George Weigel thinks the resurrection of Jesus made possible "the individual" in the West when it was really the example of Jesus

Rebels like Paul and Luther would be unthinkable without that example.

Catholics used to understand this. It is amusing that Weigel argues like a Protestant fixated on the resurrection instead of on the life and teaching of Jesus.

Who Invented the Individual? 

George Weigel, First Things

Before Christianity, immortality was a family concept: One lived on in one’s family. The Resurrection of Jesus and the promise of a “resurrection like his” (Rom. 6:5) changed all that, as the individual human being became the locus of immortality—and thus the bearer of a unique, personal, “individual” dignity. 

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None of that would have been even thinkable were it not for the example of the supreme individuality of the forerunner as the "true man", whose vertical faith relation to God superceded [sic!] the social dimension and made it irrelevant:

 

And [the Pharisees] sent out unto him their disciples with the Herodians, saying, Master, we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest thou for any man: for thou regardest not the person of men.

 

-- Matthew 22:16

This aloofness of Jesus, if we may call it that, is one of the things which marks out the unique individual qua individual so characteristic of the figures we name "religious founders". For good or for ill, it is that attitude which triumphed in the West and has been democratized to an extreme degree, in large measure due to Protestantism. Positively it has evolved into what we call "leadership". Negatively it is what is known as "a Messiah complex".

The example of Jesus is not unalloyed.

Care not for any man

It is folly to seek the approbation of any being, besides the supreme; because no other being can make a right judgment of us, and because we can procure no considerable advantage from the approbation of any other being.

-- Joseph Addison

Jesus believed only a few in Israel would be saved, Paul believed all Israel would be, along with many Gentiles

For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins. ... For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all.

-- Romans 11:25ff., 32

Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you. ... Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:  Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. 

-- Matthew 7:6, 13f.

These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. ... And ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles. ... But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another: for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come.

-- Matthew 10:5f., 18, 23

But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. ... But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs.

-- Matthew 15:24, 26

So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.

-- Matthew 20:16

For many are called, but few are chosen.

-- Matthew 22:14

Both things cannot be true.

Jesus' encounter with the Sadducees is pro-Pauline propaganda, not history

God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

-- Matthew 22:32

He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living.

-- Mark 12:27

For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him.

-- Luke 20:38

The idea that Jesus got into a dust-up with the Sadducees over the intermediate state and resurrection and basically ended up taking the position of the Pharisees for himself is absurd. This is evidence of the later Pauline consensus contaminating the tradition, at the expense of the eschatology of the historical Jesus.

Talk of an intermediate state, for example, between death and final judgment where the dead go to be with the Lord interjects a fatal pause to the present time, which for Jesus is pregnant with eschatological expectation. That pause necessarily would have undercut the present sense of urgency which informed the call to repent and escape what is surely coming.

With an intermediate state awaiting at death instead of judgment imminently confronting, one rationalizes away the extraordinary current moment in favor of the continuation of human history as it has always continued.

 

The need to leave all and follow Jesus evaporates (Matthew 4; Mark 10; Luke 5; Luke 18), replaced by less consequential belief.

 

The establishment of a settled life and therefore a church is made possible, which accomodates itself to time instead of revolting against it.

 

A Gentile mission, specifically ruled out by Jesus (Matthew 10), becomes possible in Athens where "in him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28) has more currency than "the kingdom of God is at hand" in Jerusalem (Mark 1:15). The kingdom focused on Jerusalem recedes from view, as does the God who is coming there soon to judge this generation's guilt for the blood of all the prophets!

The problem for historians is that there was never a sound proponent of Jesus' eschatology who followed him who could match the thoroughgoing Pauline theology. And why should have such a person arisen if his followers "after the flesh" had truly understood Jesus as they must have? Their expectation also would have continued to be for an imminent end, even despite the death and resurrection of their master: "Wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?" (Acts 1:6). There was no impetus to document anything for posterity, since posterity would never come to exist. This means that the gospels must be viewed with great suspicion everywhere, for they are the products of the subsequent, already compromised, period. They are not of the Urzeit. Only out of respect for Jesus do they preserve any of the conflicting evidence from his teaching.

Consider that if an intermediate state is put forward in the mouth of Jesus, all sense of urgency about the imminent coming judgment he predicted would necessarily melt away with authority. Belief in the restyled message of atonement could more easily become the message, relieving everyone of the onerous original obligations of discipleship. The obvious failure of the kingdom's coming meant Paul's rationalizations were ready made for the occasion, and came as a relief. In he stepped and supplied the solution to the ongoing disappointment caused by the delay of the parousia, and the death of the disciples' generation simply made all this a fait accompli.

Jesus did not view himself as Paul viewed him. "Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more" (2 Corinthians 5:16). Jesus viewed himself as the people viewed him, as a prophet. Thinking himself destined for death as so many of the prophets before him were, Jesus is unique because he thought of himself as the final prophet. Even as he's about to die he can say that history as we know it is about to end, too:

"[Y]e shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven."

