What Do Gods Do?

There is more than one God being worshipped around the world, so answering this question will depend on knowing which God one is referring-to and what is being said about that God, since all Gods do not behave alike. With those two caveats stated, this (it seems to me) is the rule: Gods do what they are thought to do—no more, no less! Basically, God is an idea that "exists" in most human minds. Hence, God has no "objectified existence"—that is, an "over-there-ness away from me" that can be pointed-to. God "is" (only in a sense) akin to an invisible immaterial spirit—and even that is too concrete. There is no spot in the entire universe where God can be located as a "material existing thing" as a person might be. Nor is God spread pervasively throughout the universe "in all things." To think in such a way is to objectify God by identifying God in some way with living creatures and plants (flora and fauna), and inanimate objects. A saying in the Gospel of Thomas attributed to Jesus, however, says precisely that: "Split a piece of wood; I am there. Take up a stone and you will find me there" (77b; cf. Colossians 1:17). All Gods (if Gods there be) do not inhabit a space time continuum in the universe as human beings do.

Primitive societies, however, did make one-to-one identifications between their idols (things representing God) and the spirit of mana thought to infuse their idols. The Greeks and Romans also objectified their Gods, representing them in statuary and even thinking that sometimes the God had taken human form. They even believed their statuary possessed some of the essential power of the God. For example, in the council chamber of the city of Stratonicea (West Coast of Asia Minor) there stood the statues of Zeus and Hecate, which were said in a formal city decree to "perform good deeds of great power." The citizenry celebrated their miracles daily by sacrifice, burning incense, praying, and giving thanks.

Christians, on the other hand, generally have not objectified God, with one noticeable exception. In the 5^th century Nicene Creed Jesus, the Jewish sage, is elevated to "true God of true God" and worshipped and glorified. This is apparently a dual movement consisting of God becoming man and man becoming God: it may be thought of as an instance of divine spirit "infused" into flesh and blood, or the materializing of immaterial divine spirit into human matter. He was not always the Son of God (Rom 1:3).

An easier answered historical question, however, is what is God represented as doing in the Bible? That question can at least be investigated. The Bible is divided into two divisions: Hebrew Bible and New Testament. Among other things these divisions are characterized by two completely different thought worlds: Semitic (Hebrew Bible) and Hellenistic (New Testament). Hebrew Bible describes what God does from the perspective of Old Testament faiths according to Hebrew tradition, and the New Testament, drawing on the Old Testament, describes what earlier followers of Jesus believed about God's behavior from the perspective of New Testament faiths.

"Christian" ideas about what God does come much later as expressed in the early Christian creeds of the fourth and fifth centuries and later, which are not part of the biblical tradition, although Christians argue that both the Hebrew tradition and the early Jesus tradition inform Christian beliefs.

Between the two divisions of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and the New Testament lies Jesus of Nazareth. The thought world (how he expressed himself) of Jesus is indebted to the Hebrew/Jewish traditions. Christian theology is partly based on the sayings of Jesus, the Jewish sage, and partly on Graeco-Roman ideas of divinity. The question becomes: according to Jesus, the Jewish sage, what does God do? The most critical sifting of all sayings attributed to Jesus in early Christian literature of the first and second centuries by the Jesus Seminar suggests that there is only modest God-language to be found in the residue of Jesus sayings that survived the lapses of memory of his earliest followers, and what was attributed to him in the piety of the later church. What little there is suggests that God is not sectarian but cares for good people and bad people alike (Matt 5:45b), even to the extent of providing for their daily needs, like feeding and clothing them (Matt 5:25–30; 7:11; 10:29–31). Jesus prayed for the daily provision of the basic necessities of life, as though he himself were indigent (Matt 5:11), and he thought that God's watch-care over the world extended to "numbering the hair on peoples' heads" and micromanaging the deaths of sparrows (Matt 10:29-31). He knows how to give good things to those who ask him (Matt 7:7–11). People of means, on the other hand, will have difficulty entering God's imperial rule (Mark 10:28; Matt 6:24).

When it comes to Gods, the biggest mistake most people make is thinking that their personal beliefs control what God does. As Job said, in a sudden flash of understanding, "Shall we receive good at the hand of God and not evil" (Job 2:10, cf. 30:26). In short, the ways of the Gods (if Gods there be) are inscrutable.¹

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹This essay first appeared on this blog on June 13, 2013. It later appeared in print in Hedrick, Unmasking Biblical Faiths (2019). It appears here again reedited and expanded.

Mysticism and the Jesus of John's Gospel

I have previously defined mysticism briefly as "the experience of mystical union or direct communion with God."¹ In other words, it is an experience in which an individual becomes one with God, or unites with God. Recently I found the following definition on the internet:

In modern times, "mysticism" has acquired a limited definition, with broad applications, as meaning the aim at the "union with the Absolute, the Infinite, or God". This limited definition has been applied to a wide range of religious traditions and practices, valuing "mystical experience" as a key element of mysticism.²

Becoming “one with God” would seem to be a claim that one has become “divinized,” or simply stated: one has become absorbed in God. Is that even possible? Through history, however, there have been those that believed it to be possible. One finds such statements in ancient texts as the Corpus Hermeticum (1,25-26), and Plotinus, for example, said that the goal of humanity “was not to be sinless but to be God” (Enneads, I.6,1-3). Porphyry, his student, claimed that Plotinus had achieved union with God four times during his time with Plotinus and even Porphyry claimed to have achieved it once.³ In philosophy it is known as henosis (becoming one with the one).⁴

In the modern Orthodox Christian Church, the stated goal of salvation is becoming one with God.⁵ For a brief discussion of the pervasiveness of union with God in the Christian devotional classics, see the brief discussion in Georgia Harkness, Mysticism. Its Meaning & Message.⁶

            Against this all too brief background I note several statements by Jesus in the Gospel of John suggesting that the author portrayed Jesus as a mystic who was conscious of being one with God. The plain language of the statements themselves are clearly mystical, but critical New Testament scholarship has generally not taken them to be such.⁷ There are two levels of mystical statements; in the first Jesus speaks of himself and God and a second level in which he speaks of himself, God, and the disciple. The union of the Father and the “son” are reflected in statements made by others at the beginning and ending of the gospel. At the beginning the narrator describes the “Word” (generally it is assumed Jesus is the Word) as being both opposite God and as being God (The word is Theos, God, and not theios, divine): “The Word was with God and the Word was God” (John 1:1). And a second statement by the narrator describing Jesus (from the critical Greek text) as: “the only God in the bosom of the Father” (John 1:18). And at the end of the gospel Philip’s confession about Jesus: “my Lord and my God” (John 20:28). These two statements form a basis for understanding the statements below as mystical.

