New Archbishop of Wales, Cherry Vann, who lives with her civil partner Wendy and their two dogs, touted as the right pick to end misbehaviour at Bangor Cathedral

 

Cherry Vann has been announced as the new Archbishop of Wales.

She becomes the first female leader of the Church in Wales, replacing Andrew John who retired following a turbulent period.

Originally from Leicestershire, she has been Bishop of Monmouth since January 2020, and was among the first women to be ordained as a priest in the Church of England in 1994.

Mr John announced his decision to retire with immediate effect in June following the publication of two summaries highlighting safeguarding concerns and misbehaviour at Bangor Cathedral. ... 

Ian Black, Dean of Newport, welcomed the appointment on behalf of the Diocese of Monmouth, said Ms Vann was "the right person for this moment in the Church in Wales' life". ...

More.

The dog must learn it, when he is a whelp, or else it will not be . . .

 

 . . . for it is hard to make an old dog to stoop [submit]. 

-- Anthony Fitzherbert, The Book of Husbandry (1523/1534), paragraph 41:

 

 

 

The new pope's a wiener in Chicago

I am not ecumenical when it comes to hot dogs.

The Chicago style is without doubt the very best, the top dog, yes, the pontifex maximus of salsicce, as long as it comes from Vienna or Frankfurt.

 

 

Against the Pharisees' core tenet of resurrection, Luke's Jesus insists it is superfluous

  

And the Pharisees also, who were covetous, heard all these things: and they derided him. And he said unto them . . . There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day:  And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.

And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried; And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.

And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.

But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.

And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.

Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father's house: For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment.

Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.

And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent.

And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.       

-- Luke 16:14f., 19ff.

cf. John 5:45ff.:

Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father: there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust. For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?

Remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things

 

America: The most English, the most German, the most Protestant, the most guilt-ridden this Columbus Day

 

... the idea that Britain might celebrate, say, Cecil Rhodes in the way that Spain does Columbus seems almost heretical. The English-speaking peoples evince a peculiar compulsion to apologize for their overseas victories — a compulsion not much shared by Arabs or Portuguese or Russians or Turks or Italians. When it comes to self-criticism, only the Germans give us a run for our money.

Why should that be? Is it some curious manifestation of Protestant guilt? Is it that Anglosphere universities, unusually, remove students from their families and their hometowns, leaving them in each other’s company and making them unusually vulnerable to purity spirals and silly ideas? Or is it simply that everyone loves an underdog and the English-speaking peoples are almost never underdogs?

Whatever the explanation, we have reached a strange cultural moment when the countries that did the most to spread personal freedom and representative government across the globe are also the ones most embarrassed about their achievements.

 

More.

That Jesus conceived of the coming eschatological kingdom as a Jewish kingdom of the twelve tribes of Israel is the simplest explanation of the evidence

There are but two survivals of the explicitly Jewish conception of the coming kingdom in the Gospels, without any thought of inclusion of Gentiles, in Matthew 19 and Luke 22.

But the choice of twelve disciples by Jesus as a function of this explicitly Jewish conception of the imminently coming kingdom as a kingdom of the twelve tribes of Israel is also evidence. If the former nearly was expunged from the record, the tradition of the twelve survived because they did.

Those elements, the future Jewish kingdom and its twelve Jewish judges, are consistent with other surviving evidence of Jesus' original Jewish Gospel, for example with the charge in Matthew 10 and 15 not to go into the way of the Gentiles but to go only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, as well as with the scattered derogatory references to Gentiles, for example as dogs.  

Needless to say, a future Gentile kingdom would have required more judges than the twelve, and a Gospel to the Gentiles worked out to go with it. The latter was the innovation of Paul, not coincidentally a missionary Pharisee. The former never existed but for him.

And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life. 

-- Matthew 19:28f.

Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations. And I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father hath appointed unto me; That ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. 

-- Luke 22:28ff.

That this conception of a future Jewish kingdom was there from the beginning explains the many instances of the disciples' fascination with who would be greatest in that kingdom which survive.

Those discourses need not be historical in all their particulars. The failure of the Jewish kingdom to appear necessitated rationalization of the conception involved under and for the new circumstances. Hence the emphasis upon selfless servanthood in the light of the reinterpretation of Jesus' death as a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world.

At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? 

