William Law, the Christian Chuang tzu

 When a right knowledge of ourselves enters into our minds, it makes as great a change in all our thoughts and apprehensions, as when we awake from the wanderings of a dream.

-- William Law 

A priest eschews AI confession for disembodying the Gospel, but misses how priests and sacraments started it all

 

The historical Jesus made forgiveness of sins a horizontal matter in a social relation of equals, and a predicate for divine forgiveness before the imminent end of the world foreclosed the opportunity.

The Christ of faith and early Catholicism turned forgiveness of sins into a vertical matter enclosed in a sacrament requiring elite intermediaries to administer it. 

But with a sacrament of confession to a priest the person actually wronged is simply bypassed and forgotten. Is there a better example of disembodying the Gospel? People who look for the origins of gnosticism and individualism should look here! 

The historical Jesus did not teach to confess one's sin to a priest, but to the person who was actually sinned against! Jesus' teaching everywhere stresses horizontal reconciliation without which there can be no vertical reconciliation.

Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.

 -- Matthew 5:23f. 

... And forgive us [ἄφες] our debts, as we forgive [ἀφίεμεν] our debtors. ... For if ye forgive [ἀφῆτε] men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you [ἀφήσει]: But if ye forgive [ἀφῆτε] not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive [ἀφήσει] your trespasses.

-- Matthew 6:12, 14f.

So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive [ἀφῆτε] not every one his brother their trespasses.

 -- Matthew 18:35

And when ye stand praying, forgive [ἀφίετε], if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive [ἀφῇ] you your trespasses. But if ye do not forgive [ἀφίετε], neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive [ἀφησεὶ] your trespasses.

 -- Mark 11:25f.

Confess your faults one to another . . ..

 -- James 5:16 

Forgiveness [ἄφεσις] is the social imperative of eschatological time, of the fullness of time proclaimed by Jesus the eschatological prophet when the kingdom of God was "at hand".

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance [ἄφεσιν] to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty [ἐν ἀφέσει] them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

-- Luke 4:18f.  

This forgiveness is offered unconditionally, without the "ifs" and conditions for forgiveness of later tradition. And Jesus himself models that meaning of unconditional forgiveness even to the bitter end of his life.

Father forgive [ἄφες] them, for they know not what they do.

-- Luke 23:34

This is why the disciple compelled to walk one mile walks two (Matthew 5:41). This is why the disciple struck on the one cheek offers the other also (Matthew 5:39). This is why the disciple robbed of his coat gives up also his cloke (Matthew 5:40).   

But retaining sins, withholding of forgiveness, would have simply been anathema to the historical Jesus. That just represents the intrusion of business as usual, the mere continuation of profane time, whose time was up. 

  

A Disembodied Gospel

Jim Morin, The Lamp

 

... For Catholics, the ordinary way to receive forgiveness of sins is by individual sacramental confession to a priest. We believe that Christ instituted this sacrament when he said to his apostles, “whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” [John 20:23] But what is the reason which stands behind Christ’s decision to make forgiveness dependent on a direct interaction with a priest? One can give psychological motivations: confessing sins to another person promotes self-examination and sharpens awareness of sin; hearing spoken words of mercy gives experiential knowledge of forgiveness. One can also give ecclesiological reasons: reconciliation with God is simultaneously reconciliation with the Church, and besides, confessors are theologically trained to judge repentance, to resolve moral doubts, to answer spiritual questions, and so on. ...        

The irony of the essay is that this priest really does seem to grasp in his conclusion that "we need real human communion rooted in the love of the Incarnate Word". It just never occurs to him that he might be standing in the way of it, just like AI.

Gnosticism alert: Get in touch with R E A L I T Y . . . just by reading . . . about sacraments . . . in one easy sitting!

As often as we mention a sacrament, it is improperly understood [poor thing!] ... our restraint of the word to some few principal divine ceremonies, importeth in every such ceremony two things, the substance of the ceremony itself, which is visible; and besides that, somewhat else more secret . . ..