            In the first level of statements Jesus claimed union with the father: “I and the Father, we are one” (John 10:30; see also for similar statements: 14:10-11; 17:21-22). In the second level of statements Jesus brought the disciple into mystical union with himself and the Father: “On that day you shall know that I am in my Father, and you are in me and I am in you” (John 14:20; see also 15:4-7; 17;21, 23, 26).

            Is the author of the Gospel of John a mystic? The English New Testament scholar C. H. Dodd had problems with the term mystic and wrote:

If the mystic is one whose religious life is expressed in ecstasy, or one who experiences an impersonal absorption in the divine, then one is right to deny this description to the author of the gospel (Dodd, p. 198).

Nevertheless, Dodd avers that John was not using stereotypical language then in vogue, but clearly using language evocative of mysticism. Dodd surveys the passages in John that suggest “union with God” and chides the German scholar, Walter Bauer, for shying away from the term “mystic” and instead describing the author of John as opting for a “conception of the Christian life” akin to a “kind of legalism.” Dodd himself affirms that the author of John opened up for believers a situation in which faith permitted them to dwell in God and God in them, but opines “whether this should be called ‘mysticism’ I do not know” (Dodd, p. 198). His problem with the term is the ecstasy associated with it.⁸

            Clearly John uses the language of mysticism, but there is no evidence for ecstatic visions or other mystical retreats from the world to be found in John. Does this suggest John reflects a kind of intellectual “mysticism” (if such is even possible), as Dodd seemed to think?

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹http://blog.charleshedrick.com/search?q=mysticism

²https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysticism

³Porphyry, “Life of Plotinus,” 23: in A. H. Armstrong, Plotinus, Porphyry on Plotinus; Enead I (Cambridge/London: Harvard, 1966; revised 1989), 69.

⁴https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henosis

⁵Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church (Penguin Books, 1964), 236-37. For the quotations, see C. Hedrick, “On Becoming God,” Wry Thoughts about Religion, Tuesday July 4, 2017: http://blog.charleshedrick.com/search?q=enneads

⁶Georgia Harkness, Mysticism. Its Meaning & Message (Nashville: Abingdon, 1973), 20-24.

⁷For example, see C. H. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge: University Press), 187-200; Raymond Brown does not even raise the subject of mysticism in connection with John’s language: The Gospel of John (2 vols.; AB 29; New York: Doubleday, 1966, 1970). Ernest Haenchen sees no hint of mysticism in these verses: A Commentary on the Gospel of John (2 vols.; Hermenia; Fortress, 1984), 2.50. He even translates Theos (God) in John 1:1 as if it were theios (divine).

⁸See Rev 1:9-20 as an example of an ecstatic vision; for definition see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecstasy

WHAT DOES GOD DO?

Answering this question will depend on knowing which God and what is being said about that God, since not all Gods behave alike.  With those two caveats stated, this is the rule: Gods do what they are thought to do—no more, no less!  Basically God is an idea that "exists" in most human minds.  Hence, God has no "objectified existence"—that is, an "over-there-ness from me" that can be pointed to.  God "is" (only in a sense) akin to an invisible immaterial spirit—and even that is too concrete.  There is no spot in the entire universe where God can be located as a "material existing thing" or a person might be.  Nor is God spread pervasively throughout the universe "in all things."  To think in such a way is to objectify God by identifying God in some way with living creatures and plants (flora and fauna), and inanimate objects.  A saying in the Gospel of Thomas attributed to Jesus, however, says precisely that: "Split a piece of wood; I am there. Take up a stone and you will find me there" (77b; cf. Colossians 1:17).  God, if God there be, does not inhabit a space time continuum like the universe and human beings do.

            Primitive societies, however, did make one-to-one identifications between their idols and the spirit of mana that infused their idols.  The Greeks and Romans also objectified their Gods, representing them in statuary and even thinking that sometimes they had taken human form.  They even believed their statuary possessed some of the essential power of the God.  For example, in the council chamber of the city of Stratonicea (West Coast of Asia Minor) there stood the statues of Zeus and Hecate, which were said in a formal city decree to "perform good deeds of great power."  The citizenry celebrated their miracles daily by sacrifice, burning incense, praying, and giving thanks.  Christians generally do not objectify God—with one noticeable  exception.  In the 5^th century Nicene Creed Jesus the Jewish sage is elevated to "true God of true God" and "worshipped and glorified." This is apparently a dual movement consisting of God becoming man and man becoming God: it may be thought of as either an instance of the spirit "infused" into flesh and blood, or the materializing of immaterial divine spirit into human matter.

            An easier answered historical question, however, is what is God represented as doing in the Bible?  That question can at least be investigated.  The Bible is divided into two divisions: Hebrew Bible and New Testament.  Among other things these divisions are characterized by two completely different thought worlds: Semitic (Hebrew Bible) and Hellenistic (New Testament).  Hebrew Bible describes what God does from the perspective of Old Testament faiths according to Jewish tradition, and the New Testament, drawing on the Old Testament, describes what earlier followers of Jesus thought about God's behavior from the perspective of New Testament faiths. 

"Christian" ideas about what God does come much later as expressed in the early Christian creeds, which is not part of the biblical tradition, although Christians argue that the biblical tradition informs Christian beliefs.

Between the two divisions of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and the New Testament lies Jesus of Nazareth.  The thought world of Jesus is indebted to the Hebrew/Jewish traditions.  Christian theology is partly based on the thought of Jesus the Jewish sage and partly on Graeco-Roman ideas of divinity.  The question becomes: according to Jesus the Jewish sage what does God do?  The most critical sifting of all sayings attributed to Jesus in early Christian literature of the first and second centuries by the Jesus Seminar suggests that there is only modest God-language to be found in the residue of Jesus sayings surviving lapses of memory, and the piety of the church. What little there is suggests that God is not sectarian but cares for good people and bad people alike (Matt 5:45b), even to the extent of providing for their daily needs, like feeding and clothing them (Matt 5:25-30; 7:11; 10:29-31).  Jesus prayed for the daily provision of the basic necessities of life, as though he were indigent (Matt 5:11), and he thought that God's watch-care over the world extended to "numbering the hair on peoples' heads" and micromanaging the deaths of sparrows (Matt 10:29-31).  He knows how to give good things to those who ask him (Matt 7:7-11).  People of means, however, will have difficulty entering God's imperial rule (Mark 10:28; Matt 6:24).

When it comes to Gods, the biggest mistake most people make is thinking that their personal beliefs control what God does.  As Job said, in a sudden flash of understanding, "Shall we receive good at the hand of God and not evil" (Job 2:10, cf. 30:26).  In short, the ways of the Gods, if Gods there be, are inscrutable.