-- Mark 14:62

"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 11:51

This is where Muhammad got his idea to style himself as the final prophet, but armed with a sword, centuries later! More than most New Testament critics of modern times, Muhammad long before sensed the inadequacy of the gospels' handling of Jesus' eschatological message. And if Paul of Tarsus could receive direct revelations from God and refound a movement, so much more the better. So could he!

There is no dying and rising as a sacrifice for sins in Jesus' mind, only prophets perishing unjustly in Jerusalem. The rising is added under the influence of hysterical women, and an unstable Pharisee, Paul.

The fanatical Benjaminite had recourse to the resurrected Jesus to make sense of his own personal conversion experience, which was really a mental breakdown if one is to be perfectly frank about it. After all, after a surprising, brief period of activity as a Jesus advocate instead of as the well known and feared Jesus persecutor he had recently been, Paul disappears for a period of ten years, if the chronology and the account are to be believed. This is hardly the behavior of a settled individual convinced by his experiences one way or another, but of a still-troubled person. It was during this time that Paul must have developed his ideas of Jesus' sacrificial death and resurrection under the influence of the direct, supernatural visions and revelations he claimed were the sole basis of his gospel: "For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ" (Galatians 1:12). What these really were is anyone's guess, but in his own time people already were calling him crazy. To be sure they are at the same time productive of ingenious solutions, as his letters testify. These solutions eventually supplied Paul with a ready escape from the offense of his own Jewish particularity, which he experienced as a Roman citizen in his Asian backwater, and at the same time validated the Pharisaic impulse, which he imbibed as a youth and to which he remained committed, to democratize Temple holiness by making proselytes and founding synagogues. His possession of the Roman franchise reinforced his ideas of human equality under God and their legitimacy.

The body of Jesus temporarily and hastily buried was missing on Easter morn because it was moved. The disciples to a man did not believe Jesus rose from the dead, only the women in their hysteria at discovering this did. (If one is looking for the incipient enthusiasm later displayed by early Christianity described in Acts, it is here). The gospels' portrayal of the general dim pall of ignorance of a predicted rising on the third day which hung over the movement despite all the supposed evidence to the contrary makes no sense if Jesus were in fact a resurrection preacher and intermediate state believer first and foremost. That "evidence" became part of the narrative ex post facto. The idea otherwise should not have been rejected so out of hand by his very own disciples as it was. The plainest explanation for their unbelief on the third day is that they had no prior knowledge of the idea of resurrection on the third day, and that because Jesus had never preached it.

Paul the Apostle is the true founder of Christianity. He co-opted the sectarian Jewish eschatological religion preached by Jesus. An enthusiast for Pharisaism to the end, Paul's personal ambition was to make Judaism safe as a universal religion, relegating present Jerusalem to the discarded past: "She is in slavery with her children" (Galatians 4:25). By turning Jesus into a Pharisee, he succeeded.

Nevertheless I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following; for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!

-- Luke 13:33f.

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

Anthropocentric twaddle on hell from the Jesuit priest Thomas Reese of the Religion News Service

 

 

 

God did not create hell; we did. On the other hand, some theologians think that hell is empty because once we meet God, we will choose him.

Here.

The unspoken corollary is that we also created heaven.

Which is fine if you're an atheist, who typically maintains that religion is not the stuff of revelation but is a human creation. But such talk is hardly compatible with the teaching and perspective of Jesus, who was anything but sanguine about human nature, or its fate.

"For many are called, but few are chosen."

"Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it."

It's no surprise that the many would disagree with this. The offense of the gospel is not the cross, it's the exclusiveness of the club. St. Paul tried to ameliorate this by opening the club to the Gentiles, and the universalists among us carry it a step further, opening the club to the denizens of hell, but at which point nothing Jesus has to say matters much anymore.

And yet they claim to be his worshipers, or at least his followers.

They are neither.

True man, the glory, jest, and riddle of the world

 

 

Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd: 

The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!

-- Alexander Pope 

The triple tradition says that Jesus broke the prime directive to pieces

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

-- Genesis 1:27f.

For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.

-- Matthew 22:30

For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven.

-- Mark 12:25

And Jesus answering said unto them, The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage: But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection.

-- Luke 20:34ff.

N. T. Wrong strikes again, denies the Synoptic Jesus who teaches a revolution in the creation, not a reaffirmation of it

It makes you wonder if N. T. Wright, here, would consign the whole triple tradition to "incipient gnosticism", which would be quite the leap:

Second, John's prologue by its structure reaffirms the order of Creation at the point where it is being challenged today. John consciously echoes the first chapter of Genesis: "In the beginning God made heaven and earth; in the beginning was the Word" (John 1:1). When the Word becomes flesh, heaven and earth are joined together at last, as God always intended.