-- Richard Hooker 

Gospel claims forty years removed and more from Jesus' resurrection are not the same thing as claims which are "only a short time later"

Jesus After the Critics

Michael C. Legaspi  

 ... Like most New Testament scholars, she holds Mark to be the earliest Gospel (composed sometime around the year 70), with Matthew and Luke—both of whom use Mark as a source ­document—coming along a generation later. John, independent of the other three, came later still. ... 

Pagels’s own position is that the question of Jesus’s resurrection goes beyond what a historian can say: “Historical evidence can neither prove nor disprove the reality”; it can only verify that “after Jesus died many people claimed to have seen him alive.”

Pagels is not entirely wrong. The evidence that Jesus was put to death—actually killed, in public, on a cross, by the governing ­authority—and that many people claimed, only a short time later, that they saw the same Jesus alive cannot seriously be doubted. ...              

 

Nice try, but no. 

We do not know that many people claimed that they saw Jesus alive "only a short time later". 

Pagels' claim to fame has been all about making this very kind of chronological error, placing later Gnostic sources on the same level as the New Testament as evidence to argue for multiple Christianities and their legitimacy. That Legaspi shrinks from calling her out on that tells you everything you need to know about Legaspi.

The only sense in which it is true that the modern phenomenon of scholarship is "now in retreat" is in the extent to which scholars like Pagels and her reviewer Legaspi themselves retreat from the critical project.  

Meanwhile in A.D. 69, around the time of the composition of Mark, many dreamers thought Nero had come back from the dead, too, but just because they existed doesn't mean we take them seriously or believe them, any more than Tacitus did, whose case proves yet again that human nature is unchanging, a mixture of credulity and incredulity from time immemorial:

... About this time Achaia and Asia Minor were terrified by a false report that Nero was at hand. Various rumours were current about his death; and so there were many who pretended and believed that he was still alive. The adventures and enterprises of the other pretenders I shall relate in the regular course of my work. The pretender in this case was a slave from Pontus, or, according to some accounts, a freedman from Italy, a skilful harp-player and singer, accomplishments, which, added to a resemblance in the face, gave a very deceptive plausibility to his pretensions. After attaching to himself some deserters, needy vagrants whom he bribed with great offers, he put to sea. Driven by stress of weather to the island of Cythnus, he induced certain soldiers, who were on their way from the East, to join him, and ordered others, who refused, to be executed. He also robbed the traders and armed all the most able-bodied of the slaves. ... Thence the alarm spread far and wide, and many roused themselves at the well-known name, eager for change, and detesting the present state of things. The report was daily gaining credit when an accident put an end to it. ...

-- Tacitus, Histories 2.8 

 

The rise of The Nones will plateau because . . .

 Atheists Just Don't Have Many Kids:

. . . look at the change in the atheist/agnostic share of the adult population in recent years. In 2013, it was 10%. In 2016, it was 12%. In November of 2022, it was still 12%. ... It’s harder for a “religion” to grow if it has to achieve that growth largely through conversion.

Portents are a dime a dozen

 Every unwonted meteor is portentous, and some divine prognostick.

-- Joseph Glanvill

A psychology of the children of light . . .

. . . or why you became a religious fanatic, a band groupie, the Chicago Cubs' Number One Fan, a fill-in-the-blank junkie/obsessive-compulsive, a political radical, an activist, a racist, or maybe a workaholic, drug addict or alcoholic, got a tattoo or covered yourself in them, cut your ears, and maybe your tongue, nose, nipples or genitals, replete with jewelry, questioned your sexuality or gender, added or subtracted breasts, got a chopadickoffofme or an addadicktome, keep changing your hair color, or are otherwise consumed by your "identity".

Because you ain't heavy.

 

 

 

 

 

 Are Twitter trolls mentally ill? :

"diagnoses of the various kinds of personality disorder are very fuzzy — often people are in several categories, or don’t fit neatly into any of them." ...