 

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

Man becoming God is an Old Idea

In an essay for the Springfield News-Leader (January 11, 2013) Pastor Mark Kiser blames all societal ills on the fact that people have tried to divorce themselves “from the influence and loving arms of a gracious God, Jesus Christ” (Mark Kiser article). Kiser is the President of “Reclaiming Missouri for Christ,” although I was unable to identify the church of which he is pastor.
       In early Christian texts Jesus is presented as a Jewish man to whom were attributed mighty works, wonders, and signs (Acts 2:22); he lived and died in Palestine in the early years of the first century A. D. His preferred term for himself was “son of man,” but his followers in the latter half of the first century described him as “God’s Anointed” and “Son of God,” a title given to other Greco-Roman “sons of God”—but his earliest followers did not make him God, nor did he claim to be God. Early Christian texts in the latter half of the first century, however, describe four different ways that the followers of Jesus thought he had become a “son of God”: at his birth (Matthew, Luke), at his baptism (Mark), at his resurrection (Paul). In John, however, Jesus was always the pre-existent son of God, and the only one of his kind.
       Kiser’s description of Jesus as God is not consistent with early Christian faith or even Christian orthodoxy. Not even the prologue to the Gospel of John, the Christ hymn of Philippians; and the Trinitarian Creeds of the 4th century (Apostles Creed, Nicene Creed), which describe a very close relationship between God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit (i.e., three persons in One) go as far as Pastor Kiser and actually turn Jesus into God. Tertullian, a late 2nd century churchman and author, who was the most precise of early Christian writers in his description of the Trinity, insisted on a clear distinction between God and the son, something the later creeds obscure. The earliest Christians worshipped Yahweh the God of Hebrew faith, and regarded Jesus who, as God’s Anointed, was believed to have played a special role in the divine economy. Nevertheless, at the end of the first century there are clear indications that the role of Jesus was becoming far more important in Christian faith. For example, Pliny the Younger, a Roman special commissioner to Pontus-Bithynia, reported that Christians in Bithynia had admitted meeting on certain days at daybreak to chant a hymn “to Christ as to a God.” And the outburst of Thomas in John 20:28 seems to elevate the role of the resurrected Christ to a position assuming the role of deity.
       Pastor Kiser raises an interesting question. Can humans become divine, and receive worship as a God? The answer is yes they can—and they have done so. It was a common feature of Pagan antiquity to believe that human beings of great accomplishments had a God for a father and a human for a mother, and they as “sons of God” developed cult followings. For example, Theagenes was only a Greek athlete of legendary prowess, but according to the Greek Historian Pausanias, by the 2nd century cult centers existed across Greece where Theagenes received divine honors, and sacrifice was rendered to him as to a God.        
        In Greco-Roman antiquity anyone who knew Homer’s writings knew the Gods often came to earth in the disguise of humans. So for example, Paul and Barnabas were mistaken for Gods (Hermes and Zeus) at Lystra (Acts 14:8-18), and Paul was mistaken for a God at Malta when the viper bite him but did not kill him (Acts 28:1-6). The Roman Centurion, Cornelius, began to worship Peter as a God at Caesarea (Acts 10:23-26). Likely, the Christ Hymn of Philippians (2:5-11) should be understood in such a context (see particularly, Phil 2:5-8): Christ Jesus as a pre-existent divine figure does not become human but rather merely assumes the disguise of a human being.
       It is apparently an easy matter even for people even in the modern world to believe that humans can become divine. Until the end of World War II the Japanese emperor Hirohito was believed to be divine and worshipped as such—he did not renounce his divinity until 1946. There are other examples.
       Dethroning the traditional God of Jewish and Christian faith and replacing God with Jesus, as Pastor Kiser has done, is not unprecedented, however. In the ancient world Zeus was believed to have dethroned his father Cronus, thereby becoming the Lord of the Universe—just as Cronus himself at an earlier time had dethroned his father Uranus.
       Can humans become Gods? The evidence seems to suggest that whatever you are able to convince people to believe will become their reality.

A shorter version of this blog appeared in the Springfield News-Leader on January 19, 2013: http://www.news-leader.com/article/20130119/OPINIONS02/301190018/-1/7daysarchives/Man-turning-into-god-ancient-idea

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

On Becoming God

An odd but well-known locution used by Paul throughout his letters is "in Christ." Rudolf Bultmann, arguably the most influential New Testament Scholar of the twentieth century, described this expression as denoting an individual's mystical relationship to Christ, from which the actual life of the believer is lived not out of himself but out of Christ. He continues: "It makes no difference whether Paul speaks of the believer's being in Christ or Christ's being in the believer."¹ Perhaps Bultmann is correct, but that may not be the case. It seems to me that the linguistic contexts of antiquity out of which these two different locutions are driven are very different.

 

            Readers will be most familiar with the expression of Christ being in the believer: for example: "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Gal 2:20; compare, Rom 8:9-11; 1 Cor 3:16; 2 Cor 13:5). The language of these expressions finds its natural locus in the well-known context of spirit and demonic possession in the ancient world: for example, Mark 9:25-27; Luke 8:26-33; Matt 12:43-45a=Luke11:24-26; Luke 22:3.

 

            On the other hand, the language of the believer "being in Christ" is different; for example, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away behold, the new has come" (2 Cor 5:17; Rom 16:7; 2 Cor 12:2; 1 Thess 4:16). The natural location of these kinds of expressions is found in a mystic encounter whereby the believer seeks to become one with deity, or to become deity; that is to say it is the process of deification or divinization; for example, Corpus Hermeticum I.25-26 describes the process of deification, or divinization:

 

The human being rushes up through the cosmic framework…And then stripped of the effects of the cosmic framework the human enters the region of the Ogdoad [the eighth sphere]; he has his own proper power, and along with the blessed he hymns the father. Those present there rejoice together in his presence, and having become like his companions, he also hears certain powers that exist beyond the ogdoadic region and hymn god with sweet voice. They rise up to the father in order and surrender themselves to the powers, and, having become powers, they enter into god. This is the final good for those who have received knowledge: to be made god.

