Maybe Trump could get there if he didn't murder people in cold blood like Obama murdered American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki

 Trump asks supporters for $15 donations to 'get him to heaven'...

 

Prodigal vineyard owner lavishes a full day's pay on workers who worked but one hour, Calvinists most hurt

 

 For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. Now when he had agreed with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard.

And he went out about the third hour and saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and said to them, You also go into the vineyard, and whatever is right I will give you. So they went. Again he went out about the sixth and the ninth hour, and did likewise. And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing idle, and said to them, Why have you been standing here idle all day? They said to him, Because no one hired us. He said to them, You also go into the vineyard, and whatever is right you will receive.

So when evening had come, the owner of the vineyard said to his steward, Call the laborers and give them their wages, beginning with the last to the first. And when those came who were hired about the eleventh hour, they each received a denarius. But when the first came, they supposed that they would receive more; and they likewise received each a denarius. And when they had received it, they complained against the landowner, saying, These last men have worked only one hour, and you made them equal to us who have borne the burden and the heat of the day.

But he answered one of them and said, Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what is yours and go your way. I wish to give to this last man the same as to you. Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with my own things? Or is your eye evil because I am good? So the last will be first, and the first last. For many are called, but few chosen.

-- Matthew 20:1ff. 

Tell how learning shoots

 Tell like a tall old oak how learning shoots

To heav'n her branches, to hell her roots.

 

-- John Denham 

Jesus' trial: Why Luke omits "Ye shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven"

 

Luke omits Jesus' prediction at his trial that his Jewish judges would see the Son of Man coming in the clouds. Luke also omits that they would see him seated at the right hand.

 

These predictions are made at Jesus' trial as found in Mark and in Matthew but not in Luke:

 

And Jesus said, I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.  

-- Mark 14:62

 

Jesus said to him, "You have said it yourself. But I tell you, from now on [ἀπ᾽ ἄρτι] you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power and coming on the clouds of heaven." 

-- Matthew 26:64

 

But from now on [ἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν] the Son of man shall be seated at the right hand of the power of God.

-- Luke 22:69

 

Of course, some commentators get around the omissions by positing that Luke simply used a different, independent source from Mark and Matthew at this point, but that simply leaves us with two competing versions of what Jesus said.

Luke, however, is not unaware of the main idea and has Jesus say it elsewhere, and therefore it is not necessary to posit a different source but that he has simply made a different editorial decision about where and when to put it. To Luke it doesn't belong at the trial.

Like Mark 13:26 and Matthew 24:30, who thus have the conception uttered twice by Jesus, Luke reserves it to his version of the Little Apocalypse about the end of the world, where "they" refers to humanity in general:

 

And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.  

-- Luke 21:27

 

This makes more sense to Luke, and removes what looks like a difficulty for him if Matthew and Mark are insisting what they appear to be insisting.

 

For Luke the kingdom is already here because Jesus is present and working (Luke 17:20f.), but it will never really be "at hand" as it is in Matthew (3:2; 4:17; 10:7) and Mark (1:15) until a little later, when the trees shoot forth in the summer (Luke 21:30f.).  For Luke's apocalyptic Jesus, the appearance of such leaves is analogous to the emergence of the signs of the end of the world in sun, moon, and stars: chaos on land and sea and the powers of heaven rocked (Luke 21:25f.).

 

In Luke's hands Jesus now states perfunctorily at his trial that the Son of Man will sit at God's right hand, dropping the coming on the clouds and the prediction that his Jewish judges will see that or the enthronement. For good reason. Presumably he knows that Annas and Caiaphas died in the 40s and lived to see nothing, and Luke as he is writing has not witnessed the fulfillment of such predictions either.

 

It is little appreciated how Luke's editorial activity in the trial scene is connected to his larger theological project.

 

It is designed to agree with Luke's understanding of Jesus exalted at God's right hand in Acts, continuing his presence on earth by directing the missionary activities of the church through the Spirit, especially those of Paul among the Gentiles. 