-- Matthew 18:1

But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant.

-- Matthew 23:11

And he came to Capernaum: and being in the house he asked them, What was it that ye disputed among yourselves by the way? But they held their peace: for by the way they had disputed among themselves, who should be the greatest.

-- Mark 9:33f. 

Then there arose a reasoning among them, which of them should be greatest.

-- Luke 9:46

Luke says the dispute among the twelve persisted even to the Last Supper, which is remarkably self-absorbed of them given the supposed gravity of the moment. It also suggests the lectures by Jesus all along didn't do them much good. It's almost as if the fact of the incipient nativism were a pretext for Luke's narrative invention. And then there's the irony that even in correcting the disciples' preoccupation with themselves, Luke still makes Jesus contrast the proper behavior with the improper behavior in terms of Jew vs. Gentile. 

And there was also a strife among them, which of them should be accounted the greatest. And he said unto them, The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors. But ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve. For whether is greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he that serveth? is not he that sitteth at meat? but I am among you as he that serveth.  

-- Luke 22:24ff.

But ye shall not be so.

It is easier to explain the more inclusive conception of the kingdom of God with Gentiles as a development from this original narrower one without Gentiles than the other way around. 

The narrower conception died hard, especially for example in the person of Peter, whom Paul accused of lingering hypocrisy about it in Galatians 2.

Luke, on the other hand, paints Peter in a more sympathetic light, in Acts 10, 11, and 15, showing how God himself miraculously intervened to change Peter's opinion about Gentiles.

But that Peter persisted in the nativism so long is the point. He didn't invent it. He got it from someone and stuck with it the whole time almost up until the moment he disappears from Luke's narrative never to be heard from again.

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.

Scott Redd simply assumes that Jesus loved the immigrant, refusing to mine the uncomfortable evidence to the contrary

Immigration and the Kingdom of God:

 

[W]e do best when we remember how Jesus loved the poor, the needy, the immigrant, while never forgetting that His work always pointed us further to another goal: a world without borders, where every tear is wiped away (Revelation 21:5). That’s where we are going too, but we are not there yet.

Matthew 2:6 knows no such world without borders, only a Christ who shall rule over Israel:

And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel. 

 

^{Matthew 10:5ff. has Jesus explicitly telling his disciples not to evangelize the Gentiles but to go only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel:}

^{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 as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. ... 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 15:24ff. tells us Jesus called the Gentiles dogs, to whom he was not sent and who should not be preferred over the children of Israel:}

^{But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Then came she [a woman of Canaan] and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me. But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs.}

 

^{Matthew 19:28 conceives of the kingdom to come as the kingdom of the twelve tribes of Israel, not as some new, all-inclusive redefined Israel with the Gentiles grafted in:}

^{And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.}

And now a word from a lying Jesuit dog, who obviously isn't one of Jesus' little lambs

"Don't waste what is holy on people who are dogs. Don't throw your pearls to pigs! They will trample the pearls, then turn and attack you." -- Matthew 7:6

Then Jesus said to the [Canaanite] woman, "I was sent only to help God's lost sheep—the people of Israel." But she came and worshiped him, pleading again, "Lord, help me!" Jesus responded, "It isn't right to take food from the children and throw it to the dogs." -- Matthew 15:24ff.

Jesus told her, "First I should feed the children—my own family, the Jews. It isn't right to take food from the children and throw it to the dogs." -- Mark 7:27

Watch out for those dogs, those people who do evil, those mutilators who say you must be circumcised to be saved. -- Philippians 3:2

It would be better if they had never known the way to righteousness than to know it and then reject the command they were given to live a holy life. They prove the truth of this proverb: "A dog returns to its vomit." And another says, "A washed pig returns to the mud." -- 2 Peter 2:21f.

The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, "Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" -- John 1:29

But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: -- John 10:26f.

Outside the city are the dogs—the sorcerers, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idol worshipers, and all who love to live a lie. -- Revelation 22:15

Critic of the alt-right Matthew Rose is mistaken: Race was a category to the historical Jesus

Matthew Rose, here in First Things:

The alt-right seeks an account of what we are meant to be and serve as a people, invoking race as an emergency replacement for our fraying civic bonds. It is not alone; identity politics on the left is a response to the same erosion of belonging. But race is a modern category, and lacks theological roots. Nation, however, is biblical. In the Book of Acts, St. Paul tells his Gentile listeners, “God has made all the nations [ethnos].” The Bible speaks often of God’s creation, judgment, and redemption of the nations. In Christ there is no Gentile or Jew, yet God calls us into his life not only as individuals but as members of communities for which we are responsible. ... Young men . . . need an account of nationhood that teaches them about their past, without making them fear the future; an account of civic life that opens them to transcendence, rather than closing them to their neighbors.