 

This experience is a "birth of mind," of which the teacher claims: "we have been divinized by this birth" (CH XIII. 10; see similar statements in CH IV.6; X.24-25; XI.20; XII.1, 14). In a hymn Trismegistus (Thrice Great Power) praises the god Asclepius: "We rejoice that you have deigned to make us gods for eternity even while we depend on the body" (Asclepius 41; see also 6, 22).²

 

            A final example comes from the Neoplatonic philosopher, Plotinus (A.D. 204-70): The soul holds an "intent towards that unity to which all souls should move and the divine souls always move , divine in virtue of that movement; for to be a god is to be integral with the Supreme" (Ennead VI. 8).³

 

            Paul seems to share such a view and puts it this way in 1 Cor 6:17: "But the person joined to the Lord becomes one spirit." Many translators add the words "with him" to the end of the sentence, but the words are lacking in the Greek. The inclusion of a clarifying "with him" in the translation suggests a dualism whereby the person and the Lord retain their individual identities in the unity, but Paul only says the two become one spirit.  The same is true of the previous verse (1 Cor 6:16): whoever joins with the prostitute becomes one body." It is no longer he and she sharing one body, they are one body. Other arguments about unity seem to support this idea. For example, Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female "are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal 3:28; see also 1 Cor 10:16-17; 12:12-13).

 

            While Paul does not explicitly say that "becoming one spirit" with the Lord is essentially becoming divine, he nevertheless uses the language of deification and it could easily have been understood in that way by his contemporaries. The author of Second Peter, on the other hand, has no hesitation and described people who shared his faith (2 Pet 1:1) as having "come to share in the divine nature" (2 Pet 1:4). One who has come to share in the divine nature has essentially become divine himself—or so it would seem. At least that is how the Christian experience is understood by the Orthodox Church of today, where deification or theosis is the aim of the Christian life:

 

[Saint] Basil described man as a creature who has received the order to become a god; and Athanasius…said that God became man that man might become god…Such, according to the teaching of the Orthodox Church, is the final goal at which every Christian must aim: to become god, to attain theosis, 'deification' or 'divinization.' For Orthodoxy man's salvation and redemption means his deification.⁴

 

Does sharing the divine nature make one divine?

 

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

 

¹ Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament (1951), 1.328

² Quotations from the Hermetica are from Brian P. Copenhaver, Hermetica. The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius in a new English translation with notes and introduction (1992). The dates of CH are given as A. D. 2-5.

³ Translation by Stephen MacKenna, Plotinus, The Enneads (1991).

⁴ Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church (1963).

How is Jesus the Son of God?

This essay aims to be a brief summary of Christology in the New Testament and unfortunately it is longer than my blog essays usually are.

My title is awkwardly stated, unclear, and imprecise. Nevertheless, it must be so stated in order to accommodate the numerous contradictory ways that the New Testament responds to questions about Jesus' divine sonship. The question that my title appears to ask concerns the nature of Jesus: what in his nature makes divine sonship possible? Another way of putting the question asks about the process of his becoming son of God: How is it that Jesus came to be son of God? The first question is appropriate for one text; the second question is appropriate for others. Just figuring the right question to ask about Jesus' divine sonship reveals a fundamental divide in the New Testament incapable of a satisfactory resolution.

            A big part of the problem is that no New Testament text ponders the character of Jesus' divine sonship in an extended essay. A reader must track the issue through the texts searching here and there for fragments of the authors' ideas on the issue and then match them up with related ideas, sometimes from other texts.

            There appear to be in New Testament literature at least four distinct ways that early followers of Jesus explained his divine sonship.

Jesus is Chosen by God to be God's Son

            Mark presents Jesus to the reader as a fully grown man. He was a follower of John the Baptizer (1:4-9) and a skilled craftsman (6:3), who was part of a family unit having a mother and brothers and sisters (3:31-35; 6:3). At his baptism by John he has a private vision in which "the heavens are torn apart" and a voice directly addresses only him "from the heavens, You are my beloved son" (1:9-11; cf. Ps 2:7; Luke 3:22; Heb 1:6; 2 Pet 1:17).¹ Jesus makes the affirmative claim that he considers himself to be son of God (14:61-62). Hence, one is led to conclude that Mark presents Jesus as a human being whom God chooses to be his son at his baptism. In Mark what divine sonship appears to mean is that Jesus has authority over nature, disease, and evil spirits.

Jesus is born son of God

            This view of Jesus' divine sonship is held by the authors of Matthew and Luke who present to the reader two different narratives of his birth. In Matthew the reader is told that Mary has conceived a child from a holy spirit (Matt 1:18, 20) in fulfillment of what the Lord spoke through the prophet Isaiah (Matt 1:23): a young woman will give birth to a child who will be named Emmanuel (Isaiah 7:14). What this means, Matthew takes from the name of the child, which being interpreted is "God with us" (Matt 1:23). Even though the divine sonship of Jesus is acknowledged by the demonic world (8:29), recognized by his disciples (14:33), publicly announced to the people assembled at his baptism by John (3:16-17) and to his inner circle at the transfiguration (17:1-8), Jesus still evades the question of the high priest: "tell us if you are the Christ, the son of God"; Jesus evades the question (26:62-64). Matthew, however, presents the child to the reader as the son of God (Matt 16:16) by virtue of his divine conception and birth, but does not explain the appellation "son of God" further.

            Luke's imagery about the birth of the child is more graphic than that of Matthew. An angel announces to Mary that the Lord is 'with you'" (1:28), which greatly upset Mary (1:29). The angel replies do not be afraid "for you have found favor with God" (1:30) and clarifies that she will conceive and bear a son and name him Jesus (1:31). This child will be great and called "son of the Most High" (1:32). Mary asks how does that happen because she has not "known a man" (1:34). The angel responds in language mildly evocative of a physical encounter:

A holy spirit will come upon you and power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the child being born will be called a holy son of God. (1:35, italics mine)

Powers of the demon world acknowledge his divine sonship (4:41; 8:28). It is announced to Jesus in a private vision at his baptism (3:21-22) and to his inner circle at the transfiguration (9:35-36), where a heavenly voice calls him "my son the Chosen One." Nevertheless, Jesus twice publicly evades the question of his divine sonship (22:66-71).

Jesus is Inherently the Son of God

In the Gospel of John two things are immediately clear. The first is that there never was a time when Jesus was not the divine son of God. In the poetic section on the Word at the beginning of the gospel (1:1-18) the Word is identified as the "one and only from the Father" (1:14) and the "one and only God in the bosom of the Father" (1:18). Thus, he is inherently divine. What I mean by inherently is: "Involved in the constitution or essential character of something; belonging by nature."² Or as the Revised English Bible puts it:

In the beginning the Word already was. The Word was in God's presence and what God was, the Word was. He was with God at the beginning. (1:1-2)

The second clarity of John is that the author insists that Jesus is not "a" son of God rather he is the "one and only" son of God (1:14, 18; 3:16,18). The only passage in which the appellation "the son of God" appears in John without the article "the" (ὁ) is John 10:36, while in the synoptics it appears frequently without the article.

