continued existence in an increasingly dangerous world, and finds the earliest tradition about the imminently coming kingdom and its ethic of no possessions, not even weapons, difficult to reconcile with reality. The remarkable thing about that is how he knows that tradition and records it in the starkest possible terms (14:33), which no one else does (So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple). It's almost like it bothers him. And, of course, Mark's unique saying about keeping a defensive weapon would be in keeping with Luke's point of view because, like Luke, Mark is associated with the later, Pauline perspective, which has already rationalized to some extent the failure of the parousia.

It is fashionable to ridicule Luke the historian as anything but an historian for reasons such as this. On the contrary I would say that his realism about the on-going perils of human existence in the face of a delayed parousia mark him as a reliable recorder of the transition from failed apocalyptic faith to the phoenix of catholic faith.

But it will not do for us to sweep aside the Jesus who thoroughly disavowed the role of human agency in ushering in the reign of God and who believed to the bitter end that God himself would bring it to save the faithful few who repented and were waiting for it. Nor can we sweep aside Jesus' expectation of this imminently coming kingdom for one rationalized as delayed indefinitely in order to save the many who would be able also to repent and believe.

Both views trim the sorry evidence.

Foxes Have Holes And Nadia Bolz-Weber Has A Duvet

Here, in The Washington Post:

“I never experience God in camping or trees or nature. I hate nature,” she told the Austin crowd as she paced the stage. “God invented takeout and duvets for a reason.”

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Honesty. It's a start.

And it came to pass, that, as they went in the way, a certain man said unto him, Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. And Jesus said unto him, Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.

-- Luke 9:57f.

The False Pen Of The Scribes

"How can you say, 'We are wise, and the law of the LORD is with us'? But, behold, the false pen of the scribes has made it into a lie. The wise men shall be put to shame, they shall be dismayed and taken; lo, they have rejected the word of the LORD, and what wisdom is in them?"

-- Jeremiah 8:8f.

All Men Are Created Evil

Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb; you taught me wisdom in that secret place.

-- Psalm 51:5f.

When It Was OK To Be Poor

 

If we have food and clothing, with these we shall be content.

1 Timothy 6:8

What Kind Of Faith Is It When You Say Jesus Is Your Husband And The Father Of Your Child?

From The New York Times, here:

Evangelicals are assuring single moms that God has a plan for them, and it still includes marriage — just not in the way they expected. Rita Viselli found herself pregnant at age 35 with the child of a man she was casually dating. She was a recovering drug addict, the troubled daughter of a single mother herself, and a recent convert to evangelical Christianity. In 2000 she began a Bible study for single mothers in her living room in Southern California. She taught them what she had realized: “I have a husband. His name is Jesus Christ. I have decided that he will be my daughter’s father, and she has grown up being told that God is her father. He is real in our house,” she told me. “He has provided for me and my child better than 10 husbands could have.”

This connubial language pervades the small but growing world of evangelical single mothers’ ministries. It has deep roots in Christian spirituality. In mystical marriage to Jesus, medieval nuns and laywomen found one of the few paths to spiritual authority open to them, an escape from repressive reality. When Margery Kempe, an English mystic born around 1373, heard Jesus say “I take you, Margery, for my wedded wife,” she “felt the fire of love burning in her breast.”

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What if Mary the mother of Jesus thought the same way? That God was the father of her bastard baby? Is that how the Son of God idea started in Christianity, and the idea of the virgin birth, as a kind of spiritual rationalization of a poor woman's predicament which fatefully imbedded itself in the mind of Jesus because that's what Mary kept telling him all his life?

"And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven."

-- Matthew 23:9

Ideological religion: Jesus as terrible simplifier

Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a certain village: and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet, and heard his word. But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me. And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.

-- Luke 10:38ff.

Sleepin' On It

I bless the LORD who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me.

-- Psalm 16:7

The Children Of Hell

Gustave Dore "Hypocrites" in Circle 8

"Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves."

-- Matthew 23:15

Little Lord Lesus

It was embarrassing enough when Pope Benedict resigned before the assembled cardinals in Latin and no one understood him. Was "Francis" in the crowd?