But the Creation story, which begins with the duality of heaven and earth, reaches its climax in the duality of male and female. When heaven and earth are joined together in Jesus Christ, the glorious intention for the whole of Creation is unveiled, reaffirming the creation of male and female in God's image. There is something about the enfleshment of the Word in John 1 that stands parallel to Genesis 1 and speaks of Creation fulfilled. We see what's going on: Jesus Christ has come as the Bridegroom, the one for whom the Bride has been waiting.

Not for nothing is Jesus's first sign to transform a wedding from disaster to triumph. Not for nothing do we find a man and a woman at the foot of the Cross. The same incipient gnosticism which says that true religion is about "discovering who we really are" is all too ready to say that who we really are may have nothing to do with being physically created as male or female. But the Christmas message is about the redemption of God's good world, his wonderful Creation, so that it can be the glorious thing it was made to be. This word is strange, even incomprehensible, in today's culture. But if you have ears to hear, then hear it.

Au contraire:

For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.

-- Matthew 22:30

For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven.

-- Mark 12:25

And Jesus answering said unto them, The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage: But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection.

-- Luke 20:34ff.

The Way of God

And they sent out unto him their disciples with the Herodians, saying, Master, we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest thou for any man: for thou regardest not the person of men. -- Matthew 22:16

And when they were come, they say unto him, Master, we know that thou art true, and carest for no man: for thou regardest not the person of men, but teachest the way of God in truth: Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar, or not? -- Mark 12:14

And they asked him, saying, Master, we know that thou sayest and teachest rightly, neither acceptest thou the person of any, but teachest the way of God truly: -- Luke 20:21

And [Apollos] began to speak boldly in the synagogue: whom when Aquila and Priscilla had heard, they took him unto them, and expounded unto him the way of God more perfectly. -- Acts 18:26

NT Wright's Kingdom of God is still basically a kingdom designed for and of this world, and that's the problem with it

It is not the apocalyptic kingdom of the gospel documents which he otherwise claims to be rescuing.

Here:

[A]t a particular time God called a particular pair for a particular task: to look after his creation and make it flourish in a whole new way. ...

The point is that if you start, not with Adam and a “moral test,” but with Adam and Eve and a vocation (see Psalm 8), then a lot of things in Paul look significantly different. There is more to Paul—and to Genesis—than you might have thought. It all works, it’s all good, it’s all about God’s grace—and it’s about a justification through which humans are “put right” in order to get the original project back on track, so that we might be “putting-right” people for the world.

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"For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven."

-- Matthew 22:30

"[T]he harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels."

-- Matthew 13:39

Many Are Called, But The Jesuits Aren't Chosen

"For many are called, but few are chosen."

"For many are called, but few are chosen."

Matthew 22:14

The Most Influential Verse Of The NT For The Western World: Neither carest thou for any man

 

And [the Pharisees] sent out unto him their disciples with the Herodians, saying, Master, we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest thou for any man: for thou regardest not the person of men.

-- Matthew 22:16

The Synoptic Jesus Did Not Expect Many To Be Saved

"Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few."

-- Matthew 7:13f

"For many are called, but few are chosen."

-- Matthew 22:14

And some one said to him, "Lord, will those who are saved be few?" And he said to them, "Strive to enter by the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able."

-- Luke 13:23f.

"Not every one who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?' And then will I declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you evildoers.'"

-- Matthew 7:21ff.

"For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened."

-- Matthew 24:21f.


And [the disciples] were astonished out of measure, saying among themselves, 'Who then can be saved?'

-- Mark 10:26

When his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, 'Who then can be saved?'

-- Matthew 19:25

"And except that the Lord had shortened those days, no flesh should be saved: but for the elect's sake, whom he hath chosen, he hath shortened the days."

-- Mark 13:20

And they that heard it said, 'Who then can be saved?'

-- Luke 18:26

What Belongs To Caesar Belongs To God, Because Even Caesar Belongs To God

The earth is the Lord's . . . and they that dwell therein . . . whether they like it or not.

For many are called, but few are chosen

"[T]he worthy disciples of philosophy will be but a small remnant."

-- Socrates, Plato's Republic, Book 6

πάνσμικρον δή τι, ἔφην ἐγώ, ὦ Ἀδείμαντε, λείπεται τῶν κατ᾽ ἀξίαν ὁμιλούντων φιλοσοφίᾳ

"Because strait [is] the gate, and narrow [is] the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it."

-- Matthew 7:14

 ὅτί στενὴ ἡ πύλη καὶ τεθλιμμένη ἡ ὁδὸς ἡ ἀπάγουσα εἰς τὴν ζωήν, καὶ ὀλίγοι εἰσὶν οἱ εὑρίσκοντες αὐτήν