            The Word "becoming flesh" (1:14) in the Gospel of John is not describing a birth. It is an "enfleshment" of the primal Word, who was from the beginning (1:1-2). The description is akin to a pre-Pauline hymnic section, where describing Jesus Paul states:

Although he was in the form of God,

Did not regard equality with God

As something to be exploited

But emptied himself,

Taking the form of a slave,

Being born in the likeness of men.

And being found in form as a man,

He humbled himself…(Phil 2:6-8)

In other words, he wasn't a human being but only temporarily took human form.

Enfleshment was a manifestation of a temporary condition (1:14) that did not affect his essentially divine character.

Jesus becomes a Child of God through Faith

Literary fragments of such a view survive, hinting at what may have been the case—if these fragments ever became fully developed and then were simply swept into the dustbin of history by a rising orthodoxy, and forgotten. One hint that there may have been such a such a view of Jesus is the appearance of a rare appellation for Jesus that survives in Acts (3:15; 5:31) and Hebrews (2:10; 12:2). Jesus is called archēgos, which has usually been translated "pioneer" in the New Testament.³ He is a pioneer, according to the author of Hebrews, in that "it was fitting that he…in leading many sons to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through [his own] sufferings" (Heb 2:10): that is to say, suffering perfected him as the pioneer of a Way of faith. Hence, Jesus was not the perfect son of God who suffered "in our behalf" (Rom 5:8). His own faith and confidence in God (Gal 2:16) and perfection through suffering qualified him to lead the Way to glory for many other sons of God (Heb 2:10). It is in this way that Jesus became the firstborn among many brothers (Rom 8:29).

            A second hint is found in the Pauline correspondence, when Paul refers to followers of Jesus being "justified through the faith of Jesus" rather than being justified "through faith in Jesus." That is to say: it was what Jesus believed that mattered rather than what people believed about him:

…a person is not justified by works of the law but through the faith of Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by the faith of Christ and not by works of the law…(Gal 2:16).⁴

A third hint lies in Luke's description of a sect called "the Way" (Acts 9:2; 19:9, 23; 22:4; 24:14, 22). The name likely derives from members of the group describing themselves as following the way of the Lord or God (Acts 13:10; 18:25-26) or the Way of life or salvation (Acts 2:28; 16:17). Nothing else is known of this group. Nevertheless, if these references to the Way are historical and not Luke's creation, the Way appears to have been an early nascent movement around Jesus growing out of Israelite traditions.⁵

Conclusion

It will depend on who is drawing the conclusions. There are two institutions that have an interest in this material, the institutional church and critical New Testament scholarship.⁶ Let me draw two conclusions in the form of challenges to both. For the institutional church the question becomes how can deference continue to be rendered to the dominance of Pauline Christology in the face of such diversity? On the other hand, scholarship has long been aware of the diversity of ideas in New Testament Christology. For my colleagues the question becomes, has that diversity grown larger? Is the recognition of another kind of "Christology" valid?

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹See Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 112-13. The Western reading adds to Mark 1:11: "This day have I begotten thee." In Matt 3:17 the voice from the heavens addresses the crowd: "This is my beloved son."

²Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (1990): s.v. inherent.

³Other ways it has been translated is leader, ruler, prince, instigator, originator, founder, author. See Danker/Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago, 2nd ed., 2000).

⁴See Arthur Dewey et al., The Authentic Letters of Paul. A New Reading of Paul's Rhetoric and Meaning (Polebridge Press, 2010), 65-66.  In recent years Gal 2:16 has been mistranslated as "faith in Christ."

⁵See Hedrick, Wry Thoughts about Religion Blog: "The Gospel of Mark and the Way, a Sect reported in Acts," Monday, January 11, 2021: http://blog.charleshedrick.com/search?q=the+way

⁶If Hector Avalos is correct in his assessment of contemporary biblical scholarship, there may be three institutions concerned with the material. Avalos describes what he calls an ecclesial-academic complex in the field of biblical studies, in which "much of biblical scholarship still exists as part of a commitment to specific religious traditions and bears an apologetic subtext." See Hector Avalos, "Review of Charles W. Hedrick, Unmasking Biblical Faiths." Review of Biblical Literature 2020, by the Society of Biblical Literature.

Humanizing the Lesser Human

On June 5, 2017 I published a blog entitled: "On Becoming and Being Human."¹ The essay closed with this statement, "Being human is not an accident of birth, but a matter of behavior." We modern humans are called Homo sapiens (intelligent man). There was a time when Homo sapiens existed at the same time as others of its genus. They are now extinct. Our nearest "relatives" in the genus Homo were: heidelbergensis, neanderthalensis, erectus, and floresiensis. If I am correct, there is a spectrum, or range, to human behavior, ranging from what is less human to more human. Since archaic Homo sapiens was inferior as a species when compared to modern Homo sapiens, the obvious conclusion is that there is always room for improvement in the humanity of the species. I will describe the lesser human as reflecting the archaic traits of the primitive still surviving in our species. The spectrum raises the question, how do we fully humanize the lesser human? The question seems reasonable, since there are those living among us who have behaved less human than humanity at its ideal best.

            Modern society has developed institutional "treatments" for lesser human behavior in our species. For example, the penal system supposedly aims at the rehabilitation of inmates, those whose criminal behavior has necessitated their incarceration away from Homo sapiens' society at large. The goal of incarceration is to return them to society fully capable of following society's rules—in other words to "humanize" them, since their behavior previously was less than what we think of as ideally human. Society also recognizes that children need to be educated; that is, they should learn how to function and behave in human society. The public-school system in America is dedicated to the purpose of producing well-rounded human beings who will assume their places in society as responsible citizens. Both these institutions in modern society have the full support of Christian Churches as being necessary to society's wellbeing. In other words, the modern Christian Church, as a societal institution, has a vested interest in the humanization of society in the sense I have described it above. What the institutional church does in its religious educational programs is as much for the purpose of humanizing its members as it is for the purpose of religionizing them, since the ideal church member is also expected to be a responsible member of human society.

            It might be surprising to learn that the idea of humanizing society had not occurred to Christians before the fourth century. The early Christians thought of themselves as already belonging to the "household of God" (Eph 2:12) rather than belonging to the present world, for that world was passing away (1 Cor 7:31). The time remaining to them had grown very short (1 Cor 7:29). They stood, they believed, at the very end of time, and hence the usual conventions of first-century society were no longer applicable (1 Cor 7:1-38). The end of the world was coming in their own lifetime (1 Thess 4:13-18; 1 Cor 10:11). Hence, they were not concerned with the betterment of human society. In fact, the Apostle Paul thought that even the created universe would need to be transformed to "be freed from its shackles of mortality" in order to "enter upon the glorious liberty of the children of God" (Rom 8:19-25, Revised English Bible).