Now a papal medal with a favorite line of the new pope misspells "Jesus" in Latin, as reported here:

"They went on sale on Tuesday but it was not long before it was noticed that the word Jesus, stamped around the edge of each medallion, had been spelt wrongly, with an L in place of the J."

Even more embarrassing is that this gotcha gets it wrong also, not realizing there is no "J" in Latin. The Vulgate spells it with an "I", so for example Jesus becomes "Iesus" as in "et lacrimatus est Iesus" (John 11:35). So did I.

Until I saw in the comments section that philology and textual criticism aren't quite dead yet out there after all, as one Seth Murray explains how the error must have occurred:

The Latin capital "I" was taken for an "l" in the lower case as in "lover", and re-capitalized "L" unthinkingly at the mint.

Francis' papal motto, incidentally, comes from the venerable Bede:

The motto of Pope Francis is taken from a passage from the venerable Bede, Homily 21 (CCL 122, 149-151), on the Feast of Matthew, which reads: Vidit ergo Jesus publicanum, et quia miserando atque eligendo vidit, ait illi, ‘Sequere me’. [Jesus therefore sees the tax collector, and since he sees by having mercy and by choosing, he says to him, ‘follow me’.]

More Than Half Of All Christians Have Their Wafer Worship, But 1.57 Billion Muslims Worship A Rock 5x/day

And must visit it and circumambulate it 7x at least once in their lifetimes.

Idolatry is a global phenomenon.

"The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all men life and breath and everything."

-- Acts 17:24f.

Holy Spirit Inspires Bill O'Reilly To Write Book KILLING JESUS Which Conflicts With Gospels

1 packet serves 1.2 billion. It's miraculous.

Quoted here:

O’Reilly is a devout Catholic, but Killing Jesus is not a religious book. He doesn’t refer to Jesus as the Son of God or the Messiah, and some of his points are in direct contradiction to what the Bible teaches.

For instance, O'Reilly argues that Jesus did not say “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” from the cross. He says it wouldn’t have been physically possible.

“You die on a cross from being suffocated,” he says. “You can hardly breathe. We believe Jesus said that, but we don't believe He said it on the cross because nobody could have heard it.”

Despite his controversial remarks, O’Reilly says the Holy Spirit inspired him to write Killing Jesus. He claims he woke up in the middle of the night and thought, “Killing Jesus.”

“I believe because I'm a Catholic that comes from the Holy Spirit,” O’Reilly explained in Sunday’s airing of 60 Minutes. “My inspiration comes from that. And so I wrote Killing Jesus because I think I was directed to write that.”

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Uh huh.

Reza Aslan proves some PhD's are worth more than others

Reza Aslan makes the simplest of mistakes in a recent Washington Post column, here:

'[N]owhere in the New Testament is “adelphos” used to mean anything other than “brother.”'

Well of course it is, as when the gospels portray Jesus making distinctions between his natural, biological family and his more real family, his hearers, whom he calls his real brothers, sisters and mother. And the following instance, where the term is deliberately bent to deny its natural meaning, is noteworthy for how the gospels, and presumably Jesus, made the term elastic in its meaning in the first place:

But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren.

-- Matthew 23:8

Quite apart from some humanitarian notion of the brotherhood of man, eschewing all earthly definitions and entanglements is part and parcel of Jesus' apocalyptic proclamation, expecting the imminent coming of the kingdom of God and with it, final judgment, which can be escaped only through turning away, even from your family if necessary. That's the whole point of his redefinition of "brother". Strictly political interpretations of the historical Jesus will of necessity ignore this, or worse, deny it.

On the immorality of Jesus' idea of self-impoverishment

"It is forbidden for a person to disown or dedicate all his property and thus become a burden on others."

-- Maimonides' Code, Laws of Right Views 5:12 (quoted here)

"Sell that ye have, and give alms; provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no thief approacheth, neither moth corrupteth. ... So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple."

-- Luke 12:33, 14:33