It was the Pauline synthesis which made the risen Christ the proponent of a universal religion, one which goes into all the world making disciples. The historical Jesus, however, viewed those outside the house of Israel as dogs, and himself as sent only to the lost among his own kind. To imply that that made Jesus somehow closed to transcendence certainly ought to give his worshippers pause, but it shows just how thoroughgoing has been the victory of Paul over Jesus that the horizontal is so matter-of-factly valued as if it were the vertical. This is, in fact, a kind of idolatry.

The alt-right's opposition to Christianity is really opposition to this Paulinist revolution, without which Christianity would no doubt have ceased to exist. But the alt-right understands it as little as Christians understand that they are children of this lesser god.

Meanwhile, the failure of Jesus' coming Kingdom of God is a cautionary tale of humanity's inate capacity for self-deception which could instruct his followers and opponents alike but, because it hasn't so far, probably never will.

North America will be glaciated again, or worse, before that ever happens.

    

An alt-right Jesus, but for Jews only: The rest of us are dogs, whites included

Contra Connor Grubaugh, assistant editor of First Things, here:

Christianity in its original and most animating form is fundamentally incompatible with the Faustian ethic and race-based mythos of the alt-right, just as it is incompatible with the equivocations of liberalism. Orthodoxy is its own mythos—a true one.

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.

-- Matthew 10:5f.

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

-- Matthew 15:24, 26

The vignette in Acts 10 and 11 proves that the earliest church had assumed on the basis of this original message of Jesus that repentance unto life had not been granted "also to the Gentiles" (Acts 11:18).

Moreover Jesus himself had criticized the missionary zeal of the Pharisees in the outside world:

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

-- Matthew 23:15

Rather than speak of the impossibility of "alt-right Christianity", it seems more like an absolute necessity, however much that makes the faith an anachronism which has precious little to say to our time. The original message of Jesus is thoroughly "race-based", for Jews only.

Or is all this "scripture" to be relegated to the junk heap of history as nothing more than the evil work of Paul's opponents, the Circumcision, tampering with the Word of God?

Racism angers Jesus Racist, Ethnic Nationalist God-King of the Jews?

Ideologue Russell Moore thinks so, puttin' on his blinders, in WaPo predictably:

"[T]he picture we get of Jesus in the Gospels is how relatively calm he is. ... Jesus spoke gently with those on the outside of the people of God. ... The religious leaders and those keeping the worship of God from the nations had something in common: Both were seeking to keep people away from the kingdom of God, people they didn’t feel were worthy of it. ... [E]thnic nationalism is not just a deviant social movement. It is the same old idolatry of the flesh, the human being seeking to deify his own flesh and blood as God." 

If only it were that simple.

These twelve Jesus sent out, instructing them, Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And proclaim as you go, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand.

-- Matthew 10:5ff.

But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

-- Matthew 15:24

Don't give what is sacred to dogs. Don't throw your pearls to pigs! They will trample the pearls, then turn and attack you.

-- Matthew 7:6

But he answered and said [to the woman of Canaan], It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs.

-- Matthew 15:26

And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them . . ..

-- Matthew 6:7f.

The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.

-- John 10:33

The partiality of Jesus: Good news for the lost sheep of the house of Israel

"For a certain woman, whose young daughter had an unclean spirit, heard of him, and came and fell at his feet: The woman was a Greek, a Syrophenician by nation; and she besought him that he would cast forth the devil out of her daughter. But Jesus said unto her, Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it unto the dogs."  -- Mark 7:25ff.

"And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil. But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us. But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me. But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs." -- Matthew 15:22ff.

"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." -- Matthew 10:5f.

"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." -- Matthew 7:6

"Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie." -- Revelation 22:14f.

Muslim superstition: They blame their failed states and economies on a failure to practice pure Islam

Starting with the dog: NO DOGS!