The New Testament writers used a collective adjective to describe aspects of being human. A human being (a person) was an anthrōpos, and the adjective used to describe our species was anthrōpinos, "human" (1 Cor 2:13, 4:3, 10:13, Rom 6:19, James 3:7, Acts 17:25, 1 Pet 2:13). They never wrote, however, about humanizing an anthropos. In fact, their ancient texts do not even contain a word for "humanizing." The ancient Greeks, however, did have such a word. The word "to humanize" (exanthrōpizō) is used, for example, by Plutarch in a slightly different way than I have used it above. Plutarch described a humanizing of the divine: that is "degrading things divine to a human level."² On the other hand, I am describing degrees in the quality of human behavior and am arguing for the need to humanize the lesser human as revealed by their negative behavior.

The earliest Christians, on the other hand, were primarily interested in divinizing the human. Here is how the author of 2 Peter puts it:

[God's] divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Thus he has given us, through these things, his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust, and may become participants of the divine nature (2 Pet 1:3-4 NRSV).

The Revised English Bible translates the italicized phrase above this way "and may come to share in the very being of God."

Only the most conservative of religious groups have retained the intense end-time expectation. The more moderate have adjusted to life in this world and explain the delay in the end as the author of Second Peter does: the end is delayed because of the "forbearance of the Lord, not wishing that any should perish" (2 Pet 3:3-10). Folks, this little blue and white planet so far as anyone knows is the only place in the universe that can sustain life, we had better get serious in caring for it and helping the lesser humans among us to achieve their full potential as human beings. This planet is all we have. And in my view a planet in the hand is worth two heavens in the mind.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Hedrick, "From the Jesus Tradition: On Becoming and Being Human," Unmasking Biblical Faiths. The Marginal Relevance of the Bible for Contemporary Religious Faith (Cascade: Eugene, OR, 2019), 57-58; see also, "On Being Human in the Contemporary World," ibid., 55-56.

²"Isis and Osiris" in F. C. Babbit, Plutarch's Moralia (Loeb Classical Library, 1962), 5.55-56 (360). Plutarch (AD 46 to after 119) was a philosopher and priest of Apollo at the God's cult center in Delphi, Greece.

WILL THE EARTH ABIDE?

Even to consider the question seriously starts the tectonic plates shifting beneath one's feet. If the earth passes away, it takes along with it human consciousness, history, and civilization. As unthinkable as it may be, the impermanence of the earth has been considered even by the biblical writers, although God pronounced his creative act "very good" (Genesis 1:31).  The biblical myth, however, is that God once destroyed every living thing on the earth (Genesis 7:4, 21-23), so something went very wrong.  The flood event was not understood by the writers as a destruction of the earth, but (as we would say) a global destruction of life, which God promised never to do again by floods (Genesis 9:11-17).  God promised that the earth and earthly life cycles would continue "while the earth remains" (Genesis 8:20-22), which is not quite a promise that the earth is permanent.  Hence, in this expression the biblical writer raises the specter of the earth's impermanence.

 

            The threats of destruction involving the earth in Hebrew Bible are usually like the flood incident—threats against a particular people for a particular reason (e.g., Zephaniah 1:14-18; 3:1-8).  The earth abides, but certain peoples are destroyed.  Even the "Little Apocalypse" of Isaiah 24-27 (First Isaiah) predicts only a devastation of the earth and not its destruction. Isaiah 65:17-20 (Third Isaiah), however, foresees a "new heavens and a new earth" and asserts that "the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind."

 

            Paul's letters seem inconsistent.  In one letter he suggests that even the (old) earth is anticipating redemption, because of its being in bondage to decay (Romans 8:19-23), which suggests that the present earth will continue after its redemption.  Yet in another letter he writes that "the form of this world is passing away" (1 Corinthians 7:26, 31).  The writer in Second Peter unambiguously announces the destruction of earth:

 

The Day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and the works that are upon it will be burned up. (2nd Peter 3:10).

 

The prophetic writer, John, echoes Third Isaiah in foreseeing the advent of a "new heaven and a new earth," and echoes Paul in announcing the "passing away" of the first heaven and first earth (Revelation 21:1-4).

 

            Do you suppose that God's mind for some reason was changed about the creation being "very good," and as a result what began "good" in God's judgment will end up in a fiery cataclysm?  If so, why would God decide to destroy a "very good" and perfectly innocent creation?  Animals, plants, and the "material stuff" of earth are not unrighteous, evil, or unethical, and scarcely deserve punishment.  Such insentient things and creatures would scarcely even be able to appreciate that they were being punished.  Perhaps the biblical writers are wrong in foreseeing the end of the world, for they cannot actually read God's mind. When it comes to God, all of us human beings are limited and see things only "in a mirror dimly" (1 Corinthians 13:9, 12)—even prophets, preachers, and TV evangelists.

 

            Nevertheless, that said, the transience of our habitable blue and white planet earth has always been threatened by natural causes.  A large enough wandering comet striking earth would cause catastrophic devastation.  In 1908 a comet about the size of a football field, among other things leveled 2000 square kilometers of forest in central Siberia. Perhaps some other cosmic catastrophe might occur, such as a "super nova within ten or twenty light years of the solar system," an event that some conjecture was the cause of the passing away of the dinosaurs "some sixty-five million years ago." Super novae are huge exploding stars.

 

            Our Sun is a star, or put another way, the stars you see in the night sky are suns.  They have a limited life span. "Billions of years from now, there will be a last perfect day on earth. Thereafter the Sun will slowly become red and distended," on its way to becoming a red star, then degenerating to a white dwarf; ultimately it becomes a dark and dead black dwarf.  Our earth would have then long since become uninhabitable to life as we know it. Sagan's description of the death of the earth echoes Second Peter: Earth will "swelter even at the poles" and then,

 

The Arctic and Antarctic icecaps will melt…Eventually the oceans will boil, the atmosphere melt away to space and a catastrophe of the most immense proportions will overtake our planet.

 

Will we earth people be able to survive without our mother, the earth?  We were spawned millions of years ago in an earthy primordial soup of dust from the stars and nourished at mother earth's breast on our way to becoming human beings. Perhaps, we will, but what might we become without her?

 

How does it seem to you?

 

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

 

Carl Sagan, Cosmos (1980): comets, 73-76; death of the sun, 230-32; death of the dinosaurs, 283; origins of life, 30-31; super nova, 238-39.

Why is the New Testament a Postscript in the Christian Bible?

My beginning question is: why are the Christian Holy Writings attached footnote-like to the end of the Jewish Bible? I suppose one could reasonably argue that the two collections are gathered into the Bible in the historical sequence of their dates of authorship. That is a reasonable thought, for the dates of the Hebrew Bible texts predate those of the New Testament (NT). But why doesn’t the same rationale apply for the order of the books within each collection? For example, the NT texts are not printed in historical order. If that were so, First Thessalonians would be the first text in the NT, followed by the rest of the undisputed Pauline letters, and the next few would be in this order: Mark, Matthew, Luke, Hebrews,¹ John…and second Peter would be the last text in the NT.