"neurotypical people ... are heavy, it takes a lot to move you. So when something quite nice happens to a neurotypical person, it makes them slightly happier: the wind only moves them a little bit. When something quite unpleasant happens, it makes them slightly sadder. ... if you are cognitively light, then the same events will move you much further. ... think of it as someone being light, rather than heavy: being blown on the wind of events. [Light] people ... feel emotions much more strongly. But they also have difficulty forming a strong self-image, and often take on very visible identities, such as being a Goth or a fan of a particular band, dyeing their hair or getting tattoos, in order to give themselves something solid to cling to." ...

"we all grow more emotionally stable over the course of our lives (as children, we are very emotionally volatile, and settle down with age) and by middle age, most people ... are leading healthy and happy lives. One study followed up patients 27 years after diagnosis and found that 92% of them no longer met the diagnostic criteria." /end

The easy malleability of the human personality, its "light" nature, its instability, particularly of the child, is both a feature and a bug according to the New Testament.

Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein.

-- Luke 18:17

The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit.

-- John 3:8

While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light.

-- John 12:36

Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. ... But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation.  

-- I Thessalonians 5:5,8

That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; 

-- Ephesians 4:14

For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light:

-- Ephesians 5:8

If Gnostic ideas are "essentially apostate" and "heretical", the question of their necessary and actual origin in Paul, for example, is simply being begged

The Gnostic heresy’s political successors :

First, they are all essentially apostate projects, enterprises that have arisen in the midst of Christian civilization with the aim of supplanting it.  And they could have arisen only within the Christian context, because, second, these projects are all heretical in the broad sense of that term.  That is to say, they are all founded on some idea inherited from Christianity (the dignity of the individual, human equality, a law-governed universe, a final consummation, etc.) but removed from the theological framework that originally gave it meaning, and radically distorted in the process. ... the key marks of the Gnostic mindset – the positing of unseen malign forces, the hermeneutics of suspicion and “dream world” theorizing, Manicheanism and shrill intolerance of all dissenters, even something like an immanentized eschaton (“The Storm”). 

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. -- Ephesians 6:12

Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come to nought: But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory: Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. -- I Corinthians 2:6ff. 

Be not ye therefore partakers with them. For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light: ... And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. ... Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.  -- Ephesians 5:7f.,11,14

Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son:  -- Colossians 1:12f.

This was that: Misinterpreting the past with the present

What are we to make of John Allen Chau, an American missionary murdered in India?:

I think his was authentically a Christian death. ... I believe he is indeed a martyr.

I believe this, one, because of all the laughter, because his sanity's been questioned. Some thought the same of Jesus, you see, some even from his own family. In early accounts of Christian martyrs, centuries ago, repeatedly, the scorn leveled against them was that they were crazy too, unbalanced, that they had a death wish. "Why do you rush towards death?" they asked Pionius, one of our early martyrs, a mouthy Christian priest crucified, the story goes, just like Christ. "I am not rushing towards death, but towards life," he said. It's a misunderstanding typical between those who believe and those who don't; one thinking the other one crazy, the other embracing life in death amid the ridicule of those playing it safe. It's why nothing of the laughter or of the disapproval of the agnostically sane persuades me to pass judgment. Because martyrs don't make sense, never have. But neither did Jesus, nor his Crucifixion.

Jesus wasn't thought crazy by his family because he had a death wish.

He was thought crazy because he renounced his family and his social responsibilities and took up the mantle of prophet, urging others to do just as he had done in order to escape the imminently coming judgment.

The death wish idea was imported ex post facto and superimposed on a narrative which remarkably resisted and survived.

The only thing worthy of scorn is Jesus' would-be followers' immemorial ignorance of why he believed Israel deserved the judgment he preached in the first place. 

Bethel Redding's Beni and Jenn Johnson declare "cancer free zone" in April 2017, Beni comes down with it in March 2018

 

You can't make this stuff up.

Do you see a man who is hasty in his words? There is more hope for a fool than for him.

 

-- Proverbs 29:20

Beni Johnson is the wife of Bill Johnson, a so-called miracle worker and faith healer.