Noted here:

Another benefit of Kelly’s collection is to remind us of other books that have shrewdly analyzed the Middle East and Islamic culture. V.S. Naipaul’s Among the Believers (1981) is one such classic. As Kelly notes in his review, Naipaul’s important insights include the overwhelming influence the Islamic faith has over politics and government in Muslim nations. If the state or the economy fails, the fault lies not in its flawed structure or the corruption of its leaders, but in the failure of the people to practice a pure Islam.

Dull Humanitarianism At Blog and Mablog

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The dull humanitarianism of contemporary Christianity came up here recently, humorously (to me anyway) attacking itself in a mirror:

What I mean is this — many who claim to love Jesus with their theology hate the poor with their economics, and I think we should stop being okay with that. I frankly think we should knock it off — the gospel is not some airy fairy thing that fails to apply to how people have to live out their actual lives. When Jesus taught us to feed the poor, instead of turning their place of habitation into a desolation, this necessarily excludes every form of Keynesianism.

This swipe at the left's hypocrisy is hypocritical and blind in its own way, but it is difficult to appreciate it when we are captives of an historical moment full of unexamined assumptions and unresolved historical contradictions and loyalties. For one thing, it can be demonstrated that neither side in this debate loves "Jesus with their theology". Unfortunately, their love of him picks and chooses what it wants from "his" teaching just as they pick and choose whom to help from the poor. And for another, polite discussion of the poor amongst Christians left and right these days merely objectifies, patronizes and condescends to the poor, so that a great gulf yet remains fixed between them and the poor.

Take the statement, "When Jesus taught us to feed the poor". That's a nice sounding phrase which no one on either side finds objectionable, except that Jesus didn't teach us to feed the poor. Unfortunately this is not only the accepted and false premise of Christians left and right, but it has become the accepted and false premise of our entire politics, and it is wrong. What are the poor, dogs, who once fed get to go gamboling on their way? And who are we then but their owners?

Yes, Jesus fed the 5,000 (Matthew 14:21; Mark 6:44; Luke 9:14) and the 4,000 (Matthew 15:38; Mark 8:9) and spoke very positively of the poor and very negatively of the rich, even though the poor who hung on his every word he addressed as "you who are evil" (Matthew 7:11; Luke 11:13). But nowhere do you get from Jesus' teaching a programmatic statement like that, which is surprising when you have a Sermon on the Mount or a Sermon on the Plain replete with programmatic statements of all sorts. You know, like "Give to him who begs from you, and do not refuse him who would borrow from you" (Matthew 5:42; Luke 6:30).

 

How many times have I heard from Christian pulpits that one should not give money to people who beg on the streets because they'll just "use it to buy liquor"? Isn't that what we use ours for?

If there is any programmatic statement of Jesus ignored by all and sundry today it is the very basic one you were likely to hear from Jesus every time he showed up in a new venue and set up his soap box:

Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me.  

 

-- Mark 10:21; Matthew 19:21; Luke 18:22

No, far from being "some airy fairy thing that fails to apply to how people have to live," Jesus expected his followers, as a condition of discipleship, actually to stop living as they "have to" and demonstrate repentance by the act of wealth liquidation and divestiture to the poor, and by becoming poor themselves. In other words, Jesus demanded that his followers change places with the poor and turn their own "actual lives" into a "habitation" of "desolation". This is repentance as reversal, a literal turning upside down of every thing, every relationship, every obligation.

Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.

 

-- Mark 1:14f.

This point cannot be stressed enough. Jesus demanded that people divest themselves of everything that they are and have as the way to "fill the hungry with good things", and, more to the point, become poor themselves and escape the wrath that is to come, and come soon.

When was the last time you heard a Christian talking like that, especially in the "Bible-believing" churches which promote both Biblical inerrancy and free-market capitalism? Christians are supposed to take personal responsibility for the poor, sell everything they have, and give it to them.

 

I think the last time I heard anything remotely like this was from Anthony Quinn as the pope in The Shoes of the Fisherman. Needless to say, I've frequented liberal Methodist churches and witnessed the dull humanitarianism at its best, which is indeed impressive in its way, but it's still what it is. Those Methodists still have a place to lay their heads at night, and money to go out to lunch together on Sundays after church. And they all have churches, and indeed keep building more of them, maintaining them, heating them, cooling them and filling them with very noisy machines to entertain themselves with.

