Touch me not for I am not yet ascended, or Today shalt thou be with me in paradise?

 

The problem of the resurrected but not yet ascended Jesus telling Mary not to touch him but encouraging Thomas to do so in John 20 is hardly the only problem with John's death and resurrection narrative about Jesus. 

John never even gives us the promised ascension at all, despite all the talk in that gospel of the descending and ascending Son of Man.

The absence is not unique to John, however, which tells us that the thinking about all this was, if not fluid, at least not fully formed at the time.

Luke does not reconcile the ascension stories he himself tells in Luke 24:51 and Acts 1:9 with the words of Christ from the cross which he alone records, which imply that Jesus simply expected at death to go to heaven immediately, not to rise from the dead and ascend later, let alone descend into hell in the interim.

Compare Luke's Lazarus, who dies and goes to the bosom of Abraham, while the rich man who ignored him dies and goes to hell (Luke 16:22ff.). This is what is supposed to happen, right? There is no resurrection until "the last day", as Martha informs us (John 11:24). Everybody knows that! But then John's Jesus raises her brother anyway.

And like Matthew's I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world (28:20), the resurrected Jesus in John 21 never really exits the world either. He can appear at any time and say Follow me. Even to one untimely born (I Corinthians 15:8).

Matthew's Jesus doesn't leave in an ascension. He is always present.

For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. 

-- Matthew 18:20

The ending supplied to Mark 16, however, agrees with Luke that Jesus ascended to heaven and sat on the right hand of God. Its fascination with signs done by those who believe echos the early Christian history recounted by Luke in Acts, and doubtlessly comes from that part of the tradition and is not originally Marcan. Mark's Jesus eschews signs absolutely (Mark 8:12).

 

And [the other malefactor] said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise. 

-- Luke 23:42f.

Then came the soldiers, and brake the legs of the first, and of the other which was crucified with him. But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs: 

-- John 19:32f.

Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.  

-- John 20:17

Paul's other gospel

And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. 

 

--  1 Corinthians 15:17

This statement would have come as quite a shock to the many people whose sins Jesus actively forgave in his own lifetime according to the Synoptic tradition, who never once heard Jesus conditioning God's forgiveness of them on Jesus' own future death and resurrection. They might have been forgiven for thinking Paul's casuistry made him one of the Pharisees.

The Passion Narrative shows strong evidence of having been reworked from the later standpoint of this theology of the cross, but elsewhere hardly so thoroughly as that. 

On the contrary, the Synoptic tradition preserves a Jesus who conditioned God's forgiveness not on some once for all sacrifice whose efficacy was to be proven by resurrection, but rather on faith and its reciprocal human action which demonstrated the sincerity and efficacy of the individual's repentance. Faith is not yet a system of dogma, but a description of the right relation and interaction between God and men and men with each other in relation to God.

For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. 

 

-- Matthew 6:14f. 

 

Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give.

 

 -- Matthew 10:8

Both things can't be true. Either forgiveness of sins is a fundamentally social matter or it is not. 

The reasoning of Paul sometimes makes a mockery of the life and teaching of Jesus, whose many pronouncements of forgiveness and salvation during his public ministry become not simply relativized by Paul, but of no real effect. They become pointless episodes in a pointless life finally given meaning only by death. Paul even boasts of not knowing that Jesus, the Jesus of the flesh.

It is sick when you really think about it, but it explains much about the conflicted mind of Paul, who is possessed of a morbid fascination with death and who also owns a history of lashing out born of unresolved inner hostilities, both before and after his conversion.

We would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. 

 

-- 2 Corinthians 5:8 

 

For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If it is to be life in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account. 

 

-- Philippians 1:21ff. 

 

But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed. 

 

-- Galatians 1:8ff. 

 

If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema! Maranatha! 

 

-- 1 Corinthians 16:22 

 

For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh. 

 

-- Romans 9:3 

 

For ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews' religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it. 