A more basic question now occurs to me: why do Christians use Jewish Holy Scriptures as Word of God and put the Jewish Scriptures first in the Bible? The answer seems to be they were “grandfathered” in, as they were the first canon of Christian Holy Writings. Here is the reason: The earliest followers of Jesus were Israelites, people of the Covenant God (Gen 12:1-3; Gen 17:1-14), whose holy writings were Israelite religious texts.² When the Jesus movement later moved out into the Gentile world, capturing the imagination of Greeks and Romans, these later Gentile followers of Jesus continued to use the Bible of the Israelites (in its Greek translation), because the Israelites and these later followers of Jesus believed it to be “God breathed or inspired” (2 Tim 2:15-16).³

Those who wrote the NT searched their religious texts and found therein “prophecies” that supported their belief that Jesus was the Anointed One, who would come (Micah 5:2, for example), and applied the prophecies to Jesus. These prophecies, and the fact that they believed the Israelite writings to be Word of God, locked-in the Israelite writings as Holy Scriptures for Orthodox Christianity and secured their first-place position in the Christian Bible.

One notable exception to this “mixed” collection of Israelite and Christian texts was the biblical canon of Marcion that appeared around the middle of the second century. Nothing is preserved of his writings except refutations written by his Orthodox opponents. Marcion rejected The Israelite writings and published an abbreviated NT containing a shortened gospel (Luke) and ten letters of Paul (minus the Pastoral Letters and Hebrews). Marcion rejected the Israelite writings and their God, whom he regarded as a God of Justice (“an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”). The God of Jesus, on the other hand, was the God of Mercy. Marcion’s NT was the first attempt to form a distinctive collection of “Christian” writings.

The biblical canon of the Christian communities of the first 400 years in the evolution of Christianity retained the old covenant books (which they came to know as the Old Testament [OT]) and added to them the new covenant/testament books (now known as the NT).⁴ Both collections are named for covenants God is believed to have made with humankind. The covenants are briefly alluded-to in Heb 8:6-12, where the author of Hebrews quotes Jeremiah (31:31-34; Heb 8:8-12), who anticipated a “new covenant” with God. The author of Hebrews adds the following statement to the end of Jeremiah’s quotation:

In speaking of a new covenant, he [Jeremiah] treats the first as obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away (Heb 8:13).

This “prediction” (toward the end of the first century), making the old covenant obsolete or useless, never happened. Christians are still using Israelite writings, and these old “obsolete” writings continue to hold first position in the Christian canon. The connection with the old covenant, although “obsolete,” will likely never “disappear.” For example, when the two different collections are discussed in dictionaries of the Bible under the entry “Canon,” the editors reverse their usual alphabetical listing of entries by listing Old Testament before New Testament. Their alphabetical order would have been NT before OT.

            The tradition of individual churches decided the order of the contents in papyrus NT manuscripts, which was largely determined on the basis of interest and what could be gotten into a papyrus codex (i.e., book). The surviving papyrus fragments of NT texts do not include OT books. In the papyrus manuscripts of the second through fourth centuries, which are mostly fragmentary, there are few differences with the order of today’s NT, which is also traditional.

            The large parchment uncial Bible manuscripts (Sinaiticus and Vaticanus), surviving from the fourth century CE, however, contain both OT and NT with NT texts tagged on at the end of the OT texts. Why is that do you suppose? Two reasons occur to me: The OT was considered Word of God long before Christians began writing what eventually became NT texts, and it took around 200 years, or so, for these “postscripts” to achieve Word of God status. Hence, the OT/NT order is simply traditional.

            Isn’t it time that some enterprising ecclesiastical scholar reconsidered that arrangement and recommended putting the NT books first? It just seems rather odd to begin the Christian Bible with the Jewish Scriptures!

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Kummel, Introduction to the New Testament, 246. John was written in the last decade of the first century (90-99). Hebrews is earlier “probably written between 80-90” (p. 403).

²There was not at the time of the public career of Jesus (around 30 CE) a collection of religious texts that all members of the Israelite religious community agreed upon. The Hebrew Bible, as we know it today, is thought to have been formed by the surviving group, the Pharisees, after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE by the Romans.

³The comment in Second Timothy does not refer to the Christian Bible but rather it refers to what are today the Jewish Holy Scriptures.

⁴Covenant in Greek is diatheke; in Latin it is testamentum. The words mean the same thing.

⁵See note one above. The critical date for the writing of Hebrews is earlier than the writing of John.

Pondering Jesus as “Fully God and Fully Human”

This statement is not from the New Testament, and as best I can tell, it is not a quotation from an early creed or council of the Christian church. It appears to be a modern adaptation of what was stated at the Council of Chalcedon in 451: that Jesus was "truly God and truly man."¹ This statement stands somewhat in tension with the early Nicene Creed (325), where it appears that Jesus was "true God of true God…of one substance with the Father." He had no beginning since "he was begotten by the Father before all the ages" and "for us men came down from the heavens, and was made flesh of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and became man."²

The Nicene creed affirms that he was originally God and later "became a person." It does not claim that he was human (in Greek, man/person is anthrōpos; human is anthrōpinos). His entry into human flesh, as described by the creed, is vastly different from human procreation or generation. If the creeds accurately describe Jesus, the only conclusion one can reach is that Jesus was not like us; that is, he was not human, at least not as we are. How many other people do you know who originated in heaven and whose birth was claimed to have been occasioned by insemination from a Holy Spirit (Matt 1:18//Luke 1:35)?

            The predecessors of the later church that created the creeds, however, were not unified in describing the origin or nature of Jesus in the late first and early second centuries.³ During this earlier period the religious marketplace brimmed with competing ideas about Jesus. One could understand Jesus simply as a human being "who was descended from David according to the flesh and appointed Son of God…" (Rom 1:3-4). In other words, he did not originate in heaven but was commonly human like us. God chose to elevate him to divinity like the Roman Senate did for the Roman Emperor:⁴ declaring that the genius (an indwelling guiding force or spirit) of the emperor deserved to be worshipped.⁵

Before the creeds in the earlier period, the synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke) described his career basically as a Jewish thaumaturge (worker of miracles), faith healer, and Galilean wise man. That is something very different from being God from the beginning and later becoming flesh as the Gospel of John has it. While John is similar to the synoptics, its prologue (John 1:1-18) prompts the reader to see Jesus as having a divine origin before he became enfleshed.⁶

John presents the reader with the other end of the spectrum: the belief that Jesus, as the Word was, "from the beginning," with God and "was God" (John 1:1-2). He only later "came to be in flesh" (John 1:14).  A slightly earlier description declared that although he was equal to God (Phil 2:6), he came into being in human likeness and was found in human form (Phil 2:7). He was exalted by God for his death on the cross (Phil 2:8-9). One strange idea, reflected in Paul's letters, suggests that some thought he had a special kind of flesh that was only similar to sinful flesh (Rom 8:3), such as we human beings have. His flesh would not see corruption (Acts 2:25-31/Ps 15:8-11 Septuagint, not the Hebrew).