Divestiture of everything one has, owns and is, dare I say including even all social connections and their obligations, is now the lost meaning of repentance in the teaching of Jesus. Very few people are familiar with this anymore in America, except for some priests and members of monastic orders who actually take vows of poverty.

 

Writing way back in the early 1930s one Oswald Spengler observed that this understanding was already then long lost in Europe, and goes on at some length to show how this original doctrine of Christian renunciation as a moral doctrine was replaced with materialist philosophy by the church itself in the wake of the Enlightenment. One cannot help but think that had Europe's Christians actually practiced their faith instead of selling-out wholesale to materialism there might not have been a Great War. And of course not long after Spengler died Europe exploded again, proving one more time that its Christianity was a complete fraud, just as ours is today.

To repent includes sorrow over personal sinfulness and what it has done to other people, to be sure, but nothing so ephemeral as an emotion can encompass the true meaning of repentance as Jesus understood it. Unfortunately, however, emotion epitomizes the current understanding of Christianity in the West. It is nothing but an evanescent, psychological phenomenon.

 

To Jesus, by contrast, to repent is actually a physical turning away from the direction in which one is going, which is the conventional way of the world, the way of the many, the easy way which leads to the certain destruction which comes upon you in your sleep after you sat up late planning to build bigger barns to hold all your gain (Luke 12:18). You know, physically turning away from your house, your job, your 401k. And your beautiful wife and children, and the dog. With all these goods Jesus expected one to make a sort of restitution when repenting and following him, a settling up of accounts so to speak, in addition to getting rid of the entangling alliances they involve, and rely wholly and utterly on God for his salvation.

The cost of this discipleship in the teaching of Jesus is the same for everyone, whether rich or poor or in-between: 100% of one's very self and all that that means. From the ruler whose possessions were so very great that he went away sorrowful (Matthew 19:22; Mark 10:22; Luke 18:23) instead of giving them all away to the poor and following Jesus, to the disciples who complained (!) that they had in fact left everything and followed him (they had: Matthew 19:27; Mark 10:28; Luke 18:28), to the old widow who inconspicuously (to everyone but Jesus) put into the Temple alms box just two mites (which constituted "her whole life" Mark 12:44 says), there is nothing which may be held back by anyone no matter what their station in life. And lest we forget, that goes for the poor, too, who often cling to the mean, squalid conditions of their existence as tenaciously as the rich cling to theirs.

Like death, Jesus' call to discipleship is the great equalizer of humanity, wherein all the distinctions of human existence bleed away into nothing. Not obeying this call will get you turned into a pillar of salt like Lot's wife, or laid out at room temperature as Ananias and Sapphira found out. The repentant will escape the coming judgment, but they are few, and those who turn back from the plough, or go home first to say goodbye, or insist that the obligation to bury a dead relative has priority, these are many, and it is they who get taken for tares by the suddenly appearing Reaper Angels of the Last Judgment, are gathered up with all who do iniquity and bundled together with all those who offend, and are thrown into the fire. Which is when the meek finally inherit the earth.

The repentance doctrine of Jesus survives in its starkest form in an unlikely place, the Gospel of Luke, where kingdom interpretations "already realized" and "not yet realized" clash in the same long historical narrative and form a sort of interpretive bridge between the kingdom coming-now-before-even-Israel-is-fully-evangelized idea found in Matthew 10 (and assumed in Mark) and the kingdom relegated-to-the heavenly-realms idea of the much later Fourth Gospel:

So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.  

 

--Luke 14:33

It doesn't get much plainer than that.

But it occurred to somebody along the way that there was a certain moral inconsistency in the teaching of Jesus which became difficult to resolve in the years after Jesus' death. This had everything to do with the historical inconsistency, the failure of the coming kingdom "now" idea which Jesus entertained throughout his career right up to the bitter end of his tragic life. After the kingdom failed to arrive during the mission of The Twelve as he famously but mistakenly predicted in Matthew 10, Jesus nevertheless continued to believe in it, as Albert Schweitzer first showed us long ago. The debacle of the triumphal entry into Jerusalem may be another example of it, where he made a big show in the Temple but got such an unexpected response that he had to use crowds by day and escape out of the city under cover of darkness by night for his own personal safety. And Mark shows Jesus still angling at the very last moment for a dramatic finish when at his trial Jesus tells the high priest that the high priest himself will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven (Mark 14:62).