 

-- Galatians 1:13

Being "in your sins" seems to have been a topic of debate in early Christianity after the death of Jesus. Apparently forgiving one another was no longer thought to be a sound basis for right relation with God and with each other. While Paul sought to make forgiveness of sins contingent on an "historical" datum, the resurrection, the Fourth Gospel made it contingent on simple belief in the Good Shepherd, the Light of the World, etc. 

I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins. ... Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. 

 

-- John 8:24ff.

This is an otherwise unremarkable passage, fully in keeping with The Fourth Gospel's focus on the Divine Logos who descends from heaven in the Incarnation and ascends back up to heaven in the Resurrection. Forgiveness of sins depends entirely on belief in this person who did this. It is an entirely vertical conception. There is no social dimension to it. Gone is the "sell that ye have and give to the poor" basis of the call to discipleship found in the Synoptics (Matthew 19:21; Mark 10:21; Luke 12:33).

Except this must have caused offense at this point in John's narrative to some of the scribes, knowing the Synoptic tradition as they might have. Accordingly it is remarkable that some of them inserted before this section of John 8 the famous Pericope Adulterae, where Jesus forgives the woman caught in adultery. Nowhere else in John do we encounter this Jesus who goes about forgiving the sins of the people like we do in the Synoptics, demonstrating the horizontal faith relation which is ubiquitous there.

But even at that Jesus does not go out looking to do this in John. The woman, caught in the act of adultery, is brought to him as he's teaching in the Temple, early in the morning. And the social aspect is wholly negative compared to the positive, other-directed examples found in the Synoptics. In John the accusers simply melt away under the withering challenge of Jesus, so that no one is left. It is just the woman and Jesus alone.

Is there a more vivid image of the new gospel of the solitary individual in relation to his god?

Think of it as one of the unintended consequences of Jesus' impact.

And they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, "Teacher, we know that you are true, and teach the way of God truthfully, and care for no man; for you do not regard the position of men."

 

 -- Matthew 22:16

Like Luke's Jesus, Matthew's also taught that his generation would pay for sin in apocalyptic judgment

There is no dying sacrificially for the sins of his generation in any of this.

It would make little sense for the gospels to persist in this prediction of imminent final judgment, settling scores from the foundation of the world, when Paul's gospel of Christ dying for sins had already won the day, unless the gospels are not as late as many suppose. Paul's interpretation had penetrated mainly the thinking of the passion narratives of the gospels. So the coexistence of the two interpretations of the teaching of Jesus speaks to a date before 70, before the destruction of the temple.

Jesus' is obsessed throughout the gospels with "this generation" as the focal point for God's final intervention in human history. What matters to Jesus is true repentance, not sacrifice.

The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here. The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here.

-- Matthew 12:41f.

Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city: That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets . . . Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.

-- Matthew 23:32ff.

The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with the men of this generation, and condemn them: for she came from the utmost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineve shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.

-- Luke 11:31ff.

Truly ye bear witness that ye allow the deeds of your fathers: for they indeed killed them, and ye build their sepulchres. Therefore also said the wisdom of God, I will send them prophets and apostles, and some of them they shall slay and persecute: That the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation; From the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, which perished between the altar and the temple: verily I say unto you, It shall be required of this generation.

-- Luke 11:48ff.

Historian Phil Jenkins discovers that Christianity is the grandmother of Bolshevism

Here and imbedded links (he hasn't really yet thought through it):

"Engels had something like a love for the early Christians, and he imagines talking to them as fellow-sufferers who came from exactly the [same] kind of setting."

Attacked in the comments at one point, he responds:

". . . the early Christian movement was very diverse in its theologies. By the way, one common explanation for the ebionites was that they were the remnants of the original Jewish followers of Jesus, including the bulk of the Jerusalem church, who never accepted Paul's innovations."

Keep it up Phil! You are on the right track! Too bad you didn't train in philology . . . it wouldn't have taken you this long to figure out that Pauline Christianity is a double-edged sword leaving us with two forms of materialism which now war for our imaginations, even though you'll probably become bored and get side-tracked away from this also.