From the story here:

Beni Johnson, co-pastor of Bethel Church in Redding, California, is being treated for a cancer diagnosis that "shocked" her. "When this all began in March and I walked out of the doctor's office shocked." ...

Just over a year ago in April 2017, Beni's daughter-in-law, Jenn Johnson, urged members to pray for a "cancer free zone" at Bethel during a during a worship session while singing "By the Blood." During that service, Beni Johnson revealed she had a heavenly encounter with Jesus in the spirit and gained access to healing power over cancer. "All through worship whenever I start to sing this song and I close my eyes I just actually step into Heaven. And I was looking around Heaven but I noticed that my brother-in-law Jim, and my father-in-law Bill's dad are standing on the edge of Heaven and they are looking down," she said. "And both of them died from cancer. And I said, Holy Spirit, Jesus, why are they standing out to me? Why are they standing and looking down and then Jenn said 'we declare healing over cancer,'" Beni Johnson said as the audience applauded. ...

As people were encouraged to pray for those with cancer, Johnson stated, "Don't pray; declare. This is a time, this is an open Heaven right here and we're calling down the healing power of Jesus over cancer." 

Today's must-reading comes from the pen of Robert P. Seawright: "The Apocalypse is (Always) Nigh"

Here.

It's too long to do justice to here, so I'll simply say he's a keen observer of human nature and you won't want to miss his observations on apocalyptic religion and stock market crash prognostication.

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.

Chris Lehmann blames gnosticism for American Christians' development of a sanctified money cult

From an interesting review here by a progressive, which entirely misses the materialism inherent in both the American conservative and progressive interpretations of the meaning of the Christian faith, making gnosticism kind of beside the point because it's adapted for materialist ends, which in a real gnostic would be a contradiction in terms.

Americans, it seems, specialize in perverting not just the orthodoxy, but also the heterodoxy:

At the root of this depressing defeat for a prophetic and socially-conscious Christian faith, in Lehmann’s reading, is what amounts to a strong and ever-present current of Gnosticism: the belief that I can rise above all obstacles and can transform myself and succeed against all odds with God’s help; that I can even transcend basic human limitations—suffering, illness, and death—and become God-like in my personal triumph. It’s always about me and “my” God; it’s never about transforming the social conditions that cause so much unnecessary suffering for so many.

Lehmann demonstrates how during times of the most acute public suffering, like the depressions of 1837, 1857, 1893, etc., almost all Protestant thought leaders served up new formulas for individual self-improvement rather than challenging the presumption and arrogance of wealth. Hence his title, “The Money Cult”: in what many are pleased to regard as a Christian nation, the functional faith of most believers has usually boiled down to a sanctified form of acquisitive individualism.

Does knowledge make one a "Christian", or obedience?

Michael Williams here:

The simple definition of the term Christian is a person who believes in the teachings of Jesus Christ. ... [H]ow can someone be like Christ if they do not know even the simplest things that the Bible teaches about Him? ... The point to be made is that teaching and learning about Christ is a central element to someone being a Christian.

Were the disciples knowledgeable about the teachings of Jesus when they left all and followed him? If not, how can it be said that they were his disciples even though they were not at all like him? The point to be made is that they were his followers not because they knew anything but because they obeyed him.

The gnosticism underlying fundamentalism: Correct knowledge is essential to salvation

 

Not just knowledge, but correct knowledge.

Michael Williams says so twice so you get it, here:

[N]early 95% of the people who claim to be a Christian cannot articulate or answer simple questions correctly about how they know they are saved. ... Nearly 95% of the people who claim to be a Christian cannot articulate or answer simple questions correctly about how they know they are saved. 

Have You Ever Noticed The Gnostic-Like Esotericism Of Calvinism?

Here's a recent example:

As I said, I've only slowly come around to the Reformed tradition. It's taken years of reading different texts, working through heavy issues in metaphysics, thinking deeply through implications of the Creator/creature distinction, and coming to appreciate the Reformed tradition beyond its soteriology. I was brought into its richer tradition of spirituality through an appreciation of its emphasis on a constellation of biblical doctrines like revelation, union with Christ, providence, the atonement, and the Lord's Supper, which form the proper background for its teaching on election.