 

Jesus' Jewish judges are now completely beside the point. God has bypassed them, just has Paul and Barnabas shook off the dust from their own feet against the Jews at Pisidian Antioch and turned to the Gentiles instead (Acts 13).

 

For Luke, the judgment of the Jews is postponed temporarily until the still imminent but delayed end of the world, when Jesus will then bring vengeance upon Judea (Luke 21:22, 31).

 

God's focus is turning elsewhere in the meantime. Jesus' objective is no longer his immediate return for the judgment of Israel, but rather a  near-term future of reigning at the right hand of power in order that the whole world might repent and be saved (Acts 2:39; John 3:17; Romans 4:16; 16:26; I Corinthians 9:22; I Timothy 2:4; Titus 2:11; II Peter 3:9).

 

Luke clearly thinks Mark and Matthew have the trial details wrong, just as they have wrong the reason for Jesus' trial (Jesus' call to discipleship required radical poverty, a direct threat to the revenue of the Jewish temple, and so to the Roman treasury). Jesus is no longer returning immediately to turn the tables on his Jewish judges, to become the judge instead of the judged. He is remaining at God's right hand to do something else: extend God's offer of mercy to all of mankind.

 

Consequently the coming of the Son of Man on the clouds of heaven for Luke is now a matter of a future second coming, conforming to a more or less structured apocalyptic narrative, unfolding at an undetermined but still imminent point in the near future, in agreement with the apocalyptic parallel narratives of both Mark and Matthew.

 

And then (καὶ τότε) shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.

-- Luke 21:27

 

And then shall they see the Son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory. 

-- Mark 13:26

 

And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. 

-- Matthew 24:30

 

The imminently coming eschatological Son of Man without signs still front and center in Jesus' mind at his trial according to Mark and Matthew has been relegated to a future second coming narrative of his followers creation.

 

It is easier to explain the development of the Little Apocalypses of the gospels as derivative from an original, simple, and straightforward eschatological belief than it is the other way around. The former was developed in an elaborate manner to explain the failure of the latter.   

 

Those narratives notably all have Jesus condescend to address an apocalyptic timetable which was anathema to the original eschatological message, supplying a second coming replete with signs in the heavens above and the earth below which indicate that the ensuing end of the world can indeed be said to be observable to a certain extent, despite the fact that Jesus had in no uncertain terms eschewed any such observable signs, most notably in Mark 8:12:

 

 There shall no sign be given unto this generation.

 

Luke is not unaware of this tradition, either:

 

And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you [plural Pharisees].

-- Luke 17:20f.

 

The kingdom was already there among them, in the person of Jesus, and they had already missed it. It did not need Jesus to die and rise to be present. There would be no apocalyptic signs. It had already come as a surprise without them. Repent and follow him or perish!

 

But as both Luke and Matthew hedge Mark on Jesus' trial statements (Matthew followed by Luke already extenuate by adding "from now on", see above), they both hedge Mark about the signs as well, supplementing Mark 8:12 in their parallels with "no sign but the sign of the prophet Jonah" who was three days and three nights in the belly of the fish, about whom Mark knows . . .  nothing (Matthew 12:39; 16:4; Luke 11:29f.).

It is clear what is going on here.

 

Matthew and Luke reinterpret what is ostensibly the earliest tradition from the point of view of the resurrection wherever they can, freely tampering, dare we say it, with the word of God (II Corinthians 4:2) just as much as Mark had done (for example, by making Jesus' predict his rising on the third day in Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:34; 14:28). They are, all of them, to one degree or another, with one degree of success or another, the new scribes of the kingdom of heaven (conveniently provided for by the kingdom-as-net story in Matthew 13:52 to justify their activity) who bring out of their treasure things new and old, discarding the bad and keeping the good.

The death of Jesus required as much. This bad thing that happened to Jesus had to be explained. They thought he would bring the kingdom and he did not.

