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.