That process didn't happen in a vacuum, though. A couple patient buddies embodied helpful humility toward me as I worked through the issues. They were quick to celebrate the truths we shared together. They argued graciously with me at the right times but never questioned my faith or intelligence. They pointed me to good resources and were willing to read some of the ones to which I pointed them. Essentially they took the time to hear and understand my problems as we discussed. More than that, they honestly tried to extend the free grace that they believed they'd received from God through no merit of their own. ...

Let me put it this way: if you're really a Calvinist and believe you've received knowledge of the truth by the sheer grace of God, which is what a Reformed view of knowledge teaches, then be patient with those who don't see it. God has been (and is currently being) patient with you in some area as well. So stop sneering and ask God to humble you enough to be helpful to those offended at or wrestling with those doctrines you now hold dear.

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But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

-- Matthew 3:7

Some religions are more complicated than others.

For Most Protestants, It's Mary's Perpetual Virginity Which Is The Problem

Philip Jenkins, here, who notes the Feast of the Nativity of Mary on September 8th:

As recently as 1950, Pope Pius XII stated that “we pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma: that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.” ... [F]or most Protestants (and some Catholics), the ideas I am describing – the whole Marian lore – is so bizarre, so outré, so sentimental, and so blatantly superstitious that it just does not belong within the proper study of Christianity. If anything, it’s actively anti-Christian. Even scholars prepared to wrestle with the intricacies of Gnostic cosmic mythology throw up their hands at what they consider a farrago of medieval nonsense. ... [T]hat response is profoundly mistaken. If we don’t understand devotion to Mary, together with such specifics as the Assumption, we are missing a very large portion of the Christian experience throughout history. It’s not “just medieval,” any more than it is a trivial or superstitious accretion.

---------------------------------------------------------

That's right. The perpetual virginity of Mary is no more outrageous than the virgin birth of Christ, except that for Protestants it conflicts with the evidence that Jesus had brothers during his lifetime. To them the Romanists engage in special pleading when they say that the plain sense of these texts isn't the plain sense and should be understood in the light of the much later "apocryphal" evidence which maintained Mary's perpetual virginity and that his "brothers" must have been only his nephews or cousins.

More to the point, however, missed by most commentators, is that Jesus' rejection of normal family relationships is paramount in the Synoptic narratives mentioning his brothers and mother, and is rooted in his apocalyptic worldview of an imminent end of the world. Being tied down by a wife and children or a mother and a father and siblings, or a job or possessions or the cares of this life generally, all will hold you back and keep you from escaping from the wrath which is to come, and come soon. To repent is to turn your back on all this. The historical development is that when this Apocalypse he preached failed to materialize, this part of the teaching was transformed into an idealization of celibacy and virginity.

What if our many questions remain unanswered after we die?

How many times did we go to bed without answers, and still our mothers and fathers loved us all the same, throughout the night and the next morning? And for days and weeks and months and years, seemingly without end, until one day our parents came to an end, and we were left alone with our questions.

They took care of us at all times whether we deserved it or not, fed us and clothed us, and protected our going out and our coming in.

Isn't God something like that? Has He not loved us all similarly, but without ceasing?

And aren't we going to be always something like that, always children, whether alive or dead, because our very being is completely contingent upon our Maker?

What should change? Why should the next world mean any more, or any less, than that?

I hear you all grumbling, you sons of God, you, but it is not born of faith. It is born of presumption.

We cannot be equal with God.

For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

The knowing, as usual, has been highly overrated.

τίμα τὸν πατέρα σου καὶ τὴν μητέρα ἵνα εὖ σοι γένηται καὶ ἵνα μακροχρόνιος γένῃ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς τῆς ἀγαθῆς ἧς κύριος ὁ θεός σου δίδωσίν σοι


-- Exodus 20:12