 

In the case of the NT apocalyptic narratives, which portray Jesus willingly and volubly engaging in talk of signs of the end of the world with the disciples,  Jesus' future return as the Son of Man is now predicated on the gospel first being published among all the nations (Mark 13:10), until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled (Luke 21:24), so that all nations hear and come to hate the elect, original disciples (Matthew 24:9, 14). At which point all the tribes of the earth shall mourn when they see the Son of Man return in the clouds of heaven because judgment is finally nigh. Go ye therefore and make disciples of all nations while there is still time (Matthew 28:19f.).

 

In this the gospels overwhelmingly evidence the new point of view of the church, especially championed by Luke in Acts, which ends with Paul's arrival in Rome, the center of the world (The epistles still teem with apocalyptic expectation because with that achievement, it's mission accomplished).

Gone is the high dudgeon of the Jesus who said only an "evil generation" seeks after a sign (Matthew 12:39; Matthew 16:4; Luke 11:29).

 

All of it flies in the face of Jesus' command to go not into the way of the Gentiles (Matthew 10:5f.), and of a host of other awkward eruptions of the original, simple eschatology in the halfway houses of the evangelists:

 

that he was sent only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel (Matthew 15:24),

 

that his followers would judge the twelve tribes of Israel, not Gentiles (Matthew 19:28; Luke 22:30),

 

that those followers will not have gone over the cities of Israel till the Son of man be come (Matthew 10:23),

 

that the kingdom is at hand (Matthew 3:2; Matthew 4:17; Matthew 10:7; Matthew 26:18, 45; Mark 1:15; Luke 10:9, 11), 

 

that the kingdom is already present in exorcisms (Matthew 12:28; Luke 11:20),

 

that the Son of Man would come in his kingdom before the deaths of some of the disciples (Matthew 16:28; Mark 9:1; Luke 9:27; John 21:23),

 

that the kingdom is already in their midst but is unobserved (Luke 17:20-21),

 

and that there was a general buzz of expectation around Jesus that the kingdom was coming immediately in Jerusalem for some reason (Luke 19:11), an expectation most especially embraced by Jesus' own disciples even until the very last when Jesus ascended into heaven (Acts 1:6).

 

But the resurrection? They were supposedly blind to the very idea of it to the end and beyond. The resurrection "they yet believed not . . ." (Luke 24:41)! But a kingdom restored to Israel, that they most certainly did believe to the end and beyond, but wrongly!

 

Where oh where did they get that idea, if not from Jesus? The historical Jesus preached the imminently coming kingdom, an idea they did have, not the resurrection, an idea they did not.

 

The apocalyptic narratives are a mixture of the complicated, rationalized new and the simple, enthusiastic old. They contain at the same time 1) a thought out timetable with signs for the end of the world which was anathema to Jesus and 2) a memory of the unpredictable in-breaking of the kingdom which has no timetable, the message he actually preached.

 

It was the latter which otherwise and everywhere occasioned all this urgency and expectation swirling about Jesus in the first place.

 

His simple conception of the unpredictable end of the world, without apocalyptic adornment, is best remembered only by Matthew:

 

Then Jesus sent the multitude away, and went into the house: and his disciples came unto him, saying, Declare unto us the parable of the tares of the field.  He answered and said unto them, He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man; The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one; The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world. The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.

 

-- Matthew 13:36ff.

 

Mark and Matthew tell us that Jesus believed this even to his fateful end:

 

"Ye shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven".

Sanctities thick as stars

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 About him all the sanctities of heav'n 

Stood thick as stars, and from his sight receiv'd 

Beatitude past utt'rance.

 

-- John Milton

Hither, thither, and yon: The way shown by the gods

The gods, when they descended, hither

From heav'n did always chuse their way;

And therefore we may boldly say,

That 'tis the way too thither.

-- Abraham Cowley

Fashion is as unpredictable as the weather

And sooner may a gulling weather-spy, 

By drawing forth heav'n's scheme, tell certainly

What fashion'd hats, or ruffs, or suits, next year

Our giddy-headed antique youth will wear. 

-- John Donne

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

 

The peevish are wasps, easily offended and soon angry

Lay the rough paths of peevish nature ev'n,

And open in each heart a little heav'n.