It was not to be.

This coming kingdom "now" idea eventually got pushed back to a "coming back soon" idea in the form of Christ's return from heaven, as in St. Paul, to the point that mockers arose by the end of the first century saying "Where is the promise of his coming?" (II Peter 3:4). The Fourth Gospel came to the rescue just at this moment, complete with a Holy Spirit who revealed the real gospel, to give us a Savior who descended from heaven, instead of a Davidic King who brought us a restored monarchy of Old Testament prophecy and the Rule of God in a "kingdom come". This Eternal Logos of John's invention accomplished his work of redeeming humanity, and ascended once again to prepare a place for all who believe, helpfully omitting all the urgency implied by an impending end of the world, or even of an imminent second coming.

So in this context what do you suppose would happen to a doctrine of total renunciation predicated on the imminent end of the world? Of course it would get pushed aside just to avoid having to explain that Jesus was just a little off about the timing of the Apocalypse. But it is at once a measure of the thoroughness of our sources that they should still preserve the memory of it, as it is evidence of the deep respect with which Jesus' teaching was held, however difficult to integrate it might have been, Holy Spirit guiding into all truth notwithstanding (John 16:13).

The moral problem, I think, is less well appreciated. In the context of an imminently coming end of the world, suddenly saddling the poor with riches arguably could be justified on the grounds that the possessions wouldn't have time to corrupt them. The world would end too soon and be transformed for the no longer poor to succumb to the temptations. But introduce delay and now Jesus' teaching could possibly be guilty of hanging millstones around their necks which would keep them out of the kingdom of heaven forever (Matthew 19:23f.; Mark 10:23ff.; Luke 18:24f.).

Under such circumstances there was every reason to minimize the renunciation doctrine found in the Synoptics in favor of the new perspective enunciated in John where Jesus now merely says "the poor ye have always with you" (John 12:8). In John the poor still exist, but the rich no longer do.

 

Few appreciate that in that new framing the Evangelist has now put the objectification of the poor into the mouth of Jesus, as if Jesus and The Twelve are no longer to be identified as one and the same as the poor. No, now the followers of Jesus aren't the poor; they have the poor and are distinct from them in a way which is foreign to the equalizing message of the historical Jesus from the Synoptics in which the followers of Jesus become one with the poor. This also means that the world isn't going to end anytime soon, there will always be rich people and there will always be poor people just as there have always been, and really the only important thing now is the Savior, the Heavenly Redeemer, on whom rich ointment may indeed be lavished (John 12:3), or later . . . on his Vicar on earth, the pope. In that vignette from the Fourth Gospel is the birth of the church as charitable organization, following on the pattern of Jesus and The Twelve it presents, and gone is the directive to become poor. Rather, as that Gospel famously concludes, the directive now is that Peter "feed my sheep" with the gospel, with which the church is now rich.

Consider that according to John Jesus' followers kind of got left holding the bag quite literally when Jesus left them behind. For something like three years, or perhaps eighteen months on John's chronology, they had depended on the almsgiving of the people as they followed the man expecting God's kingdom to arrive at any minute. Judas was their Treasurer and kept "the purse". From it they not only paid their own expenses, but from it they themselves gave to "the poor". As givers of alms themselves and encouragers of same, the focus now turned to them in the absence of Jesus and they began to attract the poor as the place where the poor could beg and not be refused, just as Jesus taught. Soon The Twelve were transformed into the leaders of a self-perpetuating poverty relief machine as the poor, and the donations, kept rolling in.

So yes, the church repented Jesus' definition of repentance, and made its accommodation with the world. To that extent it may be decided by left and right in the church today that there is a basis for its materialist view of life and that they have a right to argue about the relative merits of various "economics" as if it were a category separate from "theology". The man they claim to worship, however, demonstrably had a different opinion of the matter.

Paul's Gentile Mission: The Original Schwein Hunde?

 

 

 

Look out for the dogs, look out for the evil-workers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh. For we are the true circumcision, who worship God in spirit, and glory in Christ Jesus, and put no confidence in the flesh.

 

-- Philippians 3:2f.

 

Do not give dogs what is holy; and do not throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under foot and turn to attack you.

 

-- Matthew 7:6