The point I wish to make is that after the third century the view that emerged from the debates became the standard. No longer was there an opportunity to ponder Jesus with impunity. The issue was settled. If you did not share the view of the group that called themselves "orthodox," you were a "heretic" (which only means that you do not share the orthodox view).

If the pondering of the earliest followers of Jesus (as recorded in the New Testament) is your standard for determining who Jesus was, there are several options available for you to consider. A number of ideas were in the air. Here is another that I recently stumbled across: Jesus was a human being, descended from David. He became the pioneer of a certain kind of faith in God, and established that Way of faith for others to follow by being perfected through his own sufferings (Heb 2:10, 12:2).⁷ So what do you say about Jesus, and how do you explain all the other views?

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹https://zondervanacademic.com/blog/council-of-chalcedon

²The italics are mine; the source is Bettenson and Maunder, Documents of the Christian Church (3^rd ed.; Oxford, 1999), 28.

³For a survey of the diversity of views in the pre-creedal gatherings of Jesus followers, see C. W. Hedrick, "Is Belief in the Divinity of Jesus Essential to Being Christian," Unmasking Biblical Faiths (Cascade: 2019), 221-33 and "Early Confessions and the Language of Faith," The Fourth R 32.1 (2019), 15-20.

⁴Hedrick, "Belief in the Divinity of Jesus," 223-24.

⁵E. Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity (3^rd ed.; Eerdmans, 2003), 209.

⁶Hedrick, "Belief in the Divinity of Jesus," 221-24.

⁷Hedrick, "Belief in the Divinity of Jesus," 221-33 and "Early Confessions and the Language of Faith," 15-20.

IS FREEDOM AN ILLUSION?

Happy Fourth of July! At the suggestion of a reader, today’s posting is a reprise of one originally published on May 31, 2013

I do not have in mind political freedom, which is always limited. Fortunately in a representative democracy, however, the citizen has a voice in setting the limits and deciding how free "freedom" should be. Political freedom is not absolute. Ideally laws are drafted to give all groups the greatest amount of freedom possible under the law in a way that does not unnecessarily abridge the freedom of others who share minority views. So in a representative democracy all give a little to get a little.

       In this essay, however, I have in mind the ability of individuals to make decisions that have not been influenced, whether overtly or subtly, by their environment. From the earliest moments in life no one can independently envision their course of life. You cannot pick your parents, their social and economic status, or their prospects. You take what fate decrees for you. You cannot pick where you were born. Your birthplace is chosen by your mother. You cannot pick your native language, your skin color, or nationality. All these things happen by chance. Your religion or non-religion in the early years is the choice of your parents whom you did not pick. You are indoctrinated by their religious views, or lack thereof. You do not choose in the lower grades your educational institutions. Schooling hinges on where you live and/or your parents' economic circumstances. So the attitudes, values, quality and kind of instruction, inductively learned prejudices in the region where you live, and the acquired knowledge (both formal and cultural), which subtly mold and shape you, are also not of your own choosing. Your socialization happens almost by osmosis. By the time you think you have gained control from the dominant powers in your life (parents, local educational and political systems, religious institutions, regional cultural mores, etc.) you have already become something that may not be able to be changed, even if the thought occurred to you to do so. Your future choices have already been influenced by the powers outside you in your past. Thus people are free only to the extent that they can escape their own pasts.

       In later life you find yourself immersed in a culture whose expectations, moral values, and ideals demand compliance if you are to live successfully in society. The compliant are rewarded with status in the community and those who resist are marginalized. In later years you marry and become focused on job and advancement—each economic institution has its own rules that must be mastered. There are children to be tended, a home to be kept up to community standards, taxes to be paid, medical bills to be met, the children's future to consider, and retirement to be planned for. The demands are such that you have little time to give to abstract things as thinking about becoming—and anyway you have already "become" by buying into or resisting the culture and its expectations. You simply meet the requirements, without thinking, or challenge the expectations. In any case you are simply too far in to life to make radical changes.

       Nearing the age of retirement, some do find time for reflecting on where life has brought them, or perhaps better: on what their past and present have made them. In retrospect, they look back over their lives searching for the turning points that shaped them.

       Religion is part of the problem rather than the solution. All religions claim to possess Truth, particularly the missionary religions in their traditional forms: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. All three of these have attached themselves to certain cultures sympathetic to their religious systems.  They reciprocate symbiotically by helping to reinforce the cultural norms in their chosen societies.  This has always been the case with Christianity, for example. In the first century Paul urged his churches to be subject to the governing authorities, "for there is no authority except from God and those that exist have been instituted by God" (Romans 13:1-7)—and he said this about the Roman Empire, no less! The author of Revelation, whose time and situation were different, disagreed—calling the Roman Empire "Babylon the Great, a dwelling place of demons" (Revelation 18) and "mother of harlots" (Revelation 17:5). Paul, a Roman citizen found in the Empire a symbiotic partner; the writer of Revelation did not.

       Christianity in America thinks of its gospel as "freeing." Jesus said to the Jews "who believed in him": "You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:32). And Paul wrote: "For Freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery" (Galatians 5:1). He of course was talking about freedom from the Jewish Torah. But Christianity has assimilated to American culture and its political system to such an extent that "Americanism" has become a synonym for "Christian." The American flag is displayed in churches, the pledge of Allegiance is taught to children in church schools, and patriotic songs are sung in worship. Not all churches are as blatant about the "Americanism" in their religious programs, however. Nevertheless, the religious instruction and preaching in mainstream churches aim to produce good Christian citizens who reflect American societal norms, so that their lives reflect well on the church, something the early churches were concerned about as well (1 Thessalonians 4:10-12; 1 Peter2:13-15; Titus 3:1-2). The early churches rejected the radical ethics of Jesus (if they happened to remember them) and turned to the ethical values (called "household codes") that governed private life in the early Roman Empire (for example, Colossians 3:18-4:1).

       Growing up in a lower middle class family in the Mississippi Delta in the 40s and 50s leaves me to wonder just how free I really was.

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University