-- Matthew Prior

He that is slow to wrath is of great understanding:

but he that is hasty of spirit exalteth folly.

-- Proverbs 14:29 

Swear no oaths to others or to yourself, on New Year's Day or on any other day

When I have most need to employ a friend, 

Deep, hollow, treacherous, and full of guile, 

Be he to me! This do I beg of heav'n, 

When I am cold in zeal to you or yours.

-- Buckingham in William Shakespeare's Richard III (as known to Samuel Johnson)

Lockean liberalism is in the final analysis a creature of Christianity as universal but benign religion, without which it stands to reason it will not survive

The wonder is that Locke seemed blissfully unaware, or unconcerned, that Islam was not benign and was therefore incompatible with political liberalism because it was a political religion which spread by the sword, not by the dictates of conscience.

The Need for a Revival of Lockean Liberalism:

A manuscript titled “Reasons for Tolerating Papists Equally with Others,” written in Locke’s hand in 1667 or 1668, has just been published for the first time, in The Historical Journal of Cambridge University Press. The document challenges the conventional view that Locke shared the anti-Catholicism of his fellow Protestants. Instead, it offers a glimpse into the radical quality of his political liberalism, which so influenced the First Amendment and the American Founding. “If all subjects should be equally countenanced, & imployed by the Prince,” he wrote, “the Papist[s] have an equall title.” ...

In his first major treatise supporting religious liberty, An Essay Concerning Toleration (1667), Locke constructs an argument, a defense of the rights of conscience, that he will build upon for the rest of his life. He argues that magistrates have no right interfering in religious beliefs that pose no obvious threat to the social order: “In speculations & religious worship every man hath a perfect uncontrolled liberty, which he may freely use without or contrary to the magistrate’s command.” The challenge of accommodating different religious traditions, including Roman Catholicism, is front and center. “If I observe the Friday with the Mahumetan, or the Saturday with the Jew, or the Sunday with the Christian, . . . whether I worship God in the various & pompous ceremonies of the papists, or in the plainer way of the Calvinists,” he wrote, “I see no thing in any of these, if they be done sincerely & out of conscience, that can of itself make me, either the worse subject to my prince, or worse neighbor to my fellow subject.” ...

What Locke found intolerable was not Catholic theology per se but rather the agents of political subversion operating under the guise of religious obedience. As he put it in the newly discovered manuscript: “It is not the difference of their opinion in religion, or of their ceremonys in worship; but their dangerous & factious tenets in reference to the state . . . that exclude them from the benefit of toleration.” On this point, Locke could be as tough on Protestants as he was on Catholics. ...

Political philosopher Greg Forster insightfully observes that Locke “towers over the history of liberalism precisely because virtually everything he wrote was directed at coping with the problem that gave birth to liberalism — religious violence and moral discord.” ...

America’s experiment in human liberty and equality is profoundly Lockean. It is also, in some important respects, deeply Christian. Locke believed that the gospel message of divine mercy — intended for all — implied political liberalism. The founder of Christianity, he wrote, “opened the kingdom of heaven to all equally, who believed in him, without any the least distinction of nation, blood, profession, or religion.”

It would be hard to conceive of a better doctrine on which to build a more just and humane society. A revival of Lockean liberalism would do much to tame the hatreds now afflicting the soul of the West.

Divine antonyms

Gods of whatsoe'er degree,

Resume not what themselves have given,

Or any brother God in heav'n;

Which keeps the peace among the Gods,

Or they must always be at odds.

-- Jonathan Swift, Cadenus and Vanessa, 1713

The sadness of heaven

Laura: Why do they call it Heaven's tears?

  

Jonathan: Because that's what rain is. See, when the people in Heaven get sad about the things going on here on Earth, they cry.

The suffering gods

The gods from heav'n survey the fatal strife,

And mourn the miseries of human life.

-- John Dryden

And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth,
and it grieved him at his heart.

-- Genesis 6:6

So, Jews don't believe in heaven

Or in reading:

 

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth (ἐν ἀρχῇ ἐποίησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν).