Jewish Christians renounced the material, as did Jesus, believing the kingdom of God was coming down to earth from God, right quick like, as they say in the holler. Paul's Gospel by contrast baptized entrepreneurialism and made free-enterprise and Judaism safe for the world. Hence the tithers of today, and the spread of the congregation on the synagogue model.

Historians would be better engaged figuring out what went wrong there with Paul. Albert Schweitzer figured out what went wrong with Jesus.

My Scylla and Charybdis

I have met a few serious Christians of the sacramental persuasion who maintain that the Lord's Supper has been transformative for them in some sense, but not many. And judging by the behavior of most of my fellow Lutherans over the years, I can firmly state without fear of contradiction that communion hasn't done much for them in the life-changing sense. Nor has Bible study done much to renew their minds, at least when it comes to important issues of the day involving morality. The visible church and the invisible one are definitely not of equal size.

As a boy, I endured two years of weekly catechetical instruction, including public examinations on the sacraments, the Office of the Keys, the Ten Commandments, the Apostles' Creed, and The Lord's Prayer. The expectation which was built up in me for the grand day of confirmation and first communion was considerable indeed, but the denouement was hardly climactic. In no small way the failure to experience anything significant played an important role in my subsequent efforts to seek out authentic spiritual experience, and drove me into the scriptures which I read cover to cover many times by the time I had graduated from high school. With a heady mix of sacred scripts and hormones, I ventured off to college to begin the long trek toward seminary. Instead, some wise soul should have handed me a copy of Eric Hoffer's The True Believer and sent me packing to the Marine Corps. No such luck.

In time I began to appreciate just how much Lutheranism is a kind of mixture of Catholicism and Protestantism where sacraments and scripture represent "the means of grace," through which Christians hear the gospel, believe, and obtain forgiveness of sins and eternal life. But the trinity of Lutheran beliefs clearly shows that the sacraments are secondary to scripture: grace unaccompanied by anything else, faith unaccompanied by anything else, scripture unaccompanied by anything else. The young Luther, once upon a time hiding from the authorities and unable to go to mass, says that he can take communion spiritually but no less actually simply by reading and believing the words instituting the Lord's Supper in scripture.

Nevertheless, baptism and the Lord's Supper are means of grace to be offered by the church because scripture shows that these sacraments were instituted by Christ to that end: "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved;" "This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins." The more expansive list of sacraments in Catholicism was rejected because scripture did not say they were instituted by Christ. For Luther the priority of scripture is clear in the face of the traditions of the church, accumulated over centuries, which obscure it, and reformers contemporary with and subsequent to him ran with this, and in a distinctly non-sacramental direction which emphasized scripture's singular role.

Historical forces long in the making were at work here. The recovery of knowledge of the classical Greek and Roman worlds during the Renaissance through the intensive study of manuscript evidence inevitably led to a cultural change among churchmen in the age of Reformation with respect to the study of sacred texts. Everything depended on how one esteemed them, and on what questions were asked of them. Luther's discovery of Paul's gospel in his letters helped Luther solve his own personal spiritual problems. And his respect for Paul grew so great that he could be suspicious of the canonicity of a New Testament text like James which seemed to contradict Paul. One only wonders to what lengths Luther might have gone had he come to the texts with different questions, different assumptions.

If it had been true that "any classical text, in an age when all powerful knowledge was stored in books, had the character of a bomb that had fallen from a great height and could explode at any time" (A.T. Grafton, "The Renaissance," in The Legacy of Rome: A New Appraisal, Oxford, 1992), subsequent history, especially in the age of Enlightenment, would prove that the same was true of the Bible. Luther had settled on two sacraments, not seven, and on the Bible, not tradition, but in so doing the principle had also been established that an individual could plausibly make such decisions. He had lit a fuse.

(Originally posted 5/29/09)