 

-- Genesis 1:1

 

 

Ridiculous antinomian drivel from Relevant Magazine says the Ten Commandments are over, obviously never even read The Sermon on the Mount

They should call it It's All Relative Magazine, where the 10 Commandments aren't commandments, just guidelines whose purpose was merely historicist and instrumental, not timeless and fundamental. Heaven and earth must have passed away when we were not looking! Murder, theft, and adultery? What antiquated concepts!

Why Do Christians Want to Post the 10 Commandments and Not the Sermon on the Mount?:

The Ten Commandments played a significant role in God’s creation of the nation of Israel. It gave them moral guidelines and helped separate this new nation from their neighbors. This was part of the formal agreement (or covenant) God created with his people, but Jesus’ death and resurrection signaled the end of that covenant and all the rules and regulations associated with it. Jesus didn’t issue his new command as an additional commandment to the existing list of commands. He didn’t say, “Here’s the 614th law.” Jesus issued his new commandment as a replacement for everything in the existing list. Including the big ten. Just as his new covenant replaced the old covenant, Jesus’ new commandment replaced all the old commandments.

Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. -- Matthew 5:17f.

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. -- Matthew 7:21

 

The one and only temple

 

 

The heav'n, the air, the earth, and boundless sea,

Make but one temple for the deity.

-- Edmund Waller

A Talmudic picture of heaven shares with Plato's Socrates that the debate continues in the afterlife

What Happens in Heaven? Study. Of What? Jewish Law:

But, in one particular text [Bava Metzia 86a], the Talmud presents a picture of heaven quite unlike anything in the Bible, an image that is indeed unthinkable, if not blasphemous, outside of its uniquely rabbinic context . . . :

They were arguing in the Academy of Heaven. If the blotch on the [individual’s] skin preceded the white hair, he is impure. If the white hair preceded the blotch on the skin, he is pure.

Not only does the Academy of Heaven forgo any discussion of ultimate truths, but the question being debated at this highest imaginable institution of learning centers on an issue of law—and not just any issue, but one involving some of the most obscure, picayune, and technical details that can be found in the entire rabbinic canon. 

The picture is hardly unthinkable, nor is it uniquely rabbinic.

Plato's Socrates [Apology 40f.]:

But on the other hand, if death is, as it were, a change of habitation from here to some other place, and if what we are told is true, that all the dead are there, what greater blessing could there be, judges? For if a man when he reaches the other world, after leaving behind these who claim to be judges, shall find those who are really judges who are said to sit in judgment there, Minos and Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus and Triptolemus, and all the other demigods who were just men in their lives, would the change of habitation be undesirable? Or again, what would any of you give to meet with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer? I am willing to die many times over, if these things are true; for I personally should find the life there wonderful, when I met Palamedes or Ajax, the son of Telamon, or any other men of old who lost their lives through an unjust judgement, and compared my experience with theirs. I think that would not be unpleasant.

And the greatest pleasure would be to pass my time in examining and investigating the people there, as I do those here, to find out who among them is wise and who thinks he is when he is not. What price would any of you pay, judges, to examine him who led the great army against Troy, or Odysseus, or Sisyphus, or countless others, both men and women, whom I might mention? To converse and associate with them and examine them would be immeasurable happiness. At any rate, the folk there do not kill people for it; since, if what we are told is true, they are immortal for all future time, besides being happier in other respects than men are here.

On the origin of Samantha Bee, of "feckless c*nt" fame

Hence the surface of the ground with mud

And slime besmear'd, the feces of the flood

Receiv'd the rays of heav'n; and sucking in

The seeds of heat new creatures did begin.

-- John Dryden

Old Samuel Johnson's witty lines about a hermit mock these by a young John Milton

 

And may at last my weary age

Find out the peaceful hermitage,

The hairy gown and mossy cell,

Where I may sit and rightly spell

Of ev'ry star that heav'n doth shew,

And ev'ry herb that sips the dew;
Till old experience do attain
To something like prophetic strain.
These pleasures Melancholy give,
And I with thee will choose to live.

-- John Milton, Il Penseroso (c. 1631)